Madison had a stroke last night…

On our way up to bed Madison had a stroke at the top of the stairs. She was able to get up and walk to her bed in our room but then she could not get up after that. We spend a restless night with her. We checked on her often and she seemed to be ok. This morning we got her up with a little assistance from a sling and helped her walk to the end of the hallway. She was then able to make it down the stairs on her steam and outside to pee. She is resting now. We shot this video of her this morning as we realized we did not have any of her doing her trademark singing and leading everyone in the Thomas Family Canine Tabernacle Choir. Enjoy!

Dispatches from the Land of Fat Phobia

Deb and I just came back from visiting my mother, sister and brother-in-law in Calgary (and Radium, BC). It always surprises me how food is such a mine field with my family. Growing up I was placed on diets beginning at the age of 8 years old. I remember going to Weight Watchers meeting with my mother who lost the same 57 pounds over and over again. Food was cast into the realm of good and bad. You either deserved food or you did not. If you didn’t work hard and ‘earn’ it then you couldn’t eat it. But if you had done something particularly strenuous that day then you ‘deserved’ a little something extra. This attitude became completely entrenched in my family when my mother married her second husband. He managed his weight meticulously. He backpacked and cross-country skied several hundred kilometres per year. In fact, we spent many summers backpacking for weeks at a time walking well over 200 km with very heavy packs. He was very concerned about food and how much we ate (or didn’t as the case was). Despite his influence my mother remained overweight the entire time they were married.

Once he passed away from leukemia (which was a shock to all of us given his very healthy lifestyle) my mother ceased to have interest in food. Currently she is about 5 feet 9 inches and weighs about 130 pounds. For the first time in her life she is thin and she loves it. The other morning after I got up I was sitting with my mother and sister (who were smoking their faces off) and my mother starts talking about how she can eat anything she wants now. She said: “If I want ice cream, I have ice cream, if I want potato chips, I have potato chips and I don’t have to feel guilty about it.” My internal dialog was screaming about how silly this was and how food should not have this amount of power in our lives. But I know better than to get into this kind of a discussion with them. So I sat there biting my tongue and wishing it would just stop.

Later that day my mother insisted on watching The Biggest Loser - Australia because she enjoyed the ‘personalities’. I couldn’t stand it. It was so contrived. My mother likes this kind of thing because it makes her feel superior just like being around me makes her feel like she has won because I am fat and she is not. She was so excited that I had lost weight (about 50 pounds). The only reason I lost it was because I was so sick for so long but that does not matter to her. She keeps thinking that I am going to suddenly lose all the weight and morph into an entirely different person. I have news for her - it is not going to happen.

Usually these visits take a huge toll on my self-esteem. Not this time though. I look at my mother and sister (who are like one person as Deb says) and I know I am so different from them (I am adopted). I also know that I will never have her approval unless I weigh 125 pounds. I have long given up on this ever happening. Instead I do other things for her. I am her personal computer support department. On this last trip I picked out a new computer for her and set it up in Radium including installing all of her programs and configuring it just the way she likes it. Deb spent her time cooking and filling her freezer with easy to heat up meals so that she might eat. We are also a little concerned as she is having a lot of trouble breathing. Just plugging something in caused her to breathe audibly for 10 minutes. She complains of having no energy, being tired and generally feeling unwell. I am concerned that she is in the beginning stages of COPD. She has smoked for probably for 50 years and now she is likely smoking more than a pack a day. I hope that she sees a doctor soon about getting a physical and a chest x-ray. I doubt she will ever quit smoking.

Other lowlights from the trip: our flight into Calgary was horrible. There was much turbulence and the landing was very hard. Then we went to get our car from Budget and the call centre had messed up our reservation and we could not the same rate I had been quoted ($43 per day). Apparently, they were sold out but they would give us a car for $170 per day if we wanted. So the question was are they sold out or are they not?? I could not get anywhere with them. So we rented from Enterprise who had excellent customer service and gave us a car for $109 per day. We were very impressed with them. Our flight back to Abbotsford (I cannot say enough good stuff about the Abbotsford International Airport - we will never fly out of Vancouver again!!!) was ok with just a bit of turbulence. We were both completely exhausted by the time we got home and slept until noon the next day. Thankfully, the yearly trip is now over barring any family emergencies.

Privilege (heterosexual and others)

I am writing this blog entry in response to all the comments I received on facebook when I updated my status to indicate that I was annoyed by heterosexual privilege. Frankly, the comments surprised me but I guess I should not have been. Inherently, when one is in receipt of a societal privilege they may not be aware of it. This appears to be the case. Rather than going into a long drawn out explanation of heterosexual privilege I will refer you to an excellent blog entry written by Teh Portly Dyke. She does an excellent job explaining this and its impact on homosexuals. She also issues a challenge in her entry I encourage you to try it to gain a better understanding of how insidious heterosexual privilege is in our society.

Privilege is everywhere in our society and depending on your class, race, economic status or gender expression you may or may not enjoy privilege. Being Caucasian in our society affords you a great deal of privilege. Our society is geared to make life easier for people who are white. All of our institutions are inherently racist and difficult for people of colour to navigate and receive fair treatment. If you don’t believe me ask a person of colour what their experience is at a bank or worse trying to get welfare or other government services. When I worked in a downtown eastside welfare office in Vancouver there was a great deal of racism dished out to people of colour and particularly aboriginal people.

Class is another area of privilege. I certainly noticed that as a homeowner I am treated very differently by service people than I was when i was a renter. The white woman in Kerrisdale is treated much differently than an Aboriginal woman from the downtown eastside. Many of our judgements about class are rooted in the Protestant work ethic and Protestantism in general. One of the foremost Protestant thinkers, John Calvin, believed that it was predetermined who was going to heaven and who was not. Those people who were successful in life were assumed to be going to heaven and therefore treated differently from those who were impoverished. It was also believed that if those who were not successful ‘just tried a little harder’ they too could be successful. The old adage of ‘pulling up their boot straps’ applied. We may not consciously think this way but these ideas inform our culture and the way we view the world and the people in it.

Gender expression is another area of privilege. Those who fit into society’s binary gender roles of male and female enjoy privilege. There is no question which bathroom to use and you are treated with respect. Those who are gender queer, gender ambiguous or trans have murky waters to navigate. A male to female transsexual for example may be harassed for using the woman’s bathroom. Gender expression seems to invoke violent responses from some people. Many trans people are routinely targeted for abuse by people in our society who are uncomfortable with their gender expression.

It is interesting to talk to people who are different from you and to learn how privilege or the lack thereof impacts their lives. As a white woman I know that I enjoy a fair amount of privilege in our society. I have privileges of class, race and gender. However, somethings work against me. As a fat lesbian woman I have been the target of discrimination and hate although not that often. The group with the most privilege in our society are straight, white men. It is interesting to determine what privilege you enjoy and why you have it. Deconstructing privilege helps us to understand how our society works and how we can work to be allies to those who do not enjoy the same privileges that we do. It takes a great deal of work to look inside and see what is really there - the racist and classist thoughts and to try and understand how they impact our interactions with other people. It is a life-long process and one that is very difficult. Realizing our own racist, classist and gender biases can be uncomfortable. Talking about them and challenging others racist, classist and gender biases is even more difficult. If, as an individual, you are committed to an egalitarian society it starts with you.

New Music

Deb and i were coming home from our many errands on Monday afternoon and heard this wonderful song on the CBC. The artists are Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson. If you like roots/country you will like this. Unfortunately the only place to get it is from Amazon right now. Here is their website where you can hear the title track ‘Rattlin’ Bones.’ Definitely worth a listen. I have ordered the disc from amazon and can’t wait for it to come. Kasey Chambers reminds me of Emmylou Harris.

Kasey and Shane

I have also been listening to a new Canadian artist named Jeremy Fisher. His stuff is quite interesting and different. Check him out on iTunes.