life

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.

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?

Children and Responsibility

July 30, 2007 by Susanne 18 Comments

This time I don’t want to talk about the responsibility that comes with having children. I want to talk about the responsibilities our children have. Or maybe should have.

For the past year or so my son has been really moody. Sometimes aggressive, sometimes depressed a little. We were fighting so much that we asked the preschool to switch from him going only in the afternoon to almost the whole day. (Yeah, that’s right, I put my son in daycare because we (him and me) were fighting so much.) When I approached his teacher, telling about my difficulties and the constant power struggle in our house, she said that she didn’t see any of it in school. And that maybe it had to do with him being around adults all the time. At home he is always the weak one, the little one, and the one who isn’t allowed to decide on his own. So I’ve been thinking about ways to make him feel more independent.

The other thing I have been thinking constantly about is how many of my students seem to be incapable – and unwilling – of doing anything on their own. It often seems to me that their parents still hold their hands at an age where they should be almost grown-up. And I think that this makes the students (and maybe the parents too) unhappier and doesn’t help building self-esteem

So maybe our children need more responsibility. I’m not talking about child labour here. I’m talking about having to stand up for the consequences of their own actions. Since most of my students come from rather privileged families, I have seen children sent to boarding school when they were about to fail a grade. I have seen parents doing homework, I have seen parents making up for everything their children screw up. Lost a coat? You get a new one. Forgot your homework? Your mother’s doing it. Have to go anywhere? Your parents are driving you everywhere you want. Even in the middle of the night. You don’t know what to do after high school? Well, just sit around at home moping until you find out.

They have nice parents, do they? (Of course, not all parents and students are alike. I do have students who have to be quite self-sufficient too.) But I can’t shake the feeling that these young adults have the deep feeling that they are really dependent on their parents. And that they won’t know what to do when on their own.

While responsibility might be a burden, eventually each and every one of us has to take responsibility for himself and his life. Well, there even might come a time where our children will have to be responsible for their children or, gasp, even us, their parents. With responsibility comes a sense of accomplishment and capability too. It’s not all bad though there are a lot of young adults out there who shy away from it. Who never learned it.

Young adults who grew up thinking that it was their parents they were doing their homework for. Interestingly they started failing school the minute they were old enough to realize that their parents don’t have any real power over them. When I had talked to those parents earlier and said, “Well, let him go to school without his homework then.” The parents had answered, “But then he will have bad grades!” Yeah, he will. Maybe that’ll teach him to do his homework.

I’m not talking about not helping. I’m the first one to explain something for the umpteenth time, to say, “Maybe you should try this.” But today my son refused to get dressed and then had a tantrum about his breakfast (“What do you want for breakfast, müsli or bread?”, “Müsli.”, “Are you sure?”, “Yes, Müsli.” – “Here’s your müsli.”, “But I dooon’t WAAANT MÜÜSLIIII!!!). So I told him if he didn’t get dressed he could walk to preschool naked. Then he dressed. And then we left for preschool. No breakfast. For him that is.

But I’m still behind what I thought I would be doing before I had a child. Back then I thought that a four year-old should be able to dress himself, pick up his toys, and help with housework. Very funny. Right now my son’s responsibilities are: dress and undress himself, know when to use the toilet, and unpack his backpack. Sometimes, very rarely I ask him to put his plate on top of the dishwasher after meals. One reason for this is that housework around here mostly happens when he is at preschool, but maybe we should change that.

Children of his age that are visiting Montessori school already learn how to cook a little, they brush their hair, they brush their teeth and they know how to sweep the floor and cut vegetables. They certainly have to pick up their toys.

So I’m thinking about which responsibilities to introduce next. I don’t want to end up with a boy who’s 16 and who comes home, drops his shoes in the middle of the floor, slumps into the next chair and says, “I need something to eat.” And who then expects me to cook something for him. I definitely don’t want him to grow into a man who says that housework is for women. A man who never will move out because he doesn’t want to be without room service and clean laundry.

I’d like to raise my son with the knowledge that actions have consequences and that he will have to face them on his own someday.

So, what are your children responsible for?

Sleep deprivation is the new binge eating

July 14, 2007 by Susanne

I have had an eating disorder for about 25 years of my life. I used to be a compulsive overeater. While I’m still compulsive now and then, and I’m still overeating from time to time, those days are gone. Poof. Well, not exactly poof, it took some years and some work, and then some more work, and then I had to bring out my inner parent and now I’m all better. (And if you’re interested in any of that you can look at changing habits.)

But I’ve found something new! Sleep deprivation. Makes you feel even worse than having eaten 1 1/2 bags of potato chips, a bag of gummy bears and lots of chocolate in one sitting. Just train yourself to go to bed at 11.30 when you have to get up at 6.45, when you need about 8 1/2 hours of sleep and voilà, there’s your new obsession.

First you don’t get out of bed on time because you haven’t slept enough yet. Then you stumble through your day, bleary-eyed and barely conscious. You promise yourself a midday nap only to find something really important to do, like for example reading blogs, and that’s it for the nap. You promise yourself to be good from now on, to go to bed on time. “Ah, tonight”, you think, “tonight I’ll snuggle in my cosy bed just when I’m getting tired and then close my eyes. Bliss!”. For the whole day you think of bed. In a wholly platonic way. Sleep. Sleep! SLEEP! Interestingly when evening comes around, you get awake again. There’s just this one thing more to do before going to bed. After all it isn’t that late. And it’s not good to go to bed too early of course. So you still have, let’s say, 30 minutes. So you can start to watch an episode of “Angel”. And of course you will be really good today and stop watching it right in the middle. Don’t you? Only this time it’s that interesting, never mind that you already know it. And if you stay up just a little longer you’ll be past some critical point in your knitting. Or you talk to your husband and just forget the time… Never mind the reason, the result is always the same: You go to bed at 11.30. Rinse and repeat.

After a while you are too tired to exercise. You are too tired to play with your son. You are impatient and cranky. You are too tired to make music. In fact, you are too tired for doing anything much, and everything you do takes twice the time it should take because you’re so slow. You get so tired that you shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car anymore.

So why do you continue going to bed too late? Even though you know that you never can sleep in? And you know that sleeping in isn’t good for you either. better to have a consistent routine, like, going to bed at 10.30 and getting up at 6.45. (We’re not talking about you pre-motherly goal of having nine hours of deep, relaxing, and uninterrupted sleep every night here. Just eight hours for a start.)

In a way, it’s perfect. You get to complain, which is always good, so that people don’t get jealous at you. You life has focus and you never have to shift it because nothing changes. When you’re tired it only shows how hard you work and what amazing things you do. Of course you can’t be expected to do anything for anybody before being rested. You don’t have to be creative because you’re much too tired for that. Better to dream about your projects than have them fall short in any way. You get to eat more because you’re always hungry. And since you’re so low on energy you just deserve a little chocolate to make you feel better. And then, of course, a beer in the evening to help you sleep better. Never mind that alcohol doesn’t help with sleep. At least it feels relaxing.

This of course is wholly fictional and doesn’t bear any resemblance to real, ahem, almost forty-ish singers any of us knows.

Four things meme

June 12, 2007 by Susanne 28 Comments

I’m always so happy when I get tagged for something. I suppose this has to do with not being tagged very often. Chani just wrote about the problem that tagging people for memes always leaves someone out. I’m undecided about this. I think you can try all you might but there will always be somebody who feels left out. I know that there are many bloggers out there more popular than me. Of course, bloggers who are read and loved by many do get tagged more often. I don’t think that takes anything away from me. In fact I’m really happy to have a circle of readers who come back. Even though I’m posting infrequently. And if you like a meme, well, do what I usually do – steal it. Though there has been talk that one can go blind when tagging oneself, I doubt it very much. (And I wanted to link to that but it seems to have been at an incarnation of sober briquette’s blog that’s lost to the world. I appreciate it very much that she has named her new archives “I shall not delete” in this new blog-incarnation. I had pondered to backup for her.) At least I’m only extremely short-sighted. (And Chani’s eyesight has been improving lately.)

So, enough for the mangled introduction in which I make fun of my friends. (Sorry, De.). The lovely and extremely flexible (she’s a yoga teacher, what did you think?) Liv of “madness, madness I say!”has tagged me for the four things meme. Off we go:

Four Jobs I’ve Had
1) I worked in a bakery. I was selling bread and buns and cake.
2) I worked in a company that prints labels. I was the one entering all the data into the computer. By hand. I’m really fast at typing numbers.
3) For one year I worked as an assistant at the institute of music education at Munich university. I pretended to work on an encyclopedia of music educators while writing my dissertation.
4) I was a music teacher teaching grades 7 to 12 at a school with mostly disabled students.

Four Movies I Can Watch Over & Over
1) L.A. Story
2) Jumping Jack Flash
3) The Fifth Element
4) all Star Trek Movies with Data

Four Places I’ve Lived
1) Bielefeld
2) Bünde
3) München
4) the place near Munich where I live now. Its name starts with G.

Four Places I’ve Vacationed
(only four?)
1) Ubatuba, Brasil
2) Madeira
3) Tuscany, Italy
4) Germany, all over the place

Four of My Favorite Dishes
1) Green Beans Stew (Grüne-Bohnen-Eintopf) Though I have to say my stew doesn’t look like the one in the picture at all.
2) Garlic Lime Chicken (there is the recipe when you scroll down a little, it’s in English) with broccoli and rice
3) Spaghetti Bolognese cooked by my husband
4) Chicken saté

Four Sites I Visit Daily
You know I have a really long blogroll over there, and there are other blogs that I read too. I won’t pick one over the other though. So, here’s my list:
1) statcounter
2) bloglines
3) psychedelic zen guitar (Well, I’m the tech person for this site… Also, very good music. And pretty pictures.)
4.) Script Frenzy so I can enter my word count (8,524 so far).

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now
Do I really have to be somewhere else? I’m quite content here in my home in my room with the prospect of a little guitar playing and maybe an episode of “Buffy” while knitting in the future. And then bed… So, if I must:
1.) At the Osteria Italiana in Munich. I may well have eaten the best food in my life there.
2.) At a workshop about tarot cards.
3.) A singing workshop with Bobby McFerrin and Voicestra
4.) At Blogher-Conference

You know, there are a million beautiful places in the world, but the best view doesn’t help if I’m bored, or sick or if my spirit has left. Being at the beach and soaking in the sun is nice for about a day or two. While there are a few cities I’d like to visit sometimes, like Paris or San Francisco, I can as well go out of the house, walk for about five minutes and be on the fields and among the trees. It’s very beautiful there. I could take a train for half an hour and have five beautiful lakes to choose from. Or I could take another train for about ninety minutes and climb the Alps. Or take the first train back for about half an hour again and be in one of the biggest and most beautiful cities in Germany.

So, now for the tagging. First, I don’t want to exclude anybody. Consider yourself tagged. Also, since I am a little behind with the blog reading I don’t really know who has done this or not. But I’d really like to hear De‘s answers to this. When she can spare the time. The last I heard she was buying paint too. And crazymumma’s answers. And now I’d like to go and watch my DVD. Oh, and if you don’t have a blog and want to answer these questions? Do it in the comments. I love comments. Or send me an e-mail.

Just a quick update

June 7, 2007 by Susanne 12 Comments

Firstly, please remember that today is the last day of nomination and contribution to the Just Post roundtables for May.

Secondly, the good weather has hit us. So my husband and I are deep into sanding and painting the porch now. The first coat of paint is up. Due to a severe paint shortage (I recommend to actually think about how much paint you’ll need before starting a renovation project. And then go and buy as much as needed. Just saying.) and due to today being a very catholic holiday here in Bavaria (so all the shops are closed) I won’t be painting today. My poor husband though is just heading towards our tallest ladder so that he can apply the second coat of paint to the outside of the balcony/porch. This will be especially uncomfortable for him since he has a newly developed allergy to some pollen or other that causes his eyes to itch and turn all red and inflamed.

husband with protective spectacles while sanding

husband on ladder with more protection gear (wet towel)

The porch/balcony sanded:

and with the first coat of paint:

The script has been going nicely up until the day before yesterday. Today writing feels like I’m squeezing water out of desert sand. I have written 4,852 words so far. Only 15,148 to go. Right now I’m writing a scene that was inspired by Mary Wigman‘s mask dance. I couldn’t find a video of that but there is one of her witch dance here.

The stove has been installed.

If you’re somehow new to my blog and don’t know what I’m talking about, please read the post before this in which I announced my current projects.

Oh, and to those of you who wondered when I’m doing all this stuff, and if I’m like manic or something? Well, just for scale, knitting half a cardigan has taken about two months. I’m knitting while watching DVDs. The Buffy-watching so far took about half a year. Only six more episodes to go. Apart from “Buffy” and an episode of “Deep Space 9” about once a week I’m not watching any TV. Nor am I going to the cinema or reading newspapers. The bag-project will have to wait at least until July, maybe longer. And, most important: We have yet another two-week long vacation. No students for the last ten days, and five days without child, because my mother-in-law took him to visit my parents.

And here’s a bonus:

our son banging loudly on the piano

And sorry that I haven’t visited any blogs. I still read yours and yours and yours… I hope to catch up on Sunday.