Sleepless Nights

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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.

  • Everyone is a critic

    When I was working with ABC Radio, covering MONA FOMA, we copped some flak for not being professional enough, for not reviewing the events “correctly” for not adhering to the lofty professional ideals that other people would have.

    See, the thing is, we weren’t chosen because we were professional music and art critics, we were chosen because we were people, able to tell other people what we were enjoying.

    Then, the local paper ran a story about us and I copped even more flak, for being at MOFO when I had young children, for not being chained to the oven, for getting out of the house and GASP, actually doing something I enjoyed, while my children were cared for by their father.

    SOMEONE CALL CHILD PROTECTION, THIS MOTHER HAS A LIFE.

    I was stung and angry, because these people passing judgement, they didn’t know me and my personal situation. They didn’t know what I did for a living, just that I was a 22 year old mother of two and obviously was irresponsible, going out and working for the media. I used “gives young mothers a bad name” as my bio on twitter for a while, because it amused me.

    Months later, I was featured in the newspaper again, in a story about twitter and social media.

    Obviously someone who read my blog decided to get all upset that I have the audacity to tweet when I am (GASP) disabled and should obviously only be allowed out to collect my morning quota of sunshine, before being locked back in my box, never to bother humanity again.

    Apparently if I’m able to write things online, I am more than able to attend a 9-5 job and WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE, THINK OF THE REAL DISABLED PEOPLE OUT THERE? (Yes, the ones happily locked in their boxes.)

    Again, it stung and I was angry. Angry because broken joints mean that yes, I can write a blog post while laying down and publish it, but I can’t get up of a morning without relocating half a dozen joints. Angry because someone made the assumption that they knew what I lived with every day, when I chose to share parts of my life and angry that when everything is so hard for me, I still can only feel sad that people would like to make it harder.

    Yes, I attend brand events, as disabled as I am. I do this with the help of good joint braces, pain killers (the good ones) and an awfully long recovery time afterwards. I do it with a smile on my face, even when my ribs are dislocated, because hell, I can’t change it, so I can’t let it stop me living.

    I’ve had trolls, on and off since I started blogging. Nasty commenters set on destroying my reputation and having Sleepless Nights shut down, angry women declaring that breastfeeding is disgusting and sexual and people deciding that they knew what my life was like, just because I shared a snippet of it with them.

    I was on A Current Affair last night and woke up this morning to two comments, from someone who sounded decidedly familiar. Once I’d done an IP check and worked out where they came from, I stopped feeling stung. This person, they know that I have kids on the spectrum, that we have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, that I do brand work and that things are hard for me.

    I wasn’t upset, not in the way that the other comments made me. This person, they know my situation and they choose to believe that I am a liar. So be it. I cannot change what they think and the more I argue the point, the more they think I’m lying.

    This person, they lost their power to hurt me years ago. I read the comment, worked out who they were and went “yeah, so?”

    Trolls are hard to deal with sometimes. Everyone has an opinion about your life and how you should live it, even more so when you live your life online.

    Today’s troll was the easiest of the lot, because I could just laugh at him. In the scheme of other comments left, it was relatively mild.

    You want to complain about me giving my daughter panadol? Fine. I hope no one treats your daughter they way you’ve treated me.

    And that’s what I wanted to talk about today.

  • Our wedding, sick children and eggs. Lots of eggs.

    I awoke at 3am to Amy, staring at me.

    “Mummmmmy, my ear hurts.”

    She coughed a little for good measure, as I stumbled out of bed and towards the fridge for panadol. This is why I buy panadol when my children are awfully healthy – it’s because I don’t want to be short of it at 3am.

    I dosed her up, tucked her back into bed and fell back asleep myself, praying that she wasn’t really getting sick, as the things I had planned for today really didn’t require two children in attendance.

    When my alarm went off and I stopped pressing snooze repeatedly, I woke Amy up.

    And then I woke her up again five minutes later.

    And then again, 10 minutes later.

    “But mummy, my bones are really very tired today.”

    I was still hopeful that I would be able to send her to school, up until she dozed off during breakfast, before coughing herself awake again.It appeared she was actually, unfortunately, ill.

    Instead of school, that would have been a lovely break for me and fun for her, she got to come to see our Celebrant with us, while Nathan and I dealt with the legal stuff that we needed to get married.

    Both children were very well behaved, in the scheme of things and I was quite pleased. We’re now all official with our legal intentions to marry and birth certificates looked at and everything. That is exciting.

    26th of November, we’re getting married.

    ***

    In other news, which is unrelated to everything else, I collected 14 eggs today. FOURTEEN. Even though I am using eggs as fast as I can, I am not using eggs as fast as my chooks are popping them out.

    I’ve asked Nathan nicely (demanded) to make me a sign to put out the front, offering eggs for sale, but he is terribly busy with other things (slacking off) and hasn’t. Yet.

    All of this is to say, if you’re in Tasmania, in the Hobart ish area and would like to buy some proper free range eggs, then I’m your girl.

    When I say proper free range, I mean, my chooks have access to an acre of pasture that is mine 24/7 and they frequently roam the 10 acres of pasture that surrounds me. They are proper free range and the eggs are delicious.

    I also have duck eggs to sell, but supply of these is not as reliable as the chook eggs, so email me first.

  • Working with brands: The importance of talking with bloggers, not just at them.

    I was at the Kellogg’s breakfast on Thursday and as the conversation flowed around the table, I was trying to work out why I felt differently about this brand event and why, suddenly, I was feeling excited to be there and talking with the Kellogg’s representatives.

    It was the communication.

    You see, Kellogg’s was interested in having their message heard and talking to bloggers, but more than that, they wanted to hear back from us. What made us think the way we did, why we did or didn’t like things and how we approach breakfast time, our families and our blogs.

    This is the part of working with bloggers that it feels like a lot of companies are missing.

    The Kellogg’s event was a huge success for me. There we were, sitting around a table together, talking, discussing and having Kellogg’s listen in return. That kind of involvement is priceless. Even as the morning drew to a close, we had a lot of things left to say and the discussions probably could have lasted another hour, without me getting bored.

    I get a lot of PR pitches in my email, a good portion of them that are just press releases. I am never quite sure what I am meant to do with them and when I’ve asked the contact person what exactly they want from me, I get a “We thought you might like to pass it along to your readers.”

    “HERE’S OUR MESSAGE, REGURGITATE IT FOR US.”

    I have opinions and I like to talk about why I think the way I do and I like it even more when the brand I am talking with stops and listens. I don’t like being talked at, or having to wade through a brand message to work out what they want from me.

    Other bloggers no doubt feel the same way. Communication and brand work are a two way street and it’s unsettling to realise that a lot of brands just want to dump a message in our lap and run.

    I don’t want to work like that – I want to build relationships and work with brands who are as interested in hearing from me, as I am from them.

    There is a certain level of excitement when things come together and I’m left feeling the potential of a situation and what it might bring. I left the Kellogg’s plant feeling excited about working with them and what the future might hold for brand work when it’s done well.

    Because of how Kellogg’s approached us, as mums and bloggers, it made me want to work with them, and promote their products and tell people that yes, Kellogg’s is a great company to be talking with and buying products from.

    I didn’t feel like I’d been talked at, or taken advantage of, or used to promote a message to my readers. I felt like my opinion was valued and that maybe, our opinions there on Thursday actually mattered to Kellogg’s.

    And really, that can only be a good thing.

    [L-R My Mummy Daze, Goog Googs, Diminishing Lucy, Me! and Hear Mum Roar]

    Thanks very much to Kellogg’s, DEC Communications and Louisa at Brand Meets Blog for organising everything.

  • Support Australian Musicians – The Jane Austen Argument

    I really like this song.

    And because I really like you guys, I even managed to work out how to turn autoplay off. Aren’t I nice?

    You can help support them too.