Sleepless Nights

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  • Can we all spare a dollar for the poor hard done by millionaires?

    Poor retail millionaires. It’s our fault they aren’t making as much money anymore. Instead of a 45ft yacht, they had to buy the 30ft one. Such a sacrifice they’ve been making and now, they’re banding together to let us know how angry they are about their profit margins.

    The loudest of these millionaires is one Gerry Harvey, founder of Harvey Norman, who by all accounts, is having to cut down on his caviar fund, all because I bought my kids toys online this Christmas.

    “You’ve got every second person in the country importing things from overseas, evading duty, not paying sales tax,” he said. ”You’ve got an awful lot of retailers that are going to be going broke after Christmas.’‘ [source]

    He’s been all over my TV and the newspapers, complaining about online shopping. The way he speaks, you’d think that online shopping was the devil incarnate.

    Can we all hear the sad music playing?

    I shop online, for a variety of reasons.

    I have two small children, with sensory issues, among other things. I also have incredibly bendy joints, that dislocate regularly. Getting into a shopping centre isn’t easy for me.

    I tried to shop in store before Christmas and it didn’t end all that well. I tried to browse the books, as quickly as I could, knowing that I had my partner and the kids (4 and almost 2) in tow. 30 seconds into browsing, my son bolted. I chased him and brought him back to the books, wherein he promptly melted down. Screaming at my feet, I couldn’t look at books anymore. Amy was getting overwhelmed with her brother screaming and started to whine.

    I picked Isaac up and slung him under my arm, dislocating a few ribs in the process. My partner grabbed Amy. We looked at each other and left, fast. We’d been in the shop for 5 minutes and bought nothing.

    I ended up buying all the kids presents online, slowly. My son has a birthday in a fortnight, his presents should be arriving in the mail this week.

    We live an hour from the major city, so shopping isn’t something that we can do on a whim. It takes time and preparation. It’s much easier for me to just sit down with a cup of tea after the kids are in bed and order online what we need, as the actual logistics of remembering to buy new fitted sheets for the beds (because Amy cut holes in our other ones with scissors) or getting to the DVD section, it’s a bit beyond what I find easy.

    At the end of the day though, it’s all about price. We survive on a shoestring budget and shopping online saves money. With cheaper products, even with shipping included, it works out better for us. We don’t have to waste petrol on a trip to town, I don’t get exhausted and dislocate things and the kids don’t spend the next few hours screaming. Instead, I wait for the postman each morning, when my parcels are delivered direct to my door. Win win.

    Gerry Harvey expected the Internet and online shopping to be a passing fad, that he refused to participate in. This is what he had to say just two years ago:

    “I’ve got an online part of my business, but I definitely would not put more into it. That’d be a recipe for a disaster.”

    “Online people do not make any money,” Harvey also told SmartCompany. “The whole world was conned with online retailing. People say I’m a dinosaur, and I’ve had people coming to me with sites and saying, ‘Oh, look at this, they have 10,000 or 20,000 hits!’ – but it’s a con, a complete con.” [source]

    Poor Gerry Harvey. If we’re not careful, next time we see him he’ll be sitting on a street corner, begging for money so he can buy some smoked salmon, and it will be all our fault.

    Because of online shopping, dollars have been taken away from a very rich man.

    Shame on us for wanting better deals and spending our dollars carefully.

    Shame on us.

  • Why are we not outraged about this? The St Kilda Schoolgirl Saga #dickileaks

    Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last couple of weeks, then you would have seen the AFL St Kilda scandal playing out on mainstream media and social media across the board. A football player was photographed naked, posed with a team mate holding a condom to his penis and eventually, it showed up on facebook, helped along by a 17 year old girl.

    The “St Kilda Schoolgirl” as she’s been dubbed on media outlets, has been crucified by the mainstream media and hung out to dry by the AFL. According to information coming out, she met the St Kilda players when they held a football clinic at her school. She was 16. A few weeks later, she waited outside of their changing rooms, to meet them again.

    By all accounts, she was a star struck girl.

    Of course, we all know how the story goes. She ended up pregnant and was treated badly by the AFL when she went to them about it. That was nothing compared to how they treated her when she released the photos.

    She’s been called a slut, a gold digger, a whore. Her reputation has been dragged through the mud, with the Saints trying to crucify her. What, for the crime of posting a naked photo of a player?

    I’m sorry, did the NRL chase down and try to crucify the person who released the photo of player Joel Monaghan engaged in a lewd act with a dog? No. No they did not.

    AFL chief Andrew Demetriou has apparently had over 20 meetings with this girl. Now, personally, I can’t see any reason for him to meet with her that many times – unless of course he was looking to get into her pants as well. Now that’s just my opinion of course, but does the AFL normally provide personal ‘counselling’ for every woman treated badly by the players? Methinks if they did that, there wouldn’t be time to actually organise any football games.

    I am disgusted that the St Kilda football club has taken after this girl like a pack of wolves. Threatening to sue her for everything under the sun, for damages lasting possibly 15 years? Bullying is never okay, especially when you’re a multi-million dollar football club.

    At the end of the day, this girl is 17. She’s a young girl, out of her depth and by all accounts, deeply stressed by the portrayal of herself in the media.

    And so I’m asking, why aren’t we outraged by her treatment? As women, as mothers, why aren’t we sticking up for this girl? She might have done some stupid things, but she is seventeen. We all did stupid things as teenagers.

    Imagine if it were your daughter, or your niece, or your sister. Imagine if they’d been put in this situation by heavy weights at the AFL and in the media. How would you feel, to see comments like this directed at her?

    I hope they take you for everything you have you little gold digger. Its great that now the tables have turned and youve lost your “power” that your signing a different song. If I had a kid like you i’d kick your arse and kick you out and be ashamed that I could produce something as nasty and tacky as you are. Youre not sorry, youre just sorry things havent gone your way. Enjoy being broke and having a bad rep for the rest of your life, youve earned it. If i see you in the street I’ll be sure to spit in your face.

    How is a reaction like that warranted?

    I am disgusted at the way she is being treated.

    She deserves our support, not to be abused even further.

    I thought Australia was better than this. Apparently we are, but only when it doesn’t involve our football “stars”.

    Discuss.

  • Utter disgust and reclaiming some pride.

    When a boat crashed into the rocks on Christmas Island last week, I watched the news reports come in and cried. All those families torn apart. They’d gone through so much to get to Australia, to somewhere where they would hopefully be able to find a new life and with one big wave, that hope was dashed.

    Parents held their babies up above the water, screaming for help, while residents of the Island threw life jackets, only to watch the life jackets torn away and the babies drown. So much floating debris, that they couldn’t see what was wood and what was human anymore.

    The death toll is expected to rise as high as 50, with exact numbers not being known. Some bodies won’t be recovered.

    Three children were left orphaned. Can you imagine that? Arriving in a new land, a land that your parents have likely promised will be free of death, only to have your parents drown, leaving you alone in a foreign country. Those children are in the Christmas Island Detention Centre now, not knowing their fate. There are over 150 children locked up there.

    I’ve been reading the news reports and stupidly, some of the comments below them. To the person who declared ‘We don’t want them here’, I’d like to know: Where did your family come from that you can afford to be so arrogant about the arrival of families who need our help? There is a very good chance they didn’t want to be here either, however their need to be here outweighs everything.

    Thinking about it, would you want to leave your home, your extended family, your country and your culture on a whim, forever? No. It takes some major trauma to have to decide that a foreign country is your only hope. That’s why they’re asylum seekers, not holiday makers.

    We don’t know their stories, or their horror. We don’t know what they were fleeing from. To trust their lives and the lives of their family to a people smuggler and boat that, at the end of the day, didn’t hold up so well, somehow I’d hedge a bet that it wasn’t rising rates and taxes that forced them here.

    I am ashamed that in the wake of this tragedy, our politicians are using it as a stone to throw at each other, the ‘Boat People’ stone. It isn’t constructive to throw rocks and portion blame at this time, not when you could be using your collective powers to organise a better solution, a plan so that this doesn’t happen again. A decisive agreement on what should happen once they’re here, that is in the best interest of these human beings, not in the best interest of your polls.

    Screeching at the cameras that you will ‘STOP THE BOATS’ is equally unproductive. By all accounts, the amount of asylum seekers who have made it to Australian shores this year aren’t in danger of flooding us out of our own country, like some people fear. “Boat people” has turned into a general term thrown around as a fear mongering tool that is handy for point scoring.

    It makes me wonder if the politicians have forgotten that at the heart of this aren’t people with fangs and giant claws, but babies and mothers. Fathers holding their daughters, begging for them to be saved and now, orphans. They are families who are in search of a better life, one without starvation, or murder on the horizon. Not monsters who need to be stopped.

    In a shining beacon of hope however, I’ve gotten to watch Louisa move heaven and earth to get gifts to the children incarcerated on Christmas Island. She’s organised for the parcel to make its way onto a Virgin Blue flight and clear customs quickly, in time for Christmas morning.

    Louisa has helped me feel less ashamed to be Australian today. With her idea and the blogospheres support, amazing things have happened in the last few days. Blogging has, yet again, reminded me about the best in people, instead of showing me the worst in them.

    So, thank you, to every single person who donated, who shared the love and who helped out. You people are amazing.

    And to our politicians, maybe you should be looking at the outpouring of love coming from this community and realising that not all Australians are scared of The Boat People monsters that you created. Most Australians are sympathetic and think that they deserve to be here, in this so called Lucky Country.

    Maybe you can see that too.

    One day.

  • Fuck the greenhouse, fuck the weather and where the fuck is my holiday spirit?

    Remember the greenhouse?

    Well, it held up mostly brilliantly, until this morning. Obviously the holiday stress has been getting to it, because it tried to fly away this morning. Unfortunately, greenhouses built out of bendy metal poles aren’t designed for flying and instead it flopped down, 6 inches away from where it started, slightly bent and a little worse for wear. Also lucky, it tried to fly away while I was checking my morning emails, so I spotted it and had it pinned back down quite quickly.

    An hour later, it tried to fly again, this time uprooting itself from the bottom poles in order to do so. A few bags of potting mix, some more tape and some ingeniousness, and it was stuck back down. Again.

    The weather today has been getting progressively worse, colder and windier. Certainly a day for hiding inside with hot chocolate, not a day for preventing flying greenhouses, because you guessed it, it tried to fly again.

    More successful than the first two attempts, this time it flew a good three feet in the air, before collapsing back down with a giant thud, trying again and pulling all of the support beams out.

    I tried to fix it, I really did. But once I made my way into the internals of the flying greenhouse, it tried to impale me, rather viciously. The wind tore the plastic out of my grip, metal poles were flying everywhere and after being beaten by a flying pole and worrying about my internal organs, I bailed out.

    Really, can you blame me?

    It’s still tied down, so really, it’s not doing anything other than flopping around like a fish on the end of a line and occasionally trying to murder me when I get too close.

    I was already short on Christmas spirit before the assassination attempt. A nasty flu virus that turned into a chest infection, coupled with a period that has lasted almost 5 weeks now (despite me being on the pill) and a course of prednisone to keep me breathing have all conspired to make me grinchy.
    Really really grinchy.

    But! It seems the blogosphere isn’t half as grinchy as I am, because we’ve managed to raise an extraordinary amount of money to send presents to the children stuck in detention on Christmas Island.

    The amazing Louisa decided that she wanted to send things and she mobilised the blogsphere and our various sponsors into helping. As I write, she has almost made the amount of money needed to courier the gifts to the detention centre and any extra money donated will be spent on gifts to add to the parcels.

    I even managed to get Cal Wilson to tweet about it.

    If there is any chance you can donate, or if you’re in Melbourne, get gifts to Louisa to be sent, then please, go and check out her blog for how to do that.

    And hopefully, by the time I’ve pressed publish, my inner grinch will have been tamed with something that isn’t a metal bar trying to stab me. I think the Universe is telling me something.

    help

  • When third eyelids go bad.

    My older ducks are pains in the arse to catch. They’ll happily eat their wheat at my feet, but if I’ve got to catch them for whatever reason, then I get prepared to run around the paddock for an hour, net in hand.

    That is why I was so relieved when the duck who needed catching and attending to was one of the 8 week old half grown ducklings. His eye was looking weepy and swollen and I’d been keeping an eye on it, but today, I could tell that he definitely needed seeing to.

    I put down some wheat and amongst the rush of poultry, I was able to get behind him and in one swift movement, grab him and hold him.

    He squeaked and fought, of course, but an 8 week old duckling isn’t the strongest creature on the earth and my bendy hands were able to cope with him. I tucked him up under my arm and poked his eye.

    Like I suspected, it had a grass seed in it.

    Now, grass seeds are the bane of my life. I fucking hate them.

    When I was a kid, we used to stay with friends and along with their children, I would walk to the local shop. It wasn’t a long walk, as you could cut off around 800m by cutting through a paddocky area. A paddocky area that was never mown and was always knee deep in grass seeds. I would prefer to walk the extra 800m than have to spend the next 2 days cleaning grass seeds out of my shoes and socks.

    Our grass in the paddock lately has been reminding me of the paddock as a kid, as I traipse through it and fill my shoes with grass seeds. Fucking grass seeds.

    I’m not a fan.

    Neither was this duck, who badly needed medical help and who was going to fight me every inch of the way.

    With both my hands and most of my upper body involved in not accidentally letting the duckling go, I was limited to asking Amy to find me tweezers.

    After a bit of direction and a bit of yelling and some screaming from Amy because ‘MUMMY HAS A DUCK!!!!’ I elected to bring the duckling inside and hope like fuck I didn’t accidentally drop it inside the house.

    I growled at Nathan, who was still in bed, who pointed out where he’d put the tweezers. Contorting myself into a pretzel to be able to hold the duck and yet, still reach the top shelf, I found the tweezers.

    FINALLY.

    What I hadn’t counted on was the third eyelid.

    I sat outside in the barbeque area, with the duckling on my lap, struggling and then flopping back exhausted (making me worry it’s heart had given out and who gives a fuck about grass seeds then?).

    Tweezers in hand, I had a look at his eye.

    I could see the middle of the seed. I could see all the swelling and the pus and there….

    No. Third eyelid closed.

    I spent the next 20 minutes, holding open his external eyelid with two fingers, holding his head with the remaining three fingers, leaning on him with my top half and trying to gouge his eye out with tweezers.

    Just when I was ready to yell at Nathan that I needed an extra set of hands, I found it. The end of the seed. White and pussy, it had been poking into the corner of his eye for a few days.

    Another 10 minutes and some frantic flapping (him), swearing (me) and excited screeching (Isaac) and I managed to catch hold of the end with the tweezers.

    One swift movement and the grass seed was out. The poor duckling flapped and peeped, but while poking around in his eye for half an hour and finally removing the seed must have hurt, it wouldn’t have been half as bad as letting the infection take hold and destroy his eye entirely.

    I had a good look and with a tissue, cleared up the rest of the infection and weepiness. I would have liked to bathe it in salt water too, but I was out of hands entirely.

    Fixed, mostly, I took him back outside to his siblings and came inside to photograph the grass seed.

    It was huge. Probably 3 1/2 times the size of the ducklings actual eye? Coin for scale.

    For the US readers, our 10c coin is just barely under an inch in diameter. 2.36cm