Sleepless Nights

Blog

  • What You Need

    There I things I have found, that will help you get through a day when no one (except for my MUCH LOVED partner) has had any sleep.

    First, you need a puppy. A puppy provides HOURS of toddler entertainment. Hug the puppy! Kiss the puppy! Strangle the puppy!

    If you don’t want to be bothered overly by the running! and the chasing!, you need to de-tooth and de-claw the puppy. Just a heads up from one who knows.

    [And yes, everything Amy and Seven do, does indeed require an! exclamation! mark! Suck it up]

    Second, you need an ENTIRE pack of unopened colour pencils. Preferably cheap and crappy pencils because they will be well used after today.

    Remember to provide paper with the pencils or you will be cleaning them off the walls. Also, if your child is still in nappies, remember to not let them play with pencils nappy-less. Amy? Pencils are not used for examining yourself, okay?

    Thirdly, books. Books are good when you are feeling tired.

    Fourth, a mattress. I laid on the couch while Amy jumped, snuggled and generally ran amok on the mattress. Bliss.

    Things we used today that I don’t recommend.

    A tub of butter. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. I do these things so you don’t have to.

    Okay, so I didn’t GIVE her the butter. She may possibly have climbed onto a chair, reached onto the bench and proceeded to find and eat the butter. With her fingers. Mmmmmm. All this while I was trying to read my book. When Amy went silent I knew she was into mischief.

    A bunch of celery.

    Who knew that a bunch of celery could be so much fun? Eat it, play tug of war with it, shred it, there are SO MANY things you can do with celery. Plus, it is much easier to clean up than mashed potatoes. And it was only going to be used for soup stock anyway.

    A sock bag full of odd socks.

    All our odd socks (and currently all our underwear, all out paired socks and everything else odds and ends like) are kept in a cloth bag until I can be bothered sorting them.

    Socks are so much fun IF you tip the entire bag onto the dog while she is sleeping and then belly flop into the pile as well. Hours of entertainment.

    Or at least 5 minutes.

    Until I start to swear that the sog is going to be de-toothed and de-clawed because DAMMIT! there went another pair of my underwear.

    If all else fails? Follow through with your plan to visit grandparents.

    ‘Hi Nan!’ ‘Hi Mum!’

    I may have been less than talkative, I may have been grumpy, but by god, there was someone else chasing Amy around. It did mean that her nap was an entire 8 minutes long and was taken in the car seat on the way home, but hey, someone else chased her and kept her out of trouble for me for a while.

    Fantastic.

    —-

    I gave her a bottle of warm (unsweetened) chamomile tea to take to bed. Lets see if it helps for tonight. She did fall asleep pretty well, but then again she was completely wrecked.

    As am I.

    Good night.

  • Midnight

    It is midnight and here I sit, trying to craft a post that makes a small amount of sense.

    I’m not too stressed about the lateness of the hour, seeing as how Amy screamed until 10.30pm. I figure that she has to regain the sleep SOMEWHERE and she may just sleep in for me.

    Or not, you know, as she sees fit.

    I maintain my lack of stressing about it, because GOD KNOWS Nathan has had enough sleep, he can play with her in the morning while I sleep.

    Sleep is a sanity saver, dontchaknow?

    Yes, I did just have to re read that entire first paragraph and remove unrelated words from it. I may just be a little bit ready for bed. Anyways.

    ——-

    Seven vomited on the beanbag today. It was my fault for throwing some rather oily food outside where she could get at it.

    Funny thing? I didn’t know she had vomited until I sat in it.

    Yes, you read that right. Sat. In. It.

    And even then, I assumed I was sitting on a babywipe.

    (What, you don’t have random babywipes laying around your house, making the furniture soggy? Oh, um, me either.)

    I didn’t realise it was vomit until I went to get out of the beanbag and put my hand right into the oily, stinking, cold mess.

    Even though everything has been cleaned up (yes, even me) I swear I can still smell it.

    *shudder*

    —–

    I have a whole post about our grey water and septic system and how whoever plumbed this house up WAS A FUCKING CRANK, but that can wait until tomorrow.

    Needless to say, Nathan and I spent the afternoon digging holes, unblocking pipes and trying to understand how ANYONE would think that having a water pipe running uphill would actually work.

    Ahem.

    —–

    Postscript.

    I wrote this at midnight last night and set it to publish at 11.59pm. Unfortunately I didn’t check the date and it didn’t actually publish.

    Amy woke at 3am and decided screaming was all the rage, even though I tried to persuade her otherwise. She wasn’t in any form of pain because Nurofen flatly refused to fix her.

    She woke this morning at 7.30am, so I have had approximately NO sleep. Send help? Please?

    I am going to fix the time stamp so it looks like it posted last night. Just because I can.

    xx V

  • CD30 (Approach With Caution. Blogger Grumpy)

    Today is Cycle Day 30 (CD30, see?).

    Today is 12 days (hell, sometimes even 15 days) before my period is due. I have a 42 day cycle. I have learned to live with that.

    My period started today.

    Fuck fuck fuckity fuckity fuck.

    10 days early is very very early, so I am almost suspecting that it is more irregular spotting. That said, it is heavier than spotting, but not quite as heavy as my period yet.

    It just shits me that we can’t seem to get it together. It is always one thing after another fucking with my cycles, my body, my head.

    I will be going to see my GP to get a referral to a Gyno this week. I’m not entirely sure what the waiting period would be to get in, but at this stage I am prepared to wait if it means that something is getting done.

    When I had my ultrasound done Monday, the sonographer saw a small blood clot, that was dislodged with all his poking and prodding. My instincts are telling me that this [bleeding] is more than just one small blood clot being passed (hey, I saw the clot. It was small, allright?).

    Some part of me is worrying that what he saw may possibly have been something trying to implant, but he POKED ME and messed it up. Then my head tells me I am being stupid and that isn’t possible.

    [Tell me that it isn’t possible please]

    So, I am bleeding [AGAIN! cue groans] and I am cramping [AGAIN! cue groans] and my mother has been too busy to go out looking for yarrow [that the wallabies have actually nibbled to death! cue groans].

    So it seems that there will be no pregnancy this month. It also seems that we may need further investigations done to find out WHAT THE FUCK is going on.

    I’m thinking a semen analysis wouldn’t go astray either. Luckily Nathan agrees.

    Now ‘scuse me, I am all done banging my head on the brick wall and I have a lemon and honey drink that needs sipping. Then my bed and heat pack are calling me.

    Night.

    PS. Any and all advice welcomed EXCEPT for comments about relaxation. I am relaxed dammit. I will be less relaxed if you tell me to be so. Also, similar stories of woe welcomed. It’s all about the solidarity.

  • The Deranged Tooth Fairy

    When I was a teenager, we had a bad mouse plague one winter.

    I was sleeping inside at the time, on a mattress on the floor of my brothers bedroom. He was about 8 at the time and my bus/caravan had no power and therefore was too icy cold to sleep in. Something about waking up to frost INSIDE the windows made me want to give up my privacy for warmth.

    The mouse plague was so bad that if you shook the curtains, mice would fall out of them. It was BAAAAD.

    Anyway, one night I was trying to sleep and suddenly the cat started going stupid and running up and down my legs.

    I assumed it was a mouse (hell, I was completely desensitised by then) and so I started shaking out the blankets. The cat pounced, the mouse squeaked and I heard crunching nomming noises.

    Satisfied that the mouse was dead, I promptly fell back asleep, after first reminding myself to be careful where I trod if I had to get up.

    There is nothing better than treading on a mouse liver in bare feet. NOOOOOTHING better.

    After sleeping all night (yes! I actually used to sleep! all night!) I woke in the morning and got up for school. Eventually, I was looking for something (think messy teenager) and looked under my pillow.

    Lo and behold, there was a second mouse! Dead! Under my pillow!

    I had slept on a dead mouse.

    It was even squashed flat.

    Obviously I went to school and told my friends about it. I’m classy like that.

    One friend suggested that maybe the cat lost a tooth.

    M – ‘Maybe your cat lost a tooth.’

    V – ‘And the mouse was actually a present for the cat!’

    M – ‘Well, cats don’t exactly need money’

    V – ‘It can’t have been a good tooth, the mouse was very flat and very dead. Pretty pathetic gift if you ask me’

    M – ‘Did you feed it to the cat?’

    V – ‘Yup, I just had to wiggle it a bit and she thought it was alive’

    M – ‘See?’

    M – ‘Or maybe you lost a tooth and the tooth fairy was actually just messing with your head’

    V – ‘A deranged tooth fairy’

    M – ‘Nice.’

  • No ADSL For Me

    As of today, there will be no ADSL connected here.

    Apparently, after waiting a month for Telstra to first check the line, then activate it for ADSL and then finally fix the faults on it (last count: 4 faults, each requiring about 4+ business days to be seen to) someone has pinched the port that our connection was supposed to be plugged into.

    Pissed off is a pretty mild term.

    APPARENTLY while Telstra was busy fucking around and twiddling it’s thumbs, they simply FORGOT that we were actually in the process of getting real live ADSL.

    Maybe they thought that our telephone provider (who has been lovely and helpful throughout) were bugging them about errors simply because they could.

    Who knows?

    I do know that there is no longer the infrastructure at the exchange to support another ADSL connection and that there isn’t ‘the demand’ to upgrade their equipment.

    Even though the infrastructure was available a week ago.

    Bastards.

    I am waiting to hear back from my providers customer support team, who will let me know what is going on and whether Telstra have changed their minds. (Uh yeah, not likely.)

    ****

    In other news, I’m feeling a little off colour. Not sure if it is partially the cystitis or if I am coming down with a cold, so please forgive me if I don’t get around to visit you for a day or so.