Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Handy Manny – Tooling Around – review

    This post is sponsored by Nuffnang.

    —

    We were having a sort of okay morning before the post arrived. Amy kept escaping out into the big yard, to run around and when I brought her back inside, we had tears and tantrums. FYI baling twine is great stuff to tie gates shut. Too tricky for small hands to untie. Awesome.

    She’d just had yet another tantrum and Susie, the puppy jumped all over her making it so much worse, when the mailman came.

    Getting the post is exciting don’tyouknow. Probably because it involved the big yard, yet again.

    I’m not sure what made her happier, the fact that we got something in the mail from school (letting me know what days playgroups and early learners is on) or the fact that we got a package from Disney containing a dvd AND I let her open it. To the best of her abilities that is.

    I waited until Isaac went down for a nap, figuring anything new to keep her quiet during naptime was a good thing, before putting the dvd on.

    Now I must admit, I’m not a big fan of kids cartoons. I let Amy watch them most mornings and during dinner prep, but I don’t watch them myself very often. Kids movies, well, that’s a different matter, but we’re talking cartoons here.

    So I put Handy Manny – Tooling Around on. Amy curled up on the couch to watch it. I checked emails, got some writing done and watched her reactions.

    Dude, she was quiet! QUIET.

    The dvd has an autoplay feature (Fastplay?) at the beginning, which was fantastic because I couldn’t find the dvd remote in the beginning. It was less fantastic 40 minutes later when it started playing again, without me touching it, meaning that either I brave the tantrums and turn it off anyway, or let her watch it again.

    I’m not feeling very brave, I’m letting her watch it again.

    Handy Manny offers messages about teamwork, friendship and community, while having fun with friends. I’m not sure how much of it sunk in to Amy’s head, but it’s not a bad thing for her to be learning at all. If she doesn’t bash Isaac on the head when they play with the building blocks later I’ll be inclined to look twice at the dvd.

    The bonus features were a bit beyond Amy – I’m not encouraging her to learn to use the dvd remote just yet, it’s bad enough that she knows how to work the machine by herself.

    So that’s that. Anything that gives me 40 minutes peace and quiet can only be a good thing!

  • Potato and Leek Soup (Weekly Winners)

    Take some leeks from the garden.

    Take some leeks from the garden.

    Peeled potatoes.

    Make your kitchen hand (partner) peel some potatoes.

    Chop it all up.

    Chop everything roughly.

    What Amy thinks potato cubes are for. Houses!

    Amy thinks potato cubes are for building with.

    Cover with chicken stock

    Saute it off with some bacon and cover with chicken stock. When soft, use a blender or a stick mixer to puree it.

    Potato and Leek Soup

    Serve with cream and parsley.

    Also – take photos of the summer sky:

    Night Sky

    I blame Zoeyjane for this weeks weekly winners, I was going to make tomato and onion soup, but then she made potato and leek soup and I remembered I had a bunch of leeks that needed using and there you go. Potato and leek soup.

    For more weekly winners see Lotus.

  • Last chance.

    Only a day until the competition closes, have you entered yet?

    You should.

    Really.

    It’s good for you.

    Your ad will be seen by over 12,000 people a month.

    For FREE.

  • Blocked IP addresses and Conspiracy theories.

    I noticed an odd referring URL today when I was checking my stats.

    So, as you do, I clicked to follow it back, to find out where people were clicking from.

    I wasn’t expecting to find this though:

    The web server you are attempting to reach has a list of IP addresses that are NOT allowed to access this site and your IP address is on this list.

    Maybe poking at the Premier gets you blacklisted.

    Heh.

    ***

    Actually, I was under no illusions I would be allowed to check out where the visitor had been referred from, due to the Admin part of the URL. I bet if *you* click over to the site, you will get the same blocked message.

    And of course it’s probably just a wording issue that SHOULD say ‘IP addresses of ALLOWED computers have been logged and unfortunately, you aren’t on the safe list. Go away.

    But what if it’s not?

    According to my stats, they clicked over to me a bit earlier from Bleeter’s blog – Bleeter the Serial Government Botherer – so it *could* be a blacklist.

    Things like this amuse me.

    Thoughts?

    ***

    Please don’t forget I have that amazing competition running. Feel free to enter your blog, no obligations asked after the month. Your ad will be seen by around 12,000 people over the course of the month, give or take. Entries are open for another few days, until the 1st of March, so send me an entry!

  • Facebook and Ehlers Danlos

    There is a copy paste status going around on Facebook that makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

    Paraphrasing:

    I love my body even though it’s changed through child birth, every mark, every scar, it’s a sign of my children and etc etc etc. Copy paste this if you’ve had children etc etc etc.

    Lovely sentiment and I can totally understand why women are copy pasting it to their status. Affirmation that even though childbirth has changed your body, you are an amazing woman for it.

    And you ARE. My GOD you are. You’re amazing, you created another human being. That right there is amazing and you should be proud. If I see the copy/paste thingy on your status, I promise, I won’t even be tempted to throw stones at you.

    But reading that status makes me bitter.

    Maybe because after 2 children, I’m not all that changed? I don’t think childbearing has taken it’s toll on my body all that much – except for how much bendier I got.

    And yet, I am broken and battered still.

    If my war wounds were a result of my children, I would bear them proudly, I would stand up and I would shout from the roof tops how proud I was of my body.

    Yet, my elastic skin that tears at the drop of a hat, that wasn’t childbirth. The stretchmarks on my stomach, while exacerbated by pregnancy, weren’t caused by pregnancy.

    The bruising on my legs, the livedo reticularis that means I can’t wear skirts, my battered broken bits –

    Not a one of them I attribute to pregnancy and child birth.

    Every. Single. One. of the things I dislike about my body is caused by Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and that makes me bitter.

    I can forgive the visual changes – really, I don’t mind how my body looks, even though it’s different. It would have been different anyway, no matter what.

    I dislike my body, often, even though I don’t have body image issues (in fact – 2 children later, I am quite proud of how I look).

    But.

    I hate how I can’t bounce out of bed without checking that all of my joints are in place.

    I hate that I can’t walk across the room without tripping over, or walking into a wall, or having to think about every step and judge where everything is by sight, because my feet are stupid and don’t work very well.

    I dislike that I have to think consciously about how I move.

    I hate that pouring the milk for my cup of tea this morning dislocated my wrist.

    I hate the fact that my ribs won’t stay attached to my spine like they should.

    I don’t like the way my skin tears, just because it feels like it and then takes weeks to heal. I dislike the bruising that makes me look like a victim of domestic violence (although, am grateful, my face rarely bruises unless I actually walk into a door).

    I hate that I am 21 and move like I am so much older – feel like I am so much older. I hate the pain and the exhaustion. My word the pain. My joints slide around like butter and while my smaller joints don’t leave me screaming, it doesn’t mean they don’t hurt. We won’t even talk about how my teeth hurt from the clenching.

    I am bitter about how the EDS has changed my body and I dislike that I can’t love myself in it’s entirety, when really, I’d just like a trade in. It can look exactly the same, just someone replace my fucked up genetics and collagen PLEASE.

    Bleh.

    I’m just feeling crappy and wishing my only issues were visual ones caused by childbirth.

    [Again I state that if you copy pasted that status to your Facebook, I am not having a go at you. You are amazing, you created a human being and you should be proud of every single mark it caused. I am just bitter that I am broken and hurting.]