Life Expectancy

There’s this amazing thing I found on the internet last night, a Life Expectancy calculator. I will live to be 81, barring any unforeseen events occurring. And actually, that should read 91, if you believe lesbian HIV transmission stats. I answered one question admitting yes, I have unsafe sex, but it didn’t ask if it was lesbian unsafe sex.

There’s a huge debate about women to women HIV transmission. The statistics are misleading, because of considerations like sex work, bloodplay, occasional hetero experiments, artificial insemination, rape, dildos used on multiple partners within the space of a few hours without putting on a new condom, and I’m sure even more than I’m thinking of at the moment. It makes things very complicated, because at least two of the above risks lesbians face are completely written out of the statistics by researchers defining lesbianism in a really really specific way that cuts out a huge proportion of the lesbian community, like having a penis in your body at some point in your life automatically transfers you to the bisexual stats. And even then certain issues are not ever considered, like bloodplay. And if you’ve gone to a lesbian sex show recently, you know at some point something sharp and pointy is going into someone’s body.

So my risks for HIV transmission are basically that I don’t use barriers in oral sex and I rarely use gloves unless I’m doing something that might scratch my partner. I always use a disinfected dildo and/or condoms, I never use the same condom with two people or her and myself. I also never touch myself and then her without a change of gloves or otherwise making sure fluids aren’t getting mixed. Some people aren’t smart enough about that last one, which is why I ended up with a dumb STD that pissed me off. But I would drink blood should the occasion arise, and I’m trying to lower my risks around that should it happen. Oh yeah, it’s totally risky, I’m just considering the circumstances. Anyway.

So back to the Life Expectancy Calculator. It’s pretty amazing because it goes through all aspects of your health and then evaluates your lifestyle and gives you advice on improving and extending your life. So I’ve started trying to incorporate some of those things into my life.

One was to eliminate coffee from your diet. This is pretty interesting, because I do notice it makes me feel weird. They suggest tea instead, which is way healthier and has antioxidants in it besides. I also have to exercise more, which I tried today.

I took my cross country skis to the park today. I am so out of practice, it embarrasses me. I had a pretty good clip going on for about fifteen minutes when my cuz Deanna saw me from the alley and waved hello and I did a major pratfall. Getting up with skis on is also really awful. I kept falling until I just took the skis off. I was also in a foot and a half of snow, which didn’t make things any better. The experience of skiing was really interesting though. I felt muscles in my calves and feet that I didn’t know I had. And some shoulder, upper back, and arm muscles were saying hello and I hadn’t remembered their existence. I hope I get muscly again. When I did weightlifting a few years ago I started getting nice upper arm/shoulder definition, it’s still there. Anyway, I do like skiing. And I know I need the exercise. It’s not fat shame that’s making me do it either, I just want to feel more powerful in my body, like I’d have the health necessary to defend myself physically.

Another suggestion for keeping your brain healthy is to learn either a language or a musical instrument. The second best thing for you brain is puzzles. Puzzles are okay, but I really like learning. And learning Cree has been really interesting and just on it’s own has opened my thinking to new concepts specific to Cree and explainable only in the language itself. The etymology of words from pre-colonial to colonial language is fascinating. Literal translations illuminate so much of what Crees consider our current state of affairs. Even something like America in Cree meaning Land of the Long Knives is amazing. I’m thinking about the world in new ways, and I will even more once I’m fluent.

But why stop there? You have to keep your brain active your whole life. And I think especially for someone like me who does have brain centered health issues, I need to keep myself busy working with my mind. I’d like to learn more languages. I want to learn French, for sure, because we are in a bilingual country and even though their psych wards suck and they attack aboriginals, Quebec is a nice place. Never mind the holes in that last sentence, I’m not even going to bother explaining all my critiques of Quebec. Also if you learn French you can get government jobs. I also want to learn German, for various reasons. It’s a pretty funny language, some people hate it, but I actually like the way it sounds. And since world politics is currently dominated by fundamentalist Christians versus Fundamentalist Islamics, I feel a need to learn Arabic so that I can understand the world in a different way. For one thing, I really feel uncomfortable depending on translation and translators in negotiating discourse between groups speaking different languages. I don’t know that a right wing dominated media is going to accurately translate Arabic speaking Muslims. I also just wonder if the structure and words of Arabic lead to new ways of thinking the way Cree does. I’m sure it does.