My brother and I have an eight year age difference, him being the older one. So when I was a kid, he was a teenager. Being like a typical brother, he picked on me and teased me and tried to make me angry or cry, all the time. For this and that, I remember crying to my mom and having him yelled at for not acting his age & more responsible. Even to this very day, as a 30 year old and me as a 22 year old, he still annoys the heck out of me sometimes with his occasional child-like mentality, lol. Sometimes I feel like the older sister. We’ve had disagreements where I once thought I would never talk to him again. You know, the typical sibling kind of thing.

Besides all of the very, very, very annoyed/furious states he did leave me in and still leaves me in sometimes nowadays, the best random moments with him I can name off the top of my head are: times when he would stand up for me, once when he surprised me with a copy of a Harry Potter book that was just newly released because I was in bed all day from my wisdom teeth surgery, all the times he would take me home from school and drive me places, the video games I’d watch him play, the movies we’d watch, and the video games we would play together.

Anyway! Like I said, when I was a little kid, he picked on me all the time. The hilarious thing that I still remember to this day is the fact that him constantly picking on me started showing up in my dreams as well! One night I had a dream that he was picking on me again; I think taking or breaking something that was mine. I think it was a huge fish? You know how incoherent dreams can be sometimes. But anyways, that led to me crying out, “That’s mine! That’s my fish!” and ending up in tears. I woke up from the dream (or I guess nightmare!) crying. The next day, my family reported that they heard me screaming from a nightmare the previous night. LOL. My brother’s room is downstairs and mine is all the way upstairs, but the fact that he, too, heard my screaming shows that it was a pretty upsetting nightmare to me! And thus, like I said, his bullying even permeated through my dreams. I wonder if lots of little kids end up having funny nightmares about their older siblings too.

You know, when I was younger I used to hand-make my mom a card for Mother’s Day and that would be the only thing I’d give her. My mom is the type of person who doesn’t really appreciate store-bought gifts and she is extremely practical. Even if I were to buy her a practical gift, she would think it’s a waste of money. That’s the typical Asian mom for you, haha. My family doesn’t really celebrate anything that much, and Mother’s Day isn’t an exception. Now that I’m older (age is always relative, of course), I admit I don’t spend much time making hand-made cards anymore, but that’s because now I choose to spend the time making other presents for my mom.

When I was young, it didn’t seem like my mom appreciated my hand-made cards that much. I think one year I didn’t make her one at all because I never got around to making one. Surprisingly, my mom asked me why I didn’t make her a card that year. So after that I realized that she did appreciate the little things I made for her, even if she didn’t show it much, and I continued giving her cards every year.

Now that I’m 22, I’ve learned to appreciate and love my mom much more than when I was 13 years old. It seems cliche but you really do learn to appreciate your parents much more when you get more mature. I mean, I still loved my parents as a teenager, but I got in way more arguments with them and didn’t really see too far into the future. Then once I get over that hump, I started to see how old my parents are getting and how much they’ve done to make me happy, and the fact that I want them to be happy as well.

So although holidays aren’t the only day to appreciate your family, I never miss the opportunity to participate in the festivities and show ’em that I care. This year for Mother’s Day, I gave her a cute card and I made her a Sudoku book & a little book for grocery lists.

My mom loves Sudoku puzzles. She finished the little paperback puzzle book she had and likes to work on them at work when there’s downtime. I decided making a Sudoku book would be great for her. I chose to bind the book using rings so that it’d be easier to flip back pages and remove or add new pages as needed. I cut out felt for the lettering on the cover.

The front and back covers are made of cardboard, and I blanket-stitched colored felt over the cardboard pieces. I added a little pencil holder in the back cover, haha. The Sudoku puzzles were printed off of the internet. Since there were about 25 pages to be cut in half and 50 pages to be hole-punched, my hole-puncher and scissors at home seemed a little inefficient. Since I had to go to school anyways, I went to look for a paper slicer and hole-puncher and the library, and they had them! Wish I discovered that a long time ago. The hole-puncher was a commercial one, so it could hole-punch a whole stack of papers at once.

I also experimented with making a mini-book with a cardboard cover thanks to this tutorial. It’s a pretty awesome way to use your cardboard; you should try it! It’s a great way to recycle scrap papers as well. I made her a little book for grocery lists because she’s always forgetting about what she was supposed to buy at the market.

If I could do something differently, I would have made sure my stitching along the edges would be more uniform and evenly spaced. I practiced my embroidery a bit, as you can see. I’m definitely a newbie at it, but I was relieved when my mom didn’t have any trouble reading what the letters were, LOL. She seemed really happy when I gave these to her, so I’m super happy too.

This morning, I woke up to yelling and arguing between my mom, dad, and brother. Hearing all of the problems about money and all of the verbal abuse…I just laid in bed and couldn’t help crying.

I hate it when there are arguments because you can hear everything in this house. I can hear someone talking if they aren’t being quiet. If they are being quiet, I can hear some type of mumbling. Loud arguments and angry voices come crystal clear, no matter where you are…door closed or not. I don’t post emotionally personal & money-related entries too often nowadays, so I feel a little vulnerable, but it’s also one of those times where I’m at one of my lows and I wish someone would listen to me (or in this case, read). Things are all over the place. Which is what this blog entry will be.

My dad was laid off from work about a week ago, which is really going to hit our family hard. He had that job for half of his life, but one day he was called in and it was also his last. No severance pay for all those years of being a loyal employee, not even a notice in advance that he was going to be laid off. Of course my dad would feel emotionally upset about that, and even more is we are all going to feel the effects, financially.

My dad’s job gave our family most of our income. My older brother still lives off of my parents and is about to be entering his 30’s, but he has never, ever gotten a job before besides helping my dad out at work. My mom works really hard, but her income only pays for groceries and smaller things like that. So that is really freaking scary. There is his untaken vacation pay, but that is only enough to pay the bills in the short run. I know there is unemployment pay, but I don’t know anything about that, having never encountered something like this before…so I don’t even know how much my dad can get or how long it will last. I can’t imagine what is beyond that, and it’s really scary.

And now the situation gets even more complicated. My dad has the idea that he can start up this small business/job thing, but everyone in my family is walking on a fine line right now. My dad claims he will build up the business. My brother and mother worry that he will not build up, because he’s already had this small business (we’ll call this job2) for years and it hasn’t made too much money – possibly due to the idea that my dad prefers being home and not working. My father has the defense of working his other – before he was laid off – job from 7am-5pm), but the odds are against him when we consider the days and nights where he pushes job2 off to my brother while he stays at home to sing karaoke (don’t ask) in front of his computer for hours straight. The business was bringing in more debt than it was bringing money in, so he had planned to sell all the equipment and lease out the space once and for all. However, my dad seemed to be too stubborn to sell this business (job2) so to this day it has still not been sold.

Before this ordeal, he even wanted to retire from his well-paying job & just focus on the possibly failing job2, even though we really need his income to pay off the house and live off of (well the irony is now he got that wish, but it came very untimely). It’s hard to say what my dad will ultimately choose, if my brother will finally get a job of his own, if my brother will just end up helping my dad with job2, or if both my brother and dad will just have to go out and look for another job, or if my brother and dad can even find a decent job in this economy. In the end, if we can’t pay the bills, my dad said he’d sell the business (job2). If that isn’t enough, we’ll sell the house. Oh god. I have lived in this house for almost my entire life and it’s really heartbreaking. I have to remind myself, it’s just a house. But when I do, somehow I just find tears in my eyes.

On top of the money problem, my parents are still in that possibly permanent phase of their relationship where they go out with their friends together, and pay the bills together, but they obviously can’t stand each other for very long anymore. I can’t remember the last time my dad slept in the master bedroom together with my mom. It’s probably been at least 6 years now. My dad doesn’t do any household duties and I think he sees his only duty as bringing in the money while my mother has to work and do everything else, such as take care of the kids, cook, clean the house, get the cars fixed, pay the bills, buy groceries, call in somebody to fix the house, etc. It’s overwhelming, I’m sure. It’s no doubt that everyone appreciates my dad for the money he brings to this house – we would not be living in such comfort without him. I just think that there’s more to being a dad and husband than bringing in the money.

I think my mother brought up the suggestion that my dad take care of the house more since he is now unemployed and relaxing at home, but my dad lashed back at her for saying that. Honestly. I think all my mom wanted was some equality, love, and respect. Wash the dishes sometimes, or at least don’t leave dirty dishes at your computer until it grows mold. Don’t expect Mom to cook all the time when she’s tired. Don’t leave your dirty clothes all over the house for Mom to pick up. Don’t spend all of your money on stocks (equivalent to gambling in our opinion) and electronics when we are struggling to pay the bills. If you make a mess, clean it, rather than ignoring it so someone else can step in it and clean it. Call up the technician to fix something broken in the house, or do it yourself, rather than ignoring it until Mom has to do it, even though she has no idea how to go about it. Don’t slam the door when Mom is sleeping. Close the door when you take a piss in the bathroom. Turn off the light to conserve electricity when you go to sleep.

Do you see my point? I don’t think my mom was asking for too much. Some wives can be real “feminists” and expect their men to do everything! My mom, on the other hand…I feel like all she wanted was a man who could be respectful, dependable, and just help out sometimes. She is not out of line, because my dad is not known for being considerate to other people (specifically in our family…when it comes to his friends, he jumps head first before anything) and does not know how to take care of himself, let alone other people. I think what he does best is working, but when he comes home, he doesn’t do anything to help out or make my mom happy. If I told you all the stories about my dad at home (my boyfriend has heard far more than enough), he would make your blood boil.

All these years I’ve been worried over my university expenses, which I’m still worried about, but now there is the added worry of how the heck does my family take care of bills and necessities?

To give perspective, this is my cost from just school alone. Note that my parents have not saved a dime for my college tuition (a conflict that I still hold back inside with mixed feelings). Here is tuition (strictly tuition for the school year, not including summer school, transportation, housing, books, etc.) in the last few years that I’ve been in college:

• 2008-2009: $8,774.50*
• 2009-2010: $9,984.00
• 2010-2011: $11,927.25
• 2011-2012: $13,970.00

*I dormed my first year of college so my total for tuition AND housing for 2008-2009 was $23,845.50.

This is ridiculous. It almost drives me to tears. Higher education is getting so ridiculously expensive. With every generation, it’s getting so much worse. The United States of America – people dream of living here, but the fact is, we are in serious, serious debt. February 12, 2010 the USA was $14.294 trillion in debt. I will admit I know nothing about politics and government and the latest news, but why is it that the poor must suffer in repaying this debt, while the rich get richer? (median CEO salary was $10.8 million) It makes me sick to my stomach.

The application for FAFSA (federal financial aid for college students) was due back in March and what they give you is based on income from the previous year. Tax forms are proof of your family’s income, and tax forms are based on last year. F***, I think I’m just screwed. My dad barely lost his job this year. This is the worst timing ever because this year will be my last year of college. His unemployment will do nothing for my financial aid. It will be too late. I need to talk to the financial aid office soon, but I have a feeling that there is not much that can be done for me.

I wish I could say, “Please help,” but there’s really no one to ask. I know it will be okay in the end. I just don’t know how many sacrifices and tears it will take to finally get there.