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Nigella Lawson and the High Cost of divorce

Nigella Lawson Eats A Banana (Photo credit: Kaptain Kobold)

Heartache and heartbreak are hard enough to endure but imagine having to go through the loss of a relationship while the world looks on. Such is the high price of celebrity divorce and the latest victim is the beautiful and talented television chef, Nigella Lawson. Shocking photos of Nigella apparently being choked by her husband, Charles Saatchi, surfaced in the media following the June 9th dinner at Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair, London, where the incident occurred. Saatchi’s advisors urged him to humble himself and admit a public apology for the assault. Saatchi denied any wrongdoing, saying he never assaulted her and in fact, was actually removing mucous from his wife’s nose. Nigella was stunned by the admonition of “nose-picking” and his refusal to apologize. She left Saatchi and their family home in Chelsea.

The two sides continued to disagree about the pictures; Saatchi claiming it was just a “playful tiff” and Lawson hurt and humiliated by the public’s assumption of her as victim of domestic violence and her husband as her tormentor. Insult was added to injury on July 7th, when Saatchi announced his intent to divorce his wife in the media instead of directly to her. Lawson, who had been waiting for a public apology, was blind-sided by his cruel divorce announcement. Lawson and Saatchi have been married for 10 years; Saatchi has claimed that the couple had become “estranged” the last few years. Saatchi claims that he had no choice but to act publicly since his wife “failed to defend” him with a statement to the media. In fact, Lawson has remained silent at the advice of her publicist so as not to further affect their children. Lawson (53) and Saatchi (70) have three teenage children from previous marriages that they were raising together.In addition to the “he said, she said” controversy, Lawson and Saatchi will have to fight over $150 million in shared assets, including their $12 million Chelsea, West London home. Both brought substantial assets into the marriage. Charles Saatchi is worth $100 million from the high-profile, highly-successful New York advertising firm, Saatchi and Saatchi. Nigella Lawson is a celebrity chef, bestselling author and television star with a net worth of $15 million. By the time lawyers for both sides duke it out in court and attempt to untangle the shared assets, those net worths will be considerably less.But it’s not just a monetary cost to this celebrity divorce. Saatchi had grown increasingly resentful of his wife’s high-profile career that he helped established. It’s a common theme in celebrity couples; one partner becomes the higher earner or the more recognized celebrity and the other gets bit by that green-eyed monster, jealousy. In Nigella’s case, there is the public humiliation at the hands of someone she loves to endure. It seems that Saatchi is determined to do whatever he can to make her suffer in the media. And then there are the children; children always suffer in a divorce. It can be lessened when parents work together to keep it private and amicable. But it’s incredibly painful to have your lives dragged through the media. In this case, it is Nigella and Saatchi’s children that are paying the ultimate price.

Insane Incentives

Parenting

Spring is in the air.

At my son’s school, that means it’s time for the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests. These are the standardized tests created by the No Child Left Behind Act that determine if a school is doing its job in educating children. If too many kids have lousy scores, the school gets put on the “Adequate Yearly Progress” list and will eventually get penalized financially.

That creates a perverted incentive in the school system. The main metric for a publicly-funded school’s success in Minnesota is the MCA. If a school can churn out illiterate trench-diggers, they will get increased funding as long as the test scores are good.

For a full two weeks before this test, the school effectively shut down the education program to prepare for the MCA test. That’s two weeks of studying for a set of standardized tests that focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic. I’m a fan of schools prioritizing the three Rs over other subjects, but that’s not what they did.

They spent two weeks studying testing strategies, not the material contained in the test.

In science class, they covered essential scientific elements like “Answer all of the easy questions first, so you can go back and spend time on the hard ones later.”

Spanish class covered verb usage similar to “When the time is almost out on the test, answer ‘C’ for all of the hard questions you have left, que?”

They weren’t being educated, they were learning the most effective way to solve a test to gain funding for next year.

For 2 weeks.

That’s not reading practice, or reviewing the parts of speech, or covering the necessary math skills. It’s “This is a #2 pencil. This is a circle. Practice until lunch.”

Is this really what NCLB was trying to accomplish? Standardized tests to measure school proficiency should be a surprise. Let’s randomly send in test proctors to take over a school for a day and see what the kids have actually learned.

30 Day Project – January

Misc

This month, I have two 30 Day Projects.

My first project is to start waking up at 5am. This will add an extra 90 minutes to my day, which will give me time to manage all of my other 30 day projects. I’ll be able to wake up to a quiet house, walk the dog, eat breakfast and not start every day in a rush to get out of the house. Today was my exception. After watching 2010 arrive, I didn’t get up early.

The second project is to start reading to my children every night before bed. We read to the kids often, but not every day. That’s going to change. We are also working on breaking the girls of the family bed. If I can read them to sleep each night, it will help. Good, educational family time that makes it easier to sleep every night.

These are both habits I want to keep long after the month is up.

Back to Cash

Finance

It appears that I can’t be trusted with a credit card.

At least, not a credit card that gets used for our regular shopping.

Over the past few months, our spending has slipped past our budget by more than I like. The problem appears to be that it’s really easy to toss “just one more thing” in the cart when there’s no hard limit on how much is available to spend at the register.

If you do that a few time, it’s easy to find yourself $1000 over budget.

Ouch.

If it weren’t for my side hustles, we’d have been growing our debt recently.

As of the beginning of this month, our credit card has once again been relegated to automatic bills, the gas station and online purchases.

No more groceries, no more scrapbooking stuff, and no more restaurants.

I would have done this sooner, but we were so far over budget that I didn’t have the cash to yank out all at once to cover our month’s expenses. We ended last month at a good place, so I went for the clean break and withdrew all of our day-to-day spending on the first. When I got home, it went straight into envelopes so we know what we’ve got to spend this month.

Bye-bye, credit cards!

Happy Form

If you don’t know why you are hear, please read about the 21 Day Happiness Training Challenge.

Giving Up The Magic

Parenting

It’s a sad day when kids stop believing in Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, and fairies.

Not because I enjoy lying to my kids, but because–on the day they stop believing–a piece of their innocence is lost. An unforgettable, valuable part of childhood dies.

Believing in magic is a beautiful thing.

Do you remember the last time you looked around the world with a sense of wonder? When seeing a puppy form in the clouds was a miracle? When the idea of an ant carrying 1000 times its own weight was something worth watching? When the impossible goodness of a fat man squeezing down your chimney fills you with hope instead of making you call 911?

Do I believe in Santa?

Of course not, but I believe the concept of Santa is worthy of my children’s belief. I don’t want them to lose that innocence and wonder.

When my teenager was young, he asked if Santa was real. I responded by asking what he thought. When he told me he didn’t believe, I offered to let Santa know. His panic told me he wasn’t ready to give up the magic.

The day that conversation didn’t cause a panic, he looked hurt, like he’d lost something precious. He had.

His world of magic was gone.

The he asked why I had spent his lifetime lying to him. I told him the truth. I said I couldn’t bear to be the one to shatter his belief in magic before he was ready.

Then, I informed him that he was in on the conspiracy. He was not allowed to ruin it for anyone else. Not his sisters, not his friends.

That Christmas, my little boy helped me stuff stockings, which was an odd feeling.

The magic was over, but we still got to share the magic of his cousins and sisters.

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