Rosie O'Donnell, Stabbing, Christmas Beetles, and Mothers

1. Dreamed about Wentworth. There are plans to take out the alpha female. Someone is going to blow up an area of the prison which will kill the alpha. When we get a sign, we're supposed to get to safety. We get the signal and wait, but it looks like something went wrong, and the explosion is not going to happen. 

There was also something about the food at the prison. But I don't remember much about it.

2. Read article that says Rosie O'Donnell is a fan of Wentworth and wants to be on the show.

I'm glad that she likes the show. I want Aussie shows to be more heavily promoted and watched in the US.

I'm not too keen on her being on the show. I don't like when TV shows become trendy and have cameos from various celebrities. I guess in comedy, it's not so bad. But when it's drama, I think it detracts from the storyline.  It becomes more about the guest-star than the characters.

Now if Rosie O'Donnell actually wants to on the show long-term, that's another story. I think at first I'd be thinking, Oh, look! It's Rosie O'Donnell, but then eventually I'd hopefully see her as her character and not the American actress-talk show host. But if it's just a cameo thing...Well, I personally find that annoying and distracting.

3. Did not-so-well on a QuizUp quiz about Australian celebrities. Though I did win against the other person.

I think my biggest weakness when it comes to Aussie celebrities is models. I'm ignorant when it comes that. Well, and I'm also bad with sports figures, but the quiz doesn't have many of those. It's mostly actors, models, singers, and host/entertainers.

4. Looked more closely at the quiz results. I got four right and three wrong. The ones I got wrong were about Daryl Somers, Graeme Blundell, and Jessica Hart.

Hart is the only model in the group, so maybe I shouldn't say models are my weakness. I probably have many weaknesses.

Plus, although I got the question about Julie McGregor right, I just guessed. I really have no idea who she is.

5. Looked up Julie McGregor on IMDb and saw that she appeared in an episode of Dance Academy.  She's most known for Hey Dad..!  Though QuizUp already told me that.

6. Wondered about the punctuation in the Hey Dad..! title. Why are there two periods and then an exclamation point?

7. Started watching another episode of Wentworth.  It brought up feelings of guilt for me, because it reminded me of something that happened in my past.

What happened on the show is Liz (Celia Ireland) loses her prison job because she got drunk and turned an event into a disaster. Then the prison governor (Leeanna Walsman) offers Liz's job to Doreen (Shareena Clanton). Doreen says no, thank you. She says if she took the job, she'd be stabbing Liz in the back.

When I worked at a preschool in Fort Worth, they hired me as an assistant teacher. Then after I was there for a few weeks, the director decided she wanted to give me a head teacher position.  I think I felt honored and excited, but I also felt bad because the previous head teacher was let go.

Now I'm thinking maybe I should have said no, thanks. Maybe, unlike Doreen, I was lacking integrity.

One thing I can say in my defense is I wasn't friends with the former head teacher. We had no relationship. I think Doreen and Liz ARE friends. Maybe it's okay to stab someone in the back if you're not friends with someone? Or maybe it's NOT stabbing someone in the back if you're not friends. Maybe it's just part of climbing the career ladder?

What made me feel more guilty about the whole thing is the the director was very excited about me, because I said on, my resume, that I had a Masters Degree in early childhood education. Technically that wasn't true. I didn't lie on purpose. It was a misunderstanding on my part...or more a forgetting of the truth.  My real degree was a Masters in Education but not specifically for early childhood. Most of my classes at the graduate school, and my field work, was done with preschool-aged children. So that's why I had the mistaken memory that my degree was in Early Childhood education. I FELT like I had gotten that degree.

But I wonder....If I hadn't accidentally lied, would the director have still given me a promotion?

8. Thought about how I have felt stabbed in the back. Because I had a certain job/role in the family. Then that role was given to someone else. I feel stabbed by both the people who gave the job to someone else and the person who took it.  At times, I am full of intense wrath about the whole thing. Other times I feel accepting, and wonder if I'd really want the job back anyway. I'm not sure I'd still want to do it.  Sometimes I want to open up to my family and ask why they did what they did and tell them how much it hurt me. But I hesitate, because I worry that they'll offer me the job back.

Or maybe I'm more worried they won't offer me the job back.

I don't want the responsibility of the job, but I want to know that my work, in the past, was appreciated. And I want to know why I was pushed out of my position in the first place. BECAUSE it seemed they DID like my work. I can't understand why things changed.

9. Wondered if confronting my family would bring peace and answers. Or would it lead to fights, lies, and manipulation?

10. Considered that maybe my family loved my work, but it's just that they love the other person's work more. I wouldn't share their opinion. I personally feel my work is much better. But if they prefer the other person's work, it's fair that they gave them the job.  People have different taste about things.

11. Wondered if losing the job in my family is karma for causing that other teacher to lose her job.

12.  Read a post from the Caravan of Courage blog and wondered, what the blogger meant by Christmas type beetles?  Is that a real species of something? Or are they red and green colored and reminded the blogger of Christmas?

13. Consulted Lord Wiki. He said there is a beetle called the Christmas beetle. They're not red and green. They're called Christmas beetles, because they're abundant during that time period.

It's maybe like our June Bugs here. We call them June bugs, because they're more prevalent in June. Though I've seen quite a few this April and May.

14. Saw that the blog post, with the Christmas beetle, was posted in September.  Though that might not be when the adventure took place. I get confused about whether people are posting while on the trip or when they get home. It's hard to tell sometime. Though I doubt someone would wait until September to write about their trip last December.

But anyway...if it did take place in September, maybe the blogger called it a Christmas TYPE beetle, because it wasn't seen during Christmas time. And/Or maybe it looked like a Christmas beetle, but he didn't feel definite about the identification.

14. Started watching another episode of Wentworth. I think Vera (Kate Atkinson) is kind of adorable.

15. Felt stress-by-proxy when reading the Singaporean in Australia's post about needing to get a job and a car. And his partner was pregnant at the time.

Real life requirements can get in the way of peace, fun, and happiness sometimes.

I'm feeling that with education. We've been unschooling Jack the last thirteen years. But now we're planning on starting a more structured program, so university will be more accessible to him.  This means we'll be losing some of the freedom we've had. It's going to be an adjustment.

These are the times where I wish there'd be a zombie apocalypse. Then we could forget all the normal stresses and instead spend our day searching for Twinkies and shooting corpses in the head.

16. Felt more hatred for Jacs (Kris McQuade) as she poured boiling hot water on a fellow prisoner. Bitch!

17. Read Nikki's hilarious post about living in South Africa. I love her list of their neighborhood rules. One example:  you can have your house any colour you like as long as it is red bricks or rendered whitewash or a combination of both(actually not white exactly, more of a creamy colour – perhaps its magnolia?)

18. Read a post from the Batty Tales blog. Their young daughter is named River. I wonder if she's named after River Song from Doctor Who. Or maybe River Phoenix?

Then again their daughter may be named after neither. Maybe they liked the name for other reasons.

19. Disagreed with what Eric Thompson said in this blog post.  Kate had an egg sandwich and a very juicy apple- I have no idea what I ate and I doubt anyone cares. My favorite parts of his Japan-trip blog posts are the ones involving food!

It makes me wonder about my own blog.  For some people, it could be the parts of my blog that I imagine are a waste of space, that interest them the most.

20. Saw that Vera's mother on Wentworth is played by the same actress who played Dan Wylie and Brendan Cowell's mother on Love My Way.

She played a much nicer mother on the latter show. On Wentworth, she's clingy, overbearing, and manipulative.  I hope I never become that type of mother to Jack...at least not in a chronic way. I think all most mothers have acute moments of awfulness.

21. Glad that my mother isn't clingy, overbearing, or manipulative.

22. Looked up the actress who plays Vera's mother. It's Lynette Curran.

23. Liked what Michelle said in her post about her daughter's insecurities:  We talk about writing, and how often the worst writers have the highest opinion of themselves and the best are riddled with self-doubt. I want her to recognise that her doubt is in fact a strength, that rather than crippling her it can be the engine that drives her forward.

If the amount of doubt a writer has is correlated to the amount of talent they have, I must be a brilliant writer. Really! I am so full of doubt.

But it gets confusing. If doubt equals good writing, and I start to believe Michelle's philosophy, I might lose the doubt. Then if I lose the doubt, I'll become one of those bad writers who have a high opinion of themselves.

24. Started to feel conceited, which made me doubt not only my writing but my general personality as well. Now my writing should get better.

25. Decided it's very difficult to have a healthy balanced self-esteem.

26. Strongly agreed with the Chalk and Talk blogger's believe that a birthday should be celebrated for an entire week.

27. Learned from Caz Vincent that if you are driving in a caravan (or other similar vehicles) you should wave to other people driving such vehicles.  If you're worried about taking your hand off the steering wheel, you can just lift a friendly finger.

28. Wanted to hug Vera on Wentworth.  I think it's very hard to resist a character who's both adorable AND has a tragic/sad life.

29. Started watching another episode of Wentworth.  I recognized an actress, and I THINK she might have been from the early Neighbours episodes. I forgot the character name, but she was the young woman who was dating Jim Robinson.

Now I'm going to look and see if I'm right or wrong.

30. Found that I'm right!  The name of the actress is Alexandra Fowler. On Neighbours, she played Zoe.

She was also on several episodes of All Saints.

31. Noticed that in Wentworth that they have Dick Smith's OzMite instead of Vegemite.