Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • POP goes the … squash?

    This morning it was fine and this afternoon we found this:

    All I can wonder is, what kind of noise did it make?

  • From desolate wasteland to something possibly resembling a garden

    When we moved into this house, the backyard was a wasteland of cushion stuffing, holes, dust and rubbish. It wasn’t fantastic and we’ve spent the last few years trying to get the garden up and running.

    On one hand, SUCCESS!

    On the other hand, now the weeds actually grow and my pumpkin vines appear to have taken over the path, fence and gate. Which would be awesome, except they’re also vicious, resistant to being trained and despite five metres of viney wilderness, there are only two pumpkins in there.

    I’m contenting myself with the fact that where the pumpkin vine is growing, there aren’t too many weeds.

    Which is more than I can say for the rest of the garden, which is growing lovely lush grass, while my greens get eaten by grubs.

    Grumble grumble.

    The mint is doing rather well however. As are the prickles and the couple of apple trees I grew from seed.

    The best bit about all the work we’ve put in however, is seeing the return of the natural eco-system. My perpetual spinach is the favoured hunting place for my frogs, the pumpkins and tomatoes have drawn in the bees and there are butterflies coming in as well.

    It’s nice to watch – even if the frogs now mean that I can’t cut back the (seeding) perpetual spinach that has taken over half of a garden bed.

  • What do you do to save your sanity as a parent?

    Otherwise entitled, “Why so judgey, Internet?”

    Yesterday, 93.6 Hobart asked on their facebook page, what we as parents do to combat feelings of isolation or guilt. There were some great answers and the lovely Sallyanne and I agreed that online communities are an excellent way to keep in touch with friends and family when real life doesn’t enable you to do that.

    My stock standard answer, whenever anyone asks me what I do to keep myself sane is “I blog.”

    And it’s true. This little community here has saved my sanity on more than one occasion.

    Sure, I do other things to make myself happy – I take time out to read books, I daydream, I buy delicious loose leaf tea and refuse to talk to anyone while I drink it. I take the smallest things and savour them and I laugh, a lot.

    Mostly though, my sanity saver is blogging.

    However, social media is a very new thing and it wasn’t available to a lot of parents. Something that people are all too willing to remind us.

    And really, flippant comments like “We had no time for sipping lattes and babycinos in trendy cafes” are not adding anything to the conversation, except a bucketload of guilt that apparently, mothers nowadays are doing it wrong.

    I could rant and rave about judging people (how do you know that mother in a trendy cafe with her baby isn’t taking her first time out in 6 months? how do you know it isn’t her one outing this month? HOW DO YOU KNOW?) but it wouldn’t do any good – people would still be judging and mothers would still be getting landed with a large guilt trip over “not doing it tough enough”.

    Guilt is a useless emotion. It doesn’t do anything except make me doubt myself and when Amy was a baby (screaming, screaming all the time) I promised that I would not guilt trip myself. I would refuse to feel bad for sneaking a coffee at a cafe with my mothers group and I would refuse to feel bad for things I could not control.

    Nowadays, I don’t “do” guilt. But it doesn’t stop me wanting to explain myself and my unique set of circumstances to every single judgey person out there. Should I explain about autism? About Ehlers Danlos? About how the Internet has very truly saved my sanity?

    Sure. I could.

    But I’m also pretty sure that it wouldn’t make a difference to people who want to play pain olympics and talk about who has it tougher, or who is the most selfless mother, putting themselves last always.

    Here’s the thing:

    I take good care of my sanity, because for a while there, I consistently put myself last and not only did I nearly have a mental breakdown, I nearly had a physical one.

    It took me a long time to recover and I am reluctant to ever let things get to that point again.

    Things are better now. I take time out to look after myself.

    And sure, some days that time out is merely sitting in my bedroom alone for 10 minutes while I drink a cup of tea.

    Other days, it’s taking the time to feel the sun on my face while I remember to breathe. Or turning the music up really loud and not caring what anyone else thinks of my musical tastes. Or leaving the children with their Daddy, while I attend events in the city.

    I’m not a martyr and I refuse to be one.

    Life is hard enough without carrying around a backpack full of guilt.

    —

    I would love to know, what do you do to preserve your sanity? Any tips for parents (especially new parents) who might be struggling?

  • Daydreaming counts as working in my universe

    I have to be in a certain mindframe in order to write. To Nathan, this looks like I am staring off into the distance, or mindlessly refreshing twitter. He wanders around the house, cleaning up (I picked a good one) and getting progressively hmmmphier with me, while I continue to ignore him.

    Writing requires daydreaming. Daydreaming requires that I not be vacuuming.

    Honestly, this makes perfect sense to me.

    I don’t have a writing room, or a space of my own. I have a desk in the corner of the living room, covered in detritus. If no one else knows where it lives, obviously it belongs on my desk. This is why next to my wedding and engagement rings, is a roll of duct tape and a couple of packets of seeds. Plus a sculpture, some school work, a pink labelling machine and the nail clippers.

    This is also why every few days I have to throw all of the catalogues into the fireplace, put the bills back on the mantlepiece and throw toys at my children.

    Getting into the right headspace to write things is hard when you have children. Children demand that you be in the moment with them. They have needs and their needs are usually loud and demanding. They need a cuddle, or a sandwich, or a kiss better. They NEED you to create that traintrack immediately and find their pink shoes (NOT THOSE PINK SHOES, THE OTHER ONES) and make them a drink.

    It doesn’t matter that the traintrack won’t stay fixed, or that they can reach the kitchen sink and get their own drink.

    No. They need you.

    I don’t begrudge my children this. If I did, I wouldn’t be purposely throwing myself back into the deep end with another baby.

    It’s just that sometimes, I would like a daydreaming room, all of my own. With lots of windows and a wild garden to look out over.

    Then maybe, I could daydream in peace.

     

  • Sunday Selections #60

    Sunday Selections is here today, because your ever lovely host Frogpondsrock is in Burnie for the Fired Up exhibition and sadly, has no internet. Such a shame.

    The Blurb

    I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

    I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

    So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

    Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

    Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

    Link back here to me.