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  • Twas the Night Before Christmas (With apologies*)

    Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
    a breeze was rustling, and a tiny grey mouse.
    He skittered through cupboards and under the sink,
    avoiding things that’d give him away with a clink.

    The children were tossing, hot and sweaty in bed,
    they had no idea what scurried overhead.
    Mum in her tank top and shorts pulled tight,
    she had hunted that mouse, all day and all night.

    She had chased him through rooms and over the bath
    sure that he was having a bloody good laugh.
    He seemed to twinkle and as she grew nie,
    he dashed away faster, leaving her far behind.

    Her schwacker in hand, she felt quite defeated,
    surveying his mess and all the things he had eaten.
    Until she remembered the tiny grey trap,
    set aside in a drawer and forgotten, like that.

    She dusted it off and baited it well,
    hiding it where she knew that mouse did dwell.
    She turned off the lights and made ready for bed,
    while visions of dead mice danced in her head.

    Then! Under the sink she heard a great clatter,
    Mother knew there was something the matter.
    She raced to the sink and there in her trap,
    lay the little grey mouse, squished with a splat.

    Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
    Not a creature was stirring, especially not any mouse.
    Mother had washed her hands with great glee,
    Now knowing her Christmas would be the best it could be.

    ***

    *With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore who wrote the original. You can find a copy of the original here, as well as some facts about the poet.

  • I’ve been a lazy blogger.

    Remember, months and months ago, I used to post every day? Do you remember that? I bet some of you are breathing a sigh of relief that I don’t do that anymore. I gave it up in favour of quality over quantity.

    However, it seems when I stop forcing myself to write every day, I look back at the end of the month and wonder how I managed to get so few posts together.

    It’s harder now, I’m splitting my time between three different blogs (this one, Veronica Foale and My food blog, in case you’ve been busy like me lately) and I’m running shorter on time. I’ve also found another thirty or so new blogs that I like reading and added them to my reader.

    Anyway.

    Today I logged into my reader, after sort of glancing at it for the last few days and gulped. Lots of new posts in there. Lots of people I want to keep up with. I’m not sure if I actually have the time to click through to everyone though.

    So here is your chance. If you’ve written something in the last fortnight or so and you think I haven’t seen it (you’re probably right), leave me a comment here with your link and I’ll click over and check it out. Promise.

    ***

    We’re in the countdown to Christmas here.

    Tinsel hangs garlanded around the edges of the house. Pretty beads drape themselves from spare nails, hung willy nilly everywhere, threatening to decapitate me in the middle of the night.

    Isaac spends a lot of time looking warily at the tinsel, wondering if it is going to eat him while he sleeps.

    We don’t have a tree up though. We’ve been busy and lazy and haven’t gotten around to it.

    Do you think I could borrow one of Kelley’s? I hear she has hundreds.

    ***

    Geneticist appointment:

    Question:

    Do you think the children have Ehlers Danlos?

    Answer:

    Isaac: definitely, very hypermobile, bruises easily,  happy to diagnose because his skin tears.

    Amy: shows signs, very hypermobile, very bruised, very stretchy skin, however no dislocations yet, or skin tears that I can remember. Probably. Bring her back in two years for another clinical examination.

    Until then, he is writing me letters of diagnosis for Isaac and a letter to be given to Amy’s school when she starts (in 13 or so months) to say that she has clinical signs and no, her mother doesn’t beat her, please ignore the bruises she is sporting.

    I call that a good appointment, considering in children, most doctors refuse to diagnose until they’re thirteen.

    ***

    Okay, confession time.

    I don’t have time to respond to every one’s comments via email anymore.

    So please, if I suddenly stop emailing you after you’ve commented, don’t stress that you’ve upset me! You haven’t, I’m just having to cut back on time expenditures. If you ask me a direct question, I will probably still answer you, otherwise check back on the blog because I will answer in comments.

    I hate those blogs, you know the ones, where the author never responds, never visits you back and doesn’t comment in their own comments. I don’t want to be a blogger like that. If I’m not emailing responses, likely you’ll see me in the comment section alongside you.

    Of course, if you email me outright I will respond, every single time. It’s only polite.

    ***

    So um, that’s me.

    Of course, half the reason I’ve been absent is due to a trilogy of books that sucked me in. If you like fantasy novels, I highly recommend Cecilia Dart-Thornton’s The Bitterbynde Trilogy. It is very very good. Curl up on the couch and read for 3 days straight type good.

    Now I’ve got to hunt down some of her other work to immerse myself in.

    Yay.

    Oh! Also! Kristen, over at Wanderlust, she is collecting flags on a little widget thingy. She is a little manic about it (in a good way), so if you live somewhere ‘out of the normal’ click over to her and let the widget find your flag. Or tell your friends in different countries to do it.

  • Sign the No Clean Feed petition

    The Australian Government, namely Senator Stephen Conroy has given the green light for a ‘Clean Feed’ to be applied to Australian internet.

    News posts here, here and here.

    In laymens terms, this means that come next August, MANDATORY ISP filtering will occur on all internet.

    It’s not up to the Government to say what I can and can’t look at on the internet. I am an adult and so long as my activity isn’t illegal (ch*ld porn) then the Government should have NO RIGHT to filter my internet.

    It is up to me to keep my children safe on the net. Not the Government.

    See NoCleanFeed for more details and if you agree with me, sign the petition.

    SIGN PETITION AGAINST CLEAN FEED.

    As a web publisher, this scares me senseless. Officials have admitted that the filtering, while effective against the kind of sites they are wanting to filter (a blacklist, if you will. who knows what exactly they will be deeming ‘not suitable’) there are also plenty of false positives, ie: sites blocked that shouldn’t have been.

    Does that mean I could ‘accidentally’ have Sleepless Nights blocked? Or what about you. What happens if your website gets blocked?

    I don’t agree with it. It is censorship plain and simple.

    Sign the petition against it. Please.

    ***

    Feel free to copy/paste this entire post to your blog if you like. Just remember to give credit to either https://somedaywewillsleep.com OR http://veronicafoale.com

  • Fuck Teeth

    I would just like to say – Fuck teeth.

    Specifically, the two top teeth of Isaac’s, that partially broke through the surface 2 nights ago and haven’t moved anywhere since. They’re just sitting there, almost through, causing pain and angst and woe.

    So uh, fuck you evolution. I don’t like teeth. We should all just eat mush.

    Mmmmm, mush.

    ***

    I’d also like to say fuck you to my period and the period pain it leaves me with. Thanks to enough pain killers to down an ox, I’m able to move through my day semi-normally.

    It wasn’t much good this morning when the pain meds hadn’t yet kicked in and I was a ball of misery who couldn’t move, breath, or be touched without crying/moaning.

    It was bad.

    ***

    In other news:

    I haven’t really mentioned this yet, although a few people have found me already. I have another blog, a ‘writing’ blog. Slightly more professional and definitely darker. You can take a look if you like.

    Only mentioning it because I’ve got two posts up there that I wouldn’t mind you having a look at.

    One is on Tasmania, as part of Shannon’s ‘Around the world in 80 blogs’ challenge and the other is a humorous look at blogging that I’m quite happy with.

  • The state of the Midland Highway

    A lot has been said about the state of the Midland Highway and the recent roadworks at Constitution Hill. What I haven’t seen however, have been pictures of the giant mess that has been left behind by the contracted workers.

    We drove down the Midland Highway yesterday, like we do most days of the week. Only this time, I had my camera at the ready and I took photos of the mess.

    (Sorry about the quality of some of them, they were taken from a moving car.)

    Now for my Mainland and International readers, the Midland Highway is the main highway connecting the north and south of the state together. There have been a lot of deaths on the road this year and the politicians are wondering why? This is why.

    ***

    The shiny patches you can see here collect black ice in the winter. This is the start of the brand new piece of road put in in the last few months.

    Midlands Highway 001

    Something to keep firmly in mind as you drive down Constitution Hill.

    Midlands Highway 002

    On the left hand side, you can see a strip of road that is newer than the rest. This particular piece was replaced 4 times by my count and that is only what I saw being done. Every time it rained, the side of the road washed away.

    Midlands Highway 006

    A closer look at the patching that’s been done along the left hand side. The patching has been done with the ‘slick and smooth’ bitumen, making driving on this particular patch in the rain/ice a nightmare.

    Midlands Highway 007

    More patches. Remember, this is BRAND NEW road you’re looking at.

    Midlands Highway 012

    The intersection. This bit has been done and redone and then done again. It’s still patchy.

    Midlands Highway 016

    The change to extremely smooth bitumen happens on the worst possible part of the road. This corner collects black ice in winter and some days, it never defrosts entirely. A few years back, four student nurses were killed here in this exact spot. If I’d been using a wide angle lens, you probably would have been able to see the flowers placed by their family in this photo, just ahead of the truck.

    Midlands Highway 018

    Yet more patches. These ones are falling apart already.

    Midlands Highway 020

    It doesn’t take long for the patches to fall apart. You can see this happening here.

    Midlands Highway 025

    Midlands Highway 026

    Midlands Highway 033

    The intersection at Bagdad is a mess of patches. In the rain, the water sits on the road here and you have to guess at where your lines sit.

    Midlands Highway 039

    I took some more photos as we were coming home. These next few are taken while heading North along the Midland Highway.

    Brand new road? Does it look like it?

    Midlands Highway 057

    Near Kempton, the road degenerates into a mess of potholes, which the Council fixes by turning into lumps instead.

    Midlands Highway 060

    Midlands Highway 067

    Just past Kempton here.

    Midlands Highway 079

    ***

    You can’t deny that our Highway is a total mess, yet our Politicians keep doing just that. It’s not safe to drive on in good weather and when it rains or is icy, the road is positively deadly.

    A lot of people have been complaining about the Midland Highway. This is why.