Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • From this angle, the school holidays are feeling very long

    It’s no secret that I dislike early mornings with the kids and find school mornings inordinately stressful, even if I do have everything laid out and organised the night before. Let’s face it, I am just not a morning person and would much prefer to greet the day slowly, from the warmth and comfort of my bed.

    But, that’s not how it goes once your child is at school. Most mornings, I’m lucky if I even manage half a cup of tea, before we’re out the door, dropping Amy off at school.

    However, once the chaos of the actual drop-off is over and done with, we come home and Isaac and I have a leisurely breakfast, while he watches cartoons and I catch up on things I need to do.

    With school holidays happening at the moment, I may be getting a slower start of a morning, but that is counterbalanced by the amount of attention my children need. And frankly, at this point, I’ll forgo a lie in, in favour of no screaming/fighting/kicking/hitting/toy stealing/whining. Which is what it feels like my school holidays have been made up of, so far.

    I think half of the problem is that this is Tasmania and while the calendar says that it is Spring out there, my weather flat out refuses to play nicely and it’s been cold and windy. Cold and windy means that my children have been inside more than out and it’s starting to do our heads in, just a little.

    I took the kidlets to playgroup today and LO, it saved our sanity. Isaac only had two meltdowns, and Amy painted plaster figurines, leaving me mostly free to chat to other mothers and herd Isaac into the playdough table.

    After that, they weren’t even that terribly behaved in the supermarket! I am, exhausted, of course, but so are the children, so it’s not too bad.

    And all I can say is, how long until school goes back? (8 days)

  • Blaming everything

    I keep starting to write posts and them reminding myself that actually, no, I’m not meant to be writing about that on the Internet. You see, I’ve taken some pain killers and it’s been a while since I took them, so I wasn’t sure if I would end up passing out, or just getting really stoned. This time, it appears that instead of passing out, I am inflicting myself and my weird feeling ears on the Internet.

    You’re welcome.

    I haven’t slept properly in a week. I keep passing out and them waking up with half of my joints where they’re not meant to be, then putting everything back in place, before passing out again. If you do this every hour, by the time your children wake up in the morning, you are not only exhausted, but you feel like you’ve been beaten by a baseball bat all night. This is how I’ve spent the last week.

    Sure, I could blame the flu I have had (and I will) and I could blame the bed I have (and I will) and I could blame Nathan’s snoring (and I will), but really, it’s all the crappy joints, and the crappy problems that come with the crappy joints and I’m just a little bit over it.

    Okay, I’m a lot over it.

    I’ve been trying to work out why my shoulder was hurting and then I had a poke around in there to discover a dislocated collar bone. On top of dislocated ribs. And a hip that goes click-THUNK when I walk. Along with multiple other joints that have decided to rebel. I think my body wants a divorce from me, but I’m not quite sure where I would find the legal team to take on that nightmare.

    Also, I’m pretty sure that none of this is making sense, but that is okay. You can blame the pills.

    I was thinking about my pain management appointments and the fact that I’ve been handballed off to a psych, to get my anxiety issues sorted, before my physio will start to work with me again. I would have liked to handball my physio off to school, to learn more about EDS, before he could work with ME again, but it seems that you can’t demand that they do that.

    Pity.

    Of course, getting told I need to see a psych is the easy bit, the hard bit is actually getting my shit together to make the damn appointment (where did I write those numbers down?), making an appointment for some time that isn’t 2013 and then keeping my head together until I get there. Easier said than done, it feels.

    And now that I’ve put this out onto the Internet, probably regretting it tomorrow when I wake up aching and ill, I’m going to disappear to try and read a book.

    That is, if I can make my hands work properly.

  • Walking into walls

    It wasn’t that I didn’t want to become intimately aquainted with the doorframe; it was that I was on my way to the toilet and walking into the door slowed things down immeasurably. In fact, I am certain that it is a perfectly nice door frame, even if it is painted a godawful purple colour that makes me want to puke.

    Walking into doorframes at 3am has become something of a specialty of mine, along with learning where every single exit is in a room, in case I need to run outside to throw up, and working out, if I fall over, what is the least embarrassing way to manage it? (Tripping in the airport: Manageable. Tripping as you exit the aircraft down the stairs: Highly hazardous to your health. Avoid the latter at all costs.)

    Upon examination this morning, aside from the headache I have, I don’t appear to have any lasting side effects, unlike the time I walked into a doorframe so hard in year 7 that I concussed myself.

    Sure, I told everyone that I tripped and hit my head on the book cart, but I lied. I really just misjudged where my feet were and walked, hard, into the doorframe. It wasn’t pretty, as the purple bruise on my forehead the next day showed everyone. I spent a few days on the couch feeling nauseous and forgetful after that one. It was also the start of learning that I have to be lying down to have blood taken, otherwise I will throw up and pass out at the same time – a slightly dangerous combination.

    Another time, I misjudged where my hand was while I was talking and took all the skin off my knuckles on the jagged brick wall. Walking into class with your hand dripping blood might be dramatic, but I would have preferred to float a little further under the radar than that.

    Good times, good times.

    I am bendy today. So bendy that I’m seriously considering putting on my supportive undergarments, 3 of my ribs are currently dislocated, breathing feels too much like hard work and I think my hands have forgotten that they’re meant to be attached to my wrists still. Isaac dislocated my finger this morning. Thanks kid.

    But really, I’m not complaining.

    Except about the awful purple colour my house is painted. I am complaining about that.

  • I am so not fashionable

    I am so bendy, we don’t go out often. I prefer to conserve my energy doing things like reading novels, occasional baking, child snuggling and writing. This is much easier to do when I haven’t used all of my energy traipsing around a supermarket, or glaring at old ladies who don’t understand why Isaac is speaking at volume 11 and spinning in circles.

    Because I don’t often go out, it wasn’t until recently that I bought any nice clothes. The AusBlogCon cemented my need for something that wasn’t jeans and a t-shirt and so I bought some bits and pieces.

    So now I’ve got skirts and heels and shirts and scarves, but who can pull off that kind of attire, when the most exciting thing planned for the day is walking through a paddock looking for eggs?

    Even worse, when the paddock is muddy, I usually have “outside pants” and “inside pants” and my outside pants get worn, muddied up, taken off, hung in front of the fire and ignored. Do I actually need to be wearing pants if all I’m doing is blogging?

    My paddock bashing gear is all stuff I’ve had for years. I’m loathe to wear good clothes if they’re going to get dragged through the mud, snotted on, flown into, or muddied up by dogs. Although, I am getting much quicker at dodging the incoming flying ducks and they’re getting better at not landing on me, or in the feed bucket I’m carrying. For the record, ducks are heavy and flappy.

    So really, I spend a lot of time in jeans that are a size too big, daggy t-shirts and windcheaters. All of this, I am certain, make me look uber sexy.

    Fashion blogging seems to be the “in” thing at the moment, but I’m not sure I want to inflict myself on the Internet, wearing my everyday clothes. It’s bad enough that I wear a lot of it to school drop offs.

    I can say this though – I have not ever gone to the supermarket, or school, in my pajamas. Ever.

    Is it terrible of me to admit that the most fashionable thing I own and wear on a regular basis, are my new red gumboots? They’re only mine because they wouldn’t fit Mum, and they’re two sizes too big, but they’re shiny (still) and waterproof.

    For someone who used to overly concerned with how everyone else was dressing and keeping up with the latest looks (even if those looks were, in hindsight, crap), I have certainly fallen a very long way. Heh.

  • Mushrooms at The Cupping Room

    I don’t eat out very often, much to my great sadness. I would love to, but sadly, when you’ve got autistic children and bendy joints, it can make doing things like eating out quite difficult.

    In turn, this makes it all the more fun when I do finally get to eat out and last week at The Cupping Room was no exception.

    I wasn’t quite sure what to expect actually, I had heard very good reports from my twitter and facebook friends, extolling the virtues of their coffee and food, but at the time I was researching, they didn’t have a website with a menu I could look over.

    We arrived, ordered hot drinks and looked over the menu for a bit. I knew I was having mushrooms, but I rather like stickybeaking at menus anyway.

    In the end, Mum and I both ordered the mushroom bruschetta (mushrooms on sourdough toast, with wilted baby spinach, feta, caramelised onions, basil and an apple balsamic reduction – $15), along with a coffee for Mum and hot chocolate for me.

    The hot drinks arrived before the meal and I loved the novelty of my hot chocolate. I was able to work out how strong I wanted it myself, using hot milk and melted Belgian chocolate. It was absolutely divine and I hear that the coffee was just as good.

    Then our mushrooms arrived. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but large mushrooms probably weren’t it. It was a good surprise though and even better when I tasted them. Absolutely flawless, in my opinion.

    The balance of flavours was perfect and not only didn’t we speak much while we ate, I didn’t even want to stop eating to tweet about it. That is how good it was. I’m usually a fan of mushrooms anyway, but this dish was beyond what I expected from simple mushrooms.

    It does go to show, when you’re using great ingredients, it doesn’t take much to make it spectacular.

    I can highly recommend The Cupping Room, to anyone who wants a slightly quirky dining experience, with great coffee, great service and food that is, by all accounts, brilliant.

    You can find The Cupping Room on Facebook, but their website is still under construction.

    The Cupping Room is located at 105 Murray Street, Hobart.

    ***

    Thanks to the Mushroom Growers Association for pushing me out of my comfort zone and asking that I eat mushrooms and review them here – I’ve found this a lot of fun. Even if I am slightly late with the review. This post was meant to be part of Mushroom Mania, but once I’d agreed to participate, we discovered that Tassie didn’t have any participating restaurants. So instead I got to do some food blogging.

    Disclaimer: I was paid for this post and all opinions are my own and completely honest.