Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • The very beginning of my problem with leeches

    Growing up, we lived in a dry area and so I’d never been exposed to leeches. Even the dams that were close by only held frogs, tadpoles and the occasional snake.

    This meant that when I went away to “Old Macdonald’s Farm” with my grandmother, I was completely unprepared for the horror that was about to befall us.

    Old Macdonald’s Farm was a B&B type thing, with cabins on site, animals and various fun things to do. At least, that’s how I remember it, but I was only seven at the time and my memory may be flawed.

    Honestly, it was great fun. BBQ’s, play equipment, farm animals and plenty to do.

    I think this is also where I learned to be very very wary of cows, but I can’t really remember, so I’ve probably blocked that memory out. I can tell you that I have a healthy respect for cows now and that there is no fence between me and that calf, so draw your own conclusions.

    On the second morning, we woke up and Nan declared that we were going on the rainforest walk. This was exciting, because I loved bushwalking and rainforests.

    It stayed exciting, right up until 15 minutes into the walk when Nan realised that she had a leech attached to her ankle and three more climbing up her boots. She very calmly turned me around and picked another couple of leeches off my trouser legs, while I shook like the girl I was.

    We stopped every two minutes on that walk to pick more leeches off our boots and I never really recovered. Despite pulling my socks up over my pants to protect my ankles, I was terrified that a leech would make it’s way up the back of my leg unseen and attach itself somewhere else on my body. Like my armpit.

    I can’t really remember, but I suspect a lot of that walk was taking up with me frantically spinning in circles, trying to see my own back.

    I’ve never been so grateful to get out of a rainforest before and I still harbour a major distrust of anything that wants to attach to me and suck my blood.

    IT’S JUST NOT NATURAL.

    And that’s why leeches creep me out.

     

  • I understand now why my coordination is so bad. Not so much then.

    Not only was I the weird kid in my school, I was also chronically uncoordinated, falling over my own feet with alarming frequency. This meant I was usually the kid that no one wanted on their team in sports and that I regularly came last in every event at the athletics carnival.

    I remember my father helping me learn to ride a bike and throwing his hands up in the air before declaring that I was THE single most awkward child he’d ever watched try to ride a bike. I was secretly quite proud of that, because at least it LOOKED as difficult as it felt.

    Speaking of bike riding, I didn’t actually learn to ride a bike until I was nearly eight years old – long long after all of my peers were zipping around their suburbs in groups. It didn’t help that I lived on a steep hill, with gravel roads and a gravelly stone filled driveway. It just wasn’t safe, and frankly, I was happier inside with a book anyway.

    That was, until I went away on a community trip with my grandmother.

    I frequently spent most of my weekends with Nan already, so when a community holiday was organised, obviously she was going to take me along. You can see why I miss her so much now, when I spent all of my spare time in her company growing up.

    Nan knew that all of the kids were taking bikes along with them and hey, wasn’t it lucky that she’d bought me a bright pink bike just that Christmas? A bike that I had completely failed to master I should say.

    Nonetheless, the bike was packed up, along with everyone else, before a whole group of us headed off for a week away.

    I was the only child older than four that couldn’t already ride a bike. I think I ought to point that out.

    But, if nothing else I was a determined kid and I was determined that they wouldn’t get to make fun of me this time.

    There were big long grassy hills at the holiday destination and I could just picture myself sailing down them with ease. Until I actually tried it, and promptly fell off. Again and again I tried, wobbling my way down the hill and crashing more times than not.

    One of the fathers finally took pity on me and considering his just-turned-five-year-old had finally mastered riding without training wheels, he attached her training wheels to my bike.

    Can you see my dignity dying?

    Two days and plenty of skinned ankles later (training wheels are vicious) and I was able to remove the training wheels and declare that I’d mastered my bike. I quickly progressed to riding everywhere with the other kids, pointedly ignoring the fact that they’d all seen me falling off again and again in the first few days.

    I even managed not to fall off too many more times – but I wouldn’t recommend that a beginner bike rider tries to ride over a cattle grid. That one was nasty AND I broke the bell on my bike. Devastated.

    We even managed to get Nan on a bike – although I suspect she was just showing off here and trying to make me believe that it was “easy”.

    When did you learn to ride a bike? Are you as terribly unco as I am?

     

  • I was the weird child at my school

    I was the weird child at my school. Rumours about “those hippies on the hill” flew through our conservative community with relative frequency and I was stuck at school with all of the super straight, super normal kids, whose parents had 9-5 jobs.

    Add in that our house had no indoor plumbing and the power came from a meter box through a series of extension cords and power boards and you had a recipe for school yard teasing.

    I was also quite smart, which I’m absolutely CERTAIN helped me to be pretty much a social outcast for a lot of school.

    Of course, when you’re the weird kid at school, you absolutely need to dress up like Wednesday Addams for the Dress Up Night.

    Doesn’t it just make SO MUCH SENSE?

    You can see why I had very few friends, can’t you.

    PS, Happy Birthday to my Father today! He’s responsible for 50% of my awesome you know.

     

     

  • Do you know what the inside of a chicken looks like?

    When reality sucks, I am very good at escaping into stories. Between this pregnancy destroying my joints, my blood pressure making me want to pass out and my children screaming at me, I can safely say reality sucks, and so I won’t be writing about it.

    Instead, you can have some stories from my childhood. I grew up the daughter of two punk/hippy/greenies who built their house out of recycled materials and killed their own meat. My childhood was awesome.

    ***

    I remember being about four years old when my father first showed me properly how to skin and gut a chicken. We’d had poultry for as long as I could remember and Dad had always killed them for us when chicken soup was required, or when our young roosters started to crow, but this was the first time I remember him walking me through the steps.

    He was good at it and by this stage it didn’t take long for him to finish, lopping off the ends of the wings to dry out for me (I liked feathers) and asking me if I remembered how he’d done it.

    Of course I remembered.

    Then came the cool bit.

    You know how chickens scratch and peck around? Not everything they’re eating is edible. Half of the time they’re picking up small pebbles and stones to store in their gizzard to help grind their food.

    My father hunted through the entrails he’d dropped below the dressed out chook and picked up the gizzard.

    “Look at this Ronnie” he said, as he took his knife and split it, showing me how poultry actually crush and partially digest their food before it hits their stomach. Inside was a mess of pebbles, rocks, grass and a few tiny squashed grasshoppers. Our hen had been happily pecking in the yard the moment before Dad dispatched her and had obviously found some tasty bits.

    He explained how it worked, before rinsing the gizzard free of rocks and rubble in the bucket of water next to us.

    Grabbing the hen, he lopped her feet off with the choppy thing he had and with me tailing him, we took the hen inside for Mum to make dinner.

    Dad kept the gizzard for us, slicing it finely and frying it with some onion and bacon.

    Turns out, gizzards are delicious on toast for lunch. I made Dad save them for me with every bird he killed after that.

    Except pigeons.

    Pigeon gizzards are too small to bother with.

     

  • What is your favourite smell? + Giveaway

    This post is sponsored by Bosisto’s and is helping to pay for my plumbing disaster, which is now, thankfully less disastrous and more “slightly muddy”.

    ***

    I grew up in the bush, surrounded by gum trees. When I was little and wanting to make bouquets of flowers, gum leaves used to feature prominently and through the colder months, they were the only “flowers” I could pick.

    I also spent a lot of time walking through the bush, crushing gum leaves in my fingers.

    Eucalyptus oil therefore is one of my very favourite smells and we’ve usually got a bottle or two hanging around the house, in use for things like bench scrubbing during the frequent ant plagues, as a rinse aid in the washing machine and my favourite use in Winter, being boiled in a pot of water on the stove to help the small ones breathe easily.

    It really is versatile.

    That’s why when Bosisto’s asked if I’d like to review their new all purpose eucalyptus spray and some eucalyptus oil, I agreed.

    See, we’ve got a cat that likes to pee inside and as many times as I scrub behind the TV, it still smells vaguely funky. So we sprayed behind the TV and it was good. And then the cat tried to pee in the corner again anyway, and so we sprayed her as well. Well, we sprayed near her. She didn’t like the hissing sound OR the smell and I haven’t seen her trying to hide behind the TV since.

    Nathan has also been using the oil in the laundry (have I mentioned that Nathan does all of our washing? God I love that man) and the clothes have been coming out smelling divine.

    Why yes, I am a sucker for smell.

    Because I enjoy the Bosisto’s product so much, they’ve offered me a gift pack worth $160 to give away to you guys.

    Doesn’t it look awesome? I’d certainly like to win this one!

    To enter, simply comment below telling me what your favourite smell is.

    Then fill out the Rafflecopter widget. You MUST fill out the widget to be entered into the competition. There are extra entries for tweeting about the competition, or liking Sleepless Nights on Facebook.

    a Rafflecopter giveaway

    ***

    Entries are open to AUSTRALIAN POSTAL ADDRESSES ONLY. One entry per household. I will be checking.

    You can check out more about Bosisto’s and their products here. They have lots of cool stuff.