Sleepless Nights

Tag: country living is overrated

  • Invasion of the garden eating monsters.

    Nathan and I were playing Minecraft the other night when we heard a scream. It echoed around the entire house, leaving us listening for the sound of a baby waking up, or a terrified child.

    [Related, yes, we play Minecraft together. It’s not just a game for children. Shut up.]

    When no one woke up, we looked at each other and sighing, headed for the torch.

    “It was, wasn’t it?”

    “Yep. It was a possum.”

    I knew we had a possum, because the other night, she was dancing an irish jig on the roof above my bed at three am. Later, I prayed for her death, while wondering how wrong it was to hope for something that inconveniences me personally to, you know, DIE.

    We headed outside to our one large gumtree on the property and started looking. BANG, there she was. I glared at her and she chittered at me anxiously as I shone the torch in her eyes, wishing that my torch was actually a laser so that I could get rid of the destructive fucking thing.

    Not that I’m bloodthirsty or anything.

    (I am.)

    It’s no secret that I don’t like brushtailed possums. My wish for them to pack up their bags and move far far away from my house is well documented and loudly voiced. They’re destructive. They kill my baby trees. They break tree branches. One fucker has been stealing my chicken eggs.

    I am not impressed to have yet another one living near my house.

    However, if I’m really lucky, this one will also get hit by a car, at which point I’ll do a little dance of glee, before composing myself and celebrating internally.

    I am such a bad person.

    This is why I need a protective ring of triffids around my house. Not only will they take care of marauding possums, but I can put them to work hunting down the mice that are currently eating all my seedlings. Sure, they might kill me too, but DETAILS.

  • These are intolerable working conditions.

    [Video: Now with captions]

    Internet, I give you the baby birds that are screeching above my desk. BECAUSE I WANT YOU TO SUFFER WITH ME.

    These working conditions are intolerable. I’ve tried complaining to the groundskeeper and maintenance man (Nathan) but he tells me his hands are tied and I need to discuss the issue with pest control (The Cats).

    Either way, nothing is getting done and my ears are hurting.

  • Painkillers, headspace, broken joints and assorted other things that won’t make sense

    It was after I dropped Amy off at school that my hands started to hurt, badly. We were on the way to the supermarket and I’d already had to talk myself out of vomiting a few times this morning, so my head really wasn’t up to ignoring the pain in my hands.

    By the time I was 3/4 of the way through the supermarketing, I was unable to push the trolley and the pain was at the front and centre of most of my thoughts. Luckily, with the help of unlimited lollipops, Isaac was being practically angelic and just following along behind us, as Nathan pushed the trolley and lifted the heavy things, like milk and rice.

    (Side note: It takes three lollipops to get the supermarketing done without meltdowns or screaming. What I need now, is to find lollipops without artificial colours.)

    I held on, until I got to the chemist, knowing that I had scripts for regular tramadol (that doesn’t give me insomnia) and panadol oesto for the arthritis pain. Only, when I went to fill the script, I discovered that it was out of date and I was out of luck. Fun times, you guys, fun times.

    By the time we made it home, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind and Isaac deciding to have a meltdown over toothpaste wasn’t really something I wanted to deal with.

    I managed to take some slow release tramadol (that does give me insomnia) and now, two hours later, it has kicked in and while I’m still in pain, I’m rather stoned and I don’t care quite so much. It was a choice between stoned, or knocked out. Sometimes there are no good choices.

    This Winter has been really bad. I’m coming out of the other side of SAD, smack into depression and anxiety, but I think that if I can hold on until the weather warms up, I might be okay. My soul is screaming for long hot days spent laying in the sun, letting the warmth fix my joints for a little while.

    ***

    I was outside using the pitchfork to poke holes in the swampy patch in my back corner. I had a bag full of mint that needed to be planted and Isaac was helping me, by tipping out the roots and running away with them.

    Three holes in, the pitchfork handle snapped in my face, as the bottom (metal) end threw itself up into my forehead.

    “Mummy! It hit you in the head! MUMMY!”

    Funnily enough, I realised that.

    My forehead still hurts, but the cut is healing, at least.

    I can’t say that it’s helping either my mental or physical states to be beating myself up with a pitchfork, however.

    On the upside, with some help from Nathan, I got 20 currant cuttings planted out (not sure what types – Mum had forgotten) and a bag full of mint plants planted. And the raspberry canes survived being transplanted and are shooting up.

    Finally.

    ***

    It’s been dark inside my head lately. I keep putting one foot in front of the other and trusting to the fact that eventually, this will change. It might not get better, or easier, but I can count on it getting different at some point.

    Different is good.

    I’m discontent with my house, with my lack of garden, with a paddock full of nothing, that screams its nothingness at me every time I see it. With the clutter and the lack and the excess and everything. I am discontent.

    I need to work on getting things inside my head sorted, so that I can work on getting things outside of my head sorted.

    And until then, I’m going to keep dreaming of moving house and living somewhere that isn’t falling down, that has a garden to sit in and just be, and storage space and cupboards for everything. I hear that they exist, somewhere.

    Until then, I’m going to keep planting things and hoping that they grow and help sort my sanity out.

    ***

    I don’t think this post makes much sense. Sorry 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.

  • I am such a country girl

    It doesn’t take much to send me into paroxysms of delight nowadays. A rabbit, some fruit trees and some blue metal will just about do it.

    The mud has been steadily rising here, threatening to swallow my house whole. Fifteen ducks paddling in it have been making it worse and when an equal number of chooks stand around the front door yelling for food, while also scratching through the mud for interesting grubs, it can only end in disaster.

    I put my foot down when I started to feel like it might just be easier to mud ski around parts of my paddock and insisted that we order some blue metal (crushed rock) to cover the muddy areas with.

    It’s interesting to see who you know in our relatively small community and the woman on the other end of the phone when we ordered, was a girl that I had gone to school with. She arranged for everything to be dropped off that very same afternoon, while I imagined a future in which sliding through the mud wouldn’t exist. Blissful thoughts.

    Of course, like all things possibly related to Murphy, the truck arrived while I was in the middle of collecting eggs that hadn’t been collected while I was away. There I was standing in my daggiest clothes, with blackberry leaves caught in my hair, and my shirt pulled up to make a basket for the eight eggs I had just collected, three of them covered heavily in chook poo.

    Never let me tell you that my life is glamorous.

    Chook poo and a hoisted up shirt aside, Isaac and Amy were also outside with me.

    There is only so much consoling you can do when your shirt is full of eggs and shit and your toddler is trying to flail on the ground in duck poo and mud, while a truck roars and beeps in the background.

    On the upside, no one got squashed, we didn’t smash any eggs and duck poo washes off small boys quite easily. Thank god.

    Nathan spent the day shifting blue metal yesterday and I must say, I am not missing the mud slide. Not at all.

    ***

    Today of course, I was hunter gathering, as I’m wont to do. This is no ordinary hunter gathering mind you, this is bare hands and unsuitable shoes type hunter gathering.

    First, I picked out some new fruit trees, while holding fourteen kilos of toddler on my hip and smiling at the woman who was helping me. THEN, I insisted that Isaac hug his grandmother while I sorted out my gift certificate and Nathan bought new mattresses in the next door shop.

    And then I came home and caught a rabbit, with my bare hand. Only one hand, the other hand was full of an egg that my chooks had laid.

    Yes, you read that right, I caught a rabbit. WITH MY HAND.

    Behold! My awe inspiring rabbit catching abilities.

    Okay, so it was only a baby and it had run into an old cupboard and possibly all I did was flip the cupboard over onto its back so that the rabbit couldn’t jump out, but I CAUGHT IT.

    There is something to be said for being able to announce to the collective members of a room (front yard) “Hey, so I just caught a rabbit. BY MYSELF. Want to see?” and then actually produce a live rabbit for the gooing and the gaahing over.

    Hunter gathering went well today.

    Now if I can just find where my bloody poultry are hiding their nests, I’ll be lots happier.

    ***

    The bunny was so small that I couldn’t be bothered killing it. I don’t mind shooting, but there is just something so personal about breaking a neck, or chopping off a head, you know? Plus, with all the effort I went to to catch the little thing, it hardly seemed fair that then I would then be the one gutting and skinning it and getting all up and personal with its sneeze making fur.

    And I might have had a Watership Downs flashback and wondered who was waiting for the baby rabbit at home and not been able to stop myself personifying it.

    [Digression: The cat was waiting for the baby rabbit when I went back to let it go. He had been patiently sitting on the piece of tin I had blocked the opening with, waiting for his dinner to make its way out of the box. Now I know both why the cat is so fat and why there was a baby rabbit in the middle of my paddock in the first place. Curiosity satisfied.]