and then there were three

hole.e.crap. my sister is pregnant again. my long-time readers and irl peeps will understand why i am not jumping for joy over this. i would like to say i'm surprised, but i'm not. stunned, yes at the initial shock of it, but not surprised.

for my newer readers i will give you a brief (ok, it ended up being not so brief) history. my sister is 12 years younger than me, she'll be 29 this year. her oldest child will be nine this year. right up until the moment my niece was born my sister was unsure of who her father was and the only way she knew who the father was was because of the color of my niece's skin. she'd had one night stands with several guys. during that time and for years, years following that my sister bounced in and out of mental centers...not like an institution but the centers you go to before they officially declare you fucked up and lock you away against your will. at some point she was diagnosed as being bi-polar. once that happened she would go back and forth between taking her meds and not. when my niece was a baby and my sister basically wanted nothing to do w/ her the hubs and i offered to adopt her. this caused a huge, huge family row (and led to my brother and i not getting along for years--which has since been resolved obviously because we are very close to him and his family). my mom's main reason for being against our adopting my niece was....what would the FAMILY say? hmmm, maybe that it was what would have been best for the baby? anyway, we didn't adopt her and she and my sister lived with my parents. they paid for everything, much of the time my sister didn't work and she got welfare/medicaid, etc. she was drinking, doing drugs etc. and sometimes taking my niece places she had no business being. right before my niece was actually born she hooked up w/ another guy and that relationship lasted several months, she and the baby moved in w/ him then she bounced back home.

about six years ago she was still hanging out w/ the wrong crowd, still fucked up and met another guy. during that time my mom got fed up and kicked her out for a couple of months so she lived with this new guy. they decided that, even though he had a wife and kids back in mexico, that it would be a good idea to have a baby together. and so they did. neither of them had jobs, no future plans, he was married to someone else, but they thought it would be a good idea to have a baby! my nephew will be five next month. even before he was born his dad either got deported or fled or something, but regardless he disappeared. my sister was again living w/ my parents, again bouncing in and out of being fucked up and endangering the kids. at some point my parents took temporary custody of them. when my nephew was about a year old his dad came back around, gave the sis an STD and left again.

my niece and nephew do not know their fathers and i presume my sister has no contact w/ either of them. they do not have fathers listed on their birth certificates. what if they ever develop some medical condition that requires a family history????

a couple of years ago she got, and has held, a real job, and i think it's been about a year since she's had her own apartment. however, even w/ that she spent most of her time at my parents, and by that i don't mean just hanging out but living there. during that time she's been fiscally irresponsible, despite the fact that from day one she's always qualified for state aided day care and her kids are still on medicaid and my parents fed her and gave her money each month and clothed her kids and bought their christmas, etc. and my brother and i bailed her out once against our spouses better judgement. (THAT will never happen again).

this august she married a man whom she'd known for...oh, maybe a month. he is the brother-in-law i speak of that does.not.speak. i think he understands english but he does not speak. my sister insists that her kids call him daddy. they are living in a two bedroom apartment. he does side jobs, working on cars, construction, but does not have (to my knowledge) a full time job or benefits. she has known for awhile that her employer is gearing up for massive layoffs and her job might be in jeopardy.

when she called us w/ the news tonight i said congratulations. i asked about her job and insurance. and without missing a beat she said, oh it's ok because i can get medicaid if i get laid off.

i'm just stunned. she has taken on all of the trappings of being an adult but NONE--NONE of the responsibility. she complains that she doesn't have a house or a computer or this or that and we do. uh, yeah, and we've busted our asses and had our financial bad times and have been working at this for 16 fucking years. she has no plan for the future other than having babies. not how to support them herself (rather than assuming the government will do it) or how to possibly provide them w/ a future or anything. there is no thought put into it. she is pretending to be a grown up. i knew it was coming, i knew when she got married it would happen. also, because my SIL had a baby this year i knew my sister wouldn't be far behind.

up until about two years ago any time anything major happened (good or bad) and someone other than her was the focus of attention she'd do something fucked up. check into a hospital for a week or two of a mental breakdown; drive off the side of the road w/ her baby in the car and have to be rushed to the hospital on mother's day, etc.

so, yeah, i'm going to be an aunt again.