The Worst Mother on the Planet... This post is rated Very Sarcastic. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

Yes, it is official. I have achieved it! I just shot past people who have committed murder, abuse and neglect to their children to number one. Tada!

What is my heinous crime? I'm a little ashamed to admit it here, but they do say that confession is good for the soul.

I--it's really hard to admit but--woke up and got my daughter off to school on the twenty second of April. However, I forgot that it was earth day.

Gasp!

I sent a lunchable (ironically for the first time EVER) and a juice box.

GASP!

I'll understand if no one ever wants to associate with me again. Even serial killers and animal abusers, etcetera do have standards and are advised to stick with them.

Night shift...

I am so exhausted. Did not get my proper rest today before my night shift due to a variety of (nearly) unavoidable factors. I only have to survive a few more hours.

I tell myself just a few more hours. Just approximately four hours and thirty minutes and fifty seconds as of the moment these very words were typed... Not that I'm counting.

I generally like night shifts, but this one is utterly defeating me. I have been doing everything in my power to keep my brain awake when all it wants is to go to sleep. I keep myself manically busy, to keep my brain busy (it's only semi effective). I eat (one of the reason's that I'm not skinny). I try to find things to learn online (not that anything will stick when I am this tired).

I also update my Facebook status. (I would like to note I generally only do this frequently when I'm trying to force myself to stay awake.) Here, I'll share my statuses of tonight.

Around 11:00pm
Dawnelle is so happy that her daughter's birthday party is over... Ahhhhhh... Now to go to bed--er--work. *sigh* But the kid party is over for this year... That's the important part.

Around 1:30am
Dawnelle's brain is figuratively flat lining...

Around 3:30am (Which just so happened to be immediately before I started this latest post.)
Dawnelle doesn't know how she's going to get through the rest of her shift... But she suspects periodic Facebook status updates might be the key to doing so...

So that's my night thus far. (And I must explain that I am actually doing my work--I love my job!) While I am definitely capable of making a much, much longer babbling post, I feel that I should not bother. I would not want to bore the (nonexistent) people who read this blog. Well, at least my imaginary friend, Keiner, likes it...

Oh... Wait... Apparently he just said that to make me feel better about myself...

I give up. (LOL!) I am going back to find a different way to not go to sleep.

The Anne Effect

Ah, Anne Coulter...

It's truly amazing how one woman managed to shake up Canada. I've been watching her journey unfold with something akin to bemusement. I barely even knew who she was before.

Some people seem to really admire her, other people seem to completely loath her. But love her or hate her, I think that she has done something good for this country.

Sure, she has a terrible mouth on her. I don't enjoy listening to her insults against people. Often she sounds like a single-minded playground bully rather than a reasonable adult. However, between the bouts of barking, one can hear the sound of something else. It's the sound of a silent group of people in Canada--the (ideological) conservatives.

In the states, conservatives are very vocal about what they think, sometimes to the point where they make me cringe. On the other hand, here in Canada, conservatives are much quieter. The Canadian way is to criticize internally but be NICE on the surface. Nice Canadians girls and boys do not cause altercations; they just make snarky passive aggressive comments later.

But maybe we need some altercation, and some debate. It often feels to our silent population that tolerance only goes so far, and it stops right at conservative Christianity. I'm talking about the group of people who believe in one triune God, the devil, sin and the fall, and salvation through Christ. Of course it's fine to believe it, just so long as one does not dare to suggest that it is TRUE.

Unfortunately, (whatever) G(g)od(s you believe in) forbid, Christianity logically excludes all other religions. This is a terrible (and perhaps the only) sin in our pluralistic, pick your own religion society. Christianity steps up and says that it is the only way, which means that if it is right, every other school of thought is wrong. If the God of Christianity truly exists, it means that some ways of living are WRONG. God is intolerant (yet forgiving with repentance) of sin.

Fed on the bread of "if it does not hurt anyone it's okay", no one really wants God to step in and tell them that they are not good and right. This is "intolerance" and therefore can not be abided in our lovely, tolerant society.

Then in steps Coulter like an obnoxious Joan of Ark wielding political incorrectness like a sword. Many people and groups are distressed. Other silent groups secretly cheer because someone is standing up on the public stage and defending conservative beliefs, even if, like me, they wish that she could cultivate some good old Canadian niceness.

If nothing else, Anne Coulter gets us talking, debating and thinking. And that is always a good thing.

All I want...

My birthday is coming up really shortly... While I'm not bothered by the event (most women in their late twenties seem to hyperventilate from the very thought--don't ask me why, it's a mystery to me as well) I've become very apathetic about the whole thing. I guess after twenty-some years it becomes a little less exciting to age another year. I suppose that is just how it is.

The other possibility for my recent disinterest might be the fact that my little girl's birthday is the day before mine. Back when my due date for her was rolling nearer, a lot of my friends expressed their opinion that it would be great if she were born on my birthday. I disagreed even then... I mean, would it not be fantastic to be in labour on my birthday? I think not. But I digress. The fact that my little girl's birthday is right before mine means that I spend the preceding week running around like mad getting ready for hers. I do not begrudge it, but by the time my (increasingly) big day gets here, all I want is to hide under a rock and be left alone.

So that is all that I want for my birthday... Solitude, and no obligations pressing themselves upon me. I want to shut off/unplug my phones, ignore my email and Facebook accounts and barricade myself in my house with my daughter. Maybe eat some cheesecake.

Alas, I never actually get what I want... I guess that's just how life is...

Waiting is pretty easy when there are a million things to do...

A small note on my (hopefully) epic journey into the scary world of publishing:

I'm currently paused in my quest. I'm hoping to get a response on the query that I sent in for critiquing, and in the meantime I'm dealing with the eight hundred other things that are vying for my attention in my personal and work life. My soon to be six year old's birthday is the last day of the month. Her dad will be visiting, and my birthday is the next day. I want to have nothing to do that day, so I'm frantically trying to do EVERYTHING before then. It never works, but it's a nice dream. I can see myself relaxing in a clean house, alone, with absolutely nothing that must be done.

Then back to unpleasant reality. In the real world, I've got tonnes of stuff that I MUST do, and another tonne of things that I SHOULD do. It would take a birthday miracle to dig my way out of it all. Sadly, I do not believe that miracles are very common. It's a bird! No! It's a plane! No! It's Captain Pessimist to the rescue, deflating any chance of dashed hopes!

Well, while I'm talking about worst case scenarios, just in case I never manage to publish anything, I would like to take this chance to thank two people who helped me finish writing my first book. First of all, Ashley read along in chunks as I wrote, and she was a great source of motivation. Secondly, my brother, who causes me general stress and for telling me that my story is "boring". (He had only read the first dozen pages, and later he explained that he may have felt like that due to his resentment at me bullying him into reading it in the first place.) Really though, there's nothing like a nice bit of negative criticism to make me more stubborn!

Ah, Facebook, that wonderful social networking site. The place where a huge number of my "friends" spew their (sometimes messy) emotions and opinions all over my computer screen.

Recently, one of my "friends" took me off their friends list. This was a person who I never really talked to in the real world, I think that she was a relative of a co-worker or something. I'm quite sure that she added me as I am not in the habit of adding people who I do not know how I know. I probably accepted because I wanted to figure out who she was.

Thus I and my former "friend" have mildly rubbed shoulders in the Land of Facebook for the past year. I don't remember anything of interest happening due to the fact that she was my "friend", other than perhaps having more requests for applications to ignore, wall posts to block and status updates to read.

However, back to the point. My dear "friend" removed me, because her grandmother died and I had not commented or called her. We live in a "small town" and "everybody" knew what had happened. And to be fair, I was aware, on the hazy edges of my consciousness, that her grandmother was dead. Certainly that is sad. Death is awful. Grieving can be difficult.

However, I am also of the mind that grieving is a personal thing. I am not suggesting that people do not need other people during their grieving process, but did she really need someone that she barely knew to tell her that they were sorry for her loss? Apparently yes, because she went through her Facebook "friends" and deleted everyone who did not stand by her in "her time of need". Honestly, when my (only remaining) grandmother dies, I will not expect anyone to pay homage to her on my Facebook page, nor will that be the criteria for who I keep on my list. I feel like Facebook is a place to lightly connect with other people, a way to communicate, and a source of amusement, but it is not a place where one should be looking for the fulfillment of human relationships. Even more so, it is not a place to become a tragic star of self pity. Why would anyone want to be that pathetic?

Perhaps I am being harsh, but she seems to believe that she is punishing myself and all of the other people who were cut from the illustrious ranks of her friend list. I find it ill mannered to use it like a weapon like that, like a five year old uninviting someone from their birthday party. (I outgrew that behaviour..? When I was five maybe? My patience for it deserted me quite a while ago too.)

But anyway, fine, delete me. I really do not care. What I do care is to not have to read long whining rants about how she now knows who her "real friends" are, and so forth. I find it tedious, whiney and arrogant to the extreme, as if an outward showing of sympathy is the only way that one could possibly empathize with her. There are many people out there, and no doubt some in her expelled list, who are not comfortable talking about death. Some people do not know what to say. Likely some people did not know, because our "small town" does not completely revolve around her.

I, however, do not fit into any of those categories. I've got no excuse. We had the sort of relationship that we should probably never have been Facebook "friends" to begin with. I knew, and while I did feel bad for her, I did not think that it was my business to say anything about it. I barely know her. I never met her grandmother. Besides, her grandmother was not the first grandmother to die in the history of the planet. I probably never would have even noticed that I had been removed if someone had not mentioned it to me.

Fortunately though, my invitation to the pity party has been revoked, because I do not have to see my ex-Facebook "friend's" pitiful status updates any longer. I lose no sleep over the whole petty ordeal. Plus, she gave me some nice food for thought, and enough irritation to motivate me to write a post about it. Lucky!

Ultimately, my ex-friend basically did me the favour of shaving off one of my Facebook whiners. I have plenty more where she came from. I sometimes wish that I could take a big eneedle and inject the whiners with a bit of stiff backed stoicism. But sadly, only in my imagination does that actually work... *sigh*

Totally general and rather pointless comment, but I'm visiting my cousin for the weekend, and we're watching "The Final Destination". However, I don't really get it. I mean sure, this guy had a premonition, and because of it some people who were supposed to die did not. So now Death is out to get them! Yeah, that makes sense on some understandable level.

However! What exactly is Death in these movies? Is Death the (invisible?) Grim Reaper with his cowl and scythe? Or is Death some sort of force of nature? Or is Death fate? Or is Death something like a sadistic poltergeist?

I have two general theories. The first is that Death in the Final Destination movies is actually a whole bunch of entities, and they are all trying to one up each other. Each and every little Death is trying to find a newer and more creative way to take the squirming and fleeing characters out.

In the second and more likely theory, I figure that there is only one Death, and he's going out of his mind with boredom. In the history of humanity, can you imagine how many people he's had to kill with strokes, heart attacks, drowning, blood loss, hypothermia, poison, car accidents, etcetera. Poor death has been doing the same old job for a long time. He's stuck. No one else can do it. His job satisfaction is basically zero. He's trapped forever. So what does Death do? He finds ways to amuse himself, like exploding people inside out from the pressure of a pool drain, or sends rocks flying from lawn mowers into people's foreheads. Plus, Death gets the additional entertainment value of watching the stupid little mortals run around trying to stop him!

Priceless! And for everything else, there's MasterCard.