A Writer's Blog

August 1, 2011

The Facebook invasion

Filed under: current events,Random Rantings,Toronto — jessicaorton @ 2:39 pm

This is going to be an annoying mishmash of info today. In the last few weeks since my last post a lot has happened and that has prompted me to get in the writing mood. Today I was prompted to think pretty hard about communication and the ways we choose to communicate with the people in our lives. How many of us have facebook, twitter, email, cell phones, home phones, regular postal mail, and homes to visit? Why is it that people get so offended when a person is not interested in having them on their facebook or with sharing information with them?
In recent months I have watched peoples reactions to facebook messages posted by family members and friends and literally watched relationships deteriorate before my eyes. Just today I made a decision to prevent anyone who shares my DNA from seeing my facebook wall. That’s more than half the 128 people on my list. Truth be told my family members are the ones I communicate with most in person, by phone, and on facebook. I know that my family feels as if facebook is about mutual sharing of information, and if one person is not sharing the other will more often than not delete that person from their facebook. (yes that’s almost a tradition in our family, pretty bad when there is a general rule regarding facebook that spreads through your family) I suspect my choice to prevent my family from seeing my wall posts will result in a good 50% of them deleting me. Many are probably wondering why I would choose to go this route, well it’s fairly simple.
I’m nearly 30 years old, I live on my own in a city all by myself (no family here just me and my bf). I pay my own bills and get through life more or less on my own steam. I’m the youngest of a litter of children 5 in total, and I guess in the whole family including both parents and all 5 kids I am probably the most ‘outside the box’. I did not follow any of the standard family conventions that my other siblings did, so I’m kind of, on my own, as far as traditions and lifestyle is concerned.
I’m not religious, all of my siblings had their children baptized, I don’t have any children, all my sibling have 2 a piece, I’m the only one of us to get married before/without having a child. I have some different lifestyle quirks that most of my friends think make me unique and interesting, but most of my family members just don’t understand.
Since I do not have children and do not plan to ever have any children it can be frustrating to find that most people in my family are busy when I’m looking to go out and have fun. I have some different reasons for not having children that some of my family understand and others do not. I am a member of a group called VHEMT (Voluntary Human Extinction Movement) where the general consensus is that the world is already overpopulated and that this huge number of people over running all of our natural areas is having a negative affect on our planets health. The members of the group are mostly people who in their adulthood opted not to reproduce for any number of different reasons. We discuss issues that affect the lives of child-free adults including screaming children in restaurants, our stances on issues such as abortion, and of course our reasons for choosing to remain child-free. My activity in this group unfortunately posted to my wall yesterday which upset one of my sisters, I pose this question, should I be sorry that my opinion upset her? Do I have the right to have my own opinions regarding my life? Should I be forced to conform to the conventions my parents and their parents set down?
I had a similar issue with my mother one time when I posted pictures of my bf and I on our vacation. We attended the worlds largest gay pride parade in Toronto. Before I even got all the pictures posted I got a phone call from my mother upset and asking me ‘just how gay I am’. I answered with a quite frank reply of ‘gay enough to be living with and married to two men. So she implied that I should post a note with my pictures stating that I’m not a homosexual but that I just support the lifestyle. I replied to that with a bold and firm absolutely not! I’m 30 fn years old I do not owe anyone any kind of explanation for my behaviour and my choices or my vacations or lifestyle in general.
Two years since that incident I found myself still hiding and sneaking around to be a part of groups like VHEMT, and The Thinking Atheist and hiding my involvement usually very well from my family to avoid offending or upsetting anyone. It occurred to me that yeah! I’m 30 fn years old, not everyone has to like me, and that working as hard as I have to keep my feelings, beliefs, and lifestyle under the cover of darkness has taken a toll on my own self belief and feelings of worth.
After years and years of pretending to fit into the family status quo and pretending to fit into the mold that was created for me by the first 4 kids to pass on through the family unit it occurs to me that each child before me made their dents in the mold and forged their own way in one way or another, it just seems that my choices and my beliefs appear radically different because of the visual differences such as ‘never walking around with a diaper bag, never complaining about the damn baby sitter showing up late, not complaining that my baby money didn’t come in this month from the government’ and other similar frustrations parents go through.
Although I disagree with family members who say that I am the way I am because I enjoy the shock value of it all, I do really think that I do not wish to completely blend in to the background. What kind of a difference does a person make on the world when they blend in to the background? Think about Malcolm X, Gandhi, Wilder Pennfield, Sigmund Freud, William Shakespeare and other notable members of our society. How many of them made the impact they did by blending into the background and never living up to their true potential? I do the things I do to try my hardest to get as far as I can while making a positive impact on those around me. I cannot tell you why I have the beliefs that I have or why I choose the lifestyle that I choose, but I can yell you this:

‘There has never ever been a time that I have done something with shock value in mind. Everything I have done in my life has been for one of two or a combination of two reasons, to make those around me happy while not rocking the boat, and for my own happiness and fulfillment of my life as it was meant to be.’

I do not delude myself into thinking that any of my family members actually read my blog (yeah I know how sad is that? I get lots of stranger reads but not a single family member has ever read it I don’t think) But if there is anyone out there who is curious as to the ratio of the things I have done for others and the things I’ve done for me, here is a hint, stopping people from seeing my facebook is the first thing I have done overtly just for me.
After all of this backstory my original point was simple, we fill our lives with different ways of communicating with one another including social media, mail, phone, text, and in person; why is it that people get so offended when you are not sharing facebook with them? Specially after they make a big deal and get offended by what you post and by your lifestyle? I am still available by phone, text or a visit to my home, email, postal mail, carrier pigeon, etc. years ago when I started adding family members to my facebook I knew I had made a mistake, the internet used to be a place you could go to be anonymous and discuss common interests without fear of persecution or ‘outing’ by or to family members. I used to be able to separate my internet/personal life from my family life. These days there is about as much separation between family and the internet as there is between church and state.
By that logic however it should mean that families are closer and know everything about each other and are active in each others lives right? Yeah! Not so much. It turns out people generally only make a comment or send you a message when they need something or want you to know that something you posted was offensive. Even though I have a good 40% of my family members on mother and fathers side on MY facebook and see their posts daily I rarely hear from them unless they need a cow on their farm, or are pissed off about one of my posts that clearly shares a view that conflicts with their own opinion.
So now that you know a little bit about me and my family dynamic can you understand how the internet and Facebook specifically can be exhausting? Frankly as far as I’m concerned anyone who does not like the idea of me blocking my wall from my family members for my own personal reasons, feel free to hit the remove friend button. I will not take it personally, and know that I am still available by telephone and by email, and for a personal home visit, I’ll even make the coffee. Not allowing people to see my facebook page is a personal choice, not a personal attack on others. I do not feel like I should have to defend my views, or explain my personal feelings every time you disagree with something I say on Facebook. I am entitled to feelings, beliefs, and opinions of my own.

May 27, 2011

A Step Forward?

Filed under: Random Rantings — jessicaorton @ 9:26 pm
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So, today the government announced that it will be relaxing the archaic alcohol laws in the province (full story here). I have looked into the matter and it seems to me this another one of those big hype law changes like when the province made it legal for women to go topless.  There was a whole lot of hype about it, but nothing really came of it.

For the first year only the young and attractive girls would go topless at all, and when they did they undid the backs of their bikinis and laid on their chests on a towel at the beach. Now about ten years later I see about 50 topless women in a year, 90% of those women are working in adult entertainment clubs like Crossovers in Barrie, or the House of Lancaster in Toronto; the other ten percent are the rare few brave women in the gay pride parade, or transgenered men with breast implants (again in the gay pride parade). The change of the topless law in Ontario did nothing but make it okay for women to do something they did not particularly want to do anyway.

The loosening of the liquor laws in Ontario I bet is going to be the same thing. The government did not say that we can all officially prance around at public events with liquor in our hands. What the government said was that it is now up to the event organizers to set their own boundaries for as far as we can go with our liquor. This basically means that unless the organizers want to pay more enforcement staff, and deal with the consequences of alcohol floating around all over the streets, they will likely keep the rules as they are now. I’m willing to bet that when we attend the Tastes of Danforth, RibFest, GayPride, BeerFest, or any other festival your town offers, we will still have to confine our alcohol to the bar, the beer tent, or another licensed area.

The government was trying to make a splash just before the provincial election, in my opinion they failed. The only people who are making a big deal and really care about this are the people who hate the idea.

I saw a post from a young mother of a 13 year old boy who had roughly this to say: “As the mother of a young boy I’m completely against this change, drinking underage just got easier”

The only thing I can think to say to this, it’s not very nice, but here goes anyway. The only person who would complain about this is a parent, a young immature parent even. Welcome to the real world, where YOU are responsible for policing your own child’s behaviour. Blaming the loosening of a liquor law for a child’s drinking under age is incredibly irresponsible and rather juvenile as far as I’m concerned.

Why should the entire population be penalized with harsh liquor laws because of a set of people who really should not be affected by the law at all (minors)? Why should the government further regulate a legal behaviour for adults? It does not make any sense to me. My husband and I moved to Toronto to be closer to these kinds of festivals (before this law was changed), and both support the idea entirely; although we have no hope at all that the practice of beer tents and patios will change.

It is the responsibility of parents and no one else, to monitor their children’s behaviour, I do not understand why this person is concerned at all, a thirteen year old child should not be running around the streets of downtown, the beaches, the Danforth, or anywhere else in Toronto for that matter without parental accompaniment anyway. If you are watching your child like you are supposed to be, there is no increased risk to their health or behaviour.

The change in the law only affects potential borders between ‘where you can drink’ and ‘where you cannot drink’, the law did NOT change to say that suddenly ‘if you are over the age of 19 you can now be falling down drunk in the street and you may also sell and share alcohol with minors at your discretion’.

Being able to walk more freely with your drink (if that is ever really allowed by an event organizer) I think would show a better impression of adults and alcohol to young people. How many times have you walked by a beer tent and seen the hairy tattooed guy with his little girlfriend chugging a beer on their way out? Limiting the area where you can drink promotes unhealthy drinking habits.
I have seen cases where people will wait in a really long line and order three beers per person, then sit down to drink all three beers in about ten minutes so that they can leave to get to the concert venue, or take the girlfriend to a shopping mall. Limits like this mean if you want to get all of your ‘allotted drinks’ in you need to drink more or faster than is really advisable. Doing this portrays and unhealthy image of adults, alcohol, and promotes an unhealthy unrealistic image of drinking in children and young adults.

I would rather young people see a big hairy biker looking guy walking around sipping his one beer an hour than standing at the exit gate trying to down his third beer in ten minutes so he can get on his way.

I think that parents making a big stink about this law should take a lesson from the ‘Ontario, Yours to Uncover’ story from about ten years ago and remember that just because it is legal for them to be topless in public, they still have the right to say no, their daughters likely do not go topless either even though they can do so legally. Just because there is no law stating that we have to stay in the beer tent, that does not mean that the event coordinators will change the rules that have been in place for a hundred years or more.

Take a breath parents, your youngins are still safe in the hands of the general public- for now anyway!

May 21, 2011

Have you been Raptured?

Filed under: Random Rantings — jessicaorton @ 7:22 pm
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Well that was anticlimactic.  According to this Camping character I suppose if I am still here I’m waiting for the earth quake to get me tomorrow!

If you can believe this seemingly harmless cute old man believes that a person like me is going to be punished by his God…

Well, I’m still here!

Does that make me a bad person?

If the rapture has started you sure can’t tell from where I am standing. I would like to ask this Harold Camping what the requirements are to be selected for ‘saving’. I’m a Heathen myself, but my other half is a practicing Fair-Weather Catholic. Not only is my boyfriend still here, so is the family from across the street who have a ‘virgin Mary’ window covering in their living room. The CDC promised a zombie attack as well so I’d like to ask them just when this should start happening.

Has anyone checked on this Camping guy to see if he and his cult managed to drink the Kool-Aid?

May 19, 2011

My Day in a Nutshell

Filed under: Fun,Random Rantings — jessicaorton @ 9:30 pm
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I had quite the day today. It all started with a trip from home to Queen Street East. The TTC trip planner said it would take only an hour. So naturally I left the house two and a half hours before my appointment. I arrived at my destination with an hour and a half to spare. After finding a coffee shop I sat down to enjoy a non-fat vanilla bean latte. The cafe was nice, I guess. It’s one of those tiny little buildings that seems more like a hallway than a cafe. It was called something Red, or Red something or other. The coffee was wonderful, but the table I sat at was covered in newspapers, not whole newspapers though, two or three page sections folded against the natural bends in the pages. I’m pretty sure it was one complete newspaper, but I could not find the cover section. So I managed to keep myself entertained with the Sports section.

I attended a job interview, not sure why I bother looking as it seems my writing work is keeping me pretty busy. I am in the process of reviewing a number of new contracts which include everything from Sales Copy, to Website Content Reworking, and Thesis Editing. Good times lol.

In any event when all was said and done by the end of the day I had completed one contract for some Web Content Reworking, and went for coffee with a friend who is also a writer. I finally got my copy of Young Republican, Yuppie Princess which promises to be a really entertaining read. If you are into funny and fantasy this is a book you are likely to enjoy.

Of course getting my copy of the book was no easy feat, nothing comes easily to me these days it seems. I left the house with more than a half n hour before meeting with a friend and local author at the Starbucks at Bloor W. and Runnymede. Coming from home to the coffee shop should take the average person about ten minutes by car. I gave myself my usual ‘average time multiplied by three’ buffer. I made it to the coffee shop with fifteen minutes to spare and was extremely proud of myself. Now to find a parking spot, I had driven past at least 5 of them on my way there, all nice and close within two or three minutes if I were walking. Now that I have passed them all however I have to turn around and head back up the street in the opposite direction to look for other ones. What it all boils down to is that once I was five minutes late I finally arrived at a spot that was so far away it took me an additional ten minutes to arrive at the coffee shop.

I’m not sure why but as I passed each parking spot, although I wanted to pull into each of them the car lurking in my rear view mirror prevented me from doing so. I had strange thoughts of taking too long to get into the parallel parking space and having the jerk behind me honking like a maniac as so many of them do far too often. I can’t be certain about why the idea of someone honking at me bothers me, since there is really no other situation where I really care what anyone thinks of me or says to me. I suspect it might be something to do with the impersonal nature of the car horn. People honk their horns as arbitrarily as they would throw away an empty coffee cup. In my mind honking ones horn when someone is holding you up is about the equivalent as screaming at an old lady with a walker because she is walking too slowly in front of you.

Those of you who are quick to honk at other motorists, do you frequently scream at, curse at, or flip off people walking down the street, or entering the subway or bus? I suspect that when you are outside of the safety zone your car creates for you, you are most likely much more courteous. What gives you the idea that you can treat another human being with no compassion, no respect, and above all no kindness at all, just because you are in your car?

May 18, 2011

Fantasy, The New Reality?

Filed under: Random Rantings — jessicaorton @ 9:53 pm
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I’m a member at a local Toronto Writer’s group. This group gets together a couple times a month for a variety of reasons ranging from editing each others work and giving suggestions to improve each others writing, and of course the ever popular, poetry reading. I took part in an online editing workshop where I received three pieces of stories or books that were around 3000 words in length. I was to edit them and post any suggestions I might have. Of the three works I received two were fantasy pieces including alter dimensions, mythical warfare, ability to fly and the like. The other had an older man as the main character and his encounter with a local ‘working girl’. My first thoughts were that all the stories and pieces of stories were great, I truly enjoyed reading them all even though fantasy literature is not my gig. I wonder however what the odds are that I would be the only person to write a story revolving around a potentially true life event. What I submitted was the very beginning of the novel I am working on which is a fictional crime story based in Toronto Ontario, told as if it were a true crime story.

All other writers submitted a piece that had at least some level of fantasy. The new trend of vampire fiction, werewolves, alter reality and video game settings is becoming larger and more wide spread by the week it seems. I wonder why that might be the case. Is reality boring? Maybe it’s too scary, or too dangerous? Why are so many people so far enveloped in these fantasy worlds and alter realities? Although I enjoy reading the occasional fantasy story I’m not sure I could wrap my head around a full time fantasy lifestyle or even more than a passing interest in fantasy and science fiction type topics. What is the draw to this genre?

Can anyone help me to understand the draw of this type of story, movie, or game play?

I wonder if the new and emerging writers are not latching on to these genres because of the proven interest from the younger reading audience, based on the successes of artists such as the author of Twilight, the director of Vampire Diaries etc. I must question the authenticity and the passion of a writer who writes a topic only because they are presently popular and potentially easier to make money from.

Are there still artists who are simply and truly passionate about what they do? Now do not misunderstand me, I’m asking a question here and not trying to imply that the artists I worked with are not legitimately passionate about their work. I’m just not sure where the passion comes from, or how one can simply decide one day to dedicate their lives to artificial reality and role playing games etc.

Don’t these people miss out on real life events, and social interactions?

Is the real world simply too much for some to accept or to embrace?

Why the draw to all things unreal?

May 17, 2011

Downtown Adventure

Filed under: Random Rantings,Work — jessicaorton @ 10:57 pm
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Today I had an adventure downtown. I took the bus to Runnymede station as usual and got on the subway toward downtown. I got to Yonge station and set out on foot to find Ryerson University. I’m so horribly directionally challenged that when I got out of the building onto Yonge street I couldn’t figure out whether to go left or right. Usually when you are in Toronto you can easily orient yourself by looking for the CN Tower; our phallic symbol to the world, however when you are already downtown you often cannot see it because of all of the other tall buildings.

In any event I made a right turn and started to the north. It took me thirty minutes to figure out I was going in the completely wrong direction. After finally finding the University’s Administration building I was sent on a wild goose chase to find yet another building. I was sent from the second building back to the first building. What I learned today was that I’ll be attending University of Toronto rather than Ryerson University. If I’m going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on my education, I expect to get a certain level of support from the staff at that school.

May 16, 2011

The RubberRoom for kids

Filed under: Random Rantings — jessicaorton @ 11:44 pm
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Today I drove by a park. Sounds like a normal occurrence for sure. I can understand why a person might say, ‘yeah and??’. For all intents and purposes it appeared to be a regular park at first glance. It wasn’t until I looked at the ground that I noticed what was wrong, or at least different about the park. What should have been sand, gravel, or asphalt under the jungle gym equipment was what appeared to be a 2 inch thick layer of cork or rubber that must have been either sprayed on, or rolled out in a large sheet.

Setting eyes on this park today was both incredibly interesting and astoundingly disturbing. I was momentarily brought back to my childhood. I smiled briefly thinking about the monkey bars at my first grade school where I went from Junior Kindergarten until grade 3. We had the big rounded monkey bars next to the 8 swings, the kind of monkey bars that are more like a half oval. The whole thing seemed to tower over our minute first and second grade frames, but in reality they only just a little bit taller than the top of our teachers heads, so maybe 6 and a half feet at maximum. Going back to my childhood, standing atop the monkey bars looking down, what did I see? Asphalt! That’s what. Why was that? Why is it that my childhood did not warrant all of the same safety precautions that today’s children do?

Truth be told, during my childhood I had a great deal of fun. After a couple of tumbles from the monkey bars during my first couple attempts to hang upside down from them I learned how to use my legs and arms to not only climb around but to hold myself up, or let myself down, in such a way that I was not injured. Under our wooden seat swings was some sand. That sand had been kicked out from under the swing so much that we either needed help from our friends to be tall enough to get on the swings, or use all of the upper body strength we could muster in our tiny six year old bodies to pull ourselves to the seated position; our feet often dangling several feet from the ground.

Swinging till our hearts content; we would not jump off until we had swung so high that the swing was nearly perpendicular with the dirt and asphalt under us. If you timed it wrong and jumped off while you were in a ‘going backward’ position you ran a very real risk of getting that wooden swing in the back of your head. How many times did that have to happen to us before we learned when to and not to jump? Just once!

Why is it that kids today are forced to play in parks where there is padding affixed to the frame of the play toys, and rubber is firmly placed against the ground? Are kids today really too stupid to protect themselves? Or are parents under the mistaken impression that by coddling your child until near adulthood you are going to somehow produce a smarter more self sufficient adult?

Has anyone else noticed that the more we as a society protect our young, the more our young refuse to protect themselves? In recent years it has been proven that children are staying in their family homes for considerably longer than ever before. Adults are still living with their parents until their late twenties or longer in some cases.

Back when a parent need only say ‘get outside the adults are talking’ children seemed more likely to find ways to amuse themselves, and were more mentally equipped to handle life outside their home. Anyone in their 40′s or older who is reading this, heck even in your 30′s; can you recall a single time you went home and cried to your parent that someone at school made fun of you? It’s my opinion that it is the parents and the authoritative adults today that are responsible for the behaviours of children today. There was a time when children just toughed it out. ‘Get over it so we can get on with it’ was one of my mothers famous sayings reserved specially for the times when I had complaints of unfair treatment, or hurtful peers. Today however, a child comes home with a complaint and the parents are on the phone and suddenly there is some kind of billion dollar inquest into their child being bullied, or their child having fallen from a piece of gym equipment.

It is the parents who undoubtedly want the best for their children, who are single handedly responsible for their children’s social and mental development being delayed-or retarded for lack of better description. Children are not learning the invaluable skills that are required for getting by in the world today, or the world in any other time frame. What this boils down to is the fact that adults today are preventing children from becoming the strong powerful and intelligent people that they can be.

It is a sad state of affairs when a parent has to step in to solve a disagreement between kids, or to stop a kid from being picked on. Get used of it kiddo! Not everyone will like you all the time, this will be an ongoing theme in your life until then bitter end. There is not a single person on the planet today, nor has there been a person who ever walked the earth who was loved by every person they met. Not Jesus, not Mother Theresa, not Justin Beiber (sp unsure of spelling here), not even the Beatles believe it or not!

Adults in authority positions and parents jumping in to save their child the agony of bullying, and the hardship of falling off the play ground equipment are really only saving that child the ability to learn that life is not a bed of roses. Waiting until adulthood to learn this is far more traumatizing. Just look at how many quasi adults are running around today in drug and alcohol induced fogs. More often than not these people can tell you that their parents either babied them until they died and left them to fend for themselves, or that their parents simply did not take an active interest in teaching them life lessons are a child.

How does one learn a life lesson as a child without ever having life experiences? Getting hurt as a child even breaking bones as a child, is much better than having to learn those safety lessons as an adult when your bones may never fully recover. Stop rubberizing play areas and let children learn these valuable lessons so that they can grow into adults who are able to keep themselves safe and have a real understanding of what life is about. This is my bit on preventing the further retardation of our children and of our future adults.

April 13, 2011

Canadian Election 2011

Filed under: Random Rantings — jessicaorton @ 9:24 am
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Today I reviewed the Canadian Census numbers for the first time. Why? You might ask. I was just curious to see what basis the government was going on when choosing what topics to cover and what breaks they want to offer in their election platforms.
What I discovered surprised me while reinforcing what I was already feeling. In 2006 in Canada there were three times as many single person households than households with 5 or more people. As well in 2006 for the first time there were more families that consisted of childless couples than families with children.
Working from this information why do politicians insist on pumping our heads and their platforms full of tax cuts for people with kids. They are promising things like, raising the child fitness credit, providing free government day care, more school lunch programs, more funding for elementary and secondary schools etc. since for the first time ever people without children seem to out number those with children, why do they think that will get them votes?
Come on guys, Iggy, Harpie, Jackie, and the others, include me in your platform or I’m not voting for you. I’m tired of my tax money being handed to people who chose to have kids. Having kids is definitely a choice, and those who choose to do so should have considered the financial commitment before they did it. Why should my hard earned money be used to pay for their choices? They aren’t my kids. It’s starting to feel like I’m having child support automatically deducted from my pay cheque each week to pay for children I did not have. NOT FAIR!

September 27, 2010

At 28 I finally did it!

Filed under: Random Rantings — jessicaorton @ 12:17 pm

On September twenty-third I finally got my driver’s license!  Surely from my previous post you’ll notice that I suffered some pretty fierce neurological symptoms which prevented me from acquiring a license.  Seven plus years later I have done it! 

To quote my boyfriend I’m not the best drivers but I’m getting better everyday.  “All you need to do is pull it together for 15 minutes during your test then you can join the rest of the as%*ole drivers out there” .

I drove my boss’ truck the other day with him in it, and I no longer need to drive him around because apparently I scared him half to death.   It turns out after 28 years of being a passenger, I got comfortable on that side of the road!  It has been said that I drive too close to the curb.  But with that in mind I was driving a great big huge truck too, not a small car like the one I took lessons in.

I took many hours of private lessons in order to learn to drive properly, but even with that I was very apprehensive about driving.  My driving instructor had some issues with the fact that I was drinking a coffee and texting while taking a corner at 50 kilometers an hour, but hell, no one got hurt!

A word to those who have not yet gotten their license and to anyone with children, I recommend that you get your license as soon as you are able to.  I discovered that the longer you wait the more scary it is.  16 year olds are too stupid and feel invincible so there is no fear of driving; the older you get the more you realize the danger of what you are undertaking.  Do it early, and make your kids do the same, it saves a whole lot of apprehension, fear, and self-doubt!

January 9, 2010

7 Years Today

Filed under: Uncategorized — jessicaorton @ 3:26 am

It’s been a while since I have posted anything here.  I have been doing well but today I felt a need to post something.  Today, January 9th 2010 is my 7 year anniversary… no, not of my marriage, but something bigger.  Today I am 7 years seizure free.  on January 9th 2003 I had a surgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute during which I had my Hippocampus and Amygdala removed from the right side of my brain.  Te surgery was performed in an attempt to correct a seizure disorder that was causing me to suffer from 5-10 Complex Partial or ‘petit mal’ seizures per day.  Before the surgery I suffered from a horrendous amount of seizures which impacted my life in a way that I cannot even begin to describe here in writing.

My Epilepsy remained undiagnosed until I was 19 years old.  The failure to determine what my problem was caused most people to think that I was just a problem child, then a problem teen.  Finally after being properly diagnosed there was still no medicall or pill treatment that was working.  I took dilantin which caused my gums to turn black, then valproic acid which caused my moos to be crazy, then carbamazepine (tegratol) which caused me to be a zombie, and to feel like I was stoned on opiates all day, the doctors began to realize that the side effects of the medications were not worth the 5% reduction of seizures.  I was having only 3-7 seizures per day but the meds were rotting my liver and preventing me from normal life like behaviour.  I visited Montreal, and Doctors Andremann (neurologist) and Olivier (surgeon) both examined me.  After staying for 2 weeks with electrodes glued to my head and my brain plugged in to a wall for 24 hours a day (the testing is called Telemetry, and it’s a 24/7 Electro Encephela Gram-EEG) They recored several seizures an ecided they could operate to remove the problem area.

The problem area in my case was on the temporal lobe right side of my head.  My entire head was shaved and a question mark shaped cut was made.  My short term memory (hippocampus) and mood control (amygdala) was removed.  After the surgery I suffered no further seizures!  It turns out those two pieces of my brain had scar tissue on them which prevented the electrons of passing through.  When the electrons got stuck it caused a seizure.  I had been that way my whole life which made it hard for me to report.

It might be hard for a ‘normal’ person to understand but my whole life I thought I was ‘normal’.  I had no reason to believe that I might be the only person who was having seizures.  Since I did not fall down and shake as most people automatically associate with ‘stereotypical’ epilepsy, I thought I was normal.  I lived my life for the first 19 years as if I was just like everyone else.  The only thing that made me stand out from other was the fact tat I had been through an open heart surgery at age 9 months. (yeah I know it seems nuts… heart and brain surgery on the same person… but it did happen.. I have two zipper like scars to prove it!)  My heart tested normal so I assumed I was normal.

Today, at 2:20 am on January 9th 2010 I am celebrating (after working till midnight!) the fact that not only am I still alive! but I have also been 7 years seizure free.  I never thought I would make it this far.

I got my learners permit in August 2009, so I can drive by May 2010 all by myself at age 27.  I’m really getting somewhere now!  Go Me!!!! Woohoo!

Sorry for the self indulgence there but I can’t help it.

I still suffer from some pretty serious short term memory issues as a result of the surgery but I have ‘learned how to learn’ in a different way which lets me live a relatively normal life.

Damn! The excitement is crazy.  Look at me go!

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