Sleepless Nights

Blog

  • Why Pinterest is damaging the Internet

    Pinterest seems to be the new OMG HAVE YOU SEEN IT thing lately, which, okay, fine.

    It took me a while to get into it and then only a few moments to forget about it again. This probably says more about how my brain works than any particular thing wrong with the premise of Pinterest. I’m not a designer home kind of girl and pretty things usually just make me grumpy that my house is falling down and my finances are limited at best.

    Every few weeks though, I would click through to Pinterest to see what was happening in the gardening and food sections. Gardens and food are something I can do and there were some nice ideas.

    Ignoring the fact that I seemed to see the same pictures pinned over and over and over and fucking over again, I was able to peruse photos of walkways and overgrown vegetation and delicious foody things.

    Until, one day, I found something that looked interesting. So I clicked on it, to find it’s source, so that I could read more about it.

    Source: Google.com

    Huh. Just one image, snagged by a Pinterester, using Google image search. There was no accreditation for the original photographer, and nothing available to tell me what on earth it actually was, or how to cook it.

    Slowly as I found myself clicking on more and more things, I was finding more and more images grabbed from Google, with nothing about the original author.

    And okay, I get that kittens or fuzzy bunnies or whatever maybe don’t technically NEED a source, recipes.

    Artwork, crafts and awesome ideas however, definitely DO.

    It’s like a giant game of Chinese Whispers, once things have been pinned half a dozen times, no one knows what it was originally about.

    I am a big believer in not watermarking images, instead choosing to resize to “Internet friendly, but you can’t print it out”. I think watermarks distract from a photo and make things look messy.

    But Pinterest makes me want to start watermarking things. It also makes me want to put a giant padlock on my site and disallow third party search engines from collecting images that Pinteresters could then pin, with no thoughts of accreditation.

    Also, I think Pinterest enables people to use images in blog posts and then only give source credit to Pinterest. I’m sorry, but “found on Pinterest” is not source credit.

    NO, NO IT ISN’T.

    I’m calling you out Pinterest. I think you’re damaging for artists, for craftspeople, for food bloggers, for photographers and for people with interesting ideas that they kindly share with the Internet.

  • Apparently, they can only squeak and whine

    I just shouted at my daughter for chopping a lemon into pieces with a filleting knife. While I’m proud that she didn’t chop her fingers off, I’m rather unimpressed that she destroyed my next-to-last lemon.

    At the same time, Isaac ran away outside, holding a bowl of water and pretending he didn’t hear me asking him to lay down and get changed. Again.

    I’ve got no idea what he is doing with the bowl.

    For that matter, I’ve got no idea why Amy wanted a lemon.

    Considering they’ve decided to converse solely in puppy whines (making me tell Amy more than once “If you continue to sound like a puppy, I’ll put you outside like one”) and squeaks, I’ve probably got no chance of finding out.

    This has been my Sunday.

    How was your weekend?

  • I really don’t feel guilty about this at all

    We were in the garden the other day when Amy spotted two snails having sex.

    “Mummy, what are the snails doing?”

    “They’re making babies.”

    “How do snails have babies?”

    “They lay eggs.”

    “Oh. And then the babies will hatch and eat our plants?”

    “Probably.”

    Five minutes later, the snails were slowly going their separate ways (they must have been at it all night to be done so quickly) and the ducks were at the gate looking hungry.

    So I picked the snails up and threw them to the ducks.

    I’m pretty sure they died happy, if we ignore the moments of terror when first they flew, (snails are not designed for flight, by the way) and then were eaten by hungry ducks.

    This means war.

  • The state of the uterus: 9 weeks

    Does anyone else find the comparing of fetuses to food objects creepy?  “This week, your baby is the size of a large GRAPE!”

    I’m sorry, a grape? REALLY? Is that the best you can do?

    It’s creepy.

    Things since I talked about the pregnancy last time:

    I continue to manage my nausea with anti-nausea tablets and I have not thrown up for a while, if we don’t count the retching out of my bedroom window the other day. If I forget a tablet however, I am in dire straits, needing to take myself to bed with a bucket immediately.

    I’ve lost 3kgs since falling pregnant this time, but my weight is still above 60kgs, making this my healthiest pregnancy yet. (With Amy, I fell pregnant at 60kgs and gave birth weighing 57kgs. With Isaac, I lost 6kgs in the first trimester. Yay for managed nausea!)

    I ate three thin slices of sausage last night and felt … okay.  It appears my meat aversion may be limited to beef, chicken and blowjobs. A piece of lamb on Australia day upset my stomach pretty badly, even thought it tasted great. It might have been because it was the first non-fish protein that I had eaten since the wedding.

    My blood pressure is driving me mad, sitting somewhere just above dead and making me race for the extra salty potato chips in order to bring it back up above “please don’t let me pass out in the supermarket” levels.

    Exhaustion remains, mostly because I am sick of feeling so fucking sick. I was pregnant, I miscarried, and then promptly fell pregnant again, not giving my body any time off. Fourteen weeks cannot come soon enough (although if this pregnancy is anything like Isaac’s, there will be slight nausea easing after 10 weeks. I can only hope.)

    Really, that’s it. Everything else is pretty normal – except my breasts.

    Have I talked about the massive breast expansion of this pregnancy?

    WOW. I am overflowing out of all of my bras, despite moving up a cup size just before getting pregnant (for the first time). I remember the painful aching accompanying this from Isaac’s pregnancy, but considering I conceived him only shortly after weaning Amy, there wasn’t much my breasts could do. This time, they’re HUGE.

    I have awesome cleavage right now.

    I’m just saying, there are some perks to feeling so crappy.

  • My blog is not about you, or what you want.

    In the last couple of months, I’ve seen a few posts about the tracks that haven’t sat terribly well with me. Bloggers trying to justify why they’re not reading a certain other blog, or why they’re not commenting, or not driven to subscribe.

    And I’m here to say:

    My blog is not about you, or what you want.

    No, it really really isn’t. It REALLY isn’t.

    I write my blog because it makes me happy. I’ve slowly developed a like-minded community here, who enjoy what I write and have followed me along in this journey. Frankly, this is awesome and this is what I want.

    But if you think I am weeping at night, wondering why you are not reading my blog, then, I’m sorry, but you’re sorely mistaken.

    If my blog doesn’t do it for you, then move on. Don’t whinge about what I need to change (or what any blogger needs to change) in order to get you as a reader. Find someone else who is more your cup of tea instead.

    I know that a lot of topics turn a lot of people off. For the record, no one is holding a gun to your head and making you read.

    People blog for a lot of different reasons. I blog for connection. I want to connect with those people who read my words and get something out of it. If I write a post about the hell of PCOS periods, or the miserableness of watching a pregnancy slide down my legs in the shower, then I am writing those words for myself.

    However, I am also writing them for the people out there who have felt those same emotions, or who find the post later and are so grateful that someone else knows how it feels.

    I’m not writing for the candy-floss readers, who want my blog to be funny and lighthearted all the time. My blog reflects my real life, not the life I wish I was living.

    There are topics out there that turn a lot of people off. Poo seems to be the latest DON’T YOU DARE WRITE ABOUT IT.

    I’m here to tell you that if shit is a big part of your kids life, then shit will make it onto the blog.

    And I’ll admit – I am sensitive in this case. Isaac’s bowel issues have gone from moderately annoying, to severe and impacting on our lives and I am at the end of my tether.

    You can’t decide what I can and can’t write about, just to fit it in with your pretty sensibilities.

    You can make the decision to only read what you want to read and not be an arse about it though.

    I love my readers and my community here, but I will never be writing about pop culture and the pretty shiny things in life. I have one kid who scales the cupboards and steals my chocolate while screaming like a banshee, and another kid who can’t chew properly, can’t poo and won’t eat most food, while I spend a lot of the day downing anti-nausea drugs and trying not to puke, dislocate or miscarry.

    THAT is my real life. THAT is what is happening here on a daily basis.

    And if you don’t want to see that reflected in my writing, then I’m not sure this blog is for you.