Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Your twenties are not a practise decade.

    When I first started working, I spent money indiscriminately. My then-boyfriend (now husband) and I were living in a tiny shoebox unit in the middle of the city, and spending money made us happy.

    Useless objects, littered around our house. No thought for the future.

    We were young, and growing up seems oh so far away when you’re 17 and 23. Who needs to save money? One day in the future, we’d be grown ups and things would magically work themselves out.

    Isn’t this the fairytale we’re all taught? That our twenties are only practise for our “real lives” which will start at some undetermined point down the track.

    Read The Rest at Money Circle.

    money circle logo

  • Counting down the minutes.

    I’m counting down the days, hours, minutes.

    Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

    Wednesday, Amy starts grade 2. Thursday, Isaac begins Kindergarten.

    Then, dear Internet, I will have somewhere in the realm of fifteen hours a week with only one child at home. I am pumped. I am stoked. I am carefully working out a regime of eating alone, drinking cups of tea and reading books.

    It is going to be GLORIOUS.

    I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this school holidays, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little mentally exhausted. Everyone keeps asking me questions and expecting intelligent answers from me, when all I want to do is sleep for a month.

    It hasn’t helped that Evelyn was sleeping terribly. Waking five-six times a night, wanting boobs, screaming, fussing, tossing and turning. She was getting molars, but come on, enough is enough.

    But, just quietly, she’s stayed in her own bed nearly all night for two nights running. Only needed one breastfeed at 4am.

    And I am feeling much less exhausted. Waking three times a night is easy, blissful in fact, when compared to double that amount.

    (I am writing this and Isaac is playing Minecraft: “Mummy! Come here! YOU NEED TO SEE! Another skeleton dropped a bow! COME AND SEE.” You can see why I’m exhausted. I am also not walking the length of the house again, to see a minecraft bow, again. Again again again.)

    So! School. Going back. Beginning. A new chapter. One toddler at home. One toddler who NAPS. Naps, people.

    It’s going to be great. Fantastic, in fact. And after Easter, there will be even MORE alone time, because Isaac will learn to catch the school bus with Amy and angels will sing, choirs rejoicing at the extra hour I have to Get Things Done.

    Of course, Evelyn will probably end up terribly bored and sit on me for the entire time her siblings are gone, but I’m remaining optimistically dreamy.

    SCHOOL!

  • Reading, reading more, reading better

    Home by Larissa Behrendt

    I read a lot, eagerly consuming books as fast as I can download them. Anything and everything, I’m not a fussy reader.

    Of course, I have my preferences – I’ll choose Urban Fantasy over a mystery, and a mystery over literary fiction. I love my kindle, I love the Book Depository, I’m never happier when I stumble across a book sale, or second hand books being given away.

    So when Anita Heiss published her Black Book Challenge, I expected to have read at least a few of the books.

    No.

    Not even one, I’m ashamed to say.

    It’s ridiculous, because clicking links and reading synopsis after synopsis, they are amazing books one and all. But because I rely on discount books, word of mouth recommendations and things I find in second hand stores, I’d missed every single book on the list.

    This is my challenge for 2014 – to read at least 20 of the books on the list, possibly more depending on finances. Because they’re not mass market paperback, they’re not cheap, but I’m treating every single book as an investment.

    With information coming out about plans to change the school curriculum, and the way history is taught, I feel it’s important my children have access to stories which tell of what happened when England invaded Australia, and the atrocities which followed over the next two centuries.

    It’s a dark history. Shying away from it, and refusing to teach our children the truth about how our country came to be won’t change what happened. And frankly, history is schools is already woefully inadequate, and Aboriginal history is even worse.

    I’m hoping by the end of the year I will have learned more, found new favourite authors, and gathered together a collection of books I wish to read and read again.

  • Another week people. We have another week of holidays.

    back-to-school-1

    School returns in just over a week down here in Tasmania. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it. This year I’ll have two of three children in school and the amount of free time I predict myself having is a little dizzying.

    What isn’t on my “list of things I’m looking forward to” are the costs associated with school. Fees, levies, uniforms, school essentials, lunchboxes, it all begins to add up.

    While most of the costs are a one off thing at the beginning of the year, it doesn’t stop it becoming expensive fast if you’re not careful.

    I’ve already braved the crowds at one disorganised, insanity inducing department store in my search for plain black pants and shoes that don’t pinch.

    Read The Rest at Money Circle.

    money circle logo

  • Magic, fiction and reality

    I read a lot of books, and lately it’s been mostly urban fantasy style stuff. Ilona Andrews. Carrie Vaughn. Patricia Briggs. Kalayna Price. Richard Kadrey. Also Robin Hobb, who isn’t urban fantasy, but she writes the best characters and magic I’ve read.

    I finish these books and I’m left feeling emptier somehow, wishing for magic, for meaning, for something more.

    Em Elizabeth tweeted above about dragons not being real and I sat there, looking at the screen, stunned for a bit. I spend an inordinate amount of time wishing magic were real. Constructing elaborate fantasies inside my head involving the existence of werewolves and fae, debating their existence.

    And it’s strange really. I’m a married mother with three children, and yet, I desperately wish these things were real.

    I’d like to say something beautiful and poignant here about bending reality to my whim, and etc, but really? I just think magic would be really fucking cool.

    This is why I’m a writer. My daydreams get to become reality in some small slice somewhere. I can write rules which have to bearing on my current reality. I can have faeries, and yes, even vampires. Because why not?

    But it does seem disappointing to only have the reality I want exist in my mind, completely oblivious to the world that is.

    You might think me strange and that’s okay, because I am. All writers are a little weird.

    Do you read Urban Fantasy? Who does it best?