Sleepless Nights

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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.

  • Still Decompressing – Link Share #ausblogcon2011

    I’ve been home for a few days now and I’m still decompressing from the conference. I’ve had a quick glance over the business cards I collected and know most of the women and read them already.

    The excitement of the conference has blended into a giant blur of beautiful faces and excellent conversation and I can’t quite work out who I spoke to – I can remember your faces and real names, but I’ll be damned if I can remember the blog addresses that go with them! I had so  much fun speaking to everyone, it’s been a while since I was thrown in with a crowd quite that welcoming and you were all so very lovely.

    So this is just a quick post so that I can ask you for a favour.

    If I spoke to you this weekend and you didn’t get a chance to give me your business card, would you like to leave your link in the comments? And if you missed speaking to me – I tried really hard to talk to as many people as I could, but sadly, I’m not superwoman- then would you like to leave your link?

    I would love to visit as many of your blogs as possible and I know that my business card pile isn’t as large as I hoped it would be, so I thought I would offer up a place to share your blog address with me, that I can come back to over the next few weeks.

    And if, for whatever reason, you weren’t at AusBlogCon, then I would still love for you to link yourself up.

    Let’s call it almost an unofficial delurking day.

    So go on, fess up? What’s your blog?

     

  • Aussie Bloggers Conference 2011 – how it all went down.

    It felt quite surreal as I actually got on a plane on Friday morning and then suffered through the flight to get to Sydney. Watershedd collected Mum and I from the airport and I was so grateful, as after that flight I don’t think I would have coped well on a shuttle bus.

    Saturday I woke up a bit before 5am and played around on twitter while I waited for Mum to wake up and talk me down off my ledge. I was freaking out a leeeetle bit as we got ready and headed down for breakfast, so as to be ready for registration on time.

    Can I just quickly thank my amazing meet and greet team? You guys were amazing and you made the difference for me, between the morning being fun, or it being tear your hair out stressful. These amazing women volunteered to help man the registration tables, hand out swag bags and name tags and show people to their tables, as well as being just genuinely welcoming faces to all the nervous attendees. We couldn’t have pulled it off as easily as we did without them. I’d gotten a few panicked texts from members of the team who were running late (trains not running, sick children – usual stuff) and they were more worried about letting me down than possibly not making it in for the first session.

    So, thankyou. You guys were amazing.

    Everything flowed smoothly and went beautifully and I got to meet so many amazing people that I am still buzzing.

    I moderated the “My Blog, My Story” panel and I would just like to thank the women who spoke.

    Tiff from My Three Ring Circus

    Kelley from Magnetoboldtoo

    Karen from Miscellaneous Mum

    Kim from Frogpondsrock

    Carly from Tune Into Radio Carly

    and Lori, from Random Ramblings of a SAHM.

    These women made the room laugh and cry and their stories were so powerful. If you’re not reading them, I really think that you should be. It was a pleasure moderating for them, even if all I did was introduce them and hug them once they were done.

    I learned a lot, met even more people and came away knowing that this blogosphere? It’s a bloody good place to play and work in. I cannot wait until we start organising 2012, after the success of this one. Melbourne is the idea, as the survey we asked you all to fill out in the beginning had Sydney first, then Melbourne next. Sharing the love around.

    I had so much fun, thank you for all the support in the leadup and the reminders that I would be okay.

    Oh and the keynote speech that I was meant to be reading, but was told I wasn’t able to because we were apparently running overtime? You can find it here. It’s one of my favourite pieces of writing.

    And now, I leave you with photos because I appear to have picked up some kind of bug and I was awake throwing up all night. ALLLLL night. Fun times, fun times.

    Can I just thank my fellow organisers who helped to make this thing reality. Nic, Karen, Tina and Brenda. It’s was awesome fun, didn’t we do a great job?