I must admit that I’m not fond of the pre-bedtime chaos either, but lunch time is probably my least favorite time of the day. And considering the fact that I’m not a morning person – which means I’m not thrilled with getting up – the fact that lunch gets the big award says a lot.

The reason I hate lunch so much is that I hate figuring out what to eat. I feel kind of strange for saying this when you consider that I’m blogging for refugees right now, people who have no luxury of being able to actually CHOOSE what they get to eat, sometimes not even eating at all if there’s no food. But seriously. Breakfast is always easy and supper’s not too big of a deal. It’s lunch that is a pain.

I don’t like to cook in the middle of the day so I’m not often liable to stand at the stove making something fresh and tasty. That leaves me with leftovers that can be heated in the microwave or sandwiches. I ate so many sandwiches in high school that they’re not exactly my favorite thing to eat these days, but there aren’t always leftovers from supper.

Last night we ate at McDonald’s because we took the kids and one of Hayley’s friends there to eat and then to see Ice Age 3 at the theater. Thus, no leftovers. I’m not feeling the urge to cook anything up. Hmmm. Okay, PB & J it is!

Not my favorite, but hey, it will do!

Please consider sponsoring me while I do the Blogathon for the UNHCR!

For those of you who have already sponsored me (thank you!) or those of you who are considering pledging at some point I thought this would be useful for you to know…

Six ways your donations to the UNHCR help the refugees:

1. $50 helps register 150 exhausted refugees to assess their needs and trace their families
2. $80 provides tents to shelter a family of five
3. $100 gives a family a survival kit including blankets plus a cooking/heating stove
4. $200 pays for emergency health for a community
5. $500 creates two wells to provide clean water to a community of refugees
6. $1000 gives a feeding kit that will feed 100 children

Even if you only pledge $5, it all accumulates and gets put towards any one of these things, whichever is most in need at any given time.

Sometimes people are put off by the registration assistance. How is that as helpful as blankets or food or clean water to drink? The truth is it’s VERY important for refugees to be registered at the various UN-supported camps. Without registration a refugee can’t be assured of consistent help, be it food or water or a place to sleep. Also, families often become separated when they flee a war-torn region. Parents may be separated from their children, spouses may not know where the other is, siblings may worry that they didn’t get out safely. By registering, a refugee can try to locate important people when they arrive at a safe location.

Every bit of money donated helps in a very serious way. Please don’t think that what you can spare is too little – it’s not. When you have no money at all, no home, no food, and no help other than a wonderful organization like the UNHCR, there’s no such thing as too little.

Please consider sponsoring me while I do the Blogathon for the UNHCR!

Since I mentioned earlier that I will possibly watch a scary movie later tonight to keep me awake during the wee hours of the night, I thought it would be a good time for…

Seven movies that scared the absolute CRAP out of me:

1. The Ring. I swear to God, no other movie has ever terrified me quite as much as that one. I don’t even know why, it just did. The girl, the well, all of it. I was a ball of nerves the whole time – I still feel all the little hairs on the back of my neck stick straight up when I think about the “impossible shot”, when the woman being filmed is looking straight into the mirror and yet you can’t see the camera. If you’ve seen the movie you know which part I mean. For some unknown reason that just scare the bejeezus out of me. I always swore I would NEVER watch this again, it was that bad. (I slept with the light on, honestly. Also, I have a TV at the foot of the bed, and if you’ve seen the movie you know why that unsettled me like crazy.)
2. The Ring 2. Probably predictable, right? The thing is, the sequel was nowhere near as scary as the original but I was so traumatized by the first one that I was on edge the entire second movie waiting for something to scare the living hell out of me. Gah.
3. The Grudge. What I loved about this movie is that it was really scary while I was watching it (the MOTHER, OMG!) but once it was over I had no residual fears and fell asleep about 30 seconds after getting into bed. Whew. (I think it’s clear from the first three on this list that Japanese horror movies make the best stories, even in North American remakes!)
4. The Evil Dead. If I watch it now, I laugh a lot. In all honesty it was a terribly low-budget movie with cheesy effects and questionable acting. When I first saw it though, I was only about 14 years old so it absolutely terrified me. I did always like the way they’d show a bare bulb hanging from a ceiling only to have it spattered in blood seconds later from some carnage off-screen. Nice.
5. A Nightmare on Elm Street. This is another movie that can’t really scare me now, but it was the first horror movie that I ever saw and holy hell, I was a wreck after it was over. The fact that I knew there were sequels and there was a cliffhanger ending of sorts made it so that there was no relief when the movie wrapped up – I knew Freddy Kreuger wasn’t done yet, and I still had to go to sleep at some point that night. Yikes! One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…
6. The Strangers. This was just unbelievably frightening mostly because it wasn’t about monsters or the undead or anything like that – it was just real people terrorizing a couple. I am so glad I didn’t watch it alone!
7. Haunting in Connecticut

. Based on a true story, totally creepy, and a few really good “jump out of your seat” moments. It was one of the scariest demonic possession movies I’ve ever watched, far moreso than The Exorcist was for me.

So yeah, one of those movies would probably serve me well if I feel overly tired in the middle of the night. Then again, I DO want to sleep eventually!

Some regular every-day things that I will still do during Blogathon:

1. Take care of my kid(s) – one of them is at a friend’s house after having a sleepover right now
2. Eat
3. Take photos and play with them in Photoshop
4. Wash dishes, sigh
5. Shower
6. Watch TV/movie
7. A bit of work
8. Bitch about being tired

Some regular every-day things that I will NOT do during Blogathon:

1. Make the shower a hot one – cooler will wake me up more
2. Any major housework beyond those dishes, mostly because I tend to get caught up and lose track of time!
3. Go out without my laptop
4. Sleeeeeep!

For those of you taking part, what things will you still do or not do from your usual daily routine?

Please consider sponsoring me while I do the Blogathon for the UNHCR!

A full hour after the fact, I finally have my cup of coffee, it’s about time! I was going to make it sooner but I got caught up in other blogs, then Breanna got up and wanted breakfast, but here we go. I will definitely need this now.

Note the geek cred, what with my Star Trek: The Next Generation mug and all. Also, I apologize for the fuzziness of the picture, I don’t usually do that. This is why I don’t make a habit of taking photos BEFORE coffee, only after.

I think I’ll spend some time working on the 45 other photos that I had sitting on my card. That will pass half an hour more than quickly enough!

Please consider sponsoring me while I do the Blogathon for the UNHCR!

So here’s how this is going to work this year. While it’s not written in stone, I’m going to more or less do this. For the first post of the hour, I will blog about whatever crosses my mind (and lordy, I can’t promise anything deep after 3 am). Then for the second post of the hour I will give you some sort of list. So here goes!

The SIX things that will get me through Blogathon 2009:

1. Coffee! I’m having one this morning, and then I’ll probably have one much later tonight, around 11 or midnight. I don’t want to drink tons of it since too much makes my heart palpitate and leads to panic attacks, but I’ll definitely need one late tonight for a boost.
2. Chocolate – Again, I can’t have too much or I’ll end up with a stomach ache (or worse, a crash) but a little will help. This year though, I’ll try to skip the Mars bar for breakfast at 5 am, that wasn’t very good.
3. Getting out – If the weather holds, we’re supposed to go swimming in our friends’ pool later today. I’m bringing my laptop with me (luckily they understand and won’t be offended) and setting an alarm so that I get out every half hour to update.
4. Movies – Last year I watched Hostel (not for the first time) and it’s just scary and gross enough to not really make you inclined to sleep. This year I’ll either watch something else scary or at least something really exciting and adrenaline-pumping. I sit on the floor instead of the cozy couch to help keep myself from drifting off.
5. YOU! All of you will help keep me awake, it’s always the best motivator every year that I’ve done this (this is my 4th time). I stay awake because people have sponsored me, and I stay awake because people leave me comments to encourage me or email me. I’m also around to chat in gmail if you’re over there. Help me stay up!
6. The refugees – I’m blogging for UNHCR and having read so much I know that there are refugees out there walking for days, not sleeping much if at all, crossing dangerous areas. When I read Angelina Jolie’s book about her first four UNHCR missions, she stood in a blistering hot desert for a minute and remembered that women had walked through that same desert with their children with little to no food or water and somehow found the strength to survive. If I can’t stay awake for 24 little hours in the comfort of my own home so that I can raise money for those people then that’s pretty sad.

Breakfast time!

So here I am, ready to get things started for Blogathon 2009! I’m all set for 24 hours of blogging every half hour. I’m not fully awake, exactly. Even though it’s 9 am which is a very reasonable time, I had a bit of trouble falling asleep last night and then I woke up at 6:15 this morning for no apparent reason. Of course I knew I had to get up at 8:30 so I had all this self-imposed pressure to fall back to sleep which didn’t help me drift off very easily.

Then to completely prove how dorky I am about Blogathon, I did doze off for a little while, only to have a completely panic-filled dream that I missed the very first post by 20 minutes.

Any other ‘thonners do this? Because seriously, I do this every year that I participate. And if you think that’s nuts, wait until the wee hours when I start posting only to end up panicking that I’ve forgotten to post all of three minutes later. Sleep deprivation is fun.

BUT! It’s for such a good cause, because I love knowing that I’m helping to raise money for refugees all over the world who need so much help and have absolutely nothing of their own, sometimes not even their own families with them. Please remember that you can still sponsor me at any time during the Blogathon by either going to this page, creating a simple account, and making your pledge OR you can email me (chaostheoryblog AT gmail DOT com) and ask me to make a proxy pledge on your behalf if you have trouble creating an account (this is also a good option if you’d rather mail a cheque to the UNHCR instead of using a credit card).

And don’t forget that I desperately need your support in the form of comments, emails, and morale boosting, especially later at night and into tomorrow morning when the urge to sleep is at its highest!

On that note, it’s time to hit publish and go get myself a much-needed cup of coffee. Go Blogathon!