Sleepless Nights

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  • Walking into walls

    It wasn’t that I didn’t want to become intimately aquainted with the doorframe; it was that I was on my way to the toilet and walking into the door slowed things down immeasurably. In fact, I am certain that it is a perfectly nice door frame, even if it is painted a godawful purple colour that makes me want to puke.

    Walking into doorframes at 3am has become something of a specialty of mine, along with learning where every single exit is in a room, in case I need to run outside to throw up, and working out, if I fall over, what is the least embarrassing way to manage it? (Tripping in the airport: Manageable. Tripping as you exit the aircraft down the stairs: Highly hazardous to your health. Avoid the latter at all costs.)

    Upon examination this morning, aside from the headache I have, I don’t appear to have any lasting side effects, unlike the time I walked into a doorframe so hard in year 7 that I concussed myself.

    Sure, I told everyone that I tripped and hit my head on the book cart, but I lied. I really just misjudged where my feet were and walked, hard, into the doorframe. It wasn’t pretty, as the purple bruise on my forehead the next day showed everyone. I spent a few days on the couch feeling nauseous and forgetful after that one. It was also the start of learning that I have to be lying down to have blood taken, otherwise I will throw up and pass out at the same time – a slightly dangerous combination.

    Another time, I misjudged where my hand was while I was talking and took all the skin off my knuckles on the jagged brick wall. Walking into class with your hand dripping blood might be dramatic, but I would have preferred to float a little further under the radar than that.

    Good times, good times.

    I am bendy today. So bendy that I’m seriously considering putting on my supportive undergarments, 3 of my ribs are currently dislocated, breathing feels too much like hard work and I think my hands have forgotten that they’re meant to be attached to my wrists still. Isaac dislocated my finger this morning. Thanks kid.

    But really, I’m not complaining.

    Except about the awful purple colour my house is painted. I am complaining about that.

  • I am so not fashionable

    I am so bendy, we don’t go out often. I prefer to conserve my energy doing things like reading novels, occasional baking, child snuggling and writing. This is much easier to do when I haven’t used all of my energy traipsing around a supermarket, or glaring at old ladies who don’t understand why Isaac is speaking at volume 11 and spinning in circles.

    Because I don’t often go out, it wasn’t until recently that I bought any nice clothes. The AusBlogCon cemented my need for something that wasn’t jeans and a t-shirt and so I bought some bits and pieces.

    So now I’ve got skirts and heels and shirts and scarves, but who can pull off that kind of attire, when the most exciting thing planned for the day is walking through a paddock looking for eggs?

    Even worse, when the paddock is muddy, I usually have “outside pants” and “inside pants” and my outside pants get worn, muddied up, taken off, hung in front of the fire and ignored. Do I actually need to be wearing pants if all I’m doing is blogging?

    My paddock bashing gear is all stuff I’ve had for years. I’m loathe to wear good clothes if they’re going to get dragged through the mud, snotted on, flown into, or muddied up by dogs. Although, I am getting much quicker at dodging the incoming flying ducks and they’re getting better at not landing on me, or in the feed bucket I’m carrying. For the record, ducks are heavy and flappy.

    So really, I spend a lot of time in jeans that are a size too big, daggy t-shirts and windcheaters. All of this, I am certain, make me look uber sexy.

    Fashion blogging seems to be the “in” thing at the moment, but I’m not sure I want to inflict myself on the Internet, wearing my everyday clothes. It’s bad enough that I wear a lot of it to school drop offs.

    I can say this though – I have not ever gone to the supermarket, or school, in my pajamas. Ever.

    Is it terrible of me to admit that the most fashionable thing I own and wear on a regular basis, are my new red gumboots? They’re only mine because they wouldn’t fit Mum, and they’re two sizes too big, but they’re shiny (still) and waterproof.

    For someone who used to overly concerned with how everyone else was dressing and keeping up with the latest looks (even if those looks were, in hindsight, crap), I have certainly fallen a very long way. Heh.

  • Mushrooms at The Cupping Room

    I don’t eat out very often, much to my great sadness. I would love to, but sadly, when you’ve got autistic children and bendy joints, it can make doing things like eating out quite difficult.

    In turn, this makes it all the more fun when I do finally get to eat out and last week at The Cupping Room was no exception.

    I wasn’t quite sure what to expect actually, I had heard very good reports from my twitter and facebook friends, extolling the virtues of their coffee and food, but at the time I was researching, they didn’t have a website with a menu I could look over.

    We arrived, ordered hot drinks and looked over the menu for a bit. I knew I was having mushrooms, but I rather like stickybeaking at menus anyway.

    In the end, Mum and I both ordered the mushroom bruschetta (mushrooms on sourdough toast, with wilted baby spinach, feta, caramelised onions, basil and an apple balsamic reduction – $15), along with a coffee for Mum and hot chocolate for me.

    The hot drinks arrived before the meal and I loved the novelty of my hot chocolate. I was able to work out how strong I wanted it myself, using hot milk and melted Belgian chocolate. It was absolutely divine and I hear that the coffee was just as good.

    Then our mushrooms arrived. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but large mushrooms probably weren’t it. It was a good surprise though and even better when I tasted them. Absolutely flawless, in my opinion.

    The balance of flavours was perfect and not only didn’t we speak much while we ate, I didn’t even want to stop eating to tweet about it. That is how good it was. I’m usually a fan of mushrooms anyway, but this dish was beyond what I expected from simple mushrooms.

    It does go to show, when you’re using great ingredients, it doesn’t take much to make it spectacular.

    I can highly recommend The Cupping Room, to anyone who wants a slightly quirky dining experience, with great coffee, great service and food that is, by all accounts, brilliant.

    You can find The Cupping Room on Facebook, but their website is still under construction.

    The Cupping Room is located at 105 Murray Street, Hobart.

    ***

    Thanks to the Mushroom Growers Association for pushing me out of my comfort zone and asking that I eat mushrooms and review them here – I’ve found this a lot of fun. Even if I am slightly late with the review. This post was meant to be part of Mushroom Mania, but once I’d agreed to participate, we discovered that Tassie didn’t have any participating restaurants. So instead I got to do some food blogging.

    Disclaimer: I was paid for this post and all opinions are my own and completely honest.

  • I watched The Cove and I cried. You should watch it too. #thecove

    It’s like poking at a sore tooth, wanting to flip the world upside down and peer at the dark underbelly of humanity and our arrogance.

    I make myself do these things because I feel I need to bear witness, and then in turn, ask other people to bear witness with me.

    I watched The Cove tonight on ABC and I cried. The slaughter of dolphins in a cove in Japan, when the water turned red with blood.. Images of dolphins trying to escape and the screams of the babies as they were stabbed to death will make me cry for while yet.

    Dolphins are possibly, more intelligent than humans. They are self aware and yet, we insist on killing them. Most dolphin meat isn’t sold as dolphin meat, but sold as whale meat (which: whole other issue, humans should not be killing whales either).

    The dolphins that are killed are the ones rejected by the dolphin trainers. Deemed not pretty enough, or perfect enough to be sold to places like Seaworld, they are herded into the cove and slaughtered. Every single one.

    If we didn’t have a market for captive dolphins, would the slaughter still continue? I don’t know.

    I can’t do anything to help, except throw a little money the way of the campaign and add my voice to theirs.

    I am standing up to say that this isn’t right and more steps should be taken to stop it.

    You can watch The Cove on iView if you missed it. It’s available for 13 days, after that you’ll need to buy the DVD.

    Have tissues handy.

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  • Sunday Selections, sort of. With lots of talking. Because I CAN.

    My children have been screaming at each other for hours. Amy has done something to Isaac, but Isaac has touched something of Amy’s and it’s just this big convoluted mess of screaming and sibling angst and apparently I’m not paying enough attention to either of them, despite ending up with both of them in my lap at every opportunity.

    We’re all sick, with some sort of fluey cold thing, and I’m due for my period, which means my joints keep falling out of place. Exhaustion levels are high, as are levels of snot soaked tissues (and shoulders and knees – thanks Isaac) and PMS.

    I spent some time looking back through old photos, like I always do on Sunday and now I’m sad. I’ve got PMS and I miss my grandmother and the week of slightly warm weather has decided to disappear and nothing is working how it should, least of all my body. Shoulders are not meant to go crunch when you roll over in bed.

    Some days, I would like to just go back to bed and stay there. Some days, it all just feels like too much and I’d like to trade back the dead grandmothers and autism and Ehlers Danlos for a door that isn’t quite so tough.

    Please.

    My children before they got all angry with each other:

    Our sunset the other day:

    And these, that make me miss Summer so terribly.

    MONA FOMA:

    My garden – before the frost killed everything.

    See more Sunday Selections here.