Is my dog happy?

As I write this I'm playing with my dog, by pulling a yellow stuffed duck from her mouth occasionally.  When I'm typing, she shakes the duck on her own, and then pushes it into my arm when she's ready to play more.  Every once an a while I have to tell her "no teeth".

Sometimes I wonder if we're the best owners for her.  I don't clip hair as often as I should, and apparently I'm bathing her too often (the vet just told me a few weeks ago), and sometimes her nail get to long.

I want her to be happy, and sometimes when she squeaks when I do her nails, or she looks so mopey when I'm eating and not sharing, I give into her and give he what she wants.

Temple Grandin says to give dogs at least 30 minutes of attention every day, and I think my dog gets way more than that.  I pet her and play with her often throughout the day.  I know she'd love to play fetch or frisbee, but it's too cold outside, and we don't have the space to do it inside.  Maybe they should make indoor playgrounds for dogs.

A night of old english mystery TV shows.

As I mentioned yesterday, it's cold outside.

After venturing out into the cold, to buy groceries and supper, my mother and I ate and then huddled under a mountain of covers in her bed and watched youtube videos on a computer propped up on my lap.  The dog alternated between being between us, on one of us, and at the end of the bed.  And then we settled into for a long winters....  Well not nap, youtube watching.

Old shows like "Hetty Waithrope Investigates" and "Rosemary and Thyme" filled out evening.  It was warm, cozy, and entertaining.  The wind blew the snow around outside, but inside we were warm, under several blankets and sometimes a dog.

Those are shows that we haven't watched in years, and when we first started watching them, I wasn't sure that we'd enjoy them again, but we did.  The last time I watched "Rosemary and Thyme" I was skinny like Rosemary, but this time I was fat like Thyme, which was kinda strange to realize.  It's also strange to realize that although I remembered the stone going through the window, I remembered it as a brick, and I didn't remember much else.

And so I'm sure we will do that again, sometime, when we just can't seem to get the temperature inside to warm up enough to be tolerable.  It's not that we don't have a good furnace, it's that sometimes, it just gets so cold that the furnace can't keep up, because the outside temperature plummets so much in such a short time.

And well now we've figured out how to warm up, and be entertained.

The furnace has now caught up, and the house is a liveable temperature, and we are settling in to go to bed soon.

So good night, although by the time you read this it will be moving, so good morning.

It's after midnight and it's cold outside.

Again it's after midnight, again I don't know what to post, and again I'm just going to start writing and see what comes out.

It's not that I'm not thinking anything.  It's that I just don't know what (of all I'm thinking) I should write down.

It's cold outside.  The type of bone chilling cold that freezes skin in minutes, makes sound travel faster, and makes people stay inside.  Not even cars like this kind of cold, and they demand to be warmed up before being driven.  They make funny noises when started, and need to be plugged in overnight.

It's hard to explain this type of cold to people who have never felt it.  Actually it's hard to explain winter to people who never felt it.  Things like whore frost, plugging in cars, snow, shovelling, and icey roads are hard to explain.

It's also hard to acclimatize to this cold.  I once worked for a man from Sudan, who had never known this type of cold until he got here.  He liked to keep the thermostat way higher than anybody else, even in the summertime when everybody else was using air conditioning.  He hated the ice, and fell almost every day.  "Snow I can take", he would say "Ice.  I don't know how you people walk on it."

It takes a different kind of walking on ice.  You have to shuffle your feet, moving them carefully over each spot on the ground, while looking for snow or traction in the ice to walk on.  You also have to learn how to fall.  Don't just fall.  Look for a snowy place to aim yourself and fall there.  It's softer that way.

It's not that cold all winter long.  Sometimes it's comfortable.  One those days everybody talks about how nice the weather is, and people walk around with their jackets undone.

But on other days...  Day's like today.  It's way to cold to go outside for anything other than a necessity.  All unnecessary trips are cancelled, nobody goes for a walk or a jog outside, and nobody goes to the store just for a snake.  If you have all you need in the house, you don't worry about getting anything extra.

How cold is it you ask?  Well it was -31 C (-29.2 F) without windchill today.  Overnight it might get worse.  By Wednesday it's suppose to warm up to -14 C (+6.8 F), which to us, at this time of year is down right balmy.

Maybe Entertainment isn't frivolous.

My mother and I are listening to a very good novel by J.A. Jance, about a detective named Beaumont who opens up a cold case for find even more murder than he thought he'd find.

While we are doing that I am colouring, and my mother is playing iPad games.

Just like when I coloured while listening to Raffi, I'm finding this very relaxing.  Maybe, relaxing isn't really the appropriate word for listening to a murder mystery, but in a way it is.

My problems, sadness, and hurts fade away into a fictional world created by J.A. Jance.  It's like watching a good movie or TV show, but it lasts longer.  It lasted for a few hours last night, and almost all day today.  As soon as I got up, Mom asked if I wanted to listen, and I immediately said "yes".  We were so caught up in the storey we wanted to know what happened to the 2 little boys that found the body in a barrel, and to Beaumont, the detective who had knee replacement surgery.

Her descriptions of surgery, anesthetic and Rehab in hospital (the physio kind, not the drug kind), were exactly write.  I could envision the hospital and his pain killer induced dreams perfectly.  My mother spent 3 months in a hospital after having neurosurgery (see my "about me" page for more information).  We got to know the rehab ward intimately, and it is not at all like the rehab wards they show on TV or in the movies.

Having surgery many times myself I know she perfectly described the anesthetic, except for one instance: counting backwards from 10.  Every time I have surgery, I know the anesthesiologist is going to ask me to count backwards from 10, and every time I am determined to get to 1 (or at least past 7), but I never do.  I always count ten, nine, eight, seven, and then that's it.  I'm waking up in the recovery room, wondering why I can't complete such a simple task.  I was a math major in university, you'd think I'd be able to count backwards before surgery.  I can't.  I never can.

I've wanted to be a writer for a long time.  I've written short stories, essays, and descriptions of real live in diary since I was 12, when a teacher introduced me to creative writing.  It was after my grandfather died (the same one I mentioned in yesterday's post), and she suggested it would help me deal with my great grief and hurt.  It was therapeutic.

It was also fun.

The next year in school, when the short storey was introduced in the school curriculum, I was ready.  I drove into it with excitement and enthusiasm.  In university I started writing novels.

It was never intended to be my career.  I thought that entertainment, was frivolous.  I wanted to improve the world, and I chose a degree that helped me do that.  (no it wasn't math, but I needed a major and that was available).

Things didn't quite work out as I expected, but that's a different storey not for this post.

I never gave up writing, but even my own entertainment was frivolous (it came after I did everything important), so how could I think that providing the entertainment of others was important?  I thought feelings were frivolous too.  I felt them, I wanted to understand them, but my happiness, wasn't important.  Other's were important.

But I'm starting to change my mind.  I am important.  My happiness is important.  And so is the happiness of other people.

Happiness can be attained in many ways, and I'm finding some of them.  I enjoy giving to others.  But it's also important to give to myself (and that is not something I understood before).

It's also important to do things that I enjoy doing (also something I didn't understand before).

And if it's important for me to do things I enjoy doing, it's important for others to do things they enjoy doing, and that's where entertainment comes in.  People enjoy entertainment.  A good book like the one Mom and I are listening to know, entertains, removes me from my own sadness and hurt, and takes me into a land somebody else created.

And maybe by writing good novels, and actually trying to publish one of them, maybe I'll be helping people too?  Maybe entertaining people through my writing, is important, because maybe I'll be providing them with an escape, just as J.A. Jance is doing for Mom and I.

Fire:

I never want to wake up to the word "Fire" again.  I was sleeping deeply for the very first time that night, I was finally warm, and my mother opened my door and said "Fire".  Instantly I was awake.  The smoke was so think I couldn't see anything, and I desperately searched the dark for two things: pants and my purse.

It was cold out that night, -47 C (without windchill), the coldest night of the year, but finally I was warm.  I didn't realize that warmth came from the fire that melted the lighting fixtures below my bedroom, and was melting barbie doll furniture from childhood that were stored under my bed.  In the middle of the night, in my sleep, I just knew I was finally warm.  I mostly likely would have continued to sleep, and just never woke up if my mother hadn't woken me up with that one word "Fire".

What that word represented, stole something from me that I didn't even know I could lose: safety.  Obviously that night, I wasn't safe, and as my family and I fled into the cold without jackets or shoes, we cared more about survival than frost burn or hypothermia.  But that night was the last night I ever felt totally safe.

I remember as a little girl, looking out the window at my grandparents house.  My grandfather stood beside me and together we watched the storm through huge living room windows.  I felt so save standing with my Grampa, watching the storm.  It felt like Grampa and my grandparents house could protect me from anything.  Lightning and thunder filled the sky, but I knew inside I was save.  I said so to my Grampa, and he said something very quizzical at the time: "I hope you always feel that way", and then he walked away.

I was only a small child, less than 9, and I didn't understand.  Why wouldn't I always feel save?  Didn't everybody feel save when they were inside?

What I didn't fully understand at the time, was the second world war, impacted his live.  He in fact didn't feel save.  The sound of thunder sounded like gunfire, and he never liked the sound of thunder.  And, although as I grew older, I understood more and more of just what the second world war was like, I never fully understood his comment until after the fire.

I have never been to war, and I'm sure I will never fully understand his experience in war.  But I do know what it's like not to feel safe in your own home.  My home is not a home anymore.  It's a house, that I live in, but it doesn't give me that save and cosy feeling that it once did.  It was the scene of danger, of fleeing for my live into -47 C weather without a coat or shoes or anything to keep me warm.  I didn't feel the snow beneath my feet or even know they were getting cold.  I didn't feel the wind on my bare skin.  Escaping was the only thing I knew.  Get everybody out of the house.  Call the fire department.  Wake up our neighbours.  Ask for shelter.  Those were the only things I thought about.

But after...

After is a different story.

Of all the things I lost that night (childhood pictures included), what I miss the most is not physical: it's the feeling of safety.  Now I know that nobody is ever truly safe.  It can all be changed in an instant.

I wish I had that feeling back.  I wish that even as I sit on this couch, that I thought nothing could hurt me.  But I don't know if I'll ever feel that way.

And although my childhood self can't go back and ask my grandfather what he meant, and if this is how he felt, I think that maybe this is what he was talking about, and I too wish that feeling of protection from the storm had always stayed with me.

A rant about computers

It's that time to blog again.  11:39 pm.  And I had no idea what tomorrow's blog post would be.

Until now...

My computer had started downloading an update without me agreeing to it.  There was a reason I didn't agree to let it download: my computer isn't working 100%.  It's acting slowly, and I think it might be because I have too much stuff on it.  I bought an external hard drive, and I fully intend to put things from this computer onto the external hard drive, but I haven't done it yet.

I really don't think this computer, at this time, has enough memory to do any updates at all.  It's just too full.

And yet, here it is, asking me nightly if it can update.  And here I am telling it "no", and then it goes and does it anyway.

Who programmed these computers to be so demanding?  Isn't the point of having a computer, a being that is not alive, and has no purpose beyond doing what I want it to, to do just that, do what I want it to do?  Why does it have needs, and wants beyond what I want?  And why does it have the ability to disobey and download updates anyway?

That is bad programming, and it's annoying me right now.

And that's my rant.

Obesity isn't a health problem.

I hate it when people think obesity causes health problems.  That is an absolute lie and it doesn't make any sense.

When I was born I was a small baby.  I was also extremely sick.  My parents were told I would die.  I didn't obviously.

My illness had nothing to do with my own weight.  I was just an infant, and I was small for an infant. My illness had nothing to do with my mother's weight.  She was 5 feet exactly and 99 lbs before she got pregnant with me.

I remained skinny throughout my live.  I was active in sports such as swimming, skiing, cycling, horse back riding, and walking.  I also remained sick.  After my surgery as a toddler, I didn't get as sick as that again, but I had frequent infections, and health problems related to the problems I was born with.

In my early 30's I got much sicker, and needed more surgeries.  It was after one of these surgeries, that I was no longer able to take the stairs two at a time (I had to use the elevator) or park a 20 minute walk away from my destination (I had to park closer).  I stopped all forms of exercise, except for walking, because I was too sick to do so.

I also started taking medication that causes weight gain.

I became too sick to cook, nutritious foods made from scratch.  My mother was progressively loosing energy due to her own health problems, and couldn't do that either.  Cooking from scratch takes a lot of time and energy, and Mom and I just didn't have it.  Some days we didn't eat supper, because we didn't have the energy to make it.  We grabbed potato chips instead.  To solve that problem we bought boxed foods, and made them regularly.

Sticking a couple of chicken fingers in the oven is easier than cooking from scratch, and better than eating nothing but potato chips.

And we started gaining weight.

But....

I am not unhealthy because I gained weight.  I was sick for decades before gaining weight.  I am overweight because I am sick.  I don't have the energy to exercise like I once did nor do I have the energy to spend and hour making each meal as I once did.

Obesity is not a health problem.  Health problems can cause obesity, but obesity in itself is not a health problem.