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Internet, I give you the baby birds that are screeching above my desk. BECAUSE I WANT YOU TO SUFFER WITH ME.
These working conditions are intolerable. I’ve tried complaining to the groundskeeper and maintenance man (Nathan) but he tells me his hands are tied and I need to discuss the issue with pest control (The Cats).
Either way, nothing is getting done and my ears are hurting.
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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.
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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.
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When I was working with ABC Radio, covering MONA FOMA, we copped some flak for not being professional enough, for not reviewing the events “correctly” for not adhering to the lofty professional ideals that other people would have.
See, the thing is, we weren’t chosen because we were professional music and art critics, we were chosen because we were people, able to tell other people what we were enjoying.
Then, the local paper ran a story about us and I copped even more flak, for being at MOFO when I had young children, for not being chained to the oven, for getting out of the house and GASP, actually doing something I enjoyed, while my children were cared for by their father.
SOMEONE CALL CHILD PROTECTION, THIS MOTHER HAS A LIFE.
I was stung and angry, because these people passing judgement, they didn’t know me and my personal situation. They didn’t know what I did for a living, just that I was a 22 year old mother of two and obviously was irresponsible, going out and working for the media. I used “gives young mothers a bad name” as my bio on twitter for a while, because it amused me.
Months later, I was featured in the newspaper again, in a story about twitter and social media.
Obviously someone who read my blog decided to get all upset that I have the audacity to tweet when I am (GASP) disabled and should obviously only be allowed out to collect my morning quota of sunshine, before being locked back in my box, never to bother humanity again.
Apparently if I’m able to write things online, I am more than able to attend a 9-5 job and WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE, THINK OF THE REAL DISABLED PEOPLE OUT THERE? (Yes, the ones happily locked in their boxes.)
Again, it stung and I was angry. Angry because broken joints mean that yes, I can write a blog post while laying down and publish it, but I can’t get up of a morning without relocating half a dozen joints. Angry because someone made the assumption that they knew what I lived with every day, when I chose to share parts of my life and angry that when everything is so hard for me, I still can only feel sad that people would like to make it harder.
Yes, I attend brand events, as disabled as I am. I do this with the help of good joint braces, pain killers (the good ones) and an awfully long recovery time afterwards. I do it with a smile on my face, even when my ribs are dislocated, because hell, I can’t change it, so I can’t let it stop me living.
I’ve had trolls, on and off since I started blogging. Nasty commenters set on destroying my reputation and having Sleepless Nights shut down, angry women declaring that breastfeeding is disgusting and sexual and people deciding that they knew what my life was like, just because I shared a snippet of it with them.
I was on A Current Affair last night and woke up this morning to two comments, from someone who sounded decidedly familiar. Once I’d done an IP check and worked out where they came from, I stopped feeling stung. This person, they know that I have kids on the spectrum, that we have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, that I do brand work and that things are hard for me.
I wasn’t upset, not in the way that the other comments made me. This person, they know my situation and they choose to believe that I am a liar. So be it. I cannot change what they think and the more I argue the point, the more they think I’m lying.
This person, they lost their power to hurt me years ago. I read the comment, worked out who they were and went “yeah, so?”
Trolls are hard to deal with sometimes. Everyone has an opinion about your life and how you should live it, even more so when you live your life online.
Today’s troll was the easiest of the lot, because I could just laugh at him. In the scheme of other comments left, it was relatively mild.
You want to complain about me giving my daughter panadol? Fine. I hope no one treats your daughter they way you’ve treated me.
And that’s what I wanted to talk about today.
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Tomorrow, I am getting on a plane and flying to Sydney, to attend a brand event with my sponsors for the Blogopolis, Kellogg’s. I’m pretty excited about this, but excitement seems to manifest in weird ways for me. Namely, procrastination.
You see, I’m always so worried that something will go wrong at the Very Last Minute, leaving me unable to attend an event – so I try hard not to think about it, not to look forward to it and finally (the worst one) not to plan for it.
I am good at procrastination. In fact, I think it’s probably likely to be my secret superpower.
“Able to run around screaming like a headless chicken AT THE VERY LAST SECOND. Can ignore jobs that need doing up until an HOUR BEFORE. Forgets to plan everything and then FREAKS OUT.”
I’m sure that would look perfect on my resume.
Procrastination is why, this morning, you could have found me in the garden pulling weeds, transplanting strawberry plants and planting peas and beans. Not, say, doing something sensible like making a list and packing my bags.
It is also what left me running around like an idiot this afternoon, trying to work out where my grey skivvy was, whether my skinny jeans would be okay for the plane and what on earth was I going to wear on Thurday for the actual Event.
Sigh.
I suppose everyone has to have a skill and this is mine. I only wish that it could have been a better skill, like organisation, or the ability to knit three jumpers at once, or even better, turn lead into gold.
Now those would have been skills to be proud of.
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