Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • And then she shoved both fingers up her nose and walked around talking nonsense to herself

    Evelyn 15 months

    For those of you living under a rock, I’d just like to point out that I’m doing NaNoWriMo. And let me tell you, it’s a WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL GAME with a toddler hanging around.

    Last year Evie was only 3 months old and she slept pretty much all the time. Health issues will do that to a baby. This year, she’s fifteen months old and chaos walking. Poor Amy is doing her best to keep her room clean, but Evie’s favourite game is throw everything out of every shelf everywhere, and also let’s throw all these clothes on the floor and make clothing angels, and maybe I’ll pull all the blankets off your bed while I’m at it, and can I eat that? It looks tasty. I’m going to eat it.

    And before you suggest a door, we’ve got one and she knows how to work it.

    I’ve already had an entire book of notes shredded and eaten. Luckily I got a brand new shiny red notebook for my birthday so I transcribed as much as I can and WOW, LET ME TELL YOU, the baby eats a lot of paper. Like, A LOT.

    She’s a funny little thing. She went nearly three weeks without eating a scrap of solid food. Nothing. NADA ZIP ZILCH GIVE ME BOOBS MILKLADY.

    And then she choked on NOTHING, and puked everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. And it was all snot and mucus and grossness and disgusting, and I caught it with my hands to stop it going on the floor, but it overflowed anyway and it was bad. I am not paid enough for this vomit catching gig.

    But like magic, she started eating again, and has since been ingesting at least one bowlful of food a day, as well as half a notebook as often as she can, various appointment cards, artworks and the middle bits of apples, but not the skin.

    Like I said. Funny little thing.

    Toddlerhood is chaos. How had I forgotten this bit?

    Yesterday I dished up ice-cream after dinner, because I can, and because when you have a toddler who is funny about food, all calories are good calories, and especially ice-cream because it’s full of dairy and fat, which are good.

    Anyway, I sat down to share it with Evelyn, who looked at me with giant limpid eyes, before defiantly pointing at my ice-cream, and then at her mouth. SLOW DOWN KID, I’m getting to it, LOOK HERE IT IS IN YOUR MOUTH.

    She made a contented noise and let me feed her all my ice-cream.

    So she doesn’t talk, but man, she let’s her feelings be known. You see that thing? Yeah, put it right here in my face hole right here and what do you mean you’re not sharing, of course you’re sharing, make with the ice-cream lady.

    I was going to write an intelligent piece right here about linkbait articles and how if I see another “these five photos will make you want to buy a puppy and dress it up in hats and throw a party” or “humans are killing the world and here’s how you’re a horrible person who deserves to be flayed to death because POLYSTYRENE”, but huh, turns out all my brain can manage right now is a whole bunch of run on sentences.

    You’re welcome internet.

    FLIPSIDE: I hit 25 thousand words last night. TAKE THAT HATERS.

  • It’s my birthday!

    I’m 25 today.

    doughnut cake

    Nathan delivered me a doughnut complete with candle this morning, and a cup of tea I didn’t make myself.

    So far, it’s a good day.

    If I wanted to get all introspective, I would point out that I’m now in my mid-twenties, and I’ve been blogging here since I was eighteen and a mother to one almost-toddler who never slept. My almost-toddler is now seven, opinionated, and awesome. Long term readers have seen me have another two children, all of us growing up.

    Years of writing, collected here.

    Happy Birthday me!

  • Resting on my laurels: A cautionary tale for the Internet

    Empty House

    I remember reading a blog post nearly three years ago now – wait, wait. Evelyn is how old? HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED?

    Scratch that. Start again.

    I remember reading a blog post nearly five years ago now, in which an ‘old school blogger’ whose name I can’t remember, lamented the fact that she had rested on her laurels. She’d built her audience up over some years, and during the time blogging was exploding in the US, she was considered a big name. She was there, she was everywhere, everyone knew her name.

    And then she rested on her laurels. She got comfortable sitting at the top of the blogging pile, her name on every list that came out, her audience growing.

    What she didn’t notice was that just over there (yes, there, where you are now) a bigger pile was growing. New bloggers, new blogs, up and comers, online magazines, people hungry for money and fame.

    Eventually, she realised she wasn’t a big name any more. She’d kept blogging, but hadn’t kept up the engagement, hadn’t found new readers, hadn’t pushed through with the social media. She was finding herself to be obsolete.

    It was an interesting read for me, five years ago. Five years ago, I was coasting the waves of success, and I was wary of having that happen to me.

    And then life intervened. My babies grew up. I changed my perspective. I grew up. I wrote some fiction. I wrote some more fiction. I published some. I did NaNoWriMo, wrote a book and loved it. There was cancer, death, grief, in its great soul sucking pit of horrible. My life changed. I grew up some more. I stopped caring so much.

    Five years later, I am that blogger.

    I rested on my laurels and while I’m still here blogging – albeit less regularly than I used to – the blogging world moved on without me. I stopped reading new blogs because I didn’t know their back story. I fell off the lists, people stopped asking my opinion, and when I began to turn down sponsored opportunities because I didn’t have the time/energy/inclination, I found myself pushed off the PR lists as well.

    The online world moves on, and you either adapt and improve, or get crotchety and start shouting at the kids to get off your damned lawn.

    I clearly did the latter.

    I’m finding myself drawing in, sharing less, writing more. It’s an organic change, linked to the growth of my children. Amy is seven now and her stories are not my stories. Isaac starts school in February. His stories and struggles are not mine to post all over the internet now.

    Evelyn, while small, is growing fast.

    The Internet is fast paced, a super highway full of hungry bloggers, entrepreneurs, people looking to make a quick buck.

    I stopped shouting over the noise, and the noise flowed away, like a river parting around a particularly stubborn rock. I didn’t have the time to repeat myself, over and over, for the benefit of people who hadn’t heard me the first time.

    I rested on my laurels and the Internet moved away from me.

    I’m not sure if I’m okay with that.

  • I am in garden heaven, and we had a surprise visitor.

    Yesterday morning, whilst on the phone to my mother, council contractors were clearing the road verge free of tree limbs, as well as trimming trees too close to the power lines.

    “I really should go and ask what they’re doing with the chips, shouldn’t I?” I wavered, not really feeling up to talking to complete strangers at 8.55am.

    “Yes, yes you should,” my mother replied. “Hang up. Go and ask.”

    Wearing Evelyn as protective armor, I walked to the corner of my paddock where the men were standing, and asked what they were doing with the woodchips.

    Nathan and I had been discussing getting some pinebark for a while, to help complete the small yard, as well as mulch for my fruit trees. Free woodchips delivered would just be perfect.

    Two hours later, this showed up.

    Woodchips

    “Sorry it’s not a full load, mate.” He apologised as he tipped the chips out for us.

    That pile is nearly as tall as I am.

    Today we spread chips out over part of the small yard, mulching the things we want to save and suffocating the rest.

    I was going to do a before and after shot, but I forgot to take a before shot. Just think that the centre part was all dead, and the plants were being strangled by waist high grass.

    garden 003

    We still have A LOT of woodchips left. It’s kind of awesome.

    Half way through spreading out the chips, we had a visitor.

    044

    We had to stop work to admire her.

    Of course this means I haven’t written a single thing for NaNoWriMo today. But that’s okay. I can write tonight.

    Today am am revelling in a clean fresh garden start, tomato seedlings planted, a greenhouse garden bed fixed, and woodchip mulch that I got for free.

  • Flying by the seat of my pants

    And by “flying” I mean “falling with style”.

    NaNoWriMo is nearly here and I’m freaking out. FREAKING OUT.

    I had a plan. It was a great plan – and then I scrapped it in favour of something I thought I actually had a hope of finishing. So I worked on plan #2, with Nathan quizzing me on motivations and evil and plot twists. At which point I scrapped it in favour of something I could actually publish under my pen name.

    So I took to my third idea, which is a mere germ, and I ignored it. I’ve written it down, but I haven’t got a character, a plot, any subplot, or ideas.

    I AM FLYING BLIND AND I HATE IT.

    But I’ve got three more days, right? Three days. That’s like FOREVER. Except it isn’t and I’m terrified.

    Upside: It’s nearly November and I’m going to have to start whether I’m ready or not.

    Downside: It’s nearly November and I’m going to have to start whether I’m ready or not.

    Unrelated, a story about chickens:

    I have eight baby chickens at the moment, to three mothers. Three chicks belong to one hen, and the other two hens have a sisterwives agreement and they’re sharing their nest and five babies equally. That’s the setup. This is information you need to know.

    The sisterhens have been scratching around near the house, showing the babies the tastiest grubs to be found under my fruit trees.

    Also around my house are the cats.

    Earlier today I was minding my own business when the hens started freaking out. Suddenly, Alfred flew across the yard at full speed, one of the mothers hot on his heels, clucking angrily, fluffed up like a beachball. The other mother stayed close to the babies, protecting them from all evil.

    Only they hadn’t actually checked on where the babies were, and when the mothers finished fluffing at Alfred, they called their babies directly into the netting surrounding our jumping castle.

    Cue freakouts. The mothers were freaking out, two babies were trapped in netting, and Alfred was trying to figure out if he could work this to his advantage.

    I ran outside to rescue the babies, because I AM NICE.

    The mother hens didn’t see it this way, and they fluffed up and tried to attack my face. I freaked out, they freaked out, and Nathan laughed at all of us. When asked to help protect me, he stood there, thought about it and replied “Nope, it’s too funny to ruin. Although I could go get the video camera…” Bastard.

    So there I am, trying to rescue two very frightened chickens from collapsing netting while not one, but two mothers try to attack my face.

    Jumping into the deflated castle, I managed to lift the netting and create a shield to protect myself from the raging balls of fluffy fury while I rescued the babies. And by rescued, I mean “swiftly caught and then threw at their mothers, trying not to lose my eyes in the process.”

    Everyone survived. I needed a cup of tea to recover though.

    From my Facebook Page:

    Alley the cat caught herself a starling and ate it. Confidence boosted, she thought that the next thing to catch and eat should be a chicken.

    The chickens disagreed. Alley will not be catching chickens any time soon.