Child Maintenance Quotes

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial! I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers. I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail. But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!

As the family therapist Virginia Satir famously said, “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.” Hug your child first thing every morning, every time you say good-bye or hello, and as often as you can in between.

I once two beautiful children playing together. One was a fair white child; the other was her slave, and also her sister. When I saw them embracing each other, and heard their joyous laughter, I turned sadly away from the lovely sight. I foresaw the inevitable blight that would follow on the little slave's heart. I knew how soon her laughter would be changed to sighs. The fair child grew up to be a still fairer woman. From childhood to womanhood her pathway was blooming with flowers, and overarched by a sunny sky. Scarcely one day of her life had been clouded when the sun rose on her happy bridal morning. How had those years dealt with her slave sister, the little playmate of her childhood? She, also, was very beautiful; but the flowers and sunshine of love were not for her. She drank the cup of sin, and shame, and misery, whereof her persecuted race are compelled to drink. In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right? Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so full, and my pen is so weak! There are noble men and women who plead for us, striving to help those who cannot help themselves. God bless them! God give them strength and courage to go on! God bless those, every where, who are laboring to advance the cause of humanity!

NO SHORTS or SANDAL!! This for your own protection. Tomorrow's boot camp will be something SPECIAL! Meet in front of the maintenance shed at the north end of the quad at 10 A.M! Latecomers will be left behind and this is a day you will not want to miss! - Adara - I roll my eyes. Besides her overuse of exclamation points and her tendency to yell, the idea that we're doing "something special" in camp tomorrow is not exciting. It's terrifying.

The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding. The woman without appetite politely finishes what’s on her plate, and declines seconds. She is satisfied and satisfiable. As a child, on an endless restrictive regimen that started when I was four, I was told ‘if you get used to eating less, you’ll stop being so hungry.’ The secret to satiation, to satisfaction, was not to meet or even acknowledge your needs, but to curtail them. We learn the same lesson about our emotional hunger: Want less, and you will always have enough.

If my own child were turning tricks on the streets, enslaved not only by the drug but also criminal dealers and pimps, I would want her to have the benefit of maintenance drugs, even if she sometimes misused them or otherwise figured out how to glean a subtle high from the experience. If my child's fear of dopesickness was so outsized that she refused even MAT, I would want her to have access to clean needles that prevented her from getting HIV and/or hepatitis C and potentially spreading them to others.

Virginia Satir has suggested that we need from four to twelve hugs a day as part of our health maintenance.

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents.

Ten bucks a day, just for clothes, made no sense at all until you figured a washing machine cost four hundred and a dryer another three and the basement to put them in implied a house which cost at least a hundred grand to buy and then tens of thousands a year in taxes and maintenance and insurance and associated bullshit. Then ten bucks a day for clothes suddenly made all the sense in the world.

Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and the myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know. The

Clearly, there exists an entire class of people who gain immense profit, prestige and power from the existence of the government. It is equally true that, as a collective, these people have enormous control and influence over the minds of children, since it is that same government that educates virtually every child for six or more hours a day, five days a week, for almost a decade and a half of their formative years. To analogize this situation, can we imagine that we would be at all surprised that children who came out of 14 years of religious indoctrination would in general believe in the existence and virtue of God? Would we be at all surprised if the strong arguments for atheism were left off a curriculum expressly designed by the priests, who directly profit from the maintenance of religious belief? In fact, we would fully expect such children to be actively trained in the rejection of arguments for atheism – inoculated against it, so to speak, so that they would react with scorn or hostility to such arguments.

If at this moment we were to eliminate the religions by force, the people would unanimously beseech us for a new form of worship. You can imagine our Gauleiters giving up their pranks to play at being saints ! As for our Minister for Religion, according to his own co-religionists, God himself would turn away from his family! I envisage the future, therefore, as follows : First of all, to each man his private creed. Superstition shall not lose its rights. The Party is sheltered from the danger of competing with the religions. These latter must simply be forbidden from interfering in future with temporal matters. From the tenderest age, education will be imparted in such a way that each child will know all that is important to the maintenance of the State. As for the men close to me, who, like me, have escaped from the clutches of dogma, I've no reason to fear that the Church will get its hooks on them. We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth.

Our Real Self feels both joy and pain. And it expresses and shares them with appropriate others. However, our false self tends to push us to feel mostly painful feelings and to withhold and not share them. For simplicity, we can describe these joyful and painful feelings across a spectrum, starting with the most joyous, going through the most painful, and ending with confusion and numbness, as follows: Viewing our feelings in this way, we see that our Real and True Self, our Child Within, is empowered with a wider range of possibilities than we might have believed. The maintenance and growth of our Child Within is associated with what psychotherapists and counselors call a “strong ego,” or sense of self i.e., a flexible and creative self that can “roll with the punches” of life. By contrast, the false self tends to be more limited, responding to mostly painful feelings—or no feeling at all, i.e., numbness. Our false self tends to be associated with a “weak ego” or self sense i.e., a less flexible, self-centered (negative or egocentric) and more rigid one. [Originally Freud and his followers used “ego” to mean what we now understand as being both our True Self and false self. But since about 1940, object relations and self psychologists have differentiated these and generally do not use the term “ego.” Today, more people equate ego with false self.] To cover up the pain we use relatively unhealthy defenses against pain which give us fewer possibilities and choices in our lives.

The sensory roles of the anulospiral receptor and the tendon organ are absolutely central in this process of exerting and adjusting muscle tone. These devices establish the “feel” for length and tension, and it is this feeling which is maintained by the gamma motor system, the reflex arcs, and the alpha skeletal muscles. All of my muscle cells—both alpha and gamma—are continually felt by the mind as they work, whether most of these “feelings” ever reach my conscious awareness or not. And it is primarily these muscular feelings which supply my central nervous system with the constant information necessary to successfully combine the demands of free motion with those of basic structural stability. The sophistication required for this maintenance of structure and flexibility can be appreciated if we remember that almost any simple motion—such as raising the arm out to the side—changes either the length or the tension values in most of the body’s muscle cells. If one is to avoid tipping towards the extended arm, then the feet, the legs, the hips, the back, the neck, and the opposite arm all must participate in a new distribution of balance created by the “isolated” movement of raising the arm. The difficulties experienced by every child learning to sit, to stand erect, and to walk with an even gait attest to the complexity of the demands which these shifts in balance and tone make upon us. The entire musculature must learn to participate in the motion of any of its parts. And to do this, the entire musculature must feel its own activity, fully and in rich detail. Competent posture and movement are among the chief points of sensory self-awareness. The purpose of bodywork is to heighten and focus this awareness. It is the child’s task during this early motor training to experiment by trial and error, and to set the precise lengths and tensions—and changes in length and tension—in all his muscle fibers for these basic skills of standing and walking. This is the education of the basal ganglia and the gamma motor system, as learned reflex responses are added to our inherited ones. The lengths and rates of change of the spindle fibers are set at values which experience has confirmed to be appropriate for the movement desired, and then the sensorimotor reflex arcs of the spindles and the Golgis command the alpha motor nerves, and hence the skeletal muscles, to respond exactly to those specifications that have been established in the gamma system by previous trial and error. And this chain of events holds true not only for the actual limb being moved, but for all other parts of the musculature that must brace, or shift, or compensate in any way. In this complicated process, the child is guided primarily by sensory cues which become more consistent and more predictable with every repetition of his efforts.

How to Apply for the Best divorce Advocate in Chennai? When a marriage does not last for an extended period of time, couples frequently search online for information on how to apply for divorce Lawyers in Chennai. Many couples must endure the difficult process of separation that eventually results in the best divorce advocate in Chennai at some point in their lives. It is a serious truth that provides us with a second chance to start over. The lack of legal complexities and the emotional turmoil each spouse experiences while deciding to end their partnership amicably are the reasons why the proceedings are simple. This article will teach you how to file for divorce, especially if you're Indian. Frequently Mentioned Events that Ultimately Lead to Divorce As we have closely analyzed, it has been conceivable over time to list a few typical legal justifications that are adequate for one spouse to petition the family court for a divorce from the other. These factors include: The petitioner has learned that their partner is having an extra - marital or sexual relationship with someone else. when the petitioner's spouse has avoided them for a period longer than two years beginning on the date the divorce petition was filed. when the petitioner's partner repeatedly mistreats him or her, either physically or mentally, in a way that seems so grave that it could be death. Another cause for filing a divorce petition could be inability or rejection of sexual activity. Divorce proceedings may start when one partner or better half has had a terminal illness for a long time. If there is evidence of mental illness, the other party may choose to divorce lawfully. List of Paperwork Required for Divorce Filing If a married couple in India wants to end their marriage by mutual consent, they must present the following paperwork to the court: the partners' biographical information and family information. The previous two years' income tax or IT returns statement for the spouses. Types of Divorce in Chennai In Chennai, a divorce typically occurs using one of the two processes listed below: Divorce by mutual consent Contested divorce In the first scenario, the spouse's consent to divorcing one another. These divorces' maintenance obligations can be any amount of money or nothing at all. Any parent whose obligation is shared is solely responsible for child custody. Again, this depends on the cooperation and respect between the two people. The husband and wife must execute a "no-fault divorce," as permitted by Section B of the Hindu Marriage Law, under this consensual arrangement. The first motion is done on the date set by the family court, and the relevant couple's statements are electronically recorded and preserved for later use. Both parties agree to maintain the jury as a witness throughout the remaining processes. The judge gives the couple six months to reevaluate their next motion or second motion. Many couples change their minds during this time, thus the court is using this as an opportunity to prevent a negative event like divorce. Even after these six months, if there is still no change of heart, the court moves forward with its decision and issues a divorce decree, officially recognising the previously married couple's permanent separation.

In any event, it was not many months later that my wife conceived, unexpectedly. After careful discussion we decided it was not something that should continue. I’m in my fifties. I didn’t want to go through any more child-raising experiences. I’d seen enough. So we came to our conclusion and made the necessary medical appointment. "Then something very strange happened. I’ll never forget it. As we went over the whole decision in detail one last time, there was a kind of dissociation, as though my wife started to recede while we sat there talking. We were looking at each other, talking normally, but it was like those photographs of a rocket just after launching where you see two stages start to separate from each other in space. You think you’re together and then suddenly you see that you’re not together anymore. "I said, 'Wait. Stop. Something’s wrong.' What it was, was unknown, but it was intense and I didn’t want it to continue. It was a really frightening thing, which has since become clearer. It was the larger pattern of Chris, making itself known at last. We reversed our decision, and now realize what a catastrophe it would have been for us if we hadn’t. "So I guess you could say, in this primitive way of looking at things, that Chris got his airplane ticket after all. This time he’s little girl named Nell and our life is back in perspective again. The hole in the pattern is being mended. A thousand memories of Chris will always be at hand, of course, but not a destructive clinging to some material entity that can never be here again. We’re in Sweden now, the home of my mother’s ancestors, and I’m working on a second book which is a sequel to this one. "Nell teaches aspects of parenthood never understood before. If she cries or makes a mess or decides to be contrary (and these are relatively rare), it doesn’t bother. There is always Chris’s silence to compare it to. What is seen now so much more clearly is that although the names keep changing and the bodies keep changing, the larger pattern that holds us all together goes on and on. In terms of this larger pattern the lines at the end of this book still stand. We have won it. Things are better now. You can sort of tell these things. "ooolo99ikl;i.,pyknulmmmmmmmmmm 111 "(This last line is by Nell. She reached around the corner of the machine and banged on the keys and then watched with the same gleam Chris used to have. If the editors preserve it, it will be her first published work.) " ...Robert M. Pirsig Gothenburg, Sweden 1984

AGES 14 TO 18: MORE ADVANCED SKILLS ARE LEARNED. By the age of fourteen, your child should have a very good mastering of all of the previous skills. On top of that, she should also be able to: • perform more sophisticated cleaning and maintenance chores, such as changing the vacuum cleaner bag, cleaning the stove, and unclogging drains • fill a car with gas, add air to and change a tire • read and understand medicine labels and dosages • interview for and get a job • prepare and cook meals

As an only child, Angela nurtured her parents, as if they were static fixtures in the house requiring regular maintenance.

Both had been taken out of front-line service after the Gulf War in 1991. Neither had proved sufficiently durable. Their task had been to haul Abrams battle tanks around. Battle tanks were built for tank battles, not for driving from A to B on public roads. Roads got ruined, tracks wore out, between-maintenance hours were wasted unproductively. Hence tank transporters. But Abrams tanks weighed more than sixty tons, and wear and tear on the HETs was prodigious. Back to the drawing board. The old-generation hardware was relegated to lighter duties. But

He must select the wool. The child must be the result of their combined efforts. Rollo will set aside the best materials, materials intended for maintenance, and he will give them to Ingrid. With these materials Ingrid will build their child. It takes significant effort for Rollo to approach the task with integrity. He fools himself into believing inferior materials are the best so as not to dishonor the fort. The process is slow, exacting. Each selection is a potential trap diverting Rollo’s attention. All he can trust is pain. When a selection results in pain, he knows he has the best. He resents the child and resents his role in the creation of the child. He resents Ingrid for introducing the concept of the child. He resents Ingrid for her control over the process. The strength of his resentment resonates with shocking clarity. Immediate waves of guilt surround the wicked thoughts he is producing. The guilt pushes him further in a direction contrary to his desire. As resentment for the baby elevates, so does his commitment to the task of producing the baby. Thoughts of sabotage stoke guilt, which pulls him further away from agency. He becomes exactly what Ingrid needs him to be in response to not wanting to be what she wants.

If we place ourselves on the lifelong path of creating a low-maintenance way of being in the present moment, we will not be weighed down with places to be or things to do that prevent us from carving out contemplative moments and savoring the satisfied spirit so ready to surround us if only we slow down.

Affection. Such a simple yet necessary thing in the physical and mental development and maintenance of all human beings. Having been denied it as a child and young adult, he craved it more than any drug.

A maintenance dose. It would keep her asleep all night. It would keep her warm, and gentle, and relaxed, and at peace, and cradled, and happy.

Bowlby viewed attachment as relevant “from the cradle to the grave.”9 He said that adult romantic relationships function as reciprocal attachment bonds, where each partner serves as an attachment figure for the other. Bowlby conceived of the parent-child attachment relationship as having four essential features: proximity maintenance, separation distress, safe haven and secure base. We can see many parallels between the parent-child attachment relationship and the adult-adult attachment relationship. For instance, adults seek physical contact with each other, engage in dreamy eye-gazing, and even use baby talk or cooing sounds to nurture and encourage bonding. We feel separation distress when apart, and we turn towards our romantic partners as a safe haven in times of need. We also see them as a secure base from which to explore the world and our sexuality, and we feel able to share important discoveries with them.10

The child is demanding maintenance payments from me, backdated nearly twenty years, on the grounds that the undead are jointly and severally liable for debts run up by their incarnations. It’s a legal precedent established to prevent people from committing suicide temporarily as a way to avoid bankruptcy.

Some of Becker’s most compelling research concerned altruism. He argued, for instance, that the same person who might be purely selfish in business could be exceedingly altruistic among people he knew—although, importantly (Becker is an economist, after all), he predicted that altruism even within a family would have a strategic element. Years later, the economists Doug Bernheim, Andrei Shleifer , and Larry Summers empirically demonstrated Becker’s point. Using data from a U.S. government longitudinal study, they showed that an elderly parent in a retirement home is more likely to be visited by his grown children if they are expecting a sizable inheritance. But wait, you say: maybe the offspring of wealthy families are simply more caring toward their elderly parents? A reasonable conjecture—in which case you’d expect an only child of wealthy parents to be especially dutiful. But the data show no increase in retirement-home visits if a wealthy family has only one grown child; there need to be at least two. This suggests that the visits increase because of competition between siblings for the parent’s estate. What might look like good old-fashioned intrafamilial altruism may be a sort of prepaid inheritance tax. Some governments, wise to the ways of the world, have gone so far as to legally require grown children to visit or support their aging moms and dads. In Singapore, the law is known as the Maintenance of Parents Act. Still, people appear to be extraordinarily altruistic, and not just within their own families.

It was some time before Hero came downstairs, but after about half an hour she put in an appearance, still wearing her silk and gauze ball-dress, but with her jewels discarded and her curls a little ruffled. She came quickly into the room, a look of great distress in her face, and went towards Sherry with her hands held out, and saying impetuously: 'Oh, Sherry, it is so shocking! She has told me the whole, and I never thought anyone could be so wicked! It is all too true! That dear little baby is indeed Sir Montagu's own child, but he will not give poor Ruth a penny for its maintenance, no, nor even see Ruth! Oh, Sherry, how can such things be?' 'Yes, I know, Kitten. It's devilish bad, but- but we have only the girl's word for it, and I dare say, if we only knew-' 'Might be a mistake,' explained Ferdy, anxious to be helpful. She turned her large eyes towards him. 'Oh no, Ferdy, there can be none indeed! You see, she told me everything! She is not a wicked girl- I am sure she is not! She is quite simple, and she did not know what she was doing!' 'They all say that,' said Mr Ringwood gloomily. 'How can you, Gil? I had not thought "you" would be so unjust!' Hero cried. 'She is nothing but a country maid, and I can tell that her father is a very good sort of a man- respectable, I mean, for no sooner did he discover the dreadful truth than he cast her out of his home, and will not have anything to say to her, which always seems to me shockingly cruel, though Cousin Jane says it is to be expected, because of the wages of sin, which comes in the Bible! Indeed, she is quite an innocent girl, for how could it be otherwise when she believed in Sir Montagu's promise to marry her? Why, even I know better than that!

[83:6.7] Monogamy is the yardstick which measures the advance of social civilization as distinguished from purely biologic evolution. Monogamy is not necessarily biologic or natural, but it is indispensable to the immediate maintenance and further development of social civilization. It contributes to a delicacy of sentiment, a refinement of moral character, and a spiritual growth which are utterly impossible in polygamy. A woman never can become an ideal mother when she is all the while compelled to engage in rivalry for her husband's affections. [83:6.8] Pair marriage favors and fosters that intimate understanding and effective co-operation which is best for parental happiness, child welfare, and social efficiency. Marriage, which began in crude coercion, is gradually evolving into a magnificent institution of self-culture, self-control, self-expression, and self-perpetuation.

There’s a car racing metaphor I find helpful when I’m trying to remind myself to look up from my laptop and take a break. When I was a child, I visited the maintenance pit of the famous Silverstone Formula One racetrack, and of course it was fascinating to learn about the tire switches and refueling that mechanics were able to do in just a few seconds. But what stayed with me most was the idea that success was determined not only by the car’s speed on the track, but also by the “pit strategy”—the race team’s scheduled pit stops. Each stop was a tactical investment in performance, a deliberate slowing down, to enable the car to speed up afterward. Pit stops are not wasted time—they’re an essential part of an efficient, well-planned race. And your brain is like that race car. Downtime is as important to your work as every other part of your day, and you need to make sure you get enough of that time throughout the day. Plan for it, protect it, respect it.

Children who feel that they have to be compliant to the extent of partially denying or repressing their true natures are bound to remain dependent on external sources for the maintenance of self-esteem. Such a child will develop into an adult who will continue to feel that he has to be successful, or good, or approved of by everyone, if he is to retain any sense of his own value. This necessarily makes him especially vulnerable to the reverses in life which we all have to endure: to failure in an examination or in competition for a job; to rejection by an actual or potential lover; to bereavement or to any other form of loss. Such unpleasant events make all of us temporarily resentful or low-spirited or both; but, in the case of those who possess little or no built-in self-esteem, may precipitate a devastating plunge into the hell of severe depression. People who react to disapproval, failure, or loss by becoming so severely depressed that they are clearly ‘ill’, seem to lack any inner resources to which they may turn in the face of misfortune. For them, hazards which to others are challenges precipitate feelings of total hopelessness and helplessness. Some business men who become bankrupt set to and start a new enterprise. Others cast themselves from a window on the thirtieth floor. The latter variety behave as though there were no second chances in life; as though they were entirely dependent for maintaining their self-esteem upon the success of whatever enterprise was currently engaging them, without taking into account past blessings or future possibilities. It is as if any love or recognition which they had won in the past counted for nothing; as if there were nothing inside themselves to which to turn, no sense of being intrinsically worthwhile.

Your baby will likely cry less at sleep onset using this method if Dad is the one putting her down after soothing and Mom has left the house. This is for two reasons. First, your baby knows that Dad cannot nurse, so what is the point of crying? Second, moms are usually more sleep deprived and therefore likely to be inconsistent with the schedule. Mom might go for a walk, get a cup of coffee, or hang out with friends until Dad calls to tell her that the baby is asleep. Some mothers leave not just at bedtime but spend the entire first night away at a friend’s or at a hotel to get some much-needed rest and sleep. If affordable, one night of pampering self-maintenance at a spa hotel is a smart idea for the family and not selfish. Other

Married officers with a family often bought a place, often near their first service base or near some other location they imagined was going to be central to their lives, like West Point. They bought the place and usually left it empty while they lived overseas. The point was to have an anchor, somewhere identifiable they knew they would come back to when it was all over. Or somewhere their families could live if the overseas posting was unsuitable, or if their children’s education demanded consistency. Reacher’s parents had not taken that route. They had never bought a place. Reacher had never lived in a house. Grim service bungalows and army bunkhouses were where he had lived, and since then, cheap motels. And he was pretty sure he never wanted anything different. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to live in a house. The desire just passed him by. The necessary involvement intimidated him. It was a physical weight, exactly like the suitcase in his hand. The bills, the property taxes, the insurance, the warranties, the repairs, the maintenance, the decisions, new roof or new stove, carpeting or rugs, the budgets. The yard work. He stepped over and looked out of the window at the lawn. Yard work summed up the whole futile procedure. First you spend a lot of time and money making the grass grow, just so you can spend a lot of time and money cutting it down again a little while later. You curse about it getting too long, and then you worry about it staying too short and you sprinkle expensive water on it all summer, and expensive chemicals all fall.