‘Cause He’s Returning on a Jet Plane…

Tomorrow, my brother will be home from a year-long trip in Japan.  He spent his time there studying (hopefully), getting absorbed in the culture, and having the experience of a lifetime.

He will be home for about four days before he has to go back to school for the fall semester.  He and I have never been super close, but he is my baby brother, and I am sad that I won’t see him for very long before he’s gone again for school across the state.  I have this hinky feeling that I’m not going to see him very much anymore, period.  I don’t think he’ll be in the States very long after he graduates, and I don’t know that I will get the opportunity to visit him as much as I would like in Japan.  I’m just going to have to make a point of visiting him more often this year in BG.

I can’t imagine that the adjustment to life back in the States is going to be very easy for him.  He’s coming home from his favorite place on earth back to an obligation he doesn’t want to fill.  I can’t say as I envy his predicament too much.

Everything was Fine, Until it was Not Fine

I’ve had my own health insurance since I was hired for my current position in June of 2007.  Before that, I had individual health insurance (which, dear God, even at 22 and relatively healthy, the premiums were a fucking nightmare – especially when you’re only making $7.50 an hour and only working 32 hours a week).  In college, I was covered under my father’s insurance.

Apparently, my father has been paying for my coverage under his health plan since the last day I was eligible (December 31 2006).  Mind you, if I tried to use an insurance ID card through his group coverage, not only would I be denied coverage, I could probably be penalized for fraud.  Several times, my father has been on the company website and tried to remove me as a covered individual, but to no avail.  I guess he finally went down to HR and made sure it was taken care of.

Today, in the mail, I received information on COBRA coverage because, hey, I’m no longer being “covered” by my father’s company’s group insurance.

The reason cited for the discontinuation of my health insurance coverage?

DIVORCED SPOUSE

…Wasn’t there some paper work that I was supposed to fill out for the disolution of my marraige?

NaBloPoMo’08, Day 26: Pre-Gaming

The Boy came over, and as promised, I made three dozen pumpkin whoopee pies.  Two dozen went home with him for the long trek to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving with the Brothers, the remainder are going with us to my mother’s cousin’s house, where we will spend after-Thanksgiving.

Also, this will be the first holiday that my brother will be in Japan, and my mother is taking it kind of rough.  This time of year sucks for her because my grandmother’s birthday was on Christmas and my uncle died in early December.  So, since both sides have Skype, Binkles is going to get up at six in the morning and have “dinner” with us with the laptop set up in his seat.

We’re going to have a scaled-down dinner with just the intimate family and small portions of the classics.  Which to me, is the perfect low-key way of spending the holidays.

Happy Father’s Day

I may look more like my mother, but I am more like my father in my mannerisms. Though I did inherit his almond-shaped eyes, I also inherited his sensitivity, creativity, over-active brain, and his nerdiness. He and I can both take the grinding pain of surgery with stride and with grace, but neither us are able to shake the perhaps-unintended slight.

This is a man who spent the first five years of his life living in a post-war-torn Germany with his mother. This is a man who spent the next five years after that living in an orphanage in Pennsylvania while his mother worked at a nursing home in the hopes of a better life. This is a man who survived a difficult family situation and left home at 17 to work 40 jobs by the time he was 30. This is a man who was drafted to serve his adopted country in the Vietnam war.

This is a man who wanted better for his two children than he had for himself, and worked hard to be slow to anger but quick to teach. This is a man who loves to create with his hands. This is a man who loves nothing more than to walk out in the country with the sun on his face and the wind at his back.

This is a man I almost lost to cancer in 2006. This is a man who bravely went to chemotherapy for six weeks, and never openly complained, even as he lost weight and his hair. This is a man who will have been in remission for two years in October. This is a man for whom I will always walk for to raise awareness for the disease.

This is a man who took me to three years of father/daughter dances at Beaumont. This is a man who helped me work on grade-school science projects (usually at the zero-hour); helped me work on art projects in college; taught me how to use a table-saw, a bandsaw, a belt-sander, a drill, taught me how to plumb, how to do electrical wiring, how to lay laminate flooring, and hang tile. This is a man that I will dance with at my wedding.

And though it hasn’t always been easy to live with him, and have had some pretty terrible fights, I will always be proud of him, and I will always know how lucky I am to have him.

This man is my father.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.

Casual Work Banter

I was talking to my co-worker about various and sundry things, and the topic moved to weddings (she’s getting married this year). Most of the time, I keep pretty mum on the topic of the relationship with my mother/parents: I try to keep it very simple, very unreadable – it’s just been…safer that way. For whatever reason, given the strife that I’ve had, specifically within the last week (this week has been eye-opening in the suck), I said something that I’ve been stewing in for years: since I’ve started dating at 16.

Me: I gotta be honest with you; my mother would be thrilled to find out that I broke up with [The Boy], canceled the wedding, and just stayed single until I was thirty.

[Co-Worker]: Are you serious? Does she not like [The Boy], or…?

Me: I don’t know. I think she’d be happy if I were marrying a lawyer, or a doctor, or a financial planner later in life. But she just doesn’t want me to get married. Like I said, she’d be thrilled if I broke up with [The Boy].

[Co-Worker]: That’s kind of sick….

Yeah, it is. But it’s true. She’d admit that she’d be thrilled, too, if I ever had the stones to confront her on it.