Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Let’s talk about mothers day

    Mother’s day has never been a big thing in our house. I’m sort of blaming Nathan for this fact, because the kids are little and it’s his job to buy me something (anything!) for mother’s day. Or at least ensure I get a sleep in and a cup of tea made for me.

    Of course, like everything though, this hasn’t happened and I’ve spent my previous 4 mother’s days walking around the house grumbling about being under-appreciated and screamed at. Thanks kids, mummy loves you too.

    I’m not bitter.

    Anyway, this year being the first year that Amy is at school, there will be a mother’s day gift coming home for me, probably hand pasted with glitter on it somewhere. Considering it will be my first mothers day gift, it’s going to be brilliant, whatever it is. I’m quite looking forward to it.

    I’m lucky. My biggest worry is that I won’t get a cup of tea, or that Amy will jump all over me in excitement and make sure that I can’t sleep. Both of these things are likely to happen.

    Some mothers aren’t so lucky, and there is a big drive to buy charity gifts for mother’s day this year.

    UNICEF has an online store, where you can buy charity presents for this mother’s day. The Mother/Baby pack is especially important, because it would allow a HIV positive woman to give birth and breastfeed, without passing HIV to her baby. One thousand babies a day are infected with HIV, and without treatment, many will die before their second birthday. Medical centres are often long distances from remote villages and travelling to them is beyond most mothers means. The mother/baby pack allows medication to be distributed and used easily by the mother.

    So, if you’re wondering what to get your mother this year, or trying to work out what your older kids can buy you, and you’d like to help out a family in need, then the UNICEF shop is for you.


    ***

    Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Kidspot and I received monetary compensation for writing it. I wouldn’t have agreed to participate in a campaign that I didn’t feel strongly about however, and I think that UNICEF’s charity gifts are an excellent idea.

  • NIMBYism, hate and why “boat people” aren’t going to eat your face

    NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard.

    And so over a fortnight has passed since the announcement that a detention centre will be built at the old army barracks in Pontville, around 25 minutes from where I live, and I am still spending a lot of time throwing my arms in the air and shouting at the TV ‘OH MY GOD, THEY ARE NOT HERE ILLEGALLY. REALLY!’

    The attitude portrayed by some members of the local community has been appalling. “But they’re BOAT PEOPLE. If they had all that money to get here by boat, they should have arrived on a plane.” Yes, an actual comment. I was tempted to throw the newspaper across the car, but it wouldn’t have changed anything.

    A grand total of 4% of asylum seekers arrive by boat. FOUR PERCENT. So, of the 400 asylum seekers to be housed at Pontville, roughly, oh, 16 of them arrived by boat? Maybe 17, if we want to be generous and round up.

    One lady said that she didn’t like it because her house overlooks the detention site. Another asked if maybe we could house them somewhere else? Just for his peace of mind you see, there’s no telling what those people would do if they escaped into the community.

    I’ve been trying very hard not to read comments about the detention centre, or asylum seekers, because I start to get twitchy when I hear blatant ignorance being spouted as fact and there is only so much ranting I can expect Nathan to listen to.

    But let’s talk about it here.

    It is not illegal to seek asylum, even if you’re arriving by boat. According to Australia’s agreement as part of the UN, Australia is legally obligated to take people seeking asylum. No matter HOW they get here.

    They are not criminals. Government policy is what locks them up behind razor wire and 3m fences, not criminal activity.

    We do not know what they ran from, but likely it’s worse than not being able to buy milk for their morning coffee. They are here because they fled for their lives.

    If I hear one more person shout “BUT THEY’RE QUEUE JUMPING” I might just start throwing things. They are not queue jumping. There is no line to get into Australia.

    “BUT THEY’RE HERE ILLEGALLY!” – See my first point. It’s not illegal to seek asylum. What is illegal is overstaying your visa – but we don’t hear anyone screeching about the white British backpackers who are here illegally. Is it a skin colour thing? Or maybe it’s religion…

    The term “Boat People” upsets me. Not only is it plain wrong, but it paints the asylum seekers in a bad light. Like “Ooooooh, careful, the boat people will get you with their giant fangs and nasty nasty ways…”

    They’re not “Boat People”. They are just people, who went through unspeakable things to get to a country, in the hope that they would be safe. Their religion, the colour of their skin, what they believe in, none of that matters.

    They are just people. With families, and mothers and hopes and dreams.

    Just people.

    And we ought to show a little more humanity in welcoming them, instead of letting the politicians tell us what to think, because “STOP THE BOATS” is a handy election slogan, pandering to an upper-class white christian society, scared of colour and change.

    Some good has come out of this, the Tasmanian Asylum Seeker Support page on Facebook has over 450 “likes” and the Mayor of Brighton, Tony Foster is requesting that the community remain as welcoming as we did back in 1999, when Brighton housed Kosovo refugees.

    So the question remains, do people fear the asylum seekers because they’re secretly racist?

    Or is there something else I’m missing here.

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  • I am tired

    I am tired.

    I am tired of the screaming from my son. Right now anyone would think that I had cauterised a giant wound with a hot poker, rather than covering a blister with a bandaid. Sensory issues. Great.

    And Amy, who is permanently exhausted, and sulky and also has this terrible cough, that isn’t so bad of a day time, but is keeping us all awake of a night.

    Why does this year feel like all I’m doing is facing into the wind and refusing to walk backwards?

    I will not give up. I will not give in.

    It would have been my grandmother’s birthday today and grief is tough. Watching someone you love die is exhausting, when your brain won’t switch off and you get to relive the moments again and again in your dreams. Like deja vu, but different.

    April was always Nan’s month, her birthday and Easter falling on the same weekend a lot of the time, Easter was her celebration. Now I get to create new traditions and dammit, I didn’t want new traditions. I liked the old ones perfectly fine.

    Facebook keeps yelling at me and telling me it’s her birthday. I’ve been counting it down. Another year gone and yet, it’s not getting any easier.

    We were five generations and cancer shattered that, the bastard motherfucking thing. Fuck cancer. Fuck it to the moon and back.

    I am tired and grief is hard.

    Really that’s all I’ve got to say today.

    Five generations.

    I hear this gets easier eventually. They’ve been telling me for 2 years now. I’m not convinced.

    But hey, Isaac just fell asleep on the floor in front of the fire.

    At least something is looking up.

  • What defines a mummyblogger?

    I’m struggling with identity.

    Am I a mummyblogger? Am I a personal blogger? Does a title really even matter, if what I’m doing makes me happy?

    I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m very aware of how my words are perceived and how that reflects on me. Of course, like all good identity crises, this was helped along by some family drama IRL that has left me wondering what exactly I said to cause such offence.

    There was a report released a few months ago, that stated mummybloggers were on the rise. Of course, they classified any woman who blogs, who also has children, as a mummyblogger.

    I don’t agree with that – not every woman who has children, who also blogs, is a mummyblogger. Some write about tech, or blogging, or money making and the fact that they also have children is unrelated to their blog content.

    I’m struggling with this. Motherhood is wonderful and lovely and etc etc. But it’s not all that I am, nor does it define everything that I write about.

    More than that though, what defines a mummyblogger? With a mummyblogger conference announced, how do you decide if that is the right title for you and whether or not you’re comfortable with that moniker?

    So I’m curious, what defines mummyblogging for you? What do mummybloggers do that makes them mummybloggers, rather than personal bloggers, or something else?

    ***

    Also, if you feel that you can’t be truly honest because you’re worried about upsetting someone, then feel free to be anonymous – HOWEVER, I’d prefer you left a real email address, so that you can see my replies to you. I WILL NOT share your email address with anyone.

  • No, I don’t feel like dancing. Or dislocating my hips. Thanks anyway.

    Sometimes I attend events and there is dancing and people look at me strangely when I determinedly don’t dance. I could be coy and declare that I am a terrible dancer and oh no, I couldn’t possibly…

    I would be lying, because as far as I’m concerned, I can dance and dance well. I just shouldn’t.

    It might be easier to go down the coy route, because declaring that I don’t dance, well, it requires some explanation from me. How much of an explanation depends on how much of my blog you’ve read – or my twitter stream and how well I know you. I might just leave it at that and damned if you think I’m rude, or weird.

    Or I could brush you off with an explanation like I have bad joints.

    But unless you’re very close family, or a friend I love, I’m not going to go into it. Actually, even if you’re very close family, I’m not going to go into it.

    Invisible disabilities don’t lend themselves to being explained easily. When you add in genetic and rare, then easy explanations disappear almost entirely.

    I had a panic attack before I flew last weekend. Not because I was terrified of flying, but because I was terrified of being stuck in a tiny space, with my knee bent and having it dislocate. Of course, I’d been sensible enough to brace it before flying, but that terror of knowing that your bones don’t stay where they’re put, that doesn’t go away.

    I made it to Sydney with nothing worse than aching hips and a few dislocated ribs, but I kept the brace on anyway.

    By that night, I had an angry black bruise around the back of my knee, but it was a small price to pay for no major dislocations.

    When the dancing started on Saturday night, I smiled politely, shook my head and sat down to watch. Of course, I would have loved to dance, because I do love dancing, but I don’t love dislocated hips and I’m eternally sensible. I was already wearing heels, surely that’s enough danger for one night?

    By dessert, all my ribs down one side had dislocated and I had been sitting for so long and was so exhausted that I was close to vomiting. I’d been feeling sick all weekend, but forcing myself to eat a few green beans, some fish and half a cannelloni had taxed my already upset system and it was more than I could take. I called it a night and headed up to my room to relocate all my ribs and lay down, with my feet in the air, in an attempt to stabilise my blood pressure.

    45 minutes later, I’d removed my stockings (extra supportive, for the holding together of my pelvis) and replaced my heels with sensible flats. I went back downstairs, to at least get to talk to some of my friends.

    I think I made it another 20 minutes before my ribs all fell back out and the simple act of movement was feeling more like walking on a pitching ship, than walking down a hallway.

    But no one saw that, because Ehlers Danlos is an invisible disability. No one saw me relocate my wrist half a dozen times in a 30 minute period, or put my thumb back into joint and continue writing my tweet, or wiggle my ankle back into the spot it was meant to be in. And that’s good, because being a freakshow is not something I aspire to. Watch the girl bend in places a person shouldn’t! See her skin stretch and hear the crunch of bones! Roll up, roll up!

    I would have liked to dance, but more so, I like my hips staying in the sockets that were designed for them too.

    After all, no one looks good on the dance floor when writhing around and screaming in pain.