Archives for August 2007

Being sick shouldn’t make you bankrupt

August 27, 2007 by Susanne 15 Comments

This is my “How can it be the end of the month, and I haven’t written about anything social yet.”-post. Though I have to say that this month I feel like I haven’t said anything of substance, social or not. I blame it on vacation. (Also the not reading your blogs. Sorry. I’ll come and visit you after I return from Paris. Yes. Really.)

The thing that stuck in my head this month (apart from many fluffy things) was something Ewe wrote about Health Care in the US. And that mixed with numerous pleas for financial help on various blogs.

So: It’s a shame. Being sick shouldn’t make you bankrupt. Especially if you’re paying for health insurance. And then, when you actually need it – boom – you’re not “covered” and on top of serious illness comes financial debt. It seems to be better in Canada, and it certainly is better in Germany. Even in England, or so Ewe tells us. She writes:

I’ve never been without excellent, dependable health care, health care that never required more than a reasonable co-pay, and I’ve certainly needed it over the years for my multiple knee surgeries, shattered elbow, emergency appendectomy, pregnancies, etc.

I have been thinking about that phrase “reasonable co-pay” since then. I don’t quite know what reasonable means here. When I was pregnant and had a baby there was only one thing I had to pay for, and that was some kind of test that wasn’t deemed necessary but that my doctor recommended. It cost me about 40 €. Otherwise, dozens of ultrasounds, checking in with the doctor once or twice a month, a big ultrasound made by someone specialized in pre-natal diagnostics, giving birth in a hospital, the cesarean, staying in said hospital for ten days, all this cost me – nothing.

Health care in Germany is not heavenly, not by far, but I have never heard of somebody having to pay for years because he got seriously ill. People are required by law to have health insurance and employers are required to pay half of the monthly fees.

The US system leaves me with my mouth open in utter astonishment. I have a friend who moved to the US when she was pregnant with her first child. Her husband had a job at a university in Colorado. She told me that she had to enroll in classes she didn’t want to take (and pay for the courses of course) in order to have a reasonable health insurance. In Germany she would have had insurance through her husband. Like my son can have health insurance through me or my husband (it doesn’t really matter) without extra pay. When my friend had her second child in Germany she was surprised by all the test and check-ups that were done. Obviously, she didn’t have those when she was overseas.

Families like this have enough to deal with, they shouldn’t have to go fundraising so that there son can have necessary surgery. To me this appears inhumane. While people in the US are fortunate to have this medical care available, the next thing they have is to worry about the cost. In Germany all of the surgery, and most of the therapy would be paid for, just like that.

Nobody should be without “excellent, dependable health care”. My heart weeps for the people who live in countries where there is no medical care to speak of but I find it exceptionally cruel that there are people living in one of the richest countries in the world – and one that is very proud of having the best of everything – who can’t afford medical care. Or people who just have lost a loved one and then in addition to have to deal with that loss have to face bankruptcy on top of it.

Like Father Like Son

August 23, 2007 by Susanne 5 Comments

Kindergarten rock ‘n’ roll. (With fake English lyrics and incidental music.)

guitar & gear: epiphone mandobird, natural preschooler voice

My son thinks that everybody makes music, records it and has a blog. So of course he wants to make his own CD. (He’d be into blogging too but as for now he can’t read or write.) He already recorded two “songs”, well rather improvisations, a couple of months ago and my parents were duly impressed. A couple of days ago he wanted to go for it again. I opted for the low tech route and recorded his improvisation with the built-in microphone of my computer.

You can hear the same instrument sounding quite different when the father plays it. Of course it’s all in the recording equipment.

Handbag (or Purse) Disclosure

August 18, 2007 by Susanne 10 Comments

Her Bad Mother started another trend: people showing on their blogs what they carry in their purses (or handbags, or pocketbooks, obviously people feel strongly about the different names, only I don’t, sorry). Since I’m a very nosy person and do find these glimpses into other people’s lives very fascinating I took a moment to photograph my purse. (In fact this is a “Handtasche”, silly.) The search for this bag, by the way, started my whole new bag obsession complete with sewing them and buying getting other people to give me a new sewing machine:

These are just the basics. I can slim down but I don’t like to.

There are:

keys to everything on a flylady lanyard
hay fever remedy
sunglasses (they live in an outside pocket so I don’t need a case for them)
shopping list for the health food store from yesterday
case with earplugs (for concerts and such; they are especially made to mute without distorting the sound much. When I wear them I look like an alien because they stick out of my ears.)
pouch with earphones for PDA
reusable grocery bag (made following Lisa’s tutorial)
PDA
cell phone
tissues (very important for people suffering from hay fever, or people with children)
another little bag for impromptu grocery shopping
little notebook
string that I used to tie a plastic cover to a bowl of salad for the preschool’s summer party (I carried that around for four weeks. But who knows it might come in handy.)
and what HBM called a “sub-bag” (I love that name.) This holds small items for easier transfer to other bags. (Which happens about twice a week.)

Interestingly my wallet is not in the picture. That is quite puzzling because it’s always in my purse. So imagine a very big, blue, old wallet that holds all credit cards, business cards, old receipts, money, and my enormous German driver’s license and ID. (I suspect it sat left of the grocery bag.)

Contents of “sub-bag”:

mints
tampons (not that I use them any more but I don’t want to carry the mooncup around for emergencies. Also you can give them to other women in need.)
barrettes and hair scroos
pocket mirror
pocket knife (with scissors and tweezers but unfortunately without cork screw or bottle opener, sigh)
pen that writes with green ink for things like writing group assignments
little suction cup for getting contact lenses out
eye drops (contact lens paraphernalia again)
hair elastic (I don’t know why I keep two of them in there.)
flashlight
comb
pencil and pen for regular use
fancy glossy orange lipstick
everyday terracotta lipstick
lip balm

When I leave the house longer than half an hour I put into my purse an additional notebook (much bigger), and a book, sometimes a little knitting or crotcheting, sometimes also a pack of tarot cards, and the foldable keyboard for my PDA. And my bag is big enough to also pack some water and a cardigan. (When we went away for the weekend when the new Harry Potter came out, I put that into my purse, a map, the camera, and the PDA charger.)

What’s in your bag?

8 things about me

August 16, 2007 by Susanne 11 Comments

This is the first time ever that I have been tagged twice for something. By Lisa of u-handbag and another “bag lady”, Joanna of joanna bags. As far as I know this is just the basic 8 random things about me-meme.

Something I wrote has been put up by another blogger. (We belong to the same writing group. Look at the top of her sidebar. (Well, her blog’s sidebar, really.)) It is quite macabre and not what I’m usually writing. I did it as a homework assignment for the writing group. The assignment was to write something titled “Open”. All I can say is that I read Neil Gaiman‘s Harlequin story from “Fragile Things” at that time.
Just a few days ago did I realize that so far I have spent more than two weeks of my summer break waiting. I didn’t do anything that couldn’t be interrupted on the drop of a hat. So I did a lot of blog reading but not a lot of writing, making music or sewing.
While I wrote a sweet little line in my last post about my feet being prone to dance I haven’t danced in years. One reason for this is that Germans don’t dance at parties. Another that I gave up jazz dance and hip hop when pregnant. I could just dance around the house, but I never do.
I spent three of the last five weekends away from home. With my family. Each weekend involved an overnight stay complete with sleeping bags. Once we even packed the tent. We were at two parties, and visited with friends who live next to Austria.
I have gone from an extravert to an introvert in the course of the last few months. When I first did the Myers-Briggs test in June I scored as a ENFP. I did it again at the beginning of August and now I’m obviously a INFJ. That’s Introvert, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judgmental. Now I know why I haven’t been enjoying parties anymore. Apart from parties among middle-aged couples being a little, um, boring, I have gone from the one in the middle of the crowd who tells the funny stories to the one at the edge of the crowd bringing her crocheting. And leaving early.
I have felt quite lonely for the past few weeks. I turned 40 on July 27th, and apart from my family there was: an e-mail of a friend that came a week too early (She had remembered my birthday the first time ever though. We have been friends for almost 20 years.), a phone call on my answering machine a day late (A friend who told me she’d phone again a few days later. But she didn’t.) and a text message (I never send those) a week late from a friend of my husband. In a way I’m still waiting for a birthday card to arrive. But obviously I don’t have many friends left. – Interestingly I don’t feel lonely anymore since yesterday. You know what I did? I played the piano.
The last thing I’m waiting for is a trip to Paris with my husband at the end of the month. I have never been there and have been wanting to see it for ages. I don’t really know what I want to see, maybe I’ll just soak up the atmosphere. We are only staying for three days so we won’t look at all the pictures, museums and whatnots. What would you want to see in Paris?
If you want to hear me sing you can go to my husband’s blog and listen to our latest collaboration: dusk

First I thought everybody already did this so I didn’t want to tag somebody. But then I thought, “How about tagging people who don’t get tagged that often?” So I’m tagging Sabrina who has just moved to New York (an went on hunger-strike to get a job, obviously), Adrian who is on vacation but he will have to do it when he comes back, my husband for his German blog (This is for the ones of you who can read German.), and also I’d like to hear from the people reading here who don’t have a blog of their own. Leave your “8 things about me” in the comments, please.

(By the way you can leave anonymous comments here on my blog if you don’t have a google account but you can also go to the “other” option and just type a name into that form. You don’t even have to give an e-mail address.)

If you do have your own blog feel free to steal it.

Housework for Children

August 15, 2007 by Susanne 7 Comments

So I promised to wrap up the comments you all made to my post about “Children and Responsibility”. All of us agreed that it is a good thing for children to learn how to be responsible, and to take part in the daily chores. Since most of our children are rather small the tasks they can do tend to be things like picking up and sorting.

One of the most helpful comments to me was the one Anne wrote. Sadly there are no posts in her blog. I hope there will be. She also addressed several ways of asking a child to do something. I like her emphasis on teaching the actual skills versus the chore aspect of this. Obviously meno’s daughter has the most things to do which isn’t surprising since said daughter is about 16. Sober put it best when she wrote:

All the things that Anne said – not actually being responsible for a task, but learning alongside, taking turns doing things that he can do and watching you do the things that require the precision of an adult.

In addition to your comments I have done a little thinking on my own and pulled out a copy of “Kinder fördern im Alltag.” (Petra Kunze, Catharina Salamander)“. So, a preschooler like my son should be able to do the following:

pick up his toys
dress and undress himself
set the table (in our house somebody else will have to get the dishes because he can’t reach them)
fetch things from the fridge
help to peel and cut vegetables
rake leafs, help with yard work like watering (my son has his own little rake and watering can), pull weeds, put seeds into the ground, pot plants
pour juice, milk, or cereal
sort laundry
put dirty laundry in the hamper
put fresh laundry away
load and unload the dishwasher
help with grocery shopping, fetch things that are on low shelves, take a little shopping cart and push it through the store (my son also often gets to decide which cheese we’re buying, which fruit or vegetables
put the groceries away when home
put his own things back where they belong
clean up spills

So there are a lot of things that even a preschooler can do. My next question of course is, “How do I motivate him to do any of this?” I’m a little reluctant to make any of this things his “duty”. This is not how our family works. While there are things that one or the other of us does more frequently (I do most of the shopping and errands while my husband cares for recycling, for example.), mostly everybody does everything as needed. Sometimes on of us cooks, sometimes the other, sometimes both or all three. Sadly our son isn’t interested to join us. He’d rather sit and draw a picture or look at a book. (Yes, he truly is his mother’s son.)

As a friend pointed out to me, “After a while it just isn’t fun anymore.” Well, I didn’t know housework was supposed to be fun, I just know that it has to be done regardless of how you like to do it. And I definitely know that spreading it around and doing it together helps in making it more fun.

I have noticed that my son is especially reluctant to help if he thinks he won’t be able to accomplish the task. So sometimes all it takes is to show him that he can do it. He’s very eager to try things like make his own sandwiches. And when I get him to help he is always very pleased with himself. Like today I put everything that was needed to set the table out and he did the rest himself. After a lot of whining, “Why do I always have to do so much?”, and us pointing out that there are people actually doing more than him, he was perfectly happy to have set the table on his own.

Housework isn’t such a big deal but it’s the first and easiest way our children can contribute something to family life. And everybody has to learn how to care for himself or others.

Thank you for all your helpful suggestions. After reading your comments I kept thinking of more and more ways to involve my son. He doesn’t appreciate it now but he sure will in the future. As Hel wrote:

I hated doing chores as a child but now I am able to create a pleasant living space free of old crusty pieces of bread and unwashed cups.

On the subject of responsibility and hovering parents I might have to write another post soon.

10 things I like about me or the Stuart Smalley meme

August 9, 2007 by Susanne 10 Comments

Sage tagged me for this meme. And being me I followed it back to the beginning (always very satisfying for the suppressed researcher in me), and of course I had to look up Stuart Smalley. Let me tell you, he is almost completely irrelevant to this meme except that there is a book related to him that’s called “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!: Daily Affirmations With Stuart Smalley” and that the Blog Antagonist – who invented the meme – borrowed the phrase and twisted it a little. She wrote:

The theme of this meme is “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it…I like me.” So, in that vein, I am going to name ten things about myself that I like. I’m going to focus mostly on the physical, because that’s what tends to undermine my self-confidence the most. But you can name anything you want. Maybe you have earned a particularly difficult to achieve degree, or you volunteer tirelessly at your child’s school, or you make a really great Peach Cobbler. Anything that makes you feel proud, or happy, or significant.

And then she writes about the ten things she likes about herself and closes the list with:

That was really hard, and it really shouldn’t have been. If the task had been to list things we hate about ourselves, I could have rattled off twenty without even firing a synapse.

How can we possibly love our fellow man if we are consumed with hatred and loathing for ourselves? How can we make this life and this world better, if we are eaten up with negativity and doubt? I think a lot of the bitterness and antipahty that rocks our world every day is nothing more than an extension of deep personal dissatisfaction and disgust.

Where is the love, people?

Stand up, you. Stand up and say “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and DOGGONE it, I like me.” Then give me 10 reasons why.

So here they are, 10 things I like about me. (I’m a little disappointed. I had thought they were supposed to be 10 things I love about me. Whatever. (I’m a Leo, I can’t help it.))

I really love how my body feels from the inside. In the past years I have become much more aware of that and for the most I feel strong and healthy and right. Capable. Free from pain. Sensual.
I am fiercely loyal. Like Liv, I love BIG. Especially my husband and son. When I love someone that love and loyalty usually stays.
I love that I have managed to change habits that were old and deeply ingrained in me. Now I know that it is possible to heal, and to change. Not beyond recognition but a little nearer to my potential.
I love that I am a creative person. (Okay, that was a hard one.) I always take it for granted, but there might be people who are not constantly having ideas, hatching plans, and inventing stories.
I love my feet. Not only are they strong and capable, they are slim, and prone to dance.
I like the way I have been able to set my big ego aside for my son. When I was pregnant both me and my husband were secretly thinking that I might not be strong enough to care for somebody else. Especially when I had to go without sleep or food for it. Well, I can. And still do.
I love that I have this feeling that nothing really bad can happen to me. That deep inside me there is a part of me that is always happy, and content, and peaceful.
I love that I am such a patient teacher. Once again something I couldn’t have imagined. Impatient me being kind and gentle with even the most unpromising students.
I love that I haven’t succumbed to a life of housework, and watching TV. I love that I still strive to change the things I don’t like.
I love my voice. Especially when I sing. This hasn’t been always the case but I think, no, I know it has matured. I feel very blessed.

Wow. You should try it, it feels really good. People I’m tagging, let’s see: De (she won’t like it, I know, but I’d really like to see her doing this, it will be beautiful), Chani (don’t really know if she has done this, or is taggable), Hel, Sofia (she has to get used to memes, I think), Joanna and Lisa. I know that are more than five people. So what?

Oh, and don’t forget to go and have a look at the just post roundtable for July: