Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • A new camera body

    Frosty morning 019

    I bought a new camera body, as a balm for my shattered soul.

    Or more likely, I bought a new camera body because my old one was having a hard time actually focusing, or taking crisp images, or rendering the colours properly. I’d clicked it out, and it was slowing down, frustrating me. Once I got frustrated, I just stopped picking it up and hello, there goes my creativity down the drain.

    There was a frost this morning and I wandered around, taking photos, reminded of the fact that it had been months since I tried to take a proper photo.

    Hello, creativity.

    I’m coming back.

    I wrote my novel outline, mapping out each chapter. I sent it to two people, and then made Nathan read it. I’m working again, writing again, taking photos again.

    Hello happiness.

  • On Alfred.

    Alfred

    This is Alfred.

    Some of you will know Alfred as the half dead, starved kitten that showed up on my property a few months back. Today, Alfred is sporting the beginnings of a double chin and enough personality to fill a large room.

    He adores Evelyn. Mostly because she smells milky and delicious. She sticks her fingers in his mouth and he bites them. She tastes good, apparently. He’s a little bit psycho, and will occasionally wrap himself around my ankle and for no good reason attempt to kill my foot.

    Alfred has taken to exploring on top of my bathroom cupboards, knocking things to the floor, at which point he’ll run away and pretend he was never there. That’s where he was when I took this photo.

    As soon as I get my boobs out to breastfeed Evie, Alfred is there, wiggling between us. He thinks breastfeeding smells really interesting and sometimes he’ll even let Evie pat him as she feeds. Mostly he bites her though. Which doesn’t stop her patting him. I tried squirting him with milk once, when he had driven me mad and distracted Evelyn over and over. I got him right in the eye. He wasn’t fazed and I don’t think it helped.

    He loves me, a lot. If I’ve got an empty lap, he’ll sit in it. He’ll sit on my keyboard to stop me typing, He’d be bothering me right now, except he heard Amy roll over in bed a few minutes ago and raced down there to sleep on her tummy.

    Alfred drools when you pat him. This is kind of gross. I warn people, but it doesn’t stop him pushing under their hands for affection and then drooling on their legs. Before he showed up here, we don’t think he’d ever been touched with affection. Now he’s addicted.

    He went to the vet a fortnight ago and came home missing his testicles. He stalked around the house for three days looking offended and pointedly licking himself. I’d hoped it would curb the biting/killing/wild behaviours, but no luck. It’s okay though, because he tries to hunt mice.

    Mostly I keep cats because they’re useful. They’re soft to pet, they kill pests and they make sure that I never ever look too clean or well put together. But Alfred, I like Alfred. He has personality, and I like to think that he has a little bit of extra gratefulness to me for saving him.

  • A return to creativity.

    Last November, I participated in NaNoWriMo, writing 60k words of a novel in 30 days. It was hard, but rewarding and amazing at the same time. Sleepless Nights spent the month being neglected as I swapped my time between my novel, a tiny Evelyn, and everything else.

    It wasn’t long afterwards that PND took up residence inside my psyche, making everything more difficult than it needed to be. I started meds, which saved my sanity and my marriage. Meds however, killed my creativity, even once I’d adjusted to them. I could still write, but it was harder to think of ideas and fiction was completely beyond me.

    A little while ago, I tapered down my meds, before stopping entirely. I stayed on the meds until they began to make me feel the same way PND did.

    This morning, I stood in the shower and had multiple ideas for what I wanted to write today. It had been months since I managed any good shower ideas, and honestly, I was so relieved to have my brain back – both from PND and from meds. I’ve also managed to cook again.

    I missed this part of me.

    Yesterday I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and wrote a flash fiction piece in response to a writing challenge. It was scary to write fiction again and scarier to publish it and share the link. But creativity is a great and scary thing.

    I’m pushing myself. I’m coming back.

    It feels good.

  • Pillows for the baby. A tale of sleep woe.

    Evelyn flops around in her bed all night, imitating a fish out of water. She can’t find a spot she likes and so she wakes up every forty minutes to let me know how angry she is that she can’t stay asleep.

    She flips and flops and gets angrier and angrier before shrieking her displeasure, feeding briefly and starting the whole process again. I change her blankets. Softer, heavier, snugglier. I put bunny rugs under her sheet to soften everything. I come very close to just giving up and learning to never sleep again.

    She hits her head on the cot bars and I weave blankets around them to create a barrier. She tears them out.

    Evelyn does this every night for months. I spend my nights half asleep, patting her back or rubbing her feet, letting her settle into the soothing round and round of my hands. I am exhausted, but these are the sacrifices you make for a baby.

    Last night, she wouldn’t settle. After I’d put her down for the nth time, only to have her flopflipflop and scream, I gave up.

    I found a pillow. Thin, but soft, I put it in her cot. Carefully I snuggled her back to sleep and put her down with her head on the pillow. She sighed, rolled on her side, snuggled in and slept for four hours.

    Now, if only I’d thought of this a month ago.

    Evelyn Asleep

  • Evelyn learns to climb; thinks she’s hilarious.

    Evelyn 12 monthsIt was a little after 7am this morning when Evelyn climbed from the arm of the couch, onto the window sill and then onto the kitchen bench. I’d been awake with her until 3am and while she was perky and happy after a little sleep, a lot of boobs and some panadol, I can’t say I was feeling the same way. This is my excuse for why I didn’t notice her precarious position until she threw my teapot onto the floor, shattering it.

    Later, as I told the story on social media, I explained that I was lucky – the teapot was mostly empty and entirely cold, and there had been a carton of eggs right next to the teapot that she could have dropped instead.

    My brain was barely up to cleaning soggy cold tea leaves off the floor – I would not have coped trying to get egg yolk out of the carpet too.

    Of course,  I’d spoken too soon and when I opened the egg carton at lunch time to make egg sandwiches, there were three eggs with their tops bashed in. Seems Evelyn had beat up the egg carton with the teapot before she dropped it.

    Her look of glee as I removed her from her perch, wedged between the microwave and the couch, has been imprinted in my brain, and I’ll be referring back to that the next time we have to do a developmental chart.