Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Blogging means I make amazing friends.

    When I started blogging, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I know that I loved reading blogs by other women, blogs that meant I didn’t feel quite so alone.

    I didn’t expect to make such good friends, and I have. Plus, I’m still making them every day.

    Like minut’d’automne who lives in France with her twins.

    This morning a box arrived at my front door and I was thrilled. I mean, look how it’s packaged!

    (never mind the disembodied hand, that’s Isaac)

    Isn’t it beautiful?

    I felt like a kid at Christmas actually, rummaging through a box, discovering treasures through the whole thing.

    There were books – lots of books.

    As well as some french caramels (probably the reason the box was searched by quarantine, however, everything was deemed safe, thank goodness) a pair of pants for Isaac and a lovely top for Amy.

    Plus lots of stickers, which Amy promptly claimed and stuck everywhere. Hehe. Isaac still has a glittery horse on his cheek that he hasn’t noticed. I can’t bring myself to peel it off.

    So thankyou so so much. I love it and I’m looking forward to immersing myself in books for a while.

    Blogging is fantastic. I’ve made amazing friends.

    ***

    While we’re talking about friends, I met with a bunch of Tasmanian twitterers last night for drinks and cheese (or, in my case, mineral water). That was good fun and I’m looking forward to hopefully doing it again another time, so that I can meet those people who couldn’t attend last night. You can see Mum’s recap blog post for that here as well as links to all the twitterers and their blogs.

  • Frozen

    It takes a brave woman to purposely put her hands in iced over water.

    At least that is what I told myself when yesterday, I found myself using a watering can to carry water to the ducks pen.

    The hose had frozen solid, a fact I discovered as I knelt in the frosty grass and leaned through the fence to turn on the tap – only to have the hose burst off, covering me in a fine spray of icy water. We won’t talk about how I tried (and failed) to reattach the hose to the tap, leaning through the fence at a right angle to the ground, supported by a strand of wire under my belly and unable to raise my head due to the live electric wires running a few inches above my head.

    So there I was, stuck half on my property and half on the farm, cows watching me intently as I tried to wrestle an ice filled hose into submission.

    After the first 3 fingers on my right hand had gone numb, I gave it up as a bad joke and carefully extracted myself from my perilous position.

    I am proud to say I didn’t electrocute myself even a little. Which is good, because the position I was in, it would have been doubtful that I would have been able to stop electrocuting myself once started and I’m not sure that would have been any fun.

    The hose dripped a little at my feet and so I kicked it. Stupid frozen thing. It retaliated by merely crunching, like a hose full of ice is apt to do.

    And so I gave up and went to get the watering can instead.

    There is a bathtub at the back of our garden fence, full of water. Likely a few more weeks will see it full of frog spawn, but at this point, I use it for animal water when the hoses are too frozen to work properly.

    I found the watering can and headed to the bathtub, only to find it full of ice. Thick ice.

    I smashed the ice with the watering can (ha! take that winter!) and then discovered that the ice was too thick to get the watering can in still, despite the smashing.

    That is when I told myself, it takes a brave woman to purposely put her hands in iced water. And then I put my hands into the water and picked up the largest chunk of ice and removed it.

    By this stage, all of my fingers were numb and I still had water containers to fill.

    The watering can was full of ice too, an inch solid block in the bottom of it, but no matter. It was going to get filled dammit, because my warm house was calling me and I was cold.

    The ducks peeped at me as I emptied their muddy iceblock that was their clean water the night before and filled up their containers. Done! I was done!

    Only I wasn’t, because I hadn’t fed them yet and they were looking at me reproachfully.

    I practically skipped back to the house to grab wheat, figuring faster was better.

    I was brave when I put my hand into the frozen water.

    I was even braver when I plunged my already numb hands into frozen wheat as I scattered it around so no one got bullied as they ate.

    For the record, wheat is bitterly cold when it’s been outside all night and you should probably not put your hands in it.

    I raced back to the house and fumbled my way inside, only to plunge my hands into lukewarm water.

    Ow ow ow ow ow.

    Defrosting hurts.

  • Yellow Dog Day

    Since Susie died, I find myself sitting on the dogs home website more often than not, looking at the imploring eyes of the dogs there. When we first moved in here and wanted a dog, that’s where we went. We came home with a 7 week old wiggling puppy, Seven.

    When we wanted a second dog, we looked at the dogs home again, but there wasn’t anything really suitable – then Susie sort of fell into our laps and then we were done.

    But I couldn’t stop thinking about the dogs there, the friendly happy dogs who pressed themselves against the edges of their cages hoping for some love, or the dogs out walking who were just so happy to see people and be walked.

    The dogs home is actually brilliantly set up, with runs and play areas, and with volunteers who walk dogs all day.

    Doesn’t mean it’s a place that you would want to live there, however.

    So, Susie died and I can’t stop thinking about another dog.

    We’ll get there eventually, I know this. Nathan isn’t ready for another dog yet and my common sense is kicking in, knowing that if we’re going to bring home a new dog, then Spring is a better time to be doing it than Winter.

    And I keep watching the photos of the dogs, seeing most disappear and new ones appear and I’m happy that someone out there has adopted a dog that I feel so sorry for.

    When we’re ready, we’ll be bringing home a dog and giving them a second chance. A new life with property to play on and children to run with.

    Seven needs a new playmate and my heart aches for all the abandoned dogs out there.

    Our Newest Addition

    Susie as a puppy. I still miss her.

    Seven

    Seven, our happy dog. She would love a playmate.

    Pedigree are currently running an adoption drive, raising awareness about the thousands of dogs stuck in dogs homes and RSPCA’s across the country. All this wonderful family potential, going to waste, pining up against a cage door, hoping for someone to pat them as they walk past.

    It’s no life for a dog.

    Pedigree have also offered to donate 1 bowl of dogfood for every person who ‘Likes’ their page on Facebook. I did. And then I made Nathan like it too.

    Because until I can bring home another dog from the dogs home, I’m going to continue to watch the website, seeing the photos come and go and feeling bad the whole time.

    ***

    Pedigree are currently running a campaign and I was invited to take part, however this is not a sponsored post and I was not paid.

  • Blogging long term.

    Or, alternately titled, Why bloggers who have been around for a long time, don’t seem to comment or visit your blog.

    So you start a blog. Maybe you found an awesome blog written by a hugely popular blogger and loved it, or maybe you’ve heard about them and want to try it out for yourself. No matter the reason, you’ve started a blog. Yay!

    And so, once you’ve gotten over your ohmygod my blog is only brand new, no one is going to like me nerves, then you start commenting. And you comment on the big bloggers and you comment on their entire blogroll and you comment and comment and….

    …nothing. Occasionally a click through if you’ve been commenting on high traffic blogs and said something interesting, but no one comments back.

    You feel a little discouraged, but never mind! I’ve read the big blogger’s archives and there are no comments for like, months of posts! It will be fine.

    So you write some more and it’s pretty good. You comment some more and someone comments back. You click to their blog because I’m not all snooty like the big bloggers are and you read and she’s lovely and you comment. You notice that she’s been blogging for around the same amount of time you have and you add her to your reader. She’s just as grateful for a comment and does the same to you.

    You have connected. You’re doing this blogging thing and you’re making friends.

    You do this with another twenty women or so, women whom you email with, you comment backwards and forwards and you’re good friends. You join twitter and you’re not terrified of being alone because there are your girls. Your posse.

    Time stretches on and you add more bloggers to your reader, bigger blogs, controversial blogs, I mean, you can’t not be reading what everyone else is reading, right?

    And suddenly, you turn around and you’re getting 20 comments a post and you’re getting, while not a huge amount, okay traffic.

    Then, one of your posse stops blogging. Maybe something happens in her real life, maybe she gets bored. She stops.

    Someone else starts updating only once a month.

    You fall out with someone, or decide that they’ve gotten boring. You unsubscribe.

    You go through your reader, looking for blogs that are now dead (and wow, you won’t realise how many there are until you start) and you unsubscribe. You stop reading blogs that you’ve been subscribed to for a long time, because meh. They’re still awesome blogs, just, I don’t need to keep up with the controversy, or follow a blog because everyone else does anymore.

    You wittle down who you’re subscribed to and one day, you wake up and your reader only has 10 updated items and you’ve got hardly any comments and wonder where everyone went.

    ****

    You see, when you start blogging, you connect with women who started around the time you did. Your traffic grows together and you become friends and follow each other and read and laugh and comment.

    And then, as your blog gets older and new bloggers shoot out of the woodwork, you find new people commenting and reading, but somehow, time flies and you don’t get a chance to click over to their blog, or if you do, you forget to comment or subscribe.

    You’ve been doing this blogging thing for so long that while every new commenter is a fuzzy feeling in your stomach, it’s not a burning need to subscribe back to them.

    Basically, you’ve become stuck in a rut. Reading the same blogs for 2 years and forgetting to add new ones to your reader.

    Sure, you’ll add new blogs occasionally, but the writing has to be extraordinary. Like, SixYearMed, or Sweet|Salty extraordinary.

    Or you have to connect instantly and want to get to know them better.

    And really, you just forget. You love your commenters and you enjoy their blogs, but you turn around and realise that 6 weeks have passed and you’ve forgotten to check their blog back, or subscribe to them.

    That kind of thing makes you feel like shit.

    It’s easy to continue to read only the blogs you’ve been following for a long time, because you don’t need to learn their backstory. You don’t need to spend time hunting through archives to work out how old their children are, or why they started blogging, or who the hell Danny is.

    But, it also means that large bloggers, they’re stagnating a little bit. They forget to link when they find a brilliant new blog, like they did in the early days. They don’t participate in awards or memes, because they know that those posts don’t get any traffic or comments.

    And slowly, they notice their own comments dwindling, because that tight knit group of women who all started at the same time, or who connected from the get-go, they start to move away from networking and the community of blogging.

    I mean, if I *know* Marylin is reading every single one of my posts, and I’m reading every single one of hers, are we still obligated to comment all the time?

    ***

    I’ve done every single one of these things. Most of my bloggy friends, the ones whose posts I don’t skip if I’m busy, they’re women I either connected with instantly, or who started around the same time I did and we’ve become friends.

    Bloggers stagnate and without a huge effort to find new blogs to add to my reader, I forget to. Especially as I’m mostly incredibly time poor.

    However, I’m making an effort, to start adding new blogs to my reader. To learn their backstory and make new bloggy friends and to remind myself, if they don’t click back and visit me here, that I know exactly why they haven’t.

    And now, I’m reminding everyone who might feel like they’re stagnating to do the same thing.

    Make a new friend this week.

    Comment on their blog.

    Subscribe.

    Link.

    And if you could have one person reading your blog on a regular basis, who would you choose?

    I’d probably pick The Bloggess for Sleepless Nights and Shannon for Veronica Foale.

    You?

  • The mystery of the magical tap that could turn on by itself. Almost.

    As dusk fell, I trudged over to feed the ducks – they were clustered around their water container and I figured that they were probably hungry. Amy generally feeds them of a morning, but I don’t remember her asking for help with the pellets this morning, so the ducks were hungry.

    A little bit of back story:

    We have access to water from the river, pumped right to our doorstep. This water waters the garden, keeps the tank for flushing the toilet full, waters the trees and keeps the duck containers full. In effect, we have a giant hose running from one end of the paddock to the other, being dragged to wherever we need water next.

    The tap for this hose lives in the paddock next door, which I can just reach with my hand if I pop my arm through the fence and strain.

    Anyway.

    So as I wandered over to the ducks, I noticed the last little bit of light glinting on a … puddle?

    A puddle? That’s odd. We haven’t had that much rain.

    As I got closer, I noticed that the hose was running and oh wow, the back of the paddock was flooded.

    I fed the ducks and grumbling about my forgetful partner the whole time, traipsed back to the house to growl at him for leaving the water running.

    ‘Nat! Why is the hose running?’

    ‘I don’t know.’

    His face doesn’t have the characteristic glint he gets when he is fibbing to me.

    ‘The hose is running. You must have forgotten to turn it off!’

    ‘No. I didn’t turn it on. When did you fix the duck’s water last? You must have forgotten about it.’

    ‘No. I remember turning it off, because I hurt my shoulder doing it.You certain you didn’t forget to turn it off? Remember I asked you to do the ducks water yesterday afternoon?’

    ‘Well yes, but I forgot. So it wasn’t me.’

    ‘Maybe the farmer?’

    ‘Maybe the farmer.’

    ‘Surely he wouldn’t.’

    ‘Hmmmmmm.’

    ‘Anyway, I’m going to go and turn it off, duck’s water should be full now.’

    As I walked over to the other side of the property I looked for clues – were there tyre tracks leading up to the tap? No? The farmer NEVER walks to the tap, he drives over, through the waist high grass.

    Funny, the grass is all flattened.

    I reached my hand through and ….

    Oh wow.

    That’s right. I remember seeing that.

    The tap is covered in dry saliva.

    The paddock is, at the moment, full of cows.

    Well, steers anyway. (castrated males)

    Half grown steers. Little more than weaned babies.

    And yesterday, they were standing around the tap, mouthing it and using it to scratch their faces.

    The tap was only turned on half a turn. The pressure is the same no matter how far you turn it on, but we turn it on all the way, just in case. Just in case of what? I don’t know, don’t judge me.

    The cows, they’d scratched and mouthed so much that they’d turned on the water.

    Wow.

    Remind me to keep an eye on the hose from now on?