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Nigella Lawson and the High Cost of divorce

Celebrities

Nigella Lawson Eats A Banana
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.

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30 Day Project Update – January

Misc

For those who don’t remember–or are just tuning in–I am doing a 30 Day Project every month this year, sometimes two.  For the month of January, I am doing two projects.  I am waking up at 5AM every day, and I had planned to read to my kids every night before bed.

Waking up hasn’t been that difficult. I’m tempted to snooze the alarm, but I haven’t done that yet.  My routine has been to wake up at 5, watch or read the news until I am fully awake, have breakfast, get ready for work, read all of the websites I follow in Google Reader, then get the kids ready.   Until this month, my routine was to get up at 6:30, rush to get ready, rush more to get the kids ready, head out the door.  This has been more relaxing and it let’s me start my workday fully awake, which wasn’t happening before.   I’m hoping to get some writing time in there and next month, exercise time.   The interesting thing is that I haven’t adjusted what time I go to bed by much, so this has actually added 90 minutes to my day.

It’s been interesting.   I’m dead tired at 9PM, but I’m surprisingly wide awake by 5:30.  It hasn’t been nearly as hard as I had feared.   I’m looking forward to spring, when I can greet the sunrise. 

Reading hasn’t gone as well.  At the beginning of the month, I told the girls I would read to them every night.   We started out wonderfully.   Then, the real world came in uninvited. I had a meeting at school that ran late.  My son’s wrestling season started.  Things just kept getting in the way of a bedtime story.  The solution?  We modified the deal.  It’s not a bedtime story any more.  I am reading to the girls whenever there is time.  I may not be home at bedtime every day, but I am certainly home at other times.  We’re making it happen, even if it’s not exactly as planned.

It’s just a demonstration of the old rule:  Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. A small amount of flexibility has turned a potentially failed goal into happy family time.  It’s still a win.
How are your resolutions progressing?

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-20

Misc

  • Crap. Replacing the power jack on my laptop means ordering out for the piece. #
  • @mymoneyshrugged Engraved pocket knives were a hit with my groomsmen. in reply to mymoneyshrugged #
  • Movies that force previews suck. Dangit, Invention of Lying. #
  • RT @Lynnae Carnival of Personal Finance #148 http://bit.ly/adRZQo #
  • @jimmyjohns – 35 minutes is not "so fast I'll freak". #
  • @jimmyjohns "Can you send the store info to bit.ly/jjfeedback? Thx!" – Done. Normally service is excellent. in reply to jimmyjohns #
  • Pizzeria with the family. Yum! #
  • RT @FrugalYankee: Fact: In 1873, there were 4131 beer breweries pumping in the US. 1973 only 41 brewers operating 89 plants. Now around 1500 #
  • Mango pudding is the king of all nummy. #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-22

Misc

Playing For Blood

Parenting

Toys of Christmas Past
Image by brizzle born and bred via Flickr

Kris at Every Tips and Thoughts wrote a post about games and letting her kids win feeling bad about winning.  I disagree.  This post is an expansion of my comment there.

When we play games in my house, we play for blood.   I’ve never let my kids win and they know it.  From the first time the kids attempt Memory, they know they’ve got to earn a win against Mom and Dad.   They know if they lose, they must do so gracefully.  If they pout or cry, they lose game privileges for a while.  I demand good sportsmanship, win or lose.

To be clear, my kids are 3, 4, and 11 and they are all held to the same standards of sportsmanship.   Win or lose, they will do so gracefully.   There will be no temper tantrums when they are Sorry’d and no pouting when the Queen is captured.

It took my son almost 3 years to beat me at chess.   When it finally happened, he was almost as proud as I was and still talks about it 5 years later.

It’s not much fun playing games with his friends. They were coddled and expect to win everything.  I have to take away game privileges just like I do for my 3 year old.  They hate that because we have the coolest board games.   Nobody else has games that involve zombies or disembodied brains.

What has the result been?

My kids love playing games.   This week, my oldest has been teaching his sisters how to play Life.   When he visits his friends, he’s as likely to bring a board game as an electronic game.    He’s got a good mind for strategy, and I can’t remember the last time he pouted when I tromped him.

My 4 year old hasn’t mastered gamesmanship yet, but she will.  When I threaten to put the game away, she wipes her eyes, and keeps playing, even if her jaw is chattering.   She knows what is expected and works to live up to it.

Both of the older kids are competitive.   They’ve never had a win handed to them, and they have each had wins they had to work for, and they know how it feels to win and earn it.

The youngest doesn’t care if she wins, she’s just happy to play.   In my experience, the competitive gameplay gene doesn’t activate until 4.

In my mind, the real world won’t hand them any wins, so I might as well start teaching them how to work for it now.

How about you? Do you let your kids win, or do you teach them that all games are bloodsports?

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Time Management

Finance, Relationships

Clockwork egg timer.
Image via Wikipedia

My wife told me that I don’t do enough around the house.

She is, of course, correct.

I could make a list of excuses, but none of them matter.   There’s really only one reason: I have problems with time management.   I’m easily distracted.

For example, in the time it’s taken me to write the above three lines, I stopped to check a website, updated my Evernote installation, and added a new contact to my address book.

That’s not multi-tasking, that’s inefficiency.   People don’t actually multi-task.  Instead, they break concentration and completely switch gears.  Repeatedly.   They pretend they are doing a lot of things at once, when in fact they are doing a large series of individual tasks.  That’s serial single-tasking, poorly.

On top of that, I focus to the point of obsession.   The entire world goes away when I am working.

No, that’s not a contradiction.    I’m good at procrastinating and I am interested in everything.   If a random thought floats to the surface while I’m working, I follow it to Google and, if it’s interesting enough, I get lost.   It generally only happens during research or while doing a job I hate.

For those of you following along at home, I can be easily distracted from some tasks, then lock on to some tangent and have an evening disappear.

For some reason, my wife hates that, especially when there are dishes to be done and laundry to be folded.

This has blown up on me a few time.

We’ve come upon a solution, in three parts.

1.  Timer.  When I get on the computer, I set an egg timer for 1 hour.  When the time’s up, I’m done.   The time limit helps me focus on finishing the task at hand.    If I know I need to get a post written in an hour, I’m less likely to catch up on the comics in my news reader.

2.  Communication.   If I’m working on something that I know will take more than an hour, I tell her.   I’ve had to do that for each installment of the Make Extra Money series.

3.  Nagging.   If #1 has failed and #2 doesn’t apply, I’ve given my wife explicit permission to remind me, as often as necessary.  Sometimes, I don’t register everything people say when I am “lost”, so now she knows to keep trying if I don’t respond, or respond with a spaced-out “Uh-huh, yes, dear.”  Before, she was worried about upsetting me by nagging, but I wouldn’t have noticed the first few times.  Thankfully, with #1 and #2, #3 has only been an issue one.

Time limits, communication, and persistent reminders.  That’s my plan to manage my time.   Getting off of the computer has helped me be more useful with household chores and it’s given me a chance to be closer to the woman I love most.   The time-limited focus has even helped me get a couple of projects rolling.

We all have the same 24 hours.  Are you using yours efficiently?

(P.S.  Happy anniversary, honey.   These have been the best years I could ask for.)

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