Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Failures, catastrophes and starting a small business

    The problem with starting up a small business, is that most of the time it’s only us to do the work. This leaves me counting down the weeks until the shop opens with no small amount of panic.

    Also it’s the end of June and my mental health is never good around the anniversary of my Nan’s death, funeral, and the subsequent family implosion which occured at the same time.

    So I’m busy and suffering from a little overwhelm.

    But it’s all good. We’ll pull it together and launch successfully and it will be amazing.

    Of course in the meantime this means I’m not online much – spending time making and stamping soap, designing packaging, making sure the curing soap gets turned regularly and the hundred other jobs we’ve got going on.

    —

    I made an exfoliating foot soap this morning. The plan was a round soap, pale green with darker green and blue swirls. I’d scented it with spearmint and eucalyptus and it was looking fantastic.

    I was just about to pour it into the moulds when I realised I’d forgotten the ground pumice stone. I’m not quite sure how an exfoliating soap without any exfoliant in it would work, but I doubt it would be successful.

    Carefully I sprinkled pumice stone on top, hoping I could maybe stir it in without destroying all the swirls. I still had a little bit of colour to swirl with after all.

    Nope. I tried, Internet. I tried really hard, but by the end, my soap was a blue green colour and nary a swirl in sight.

    I poured it anyway, only to discover large lumps of pumice in the last two cups of batter.

    Back into the bucket it went for a quick stick blend and any hope of swirls dashed.

    Dashed, I say.

    Luckily the blue green colours I picked blended really well and it looks like a lovely aqua green/blue colour.

    Not what I’d originally planned, but pretty all the same. I thought briefly about adding some titanium dioxide to a portion of the batter and trying to add a lighter swirl for contrast, but by that stage the batter was heating up and thickening and I needed to get it back into the moulds.

    I poured it and it’s currently all tucked up in towels to speed up the saponification.

    I rather like round soap and I don’t have enough of it made, so it’s going to be a few weeks of playing with column moulds, in between making bucketloads of soap for a large pre-order.

    It’s exhausting and exciting and amazing and just so much fun. Even with disappearing swirls and the thought of hundreds of bars of soap to cut, stamp, package and list online.

    —

    There’s all kind of advice out there about starting a small business.

    A lot of it is similar to advice given to bloggers. Create your brand. Behave professionally at all times. Never complain. Never mention mistakes or people won’t trust you.

    I’m not sure. I think there’s good points to the advice, but also, I’m a real person, working out of my house, with problems occuring. I made soap while the children were occupied doing something else (my soap area is gated to stop pets/toddlers causing themselves harm), only to discover Evelyn had been so silent because she was busy using a batch of sample soap bars as toy blocks, and she’d also pulled out every single nappy in the house and covered the living room with “snow”.

    And I don’t think there’s any shame in mentioning the slight panic when I just checked the freshly poured soap, found it almost too hot to touch and had to frantically find space in the fridge to stop it overheating. I may have dropped a bottle of orange juice on my foot at the same time.

    There’s a difference between being professional and unapproachable.

    I’d very much like to talk about the process of soaping with you guys, but how can I do that without also talking about the struggles of setting up a small business with no capital? About how every spare cent is going on soap ingredients so we get everything up and running. About my disgust that the castor oil I ordered is going to take over 12 days to reach me according to the tracking number, and that until it reaches me I can’t start the order which really needed to be made this week in order to give me time to remake in the event of castastophe.

    It’s a balancing act.

    Luckily I am good at balancing.

    —

    Mental health problems aside, it’s been a rough few weeks here for me. The realisation that people have strong opinions about my reproductive organs threw me for a loop and I stopped writing, talking, thinking, while I came to terms with this.

    Of course, it doesn’t matter what people think. We’re happy, and that’s all that counts, but the judgey in the meantime is hard to deal with. I won’t deny that I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, escaping into other people’s worlds for respite.

    But eh. There’s nothing I can do about it and not writing is worse for my sanity than people judging, so again. Balancing act.

    —

    In summary, life is incredibly busy, incredibly fun and we’re all doing well.

    How are you?

  • Darkness and light

    Five years ago, we clustered around a bed in a palliative care ward, waiting. Holding hands, talking, but mostly, waiting.

    It didn’t take long in retrospect, although the hours felt interminable, waiting for the next breath to come, the death rattle heavy in the room.

    Until the next breath didn’t come and it was over. Months of appointments, of waiting, of saying goodbye over and over, culminated in one sharp moment when it stopped.

    And then we all breathed again and had to go on without her. She stopped, but we failed to stop with her, and the hole of her leaving grew bigger as we missed her.

    —

    The first sign: wild ducks fleeing, circling frantically overhead like a crowd of mismanaged school children, no one sure where to go next. They hide in the trees and fall silent.

    Not a bird in the sky, until we look closer, and see them, circling. Hunting maybe, or courting.

    Round and round the eagles go, my eyes spotty from looking up at the bright sky, a cup of tea warm and heavy in my hands. The undersides of their wings glint gold in the sunlight, bright enough to make my eyes tear up as I look away.

    We watch until they disappear over the horizon.

    The crows return first, flying over, cawing their life loudly. Then the sparrows. A rosella. Our neighbours pigeons.

    Life goes on, even with the shadow of death hanging over us.

    —

    Forty minutes to make three kilos of soap. Twenty minutes standing outside. Ten minutes reading. Today is broken up into blocks of minutes as we count down.

    For a moment, everything will stop.

    And then I’ll draw breath again and on we’ll go, into our sixth year without her.

  • June has stolen all my words

    After five years, it feels strange to come to this place, here, and talk about grief. About how it changes, and yet doesn’t. About how grief never leaves you, the great whistling hole through your centre never closes right over.

    Grief is grief is grief.

    Missing someone never quite stops. Things happen and I wish, I wonder, I want.

    It’s been almost five years and I don’t have words anymore.

    —

    A series of events conspired to send me into a place mentally I haven’t been for a while. I feel raw, the bandaids torn off with no warning. I think about writing and stop. Turn away. Do something else.

    Do you really want to write about that? Open yourself up for more judgement?

    I don’t know.

    I’m tired. I’m tired of feeling like I need to defend my life, my choices, my right to be here.

    On Stateline last night, a family of acrobats twisted and twirled through the air, circus tricks and stunt work. They glossed over the fact that the house has no running water, limited solar power, there’s no money. Focus instead on the happiness, the family togetherness, the joy that living an honest life brings.

    I watched and I laughed and laughed, feeling a kinship with a family I’ve never met.

    How dare we be happy. How dare we choose a life outside of the suburban normal, nine to five, a salary and prospects of more debt to keep up with people we don’t like.

    How very dare we.

    —

    I can see them, the unhappy people, hiding in the corners here, judging, waiting and watching like a dog waiting to be thrown a bone.

    I’m disabled, I have to right to happiness. I ought to be miserable, a loser in the genetic lottery.

    But really, I wonder, why does the life of one small Tasmanian family offend them so much?

    —

    It’s all tied to grief, to missing, to yearning. Someone came in and stomped around, tore down my walls; my defences. I need a thicker skin.

    Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so sick when I think about writing about my life still.

  • All the possibilities: Supporting the community which supports me

    Look, I only support Pozibles when I think the rewards are cool enough to warrant my money. I look at it as pre-buying something, rather than donating. It’s not a charity, right?

    Which is why I’ve been so happy to see cool Pozibles popping up lately.

    This one is from my friend Sallyanne who is a professional balloonist, a single mother of three girls (one with serious complex disabilities) and a fantastic lady. And she’s offering you awesome rewards so she can get to a ballooning conference, which sounds like she might be trying to run away somewhere, but I don’t think so.

    If you’re interested in a children’s entertainer for a birthday party or event, or a bouquet of balloon flowers, or a freaking jet pack, you really ought to check out her pozible.

    Sallyanne is also my friend and she’s supported me while Eve was in hospital, being all around awesome. I feel like the least we can do is support her now. And receive SUPER AWESOME things in return.

    Sallyanne Pozible

    —

    Speaking of super awesome things, you know who else is running a Pozible at the moment? Frogpondsrock. She’s met her goal, but with every dollar over, it takes the pressure off the travel costs she’s already paid.

    Plus, it might allow her to do some cool things like see Lake Ballard at dawn, and buy fripperies like super powerful sunscreen so she doesn’t fry in the Kalgoorlie sunshine.

    If you’d like to Pozible up a pledge, it’s basically like preordering her ceramic art, only it’s wholesale prices, not gallery prices, so you really can’t lose.

    Also available are family workshops and corporate workshops – the former is great for birthday parties also, and the latter is a good way to make your work colleagues get dirty in the name of art.

    Kim Pozible

    So my lovely friends, if you’ve got a spare dollar or three hundred, there are things up for grabs you might otherwise not get at such good prices.

    Go forth! Support!

     

  • My disability does not define my worth.

    Yesterday, standing out in the paddock with the two youngest children, I waited for the lovely Helen from ABC radio to come up and interview me about my disability, reproductive choices and quality of life.

    At the same time, I kicked a ball to Evelyn and tried not to panic.

    Something I thought was nobody’s business but ours has turned into a Thing, and frankly, I have a headache over it.

    You see, what you are saying when you say we should not have had a third baby, is that people like me shouldn’t exist. That I am somehow worth less as a person because of my genetics. When you judge my children based on a small string of genetic code and find them wanting, you are telling them they are worth no more than their genetics.

    How is that not eugenics? This idea of some people having less value to a society because of their genetic fitness.

    It’s a slippery slope, and yes, I know, your situation is different. But that’s the thing – your situation may require different choices to mine. Your situation may be entirely different.

    Different people decide different things about having children all the time.

    This is not the pain olympics. Your situation does not define mine, nor mine yours.

    Asking me to say I was irresponsible for bringing children in to this world is asking me to regret my choices, my children. I can’t do that. I will never do that.

    It also implies that had we known about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, my mother should have aborted me, and so on, back through our family line. Cleansed the world of a genetic fault before any one could ever “suffer”.

    But I’m not “suffering”. I don’t find my existence to be one of suffering. I don’t sit here, waiting for my life to be done, wishing my mother had aborted me.

    When everyone else sees me as merely the sum of my disability, a collection of “issues” that they would “hate to live with” and “I can’t even imagine how you live”, I am busy getting on with my life.

    This is the body I was born in. I don’t spend time regretting my inability to run marathons. Instead I do all the things that make me happy. And maybe I am lucky – my interests align well with my abilities.

    I spend time with my family. We play video games and laugh uproariously. We read books. I write things (lots of things). I make soap.

    We’re happy.

    Let me repeat that.

    I am so happy with my life and the path I am on.

    I don’t spend all day dwelling on how my joints work. Do you? Do you spend all day noticing how your ankles move? Or how your hair colour affects the way people speak to you? Or how you breathe? Or how your eye movements control what you see?

    Of course you don’t.

    We don’t spend every moment of every day aware of our bodies and the things we can and cannot do.

    Why would you think I sit here in a pit of angst worrying about how I can’t weightlift? Or run?

    Ridiculous.

    I’d been loathe to write about this again, because hear this: What I decide to do with my uterus is none of your business. Not even a little bit. Not an ounce. You don’t get a say. If I decided to go and have another five babies, you still wouldn’t get a say.

    My disability does not define my worth, nor does it define the worth of my family.

    Remember that the next time you feel inclined to say something to me.

    —

    Comments are moderated on this post and all others from here on in. It’s not something I ever wanted to do, preferring instead to foster a group of commenters who were adult and able to agree or disagree with me without resorting to vitriol and assholery.

    That’s changed now and I am controlling the conversation. If you feel the need to comment like a dick and it doesn’t add to the conversation, I will delete you, but not before mocking you on social media.

    You can disagree with me. You can comment with an entirely different perspective and situation. You can talk about your own situation or your reaction to my situation all you like.

    But you can’t attack me or my family personally, you can’t attack choices other commenters make and you can’t spread your vitriol around like manure on the garden.