A parental lack of support

I'm not sure what the deal is with mothers. I am pretty sure they are put on this earth to support your decisions to the best of their ability. Apparently, my mother does not realize this.

She is not at all happy with our decision to have Saoirse go to Australia with her FATHER. It does not seem to matter what Saoirse's feelings would be, or what William's or even mine are. In her her mind, what we are doing is just plain wrong.

"I couldn't let her go, Emma, but that's just me."

As much as I love my mother, I will be quick to point out that I did not once nominate her for a mother of the year award. She is acting as though I am a terrible parent for allowing my daughter to be with her father.

I have already said I hate the idea of her going, I cry whenever I think about it. But the reality is I would still have to work if she were here and getting her into a daycare would be impossible because of my hours. And if I did manage to find child care she would be spending most of her time with strangers. Plus I would be stressed and as people may have realized I do not handle stress very well.In Australia, Saoirse will be with her dad and his family. There are 3 kids near her age, and plenty of older cousins to enjoy her.

Of course, it is not only my mother who has said "I couldn't do that." My friends Nancy and Andrea also said it. Others haven't said it, but I am sure thought it. My friend Shelley was fantastic and said to me that really, it would be quite selfish to not allow Saoirse to go with William as the "sun rises and sets on him." Which is very true and works in a vice versa situation as well.

I do feel like I am doing what is best for not only Saoirse, but also for William. I know how much he hates being in Australia and with Saoirse there with him, he will be able to create good memories of that country. Yes, of course I will miss her, more than I can even imagine. I just have to look at it like it is a long holiday.

Election Day...Part 3

Well, it's not terrible. I mean, I'm not bawling my eyes out or anything.

It's a Conservative minority, which really sucks, but not as badly as a majority would have done.

There are a few negatives. Anne McLellan lost her seat in Edmonton Centre, so Alberta is all Tory blue. I don't think they say Tory anymore, but whatever. I can if I want.

Hmmmm, I can't think of another major negative, excepting the Conservative win, which I already covered.

So here are the positives....
-Paul Martin kept his seat in Montreal.
-In Canada's 3 largest urban centres (Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver) the Conservatives did not win a single seat (at least not as of the time I started writing this.) You see, people from other countries, we are not all racist, bigoted rednecks.
-The Bloc lost one seat, maybe two.
-The Liberals and the NDP together have 11 more seats than the Conservatives.
-The only policies the Conservatives will be able to pass are their more liberal minded ones.
-It shouldn't be a very long minority. I would hope that the first time they piss off the Bloc, the three other parties unite and give them a vote of non confidence. I really can not see the NDP supporting them for too long, and it would just be a sore point for the Liberals if they had to.

Of course, I could be all wrong, I'm not a political person after all, and perhaps the Conservatives could go on for ages and then win a majority.

I just don't think Canadians are that stupid.

You see what 5 minutes can do?

How the tides have changed and oh, so quickly.

Conservatives 64
Liberal 57
Bloc 16
NDP 15

I had to change those numbers as I was typing...64 for the Conservatives, 62 Liberals.

Bastards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Election Day...Part 2

I know you are all counting on me to provide you with your election results.

Here we are then:

Liberal 40
Conservative 16
NDP 7
Bloc 2
Green nada

This is just Atlantic Canada and the odd Quebec and Ontario ridings. It looks OK for the Liberals thus far, but this is just the calm before the storm of Western Canada. The Conservatives did not do as well as they expected to do in Atlantic Canada, but as long as they do well in Ontario they will be fine. And Alberta will go all Conservative, so will alot of B.C. and Saskatchewan. Bastards, the lot od them.

The election has nothing on this news

Today we received a letter from Citizenship and Immigration informing us that William's application to extend his visitor's visa has been denied.

It says "You must leave Canada on or before the expiry of your current document or, if your document has already expired you must leave Canada immediately. Failure to do so could result in enforcement action being taken against you."

It also said "...I am not satisfied that you meet the requirements of the Act and Regulations."

Who is this "I" that gets to decide our future? I called Immigration after we received the letter, to find out why exactly he was turned down. It turns out that we did not send in proof of financial status. The problem is the application never asked for proof of this. It simply asked to explain how he would support himself. And this we did. We included all income received into this house, and even included outgoing expenses, just to show them that we could survive quite nicely. I also wrote in a letter that he was the main caregiver for all three of the children, not just Saoirse.

Well, apparently they don't give a fuck. They don't care that without him being here, I can't work as Saoirse does not qualify for daycare. It is funny to me that this country will let in all manner of people, provide them with a monthly allowance, and a home and not let one person who will not cost them a penny stay for an extra six months.

So he is off, probably in the next week or so. We are applying to get a passport on an urgency basis so that Saoirse can go with him for a few months. And there's a whole other story. I hate the idea of not seeing her for 3 months, but I equally hate the idea of him not being with her. Saoirse loves him like no one else, I could not keep them apart. He already missed out on 6 months of her life, I am not willing to ask him to lose out on anymore.

We will have to decide in the next while what we are going to do. If he can't live here, we may go to Scotland. Of course, that brings its own problems. It's a good idea in theory, but there is another father involved, Taylor and Liam's dad. Chances are he won't want them going to another country. Liam would be all for a move, Taylor not likely.

Life is just a vicious game, I've decided.

Election Day...Part 1

Well today's the day.

When I pick Taylor and her friend Ashley up from school I will pop into the gym and make my mark.

I have approximately 4 hours to change my mind about who I will vote for.

I feel physically ill. I am dreading tonight.

I will watch the results at 7 on CBC, because Rick Mercer will be on and at least he will make me laugh a wee bit, when really all I will want to do is cry. I'll do a bit of channel surfing to, between CTV and Global and maybe even City, just to get Edmonton results. But the main event will be CBC.

I will post after all the results and after I have had a good cry.

Fecking Conservatives.

Tomorrow is the day of doom

I am not looking forward to tomorrow, not at all.

It is election day. The day that the Liberals will be knocked out of power by the very frightening Conservative party. I am not foolish enough to believe that the Liberals can pull even another minority win off. I can only hope that Stephen Harper and his right wing buddies will NOT win a majority.

I am afraid of what will happen to this country if they win. Let's face it...these are for the most part still people with Reform party ideology. Including Harper. I do not believe that a person's politics can change so drastically. I just think that he has been told to shut his mouth. This is stil the man who, five years ago, wrote that Alberta should have plans to separate from Canada. This is the man who will reintroduce the right (or lack thereof) of a woman to choose what happens to her body into Parliament. He will have a free vote on the gay marriage issue. These are in my mind issues that have been decided. He has no right to bring us back into the past.

Tomorrow won't be the only terrible day, the next few years look like shite. I'm not going to enjoy living in a Conservative province in a Conservative country. At least I live in a Liberal municipal riding. Not that it really matters.

Ha! Finally I'm first in something!

According to Vital Statistics there were no Saoirse's born in Alberta in 2005, down from a record high of 4 in 2004. In fact, as far as I can see 2004 was the only year Saoirse was used in this province.

I tell you, 3 too many people read Morgan Llywelyn and Roddy Doyle. It's a crying shame.

I wonder if these other 3 girls have their name pronounced correctly, unlike my Saoirse. Because I had heard the name in 3 different ways and because I could not choose between the two I liked, William chose the way we pronounce it. So we say it like "Sore-sha" instead of the proper "seersha". Although quite often I find myself saying "seersha" so I am sure the poor child will have a complex and not know her proper name.

I did ask every single Irish person I know how they said it, including my dad (a so called gold medal winner in Irish, spent every summer in Donegal speaking Irish and nothing but Irish) and the majority of them said it "sore-sha". Except for my neighbour, the eejit from Ardoyne, who said "sar-ese". Honestly.

One day, I might get over this. Just not today.


In other baby name news, Emma was number 1 for the third year in a row and Ethan was the number 1 boy's name for the fifth year.

"Two Things"

Lucky me, I've been tagged. Here goes:

Two names you go by: It's hard to make a nickname out of Emma. I do get called Em, and in Grade 5 or so, we made nicknames using chocolate bar names. I was M&M due to the m's in Emma and my last name starting with M. Today, 3 people call me Mummy and most others call me Emma.

Two parts of your heritage: Irish on my dad's side, English on my mum's.

Two things that scare you: Spiders and horror movies. I had to ask William because I couldn't think of anything!

Two of your everyday essentials: My debit card (when there's money in the bank), a hug and an "aaahhh" from Saoirse.

Two things you are wearing right now: What an odd question. An Old Navy long sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans.

Two things you want in a relationship: honesty and acceptance.

Two truths: I am not very accepting of who I am and some days, I really am a terrible mother.

Two of your favourite hobbies: Reading and stamping. Yep, I'm a loser.

Two things I want really badly: For William to be able to live and work in Canada. And a mini van.

Two places I want to go on vacation: Ireland (was there any doubt?) and Scotland. Scotland is the only part of the British Isles I have never been to, which is very sad considering I spent almost every holiday of my life in the place just south of it. I suppose I should have said Australia, but you know, the spiders.

Two things I want to do before I die: Attend the weddings of my children (this includes the possibility of one of them marrying someone of the same sex) and travel across Canada.

Two ways I am sterotypically a "chick": What is a sterotypical chick anyway? Let's see...I cry at Hallmark commercials. I cry alot actually. What else? I have no idea. Oooohhhh, I talk too much. Is that a girl thing?

Two things I am thinking right now: That I must soon go to bed. And that if the Conservatives win I am liable to have a breakdown.

Two people to tag: Well, Eric's out since he tagged me and I think people may be sick of being tagged by moi. I know UI said something negative about memes so just for that I will tag him. And how's about whoever else wants to.

Do you believe in ghosts?

William and Taylor were watching Ghost Whisperer the other night when Taylor asked William if he believed in ghosts and said to him "My mum has seen a ghost!"

This is true. When I was about 6 I woke up in the middle of the night, looked down my bed and there was someone who looked exactly like Old Mother Hubbard from that nursery rhyme. I could see my Holly Hobbie wallpaper through her. I was terrified, even though she was not frightening looking. I was also in a dilemma as to how to get out of my room because I had to pass right by Old Mother Hubbard and my 6 year old self was quite terrified that she might make a grab for me. I sat there for what seemed like hours but I am sure was only seconds before I made a run for it down the hall to my mum and dad's room. "Daddy, Daddy there's a ghost by my closet!" I said. "Emma get back to bed." He was always great in a crisis, my dad. My mum got up, took me to my room and turned on the light to prove there was no ghost. I didn't believe her and ended up sleeping between the two of them, running any potential plans my dad may have had to get lucky.

Well, that's what you get for not taking a six year old seriously.

He also did not take me seriously when I awoke him when I was 9 and told him that the picture of Mona Lisa that I had foolishly insisted on purchasing at the Louvre was following me with her eyes. He was quite pissed off that he had to get out of bed to take the picture down. But by then I was 9 and no longer had to sleep in between my parents. On the floor was fine.

Note that it was my father who first told me that ghosts were real. He told me that when my granda was in the RAF, he woke up one night to see his mother sitting on the edge of the bed and she said to him "Don't worry, Tootsie, everything will be fine." Now I have no idea why my granda was called Tootise, but that's besides the point. Later that day my granda heard that his mum had died during the night. I always thought that was a bit freaky, but never doubted the truth of it.

If any of you people laughed at me for having Holly Hobbie wallpaper, remember that I was SIX and it was 1980. If anything, I was cutting edge.

A bit of trivia

How smart are you people? Let me see.

What are the only 2 EC countries without an official minority language.

Enlighten me with the very genious of yourselves.

Roy Keane so does not suit green

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I heard Roy Keane had lost his first game as a Celtic player. I was amused that Keane wasn't all that, but sad that Celtic lost. To Clyde. That's a bit hard to take I think. There was a picture of him the next day in the paper (yep, occassionally we get a bit on Scottish football) and he really did look terrible in that colour. For someone who looks rather cute in a touch of Celtic green see this lovely girl below.









This dress caused great distress for the child's father who is not at all a Celtic fan but as it was a gift from his sister, he has consented to allowing the child to wear it. But he'll never be the one to put her in it.

Next year, I'll probably get payback and one of her gifts from Scotland will be a Rangers' kit.

Unions, and why I like to bitch about them.

So my 5 days off shortened themselves to 3 as I was called into work for today and tomorrow. I was hoping for a nice, quiet day but it was madly busy. I didn't even manage to read a complete article in Time magazine, that's how busy it was.

This is purely a bitching post. I work with, quite possibly, the laziest girl in all of Canada. She would be a champ in the lazy arse world series. She is late every time I work with her. So today she comes in 10 minutes late or so and gets the pharmacy pager. I am not a fan of the pharmacy run and am more than happy to let someone else do it. The pharmacy run is every hour at half past and takes about 15-25 minutes. When you are done you are supposed to come back to radiology and help out there. Most do, but not this girl. She'll show up occassionally, if she knows it is not busy so she can sit and watch TV or read a magazine. She knew how busy we were today, I even told her, but she did not come into our department once. So essentially she had four hours of breaks. I saw her in the ER locker room, she was also seen in the front lobby reading a magazine. She is a lazy cow and on Tuesday when I see my boss I am officially complaining. It is not like this is a once in a while event, it happens every weekend and frankly I have had enough of it. It is not fair that the other guy working and I did 45 runs each.

The thing is, my boss can do absolutely nothing about it. It might be marked in her file, but apparently it is very difficult to discipline someone, never mind fire them. For all she would have to do is grieve it to the union and the union would support her entirely. I totally disagree with this. Here you have someone who is not serving patients at all, and can give our department a bad name. And does. Yet the union would back her. I don't get it. Because I am casual I have absolutely no rights. For example there is a temporary .4 position going in my department. My co workers and my boss would love for me to have that job. However, we all know someone from housekeeping will get it and chances are they will be someone who has a reputatuion for being slightly more than lazy. If it were given to me, even a .2 with 6 months seniority could grieve and get it. The crazy thing is I could grieve it as well, even though it would do me no good. That's the odd things about unions...they support all their workers even if it goes against one of them. It's nice in theory, but there's usually a reason that someone shouldn't get a job. Maybe the unions need to start looking into files and actually say "Well, hey, guess what joe blow, we see that their are numerous complaints about you and you don't show up to work all the time. Jeesh, we really can't support you on this. You don't deserve the job." It'd be nice, but it'll never happen. Feckin' unions.

Adults are worse than children

I feel I may have once touched on the pettiness of adults but I can't be arsed to look and see so if you feel this is familiar on my part...well, what can I do? I'd tell you to bugger off but I'm rather nice so I won't. Just move onto your next blog I suppose. Or suffer through reading this one.

You know how when you were a kid you'd fall out with your friends at the drop of the hat? Or how there was that one girl (and let's face it...it's always a girl) who could make everyone mad at you? That girl in my case was called Margaret, who once managed to turn the entire fifth grade against me, they even marched around my house so I was afraid to go back to school after lunch. The power some kids have!

She's a stripper today. Makes way more money than me. And apparently has a much, much better body.

Anyhoo, I digress. Back to the adults behaving like children.

I have been friends with a group of mums since we were in 4 year old playschool. We weren't personally in playschool, our children were. Alot of us went to the same school for elementary. We were joined by a mother who knew a playschool mum from living in the same neighbourhood. So we were all one big happy group.

In theory anyway. I was sort of looked down upon for leaving my children for a month to go to Ireland in the aftermath of 9/11. (Honestly, who would turn down a free trip to Ireland?? Not this girl.) As women, we are somewhat naturally catty- I can admit that about myself- and I suppose there were times when someone always felt like they were on the fringes of this group of mum's.

But nothing was ever to big a deal. It was things like "That Danielle. She thinks her children walk on water, when they are really little devils." That sort of stuff. You know, catty. And then November arrived.

We had a friend who moved to another city about a year and a half ago. She came into town with her family and a group of us went out to dinner (myself, 2 other mums and our families.) Ah feck this is turning out to be a long story. I've not the patience for it. Anyway, there was a sleepover and the next day when M (note the initials) when to pick up her son, B's son said something to her about her son being rude and M yelled at B's son. B was slightly offended but let it go and thought everything was fine. Then M's son started picking on B's son at school. B still said nothing, but realized M wasn't talking to her. This is because M believes her son is being picked on by B's son. Does this make any sense? No, not to me either.

So long,long story just long...B and M are not talking and N (yet another mum) has been thrown into the middle and is hearing both sides. She tends to side with B and thinks M needs to calm down. I agree with her as M is a wee bit on the high strung side and tends to make a mountain out of a molehill. The problem I have with M is that she is taking out her frustration on all of us, from her friends to the volunteers who help out with hot lunch.

On the last day of school before Christmas and summer vacation we always go out to lunch with our kids. This year it was off, so I thought I would do it with 2 other friends (C and F) and then decided to invite B. Then that morning I said to N that why should we lose out on our lunch because they were fighting. However, this did not extend to me asking M. So here is my dilemma. I have a very guilty conscience and feel terrible about not asking M. I am also slightly afraid that she will find out that it was me who arranged the lunch and the full wrath of her anger will be upon me. God forbid. She can be very frightening. I am not sure if I should let it be known that we went out and apologize or if I should just let it be and hope no one lets the cat out of the bag.

Being a mother of a school aged child is much more difficult than being a school aged child.

It's been a long, long while

Well. I am back. Are you absolutely thrilled? Did you miss me?

No, I didn't think so.

It has been a busy, busy holiday season. Christmas was lovely, but very quiet with Liam away. Who knew how truly loud one 9 year old boy could be? We managed to surprise Taylor with a stereo, she had also received an MP3 player from her dad the week before as well as a discman from her aunt so she now has plenty of electronic items at her disposal. More than her mother, anyway. Saoirse was happy with her toys and tossed aside the clothes, much like her brother used to do when he was a toddler. Still does, come to think of it.

My mum, the girls and I hit the mall on Boxing Day. This may have been a bit of a mistake as it was the busiest shopping day of the year and the mall was packed. All I got was a calendar, Taylor bought a Build a Bear with Christmas money from my brother and a Spongebob calendar. We left as quickly as possible.

I worked the rest of the week and was in bed by 10 every night. How sad is that? Even on New Year's Eve I was in bed at 9.30. I worked New Year's Day and there was the usual drunks and whatnot. Someone had set fire to a room in the ER well before I started but it was the talk of the day.Apparently there were some extremely good looking firemen involved. Someone was raped at a nightclub, and there was a couple of guys who looked as though they had taken quite the beating. Just the usual New Years stuff I suppose.

So now I am on day 2 of 5 days off. I worked a Bingo with my friend Shelley yesterday for her sons' hockey club. I apologize in advance to any Bingo players who might read this, but I do think there are people out there leading rather sad lives. 7 hours to do nothing but lose money? That is insane. Although 10 minutes before the night ended, some woman won over $3,000. So I suppose it might be worth it for the odd one playing.

I have totally lost my train of thought. I am like an old woman these days. Sleeping before the double digits, forgetting what I am going to say,losing my keys, pretty soon I am going to start calling people "dearie" and wearing diapers I am sure. Off to bed I go, two late nights in a row has killed me!