The Sibling Issue

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Sibling love?

As you may or may not know, I am an only child.  I never had siblings, never had to share my toys, have to bring my annoying sibling to play with my friends, nor did I have to share my parent’s love, I’m sure I have an only child complex :)

While I was growing up I always wanted a sibling, I begged my parents to have another child and give me a little brother or sister.  I was jealous of all of my friends with siblings (but never jealous of a sibling) and when kids found out I was an only child and would say “You’re so lucky!” I would immediately respond with “No I’m not I want a brother or a sister!”  But alas it wasn’t in the cards for me to have siblings and I just had to deal with it.  I thought I would always have at least 2 kids because I would NEVER put my kids through what I went through not having that built in playmate, sibling bond, ”sister forever” …

But now that I’m 32 and haven’t had any kids, I don’t know if having a sibling was all that I envisioned it would be.  I imagined a childhood playmate and life long best friend. That’s what I wanted anyways.  After seriously viewing other people with siblings, taking into account their lives, stories and experiences I have come to the conclusion that it is not necessarily better to have a sibling and in overall sibling experiences, there are just as many negatives as positives. 

For example, just because you have a sibling doesn’t mean you will get along or even like each other.  While I have friends that are very close to their siblings as they get older and become friends, I know many people who aren’t. Who in fact don’t really talk to their siblings or even like them as people.  How about sibling rivalry that never ends? I’ve witnessed this first hand as well.

While I’ve seen big families with lots of siblings pull together and help each other out when in need. I’ve also seen the opposite happen. 
An example of the positive: one brother out of 5 was diagnosed with HIV. He had to pay for very expensive drugs and couldn’t afford them on a monthly basis.  His siblings all pulled together money on a monthly basis to help buy his drugs and support him if he needed it. When I saw families like this I would feel a little pang in my heart, it was so beautiful and caring, I wouldn’t have siblings to do something like this if I were ever in that situation.
An example of the negative: A mother of 5 kids went into a nursing home because she needed assistance with her living situation.  Only one out of the five siblings was not an alcoholic nor drug addict so he took responsibility for her at the nursing home which was required by them.  The mother received a regular pension that covered the cost of the very pricey nursing home monthly.  One of the sister’s went into the mother’s bank account and cleared it out leaving the “responsible” brother to pay for all of her care.  She did this more then 1 month until eventually the mother had to be removed from the home because the responsible son couldn’t afford to pay for his mother’s nursing home.  When I see situations like this it makes me reflect, wow I could have a sibling like that.

Both of my parents come from big families, my Dad is from a family of 5 my Mom from a family of 6.  I’ve watched them have tremendous issues, from a brother who completely stopped talking to my mother for no reason she could ever understand and breaking her heart, to a father who has dealt with siblings with drug addictions and who have borrowed money and never paid him back.  At the end of the day, it’s not always a supportive friendly type relationship like I pictured when I was younger.  In fact I’m better off with no siblings then dealing with a drug addicted liar who just hurts me anyways (I’ve seen this happen a few times with friends’ and familys’ siblings). 

While siblings can be a support unit I had a chance of also getting a sibling that was not a responsible adult, or like one of my friends, couldn’t take care of their own child.  So after so many years of viewing the sibling thing with rose colored glasses envisioning a bff sister or brother whom I was robbed the experience of knowing:

Just like this picture is fictional so is the image I have of siblings

I guess it’s time to take them off and look at things realistically. I’ve had a good life, I have a great relationship with my parents and a lot of opportunities I may not have had if I had had a sibling (only having to pay for one college tuition allowed my parents to also fund me for a Masters degree for example).  I don’t think being an only child harmed me in any way and for people who think you “have” to have more then one child because it’s fair to them, I have to disagree.  I think having one child is just fine and with time I’ve come to see that my experience might be more positive then many families with siblings….

Dear 15 year old me,

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There are a few things you may be expecting out of life that are just not what you think they will be.  When you sit around with your girlfriends and gossip and fantasize about how your future will turn out (and how easy life will be once you can just get out from under your annoying parents’ thumb) and how you guys will always be friends forever with husbands and babies that all grow up together and hang out… well you’ve got another thing coming. 

First I’d like to tell you or younger me I should say, that the way you dress, do your hair and makeup is downright embarrassing to yourself later in life. I know you think you are cool and “fitting in” but maybe if you could try to break away from the crowd and think normal looking clothes I won’t have to be so humiliated to show younger pictures of myself to people in the future (PS heavy makeup is not pretty!). 

Let’s take a look at how some of our friends we loved to hang out with turned out.  Remember conversations at the park about how we would just get out of our parents’ house meet the love of our lives get fantastic jobs and have these ideal families with homes and picket fences all by the age of 22 (because that is SO old to you 15 year old me)?  Well it doesn’t happen to you or any of your friends  either. 

Oh you know your boyfriend?  The one you’ve had for the WHOLE summer? I mean that is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long at 15.  Well he turns into a big fat loser and you’ll waste a whole bunch of time crying over him for really no reason, since later in life you’ll see he was so not worth it. 

Let’s take a look at your neighbor friend that lives around the corner that always fantasizes about meeting her prince charming and getting married and having kids young.  Remember when she told you I mean me that she wanted to have her family young so that she wouldn’t be an old mom?  Maybe something like her own mother who adopted her later in life.  Well she got one thing right, that was having a kid at 17 with some guy who nobody remembers his name because they broke up after she got pregnant.  Marriage has not been in her cards so far, although she did have a second kid in another failed relationship, although I saw on Facebook (you don’t know what facebook is yet but don’t worry you’ll learn!) recently that she became a teacher and bought a house and her daughter is almost your or my I should say, age.  I’m sure life isn’t quite how she envisioned it either.

Oh and how about your little trio of best friends, the three unseperables who are going to be best friends forever?  Let’s review your three’s life plan, you’re going to grow up get the hell away from your bossy know-it-all parents, get married (all being bride’s maids in each other’s weddings of course!) and have babies that will all grow up as best friends like you guys.  Yeah, no, that ‘s not how it goes.  One of you does have kids with your high school sweetheart, only to have a catastrophical break up, custody battles and court  hearings (one of which you attend with her) over the kids.  She then gets married (you are not a bridesmaid FYI) has two more kids, get’s divorced and then dissapears out of your life like a ghost right before your wedding….
Your other besty whom your surer then sure will always be right there by your side is still in your life (thank god for one thing you planned on!) but not in the way you expect at that age. You live in different cities talk every couple of months and see each other on occasion when you roll into town. You weren’t in her wedding either (she eloped to Reno), she divorced a few years later… somehow the whole marriage fantasy of your 15 year old mind is not based in reality. Neither you nor her have kids and you are both in your 30s! I know so old! Oh 15 year old me I clearly remember being in your shoes and thinking by 25 I would definitely have the husband and kids (I mean 25 is practically a dinosaur anyways). Not. Realistic. 

Part of the problem is that your hormone ridden half fantasy ideas always simplified unrealistic ideals.  And for some reason at this age all you’re dreaming about is marriage instead of making your own path (which you end up doing anyways).  I’m sure a Sociologist would have a field day picking apart why young girls are still fantasizing about marriage/kids in the 90s instead of about how they are making their own lives and careers. 

You do get married (at 30 not 22) and marriage doesn’t end with you guys riding off into the sunset, it’s work and give and take and trying to figure out how two people can get along.  So far no kids and not even a plan to get pregnant any time soon.  Your job is not what you envisioned even in your 20s and overall satisfaction is good with the choices you make but of course if I were back in your shoes I would do everything differently.  Paying bills and being an adult is not as ideal as you think and sometimes I close my eyes and wish I could still go home to my parent’s house and not have to deal with bills, mortgages, homeowner’s insurance and credit cards.  Life is work and a roller coaster of ups and downs, and people don’t live happily ever after, it’s just not true. 

So 15 year old me, my advice is to:
-Get your head out of the clouds
-Think career not boys
-Focus on school – boys get you nowhere!
-Sleep while you can
-Enjoy not having responsibilities
-Stop wearing so much makeup and silly clothes
-Appreciate your parents, they are the ones that will always be there for you

Love,

32 year old me

Just for fun, this is 15 year old me

Spring, time to Hop the Cart

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Our herb garden

Spring is in the air and so are allergies. Me and my husband both have them, but besides the runny noses, sneezing and watering eyes I love Spring. I love when everything starts to bloom, the mild climate, and the longer days. In Fresno it’s by far my favorite time of year. We have an herb garden that was barely alive this winter (a few shoots of some things while others died back) but now that it’s getting warmer it’s really starting to take off. I have to admit a lot of the stuff my husband planted in fall and we kind of ignored it all. Then once it started taking off, I decided I was into herbal gardens and I started taking care of it (it’s easier once these things are set up for you). My family members are all suggesting I set up a full fledged garden with vegetables and such but the truth is I fear I’m too lazy. Now that my herbs are getting all crazy due to the weather It’s enough taking care of them.

I also like the Spring weather, we’ve been in the 70s pretty much every day and I can’t complain. Unlike my husband’s hometown of Graz where it has been snowing for the past month (there is a reason we are living in California and it namely has to do with snow!). Even though I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of Fresno as I’m sure you’ve heard me rant about in other posts, they do have some nice events going on this spring that will last throughout the summer.

Cart Hop

Booyah Cart Hop. Most people look at this picture and wonder who sells pies from a truck. But that’s the beauty of this seemingly out of place taco truck turned pie truck. There are all of these food trucks that travel around Fresno, including a guy with a wood fire oven for pizza (that merits a picture in itself but will have to wait for another time). They all get together a few times a week and have Cart Hop where you can go to one place and try stuff from different trucks. I’ve been going every week and trying something different each time. It’s so much fun, I’m not one of those foodies that eat at overly priced restaurants that give you miniscule portions, but I do love food. And this place has stuff as good and unique as any gourmet restaurant!

For example, there is a Korean/Mexican fusion place Tako BBQ that does Korean barbeque and puts it in Tacos, Burritos and Tortas, not to mention pure madness with a Kimchi Quesadilla (heavenly). I have no idea who came up with the idea to infuse Korean and Mexican food but it’s AMAZING, and I love them.

Mattie’s Wood-Fired Pizza, I mean I never even thought it would be possible to have a woodfire oven on a truck, but they make it happen, hands down the best pizza in Fresno.

Dusty Buns,  these people make the most delicious bread and then put delic local organic stuff on it, different specials at different times but always tasty.  It’s so good my only complaint is they are often not big enough. If I’m really hungry I could eat two.  These people aren’t originally from here (no surprise they are from more hippyish areas) but they’ve settled here for some unknown reason and I’m so glad that they did.

Benaddiction rocks my socks.  Mostly because I love eggs benedict and they have like 6 different eggs benedict sandwiches made with different stuff that you will never get bored with (I am a big hollandaise sauce fan and this is the real deal, made from scratch, yumyum hollandaise!)

Last but not least, the Summertime Pies. They make the crust both fried and baked (the fried pie crust is like a scrumptious sin no joke) and fill it either with local seasonal fruit or specials that they do on different cream pies.  The only other person that could compete on pie baking is my mother who cannot be topped on her apple pie, but besides her this is the best pie I’ve had. 

Anyways I got off on a tangent here because I was not planning on rating the cart hop trucks, but couldn’t help myself because I like them so much.  Some of my co workers would go about once a week to eat out, usually to In and Out or Subway or Wendy’s. I never went with them because I don’t really eat fast food.  But now I’ve converted some of them to going here…. The food is just superior.

New Pope – the Catholic church’s way of tricking everyone into thinking they are PC

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New Pope is a white dude, no doubt

I have all kinds of issues with organized religions in general. I’d like to start out with that, it doesn’t matter what organized religion it is, I see human politics balling it up at some point or another. So while I respect people’s religious beliefs and have no problem with people doing whatever it is they want, be that inside of an organized religion or not, I personally get pretty ticked at them especially when they are trying to trick people to get more followers.

Because my family background was Catholic (both grandmothers) I consider myself more knowledgable about this religion due to experience, although I don’t consider myself Catholic. One thing I and the rest of the world has noticed is that the Pope is always an old white dude.  In fact, when I was in the Czech Republic with my friend in the summer of 2005 when they were electing the last Pope she told me the newspapers there openly said the Catholic Church was not going to elect a black or any Pope of color. But the church has been feeling pressure for years now due to the fact that the majority of practicing Catholics are not white dudes anymore:

Maybe they had a case in 1910, but nowadays they just look silly

So all of the bishops and priests and old men who make these decisions got together and said hmmmmm…. how can we make the majority of our followers happy (in Latin America as you can see from the chart above, not to mention the huge portion of Catholics in the US that are Latino) and still keep a white guy? Because God forbid we actually let a person of color have all the power (see more human politics involved). And they came up with a simple solution, Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Not only can they appease the Latinos and strengthen their following in their biggest demographic, they get to keep a white guy. How? You may ask. Mario was born in Argentina! Yes why yes he was, but both of his parents were Italian immigrants. So although he was born in the Americas, his blood is still Italian.

Easy peasy, there is no way that “God” made this very astute political decision, it was made by people and people alone.  Organized religion only serves as a political house for people to control other people and use “white smoke” to make things seem what they aren’t and cover up long held racism.

What are your views on the new Pope and organized religion in general?

Other Mothers

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Sparkling Clean

Our house has never been so clean, really never. If I ever want my house spotless and want my husband to help out I now know the secret… the magic words. Your mother is coming! My mother-in-law is staying with us and a few days before she arrived we decided to clean up. My husband was really putting an effort in, which is unusual so to say. I mean he will clean up when we need to clean the house, but this time he made a huge effort and even mopped the floors (I almost wanted to take a picture of this but thought it might make him stop).

Having my mother-in-law here has done great things for me. If you recall from my previous post about Some Goals one of my goals was to communicate with my mother-in-law, although she studied English in school 40 years ago, her English is limited and it is much easier to communicate with her in German.  So let’s see how I’ve done with those goals… Well I did start taking resources out of the local library and listening to CDs in my car.  I haven’t done as much reading as I would’ve liked but I also started occasionally spending about 1/2 an hour speaking German with my husband for the last few months.  This helped tremendously. 

Since my mother-in-law arrived, we have had to resort to sign language for vocabulary I have no idea about in German nor her in English and I have also made many embarrassing errors that have greatly entertained her.  While in San Francisco, I saw a big ship and wanted to point it out to her:

Me: Der schifft
Mother-in-law starts laughing hysterically
I look at my husband confused Me: What did I say? 
Husband: You said he pisses
Me: Oh I thought I was saying the ‘ship’
Mother-in-law: Der schiff

As you can see a little letter changes a lot of meaning.  Not that I haven’t done many of these embarrassing things before while learning languages, but never to my mother-in-law.  Besides that though, I think my German improves a little every day with her, I’m lucky that she’s patient and wants to talk to me! Far from horrible stories you hear about people’s mother-in-laws who are pushy, and jealous of the woman that stole their little boy,  I’m lucky to have a nice and easy going mother-in-law who just wants to spend time with us.

What kind of experience have you had with your mother-in-law?

Just another insurance nightmare in the good old US of A

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When we first moved back to California one of my goals was to get a job with health insurance so if anything were to happen me and my husband, we could go to the doctor (instead of hanging out in an emergency room for hours).  When I got hired at my job and was offered healthcare after 90 days, I snapped it up in a second.  I was thrilled, I only had one option, CIGNA, but I figured it couldn’t be that bad.  Oh how I regretted that initial assumption.  As my dad always said, when you AssUMe it only makes an Ass out of U and Me. 

So let’s get to the fun part.  In October I call and schedule an annual exam with my doctor.  The annual exam is covered 100% by my insurance, no  co-pay, in my naive state of excitement over finally getting insurance I thought this would be a great.  I go in and while she is doing my annual she talks to me about any other issues I may be having.  I tell her about an issue with my neck.  This is where things get complicated OH MY GAWD.  She refers me to get an MRI but informs me I may have complications with my insurance “They run like a business, they will fight you if you cost them money”.  I felt disgusted, my health is like a business?  The doctor also agreed I needed an MRI but that probably won’t be happening for about 6 more months due to pre-existing condition issues.

So I moved on and was calmly checking the mail one day in December when I get a bill from my doctor.  It was for a co-pay of $20.  Beleiving naively this was a simple misunderstanding I call my insurance company:

Insurance: The doctor’s office billed it as a wellness visit and not an annual, they just need to change the billing code.

Me: Great, can you call the doctor and just explain that to them? 

Insurance:  *Yells* NO! We don’t talk to doctors. 

Silly me, thinking doctors and insurance companies actually talk to each other.

I call the doctor’s office and get transferred to the billing department

Billing Man looking at my file: Hmmmmm well I see here there is a note about your neck, you came to see the doctor about your neck.

Me: No I came in for an annual women’s exam, she asked me if there were any other issues while performing the PAP and I told her about my neck

Billing Man: Hmmmmmm well if you talk about your neck during your PAP then it’s not actually an annual exam.

Me: Please talk to the doctor, it was an annual exam, I assure you she saw more than I want anyone to ever see of me.

We agree he will speak with the doctor and call me back.  He never calls me back and I get another bill.  In January I go to the doctor for another unrelated issue I go into the billing department and speak with a billing girl, an argument ensues about my neck and my PAP (things you want other people to hear about in a waiting room of course).

Finally the doctor’s office calls me a week later telling me that they will write it off.  Whatever that means.  However, I am still dealing with this due to having bloodwork done for the annual, I have turned it over to my HR department who can now fight with them over PAPs and necks.

Here is a friend of mine’s story who also had an issue trying to see a doctor about something besides her annual in her post Pussyfooting Around.  All I can say is should it really be this complicated?  Isn’t visiting your doctor about your health and not about a mini-war with insurance companies?

What are your thoughts on insurance companies?