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.

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.

I am not a mistake and neither is anybody else.

"People can't be transgendered because God doesn't make mistakes".

I've heard variations of that statement several times while watching countless videos about transgender people.  The last time, was when somebody from the catholic school board was explaining why their schools would never included transgender children.

Like many people, I am extremely offended by that statement, but unlike many people it's not because I'm transgendered or even know anybody whose transgendered.

I was born sick.  My parents were told I would die.  I didn't.

That's an extremely short version of my infant and toddlerhood, but it will do for what I want to say.

If being transgendered or homosexual means God made a mistake, then what about the sick baby, whose organs weren't quite constructed in the typical way, and needed several surgeries by the age of three?  Does that make me a mistake?

Did God not intend to make me?  Was he maybe just not paying attention when he made me, and messed up my organs in some way?  Maybe he intended me to die before birth?  Is my very existence a mistake?

I vehemently say "NO!".  I scream it.  The very thought of my existence being a mistake is extremely offensive.

I am not a mistake, and neither are those who born with missing limbs, or those who are born transgender or homosexual (and yes they are born that way), or those who are born as little people, or blind, or when learning disabilities, or those who for any reason are born differently than the typical person.

I do believe in God.  I don't know why I wasn't perfectly healthy at birth.  I have theories, but none of them are tested or even half way believed.  (Hey I've had years to think about my health problems that still bother me to this day).

Does God make mistakes?  It's an uncomfortable question to ask.  It's one I don't like even thinking about.  My gut says "no", but then how do you explain me, the baby doctors believed would die?

Just as I don't know why some people are born with red hair, some have feet size 11 1/2, some love the colour yellow, and some hate the taste of ketchup.

We are all different.  And yes, we are all the same.  But is any one of us any better or worse than anybody else?  Does any one of us have a difference that is so huge it must have been a mistake?

I believe my health problems have given me qualities that other's don't have.  I'm not going to explain them here, but...

Did God make a mistake when he made me?  No.  Did he make a mistake when he made the little transgender girl who wanted to wear a girl uniform and go to the girls bathroom in her catholic school?  No.  Did he make a mistake when he made anybody.  No.

Why are those people that way?  I don't know.

I do know that when you say that a transgender child simply can't be because God doesn't make mistakes, you are insulting me.  You can't deny that I had many surgeries before I was three.  My scars prove it.  You can't deny that my parents were told I would die.

I am prove, that people can be born different than the typical person and not be a mistake.

Oh and that guy who said that...  Well the human rights commission made him eat his words.  His school was made to acknowledge transgender people, and allow them to be the gender they are at school.  Unfortunately the little girl, ended up leaving the school before that happened.