Monthly Archives: May 2016
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Post It Notes To Pimp My GiveAway
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Not OK.
Learn to swing like Tiger Woods… – RRSAHM
Learn to swing like Tiger Woods…
Yep, I know how ironic this is- I’m contributing to the current hysteria- but I am so over hearing about Tiger Woods. Yep, the man is an idiot. He has cheated on his wife repeatedly, and if he were my husband… well, I’d like to say I’d castrate him, but we all know that in reality I am a total doormat.
Anyway, this morning on Sunrise (that quality piece of programming), they interrupted themselves to go to breaking news- a reporter, live outside the hospital where Tiger’s MIL was just being released, with a clean bill of health. This is breaking news, worth a live feed? Not even him, but his MIL?? Ridiculous.
To the media of the world- lay off. Not for him- he deserves what he gets- but for his wife and kid. She must be humiliated enough without his indiscretions becoming breaking news. What a rotten situation to be in.
And on a side note- the Tiger Mistress Count is currently at eleven. Eleven. Where did this guy find time to play golf amongst all that anyway?
Previous post: Obviously it’s the silly season…
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: In The Powder Room
Stupid Things Lori Does (When She Is Sick). – RRSAHM
Stupid Things Lori Does (When She Is Sick).
Why hello there,
Please enjoy the following list of all the reasons I just should not socialise, in any way, shape or form, virtual or otherwise, while I am sick and fevered.
I almost got narky at B’s place.
I f**ked up and published Kristin’s guest post on the wrong day.
And totally forgot to do an announcement about my guest post. Which is here, in case you missed it.
I lost my car keys. Well, actually, I didn’t lose my car keys, but I thought I did. It’s a long story. One that ended with me, on the payphone at the local shops, babe in arms, sobbing to The Man.
Allow me to elaborate.
I drop the Chop off with a mate, and run to the shops with Bump, to pick up the required supplies- lemonade, Hydralite iceblocks, frozen lasagna for dinner so The Man’s stomach does not get cranky. I lug my sweating, fevered self back to the car, throw groceries and baby in. (Well, not literally throw the baby in, you know what I mean.)
But where are my keys?
Obviously they are here somewhere. They must be. I just unlocked the car. Or did I…? Maybe I left it unlocked to start with?
Who knows. A further 45 minutes, trudging the shops, looking for lost keys; one horrible moment when I realise I don’t even have my mobile phone with me, having left it at home in my rush to get to the shops. Two tearful, sobbing payphone calls to The Man. Quite a few people looking at me rather oddly.
And one moment of absolutely kicking my own ass when I realise my keys are, in fact, right where I left them. Tucked into the canopy of the Bump’s pram. Which I swear I checked, three or four times over the course of this whole drama.
Therefore I have decided it’s safer for all involved if I just stay put, silent, until I’m feeling better.
I’m sure you all understand.
Leave a Comment
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
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May 4, 2010 at 9:33 pm -
Virtual hugs Lori (1 cause we don't live close and 2 cause then I might not catch it and 3 a URL jug might be a little weird
) . I hope you're feeling better soon xo - May 4, 2010 at 3:16 pm
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I've lost my keys in the exact same place before, well not Bump's pram exactly, but y'know…. And I wasn't even sick.
Hope you're feeling better.
*big squishy hugs*
- May 4, 2010 at 12:02 pm
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Get some rest and feel better!
- May 4, 2010 at 9:49 am
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It usually takes me about 3 vicodin before I do all that. Glad you found your keys. I have days like that. And always, always, they are somewhere stupid and obvious.
BTW, went back and "liked" your comment on B's blog.
Previous post: Guest Post- How to have a satisfying customs experience
Next post: Fan Me, Man.
Countdown to Borneo- Seven Days. – RRSAHM
Countdown to Borneo- Seven Days.
Countdown to Borneo: 13 days to take off.
Anxiety Level: Increasing
Organisation Level: Low to Moderate
***
I keep reminding myself- I’ll only be gone for nine days. In my mind it feels likes some kind of forever, an indistinguishable eternity of change.
Fueled by my children’s obsession with death, perhaps, or maybe the other way around (whichever). The thought of dying in a horrible plane crash or ingesting some variety of flesh eating parasite exists in my mind as though it’s already happened. There’s a nagging, uncomfortable anxiety at the edges of my consciousness.
I really don’t want to die. That’s a thought is both unfamiliar and comforting. I find the universe’s inherent sense of irony alarming in it’s extremes- it would fit, horribly, if I were to find some kind of happy, begin to feel ‘normal’ again, only to cease existing altogether at the crux of it.
I put that thought out of my mind, away in a compartment marked ‘Impending Doom’. There’s not much else to do with it.
***
I’ve never been away from my children for such an extended period of time before, and I will miss them.
I’m existing in a heady mix of terror and excitement I’ve never felt before. It’s as though every time I inhale I’m reminded of how very scary this is (this is my first time overseas, I’m effectively going all by myself, I am far too f*cking old to be doing this for the first time…). But for every inhale, there is an exhale. And every exhale is a fizzing excitement akin to rapture (I am doing this, I am going overseas. I am terrified and I’m doing it anyway).
My bigger-picture consciousness runs on the same undulating, up and down waves. I bounce from maniacal organisation- packing, sorting, photocopying, planning; to lazy apathy- smoking cigarettes, drinking copious cans of V, randomly surfing longform reads on the web. I’m thinking it’s a kind of self-regulation; my mind effectively shutting down the Big Preparing To Go Overseas process at regular intervals. Lest it overwhelm me and I begin to feel as though I’m drowning in it completely.
Deep breaths. Just seven days to go.
***
Sometimes weird stuff just happens.
I had the pleasure of taking my mum on a BridgeClimb for Mother’s Day (more on that coming soon, and you can check out the video on YouTube).
It wasn’t until the end of the climb that we really got chatting to our instructor, Nicole. As it turns out, Nicole’s dad runs a tour company in Borneo. Working with orangutans.
Nicole’s dad is Garry, the owner and organiser of Orangutan Odysseys, the company that’s taking me to Borneo.
I like to think these things happen for a reason. I’m not sure what that reason is, as yet. But what are the chances, of a coincidence like that?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
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May 14, 2013 at 1:13 pm -
Oh, how exciting! I flew to Spain recently – about 15 hours of flying. If I thought about it too much, I could imagine all sorts of horrible things happening. But once I got settled in on the plane, it was great. How often do I get to just sit for a 9 hour stretch and watch movies or read? You’re going to have a wonderful adventure that will make the trip all worth it!
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May 13, 2013 at 11:27 am -
Hey Lori, we took our kids backpacking in borneo december before last for three weeks, although we only went to the Malaysian side. Loved it totally. Have fun over there. I blogged it too – http://downunder2borneo.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/at-home-in-kuala-lumpur/
Jack recently posted…How I fell onto the wagon.
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May 13, 2013 at 8:34 am -
I love coincidences like that! While I don’t know if it’s really all that small a world, I do think it’s a pretty amazing one that coincidences like that occur. What are the odds? I say I’m not superstitious, but I obviously am because I read into signs like that. I think it’s a marvellous sign.
Your fear of flying is so like mine. It is one of the things that has kept me from going overseas (that, and the whole money thing, you know, not having any of it!) I like being alive and the dear of flying is really just a fear of dying. I make the doctors give me many, many sedatives (though most doctors take one look at my funny-looking personage and flat out refuse) because I simply can’t get on a plane without them. It’s not just for me, it is actually really uncomfortable for the other passengers to be on a plane with someone who freaks out as much as I do!
But, I’m planning two trips in the next 18 months, and I’m already working myself up. I can do it, and if I can you can too!
Previous post: Morbid.
Next post: That’s Anxiety, Too.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Giant.
Fire, Part Two. – RRSAHM
Fire, Part Two.
A letter for my Tony…
I will never be ashamed of you.
I hate the pitied looks some people give me when I tell them how you died. It makes my breath catch, after so long of being OK with it– I forget that this is supposed to be shameful, to bring shame to you.
There is none, not a particle of shame, not as far as I’m concerned. I love you like fire. Deep in the very centre of me, where we keep the small flames burning of precious oils for all the souls we have loved, I always will. There is a burner, tiny and ornate, filled the essence of the first person I ever loved completely, without fear and hiding bits of me behind masks and cut outs– the first person who ever loved me, completely, in return. It’s flame is tended by my memories, the memories I have of us, when things where blissful and we were so very in love.
Because if what we had wasn’t love, in it’s sweetest most robust form, then I don’t think it exists. It was beyond love, because we built things on it. Emotion is like vapor– houses and children and wedding rings are tangible. They can means nothing, of course, and many will tell you that’s true. A marriage is nothing bar a piece of parchment paper with a stamped or printed signature.
But then, a wedding day can be as simple as willow branch. And ours was– it was the tieing of people, the making of two into one. The base for a heady, fraught emotion that had become something solid, something tall, something real.
And I thought it would grow taller. I really believed, in my heart of hearts, that you and I would grow old together. That we’d have our shit times, and our good times. That one of us might cheat, and be forgiven. That money would get tough and we’d get through it.
That every wedding we danced at for the next forty years, we’d reminisce sweetly in whispers of our own.
And this was only the beginning of it, the fresh and fertile patch of marriage life, where children are tiny and time is precious and life tramples all over your good intentions. This was our nappies–and–Wiggles–and–sleepless–nights–and–rare–dinners–out–and–shhh–don’t–wake–the–baby time. It was guaranteed to be rough. We were destined to fight. And fight we did, like wildfire. The very same way we loved each other.
Because following this it was supposed to be over, in a completely different way to what it is now. Our children would gradually slip into school age, time passing before we even noticed it happening. And we’d move into school–concerts–and–weekend–sports–and–Justin–Beiber–and–friends–over–for–bbqs–and–mature–age–university–student–and–trusting–each–other–through–years–of–compromise stage.
And we’d love each other that little bit more ever year that passed. A love born of familiarity and working through stuff and not giving up… the way a marriage is supposed to be.
Somewhere, a pipe dream way off in the foggy distance, we would retire to a lighthouse and live a simple life of thermos of hot coffee and dawn fishing trips and watching old (1990′s) movies together on the lounge a night.
It’s an existence I kiss softly and whisper goodbye to… fold into a paper boat and softly wish it solace as I let it glide from hands into the open gray sea.
The nappies–and–Wiggles stage is just about over here, where we are, your children and I.. stuck down here on Earth. With no newborn to sustain it and the Chop off to school in mere months… it’s passed before I even realized it was happening. It’s sad, and I regret it already. It makes me angry with you, that you took that from me when I enjoyed it so thoroughly, when it was all I ever really wanted to do.
But at least I can begin this next stage without missing you so very much– because I had never fully visualized it before you died. This day to day little person raising existence I’m living now, I know every time you are missing from a scene you should be in– and that’s always– because I can rememeber so clearly what it was like to have you here. Because I had this perfectly accurate picture in my mind of how it would be.
We start the next phase with a cleaner slate, the kids and I. There are no blueprints for this one, no expectations that are truly impossible to meet. I’ve stopped waiting for someone new to come along and ’fix’ us, or make the three of us feel complete– we feel complete the way we are. I just had to be patient… it took some time to get here.
It’s saying goodbye, in a way, to something that was so tactically, touchably real and replacing it with a daydream of what could have been. I witnessed you here in the little kid phase,I know what I’m missing. This next bit, I’ve never done it any other way except alone.
And that’s easier, somehow. Less painful. The daydream is further off from here, in the distance where I cant touch it, grab it and wring at it, make its nerve endings sting and squelch in pain. The reality of what was missing was far, far too close… close enough to hurt all the time.
We’re in a transition. Watch over us, as you do. I miss you– that’s a simple fact of life, always will be. But I’m missing the Tony who is eternally 34. And I’m getting older.
This is just to let you know, I guess– we’re OK. I know you knew I would be– I think you always knew how strong I could be if I needed to. But the doesn’t abscond you from leaving me.
And you still owe me, remember? I’m ok here, alone… but I’m lonely.
I miss you. I love you.
Like fire.
Leave a Comment
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
- September 5, 2012 at 9:12 am
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Truly beautiful Lori. Tony is proud of you … as we all are. xx
- August 31, 2012 at 1:34 pm
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I should be letting go of the life that I believe I should have had, a life with three living children, a life with a daughter and two sons, but I'm finding it so difficult. Letting go means facing the fact that I have no bloody idea whatsoever what my life will be. Letting go means letting go of hope that everything will somehow be all right. Letting go means that the best bits of my life have already been, and that's too bloody awful to contemplate.
This post made me cry. A lot. Because I feel/felt that way too.
- August 29, 2012 at 11:41 am
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Hello Lori. What a beautifully written post in regards to seizing attachment of your beloved belated. I recently discovered that in order to live out the rest of my existence, I too, had to let go of the life I once shared with a loving, compassionate husband. I'm in year four. He died of brain cancer at 34. It nearly killed me. I was left with a one year old son, and a house far too big to take care of on my own. Not exactly how I imagined my life to be at this age, but plans change, and so do we. By the way, your blog came recommended to me following a shitty fall-out of my own. I just finished up a year of dating, and it was hell. There isn't a replacement, only acceptance. I'm learning the importance of letting go. Rebuilding is in order. And thankfully, I've a priest-friend to help me out who just so happens to think exactly like my belated, and me. There is still good to be had in this world.
- August 28, 2012 at 10:19 pm
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Wow! That was beautiful! I have no other words…
- August 28, 2012 at 10:14 pm
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So beautiful
- August 28, 2012 at 10:13 pm
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Beautiful as always Lori. Don't ever be ashamed. It was a terrible situation but not a shameful one.
And I know the three of you will be ok. xxxx - August 28, 2012 at 10:07 pm
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Lori what a beautiful post. You're writing style is so amazing, and the honesty you show is so wonderful, never shying away from the truth of your feelings. Thank you for your openess.
- August 28, 2012 at 9:02 pm
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Beautifully written.
- August 28, 2012 at 8:36 pm
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Beautiful, just beautiful. So strong and true.
- August 28, 2012 at 6:29 pm
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Amen.
- August 28, 2012 at 10:17 am
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Simply beautiful. Such a way with words. Such a lady tom boy. Amazing.
Previous post: This Place Is Yours
Next post: Memory Is A Subjective Matter, Part One
Mummy Blogging 101- Corporate Whorism. – RRSAHM
Mummy Blogging 101- Corporate Whorism.
Aloha,
This is one of those blog posts that has been hanging around in the back of my head for a while now. Fermenting. As most good blog posts do. And, as usually happens, something occurred recently that acted as a catalyst for the whole idea to grow into a mutant opinionated Web baby and be born into the blogosphere, kicking and screaming and burning it’s feed. Or something.
A question, on ye olde FormSpring account. E’nuff Nuffnang, apparently. Boom tish, anonymous FormSpringer.
I felt it was worth a blog post. I’ve been meaning to have a natter about this to you, my jellybeaners, for a while now.
As you may have noticed, I publish here a lot. Five days a week, in fact. Some of those posts are “high value” posts, that I know people will love to read. Sometimes, they’re “low value” posts, that may not be so much fun to read, but serve a purpose.
I do my bestest to make this a high-value kinda place to be. I try to write my low value posts as entertaining as I can possibly can, but there’s only so much one do with air conditioners.
I started this blog as a hobby, and I’ve been lucky enough that it’s grown considerably. Why? I have no freaking idea. Some days, cyber-karma treats me well and my inbox is full and overflowing with offers to do reviews, competitions, pitches and sponsored posts. And some days, I take these random PR people up on their offers.
I get to do some cool stuff. I get some cool stuff for free. Most of the time, I’m obligated to tell you lot about it. That’s why I get it. I’ve read some very boring sponsored posts, in my not-so-extensive blogging time. And I’ve promised myself that while it may be many things, this blog will never be boring.
If you don’t like my sponsored posts, don’t read them. If you feel I’m doing too many of them, then feel free to let me know (just like our friend the FormSpringer), or just vote with your mouse and unsubscribe. Never feel obligated to read my sponsored posts, or comment on them. Never feel obliged to read anything I post, unless you’re thoroughly enjoying it.
As I said, I post here five days a week. I put my blood, housework time, sweat and tears into this blog (in a totally metaphorical, non-gross kinda way). I love to write. I love that people read what I write. I love being part of the mummy blogging community.
But I also get up to 40 emails in my inbox a day and spend up to 5 hours a day on the computer.
We’re a single income family here, with two very small children. More often than not, money is tight and we struggle to make ends meet. I published two sponsored posts in the last fortnight. I know those posts are low value. So, I’m guessing, are the FlogYoBlog Friday posts (good thing because no one reads the damn things anyway). But discounting the low value stuff, that’s still six high value posts I’ve published in a fortnight. And that’s reasonable… right?
I think it is. When you consider that those sponsored posts will pay for three months of my son’s swimming lessons, something that he dearly loves, and we would never give up, but always struggle to find the cash for. Or when you take into account that the trip my family recently took to Taronga Zoo, courtesy of my blog, was the first outing I’ve ever provided for my family, for my children. That I’ve provided. That I’ve earnt. Me. Independently. Without my husband’s wage paying for it. And I was ridiculously, inordinately proud of myself. If you don’t believe me, just as the Man. Because I could. not. shut. up. about. it. all. freaking. day.
Surely, you can’t blame me for that?
There’s a lot of chatter recently about whether we should all be charging for product reviews, how much we should be charging, and whether we’re undervaluing ourselves. I’m on both sides of the fence on this one. I understand that my blog space, my writing, my time, is valuable. But, while recognizing all that, I’m happy to do, for example, a DVD review in exchange for a copy of that DVD for me, and one to give away. Why not? It’s $40 value, for me. $40 that, had it been paid in cash, would have simply been sucked into the whirlpool of family finances. Instead, I get a DVD that I can sit and watch with my kids, and all of us enjoy.
To us, to me, that’s just as good as a cash payment.
What’s could be so wrong with that…?
In conjunction with Kmart, Aussie Mummy Bloggers recently ran a Kmart promotion. It wasn’t a competion I entered. I had 10 good solid posts sitting in my drafts folder ready to go, I wasn’t planning to write that day, and there was only just under 48 hours to enter the competition. It wasn’t something that tickled my pickle, right now. But six months ago, when I was blogging day by day and searching for ideas? This competition would have been perfect. Something creative to blog about, which was fun, and may just have won me $20.
Picture stolen form Sodahead.
Twenty bucks, you say? Is that all? Well, OK, so you’re probably not saying that, but I know some people said that. Seriously, who is anyone to turn their nose up at $20? It may not be a lot to one person. That doesn’t mean it’s spare change to someone else.
It’s not always conceivable, for bloggers who are just starting out and don’t have much traffic, to charge exorbitant amounts for reviews. If your blog is big enough that you can charge a huge sum for a review, then awesome, and good on you. You do that. But don’t slag off the little guys. Everyone has their own worth, yes, and everything is relative. $20 may mean nothing to you. But hey, in the Purple House, a new DVD is a big deal.
If you spend 62 hours writing each post, and you believe your posts are worth $500 each, awesome, charge that. But if you can knock up a post in 20 minutes, then you may just be happy with twenty bucks, and that’s OK. Or, if you, like me, are happy to chatter on about a DVD in exchange for a copy of that DVD, then that’s cool too.
As long as you are comfortable with it, that’s all that matters.
And to my anonymous FormSpringer, I work damn hard on this blog. I try and make the majority of my posts high value. Occasionally, a sponsored post or a review will pop up. I’m not going to apologise for that. I love my blog, I adore all my readers, all my faithful jellybean people. But I won’t apologise* if I’m lucky enough to make a little bit of money for my family out of doing something that I enjoy so much, that I am so passionate about, and that I spend so much of my precious time on.
To quote my homegirl Holly Homemaker–
Peace out with your crease out, y’all.
* I also won’t apologise for continuing to spell apoligise with an ‘s’, as Aussies do, Mr SpellChecker-Annoying-Wavy-Red-Line-Thing. Respect.
Leave a Comment
{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
- May 12, 2011 at 3:32 am
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If it says sponser post on it, I just delete it on my google reader. I just read the regular posts, which yours are great. There are so many blogs that all they do is advertise. I don't read those posts.
- October 27, 2010 at 9:43 pm
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Well said, hon. YOu know I agree with you 100%.
But I will say one more thing: no one owes anyone an explanation. Do what you want to do, and don't feel you EVER have to justify your decision. This is your blog, and you can do what you damn well please. Why can't some people get the whole "Each to their own" that most of us try our hardest to live by.
Your blog is awesome. You work hard at it. You should be proud. xxx
- October 26, 2010 at 11:10 pm
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Go you! Any way to earn a little extra and help the family budget should be applauded. Unless you're robbing banks or little old ladies on pension days.
You know, $20 may not seem like much, but it's a lot when you need it and don't have it. - October 26, 2010 at 2:53 pm
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hi there
I've been blogging for 4 years and this year has been the first year I've been getting some sponsored blog posts and some great product reviews! I love it and it keeps my husband happy – I figure if you're helping your family and the household budget then it's a good thing. If people don't like it then I figure they are jealous the good things aren't coming their way!
keep up the good work!
Corrie:) - October 26, 2010 at 2:40 pm
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Hey. Or yo as you prefer it. This is an interesting post. I have been wondering about the whole 'sponsored post thing'. Definately food for thought here. I love visiting the purple house. Keep doing it your way Lori.
- October 26, 2010 at 8:19 am
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The only time it really bothers me is when a blog is completely reviews and giveaways. I mean giveaways are good most of the time but I get overwhelmed with those blogs and it feels like I'm getting spammed. In moderation mixed with meaningful content, sponsors and reviews are all good
- October 26, 2010 at 6:00 am
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I absolutely agree with you. Uhm, were can I get one of those paying gigs?
- October 25, 2010 at 11:46 pm
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Great post, and as you say, if you don't like it – bugger off – well that is not exactly what you said, but too right – they should bugger off. I have always found you to be honest in all you write and if it is a sponsored post that doesn't interest me, then I don't read that one. Common sense really.
- October 25, 2010 at 9:43 pm
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Hear Hear. well said and all that. I am loving my free DVD's right now and I too have gotten some flak for my corporate whorism – but I do note that most of this criticism is from people without free dvd's. mwahaha suckers!!
Lori, your blog is never boring. - October 25, 2010 at 6:00 pm
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I think there is a genuine problem here, but it's not with you or any other blogger. It's with the marketers and PR people. I don't think I follow that many blogs, yet I saw the Cottees good things in small packages 3 times, the e-printer 3 or 4 times and I swear there were 5 reviews of the Tinkerbell movie. And now, no matter how lyrically those reviews were written and how much people loved it, there is no way in Hell I'm getting that movie because it was too annoying.
Blogging is not like a magazine ad, they may be able to get lots of bloggers for the price of a print campaign but if that's how they treat us it isn't going to work. - October 25, 2010 at 4:17 pm
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Nice post
Personally I didnt do the Kmart one, because it was only for a $20 voucher, and maybe a voucher rather than guarenteed !
But each to his own!
And I like the idea of being proud to be able to earn things for your family
- October 25, 2010 at 4:00 pm
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Hey, you have people offering to PAY you to write. And you manage to make it entertaining. Go girl!!
- October 25, 2010 at 1:17 pm
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Go Lori! Your attitude towards the whole thing just screams common sense. I don't see what the problem is. I love reading all your posts (sponsored or otherwise) and I agree that if someone doesn't like what you're doing, then they can just nick off! Don't change a thing!
- October 25, 2010 at 12:25 pm
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Good on ya hun – hell, if you can get something out of this that helps make ends meet then I say – do it! Let's be honest, anyone who says they wouldn't do it if they got paid is a big, fat liar.
And I don't find anything you do awful – I may not comment every time, but I read 'em all - October 25, 2010 at 11:57 am
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Your blog – you get to choose what you do. We get to choose whether we read. How more simple could it be. Formspring, get some perspective!
You go Lori and do what's right for you!But maybe in a really backhanded, clumsy sort of dopey way (and I've not read the comment in question directly), but just maybe Formspring is giving you a compliment ….. Formspring really likes what you write about your life and wants more! What Formspring doesn't realise is that it helps for you to have food on your table to be able to write! Just trying to find a positive in all this!
- October 25, 2010 at 11:43 am
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I love your blog, sponsored or unsponsored. Go you and post whatever you want.
- October 25, 2010 at 9:44 am
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Good for you Lori. Go girl, well said. I also review and do sponsored posts and it works for me!
Mich x
- October 25, 2010 at 4:58 am
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Don't worry about it at all and don't even bother explaining yourself. You are being paid for your writing – isn't that the dream? It is mine – all it means is that you are succeeding! I'd love to have a sponsor or even simply the occasional back hander – go to John's Newsagents, where the Curly Wurlys are great! To be honest I generally skim over the sponsor posts and leave you to it, because I either don't know what the product is, or can't win anything due to my unashamed lack of eligibility. This doesn't worry me though because I know I can come back anytime for a normal post. You do indeed do far more non sponsored posts than anything so relax, and moreover – well done on making some cash – you are living the dream mate!
- October 25, 2010 at 3:53 pm
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It's your blog, do what you want with it. To whoever/whatever formspring is: get over it and read something else.
- October 25, 2010 at 1:26 am
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I love you and all of your posts. Most of your sponsored posts I can't even enter- but they are usually hilarious to read regardless so I do. There were blogs I used to read with great posts that literally turned into nothing but sponsored posts, which sucks because I don't usually read them. (Even from my own country where I'd qualify to win contests and such!)
And ignore the squiggly line thing under that "s"–I ignore it every time it wants me to capitalize the "i" in internet. Seriously? It's a thing not a person.
- October 25, 2010 at 12:01 pm
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Hey, you do what works for you! Don't let anyone make you feel bad about it!
- October 24, 2010 at 11:51 pm
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What is it with people hell-bent on passing judgement at the moment?? Seriously, if all you've got to do with your time is make narky comments about somebody's blog post, then come around to my place, cause I've got a shitload of ironing for you to do. As long as you don't mind me gaffa-taping your mouth shut, because I don't care for your dribble.
You rock Lori. As do giveaway yielding sponsored posts. Keep it up.
- October 24, 2010 at 11:35 pm
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Your blog. Your choice on how to run it & what to include. Like you said, we don't have to read sponsored posts if we don't want to. I usually do in case there is a giveaway attached – hey, if there's a prize up for grabs then I want a chance of winning it. Good on you for having the nous to earn a bit towards your family or to receive some freebies to review. If the companies didn't like it, they wouldn't do it! I love reading your blog – keep it up!
- October 24, 2010 at 10:58 pm
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Filled a comment box so decided to do a post of my own on the topic.
I think there is more than enough great content to keep me coming back to your blog. So if it puts some extra money in your family budget. Knock yourself out. And give them my email address would you, I'm trying to get to Italy here. :oP
- October 24, 2010 at 10:47 pm
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I agree with you! If I could make cheedar for what I do then I'm all for it. We work really hard at our blogs!
- October 24, 2010 at 10:08 pm
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Totally agree with you Lori! If we can get something for what we do, then great! Pfft to the high horse people who say we are cashing out, they need to get over themselves. The formsrping person is a f**kwit!!
- October 24, 2010 at 9:50 pm
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Ah Lori, ignore those anonymous commenters. Do your thing, girl.
- October 24, 2010 at 9:30 pm
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You know you are one of my favourite people so you do what is right for you! I haven't really done any reviews or giveaways as yet…might think about it!
- October 24, 2010 at 9:11 pm
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This is YOUR space to be and do and say whatever you want. That's why we love it. Any other approach would be censorship of one of the last frontiers of free expression. So, go the sponsored post and, for anyone who is offended, just do what you did when you were a kid and the wicked witch was too scary to watch – just close your eyes.
- October 24, 2010 at 8:52 pm
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I love you and want to pash you.
If I am ever asked my thoughts on sposored posts etc I shall say "What Lori said".
xx
- October 24, 2010 at 8:45 pm
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I second that. Or twentieth it or however many comments you have here
- October 24, 2010 at 8:33 pm
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Amen, sista.
P.S, Right click, add to dictionary – we will not be Americanizzzzzed! - October 24, 2010 at 8:26 pm
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There must be something in the water lately, as this is now the third post I've read by a blogger about sponsored posts.
You know what? I like sponsored posts! I usually can't participate as I'm in the wrong country or the product isn't something I'd be interested in – but I always like to read the comments that go along with it. Usually it can be quite enjoyable reading stories or seeing pictures for the give-away.
I totally agree, if you don't like it, then don't read it. It takes two seconds to scroll further down the page or hit the close button.
You keep doing your thing, Lori.
x
- October 24, 2010 at 8:03 pm
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OK – am just coming off the back of hosting Mr Woog's B'day Octoberfest afternoon – so I will wait till tomorrow to reveal my comments as am too furious to do so right now. Oh and FUCK OFF FORMSPRING COMMENTER. ps what is a formspring commentator?
- October 24, 2010 at 7:37 pm
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Such powerful ramblings Lori. I appreciate your opinion especially 'coz I'm a newbie in this field. But I am with you that there should be more respect and tolerance in the blogosphere. You can do whatever on your space coz it is YOUR blog after all. I love any posts, sponsored or not that keeps me updated on what's out there which I may need or want. So keep it coming girl!
- October 24, 2010 at 7:34 pm
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Love this. I don't get why people get their knickers in a knot over the smallest things. I really don't.
- October 24, 2010 at 7:29 pm
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For me it's all about balance, get that right and you're laughing. As you quite rightly say no-one has to read the Sponsored Posts and if they're clearly marked then they can just skip them in their reader. However, it's your blog and if you want to write them, then it's your prerogative to do so.
I have unsubscribed to a couple of British blogs because for me, they didn't have the balance right. They'd started to post 1 normal post to 3/4 reviews/sponsored posts, it was tedious wading through so many adverts, even their 'normal' posts were talking about what they did and who they saw at some mummy blogging event. Dull, dull, dull.
- October 24, 2010 at 7:14 pm
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Good on you Lori – i love your blog, and i even love your sponsored posts, especially they give me a chance to win things!
The Purple House sounds a lot like my house – i have my first day back at work after maternity leave tomorrow and the only reason i'm going back 3 days a week is because if i dont, we WONT make ends meet at my house. Like you, $20 or a free dvd or a free book is a big deal….so you do what you have to for your family woman, and you do it with your head held high! - October 24, 2010 at 6:50 pm
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LOVE your blog and I have never thought you posted to much sponsored stuff. I mean expecially if the reader has the option to win something, right?
How could you complain, its not like your doing in daily.
I also think its awesome that you provided the family day out to the zoo, if you can stay at home with your babies and make a little extra cash or prizes on the side then great!
Keep on keeping on girl ; ) - October 24, 2010 at 5:46 pm
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All I can is say is wow you get 40 emails a day? Dude, you're like a freaking CEO or sumthin. Hehe.
Seriously though, some people need to take the freaking BIG stick out of their own arse! So there.
- October 24, 2010 at 5:40 pm
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I said my piece about this at amb, people need to lighten up about this, if I am happy to try and win twenty bucks, then let me be. Hey, maybe I might even get to buy myself a new tshirt for once if I win a twenty, if not, I still enjoyed writing the piece. I love the comps on blogs. Hopefully people don't read them, more chance for me to win!
- October 24, 2010 at 5:39 pm
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I do sponsored post too, because money is tight. Being broken and not able to work is all well and good, but at the end of the day, not having any money is HARD.
- October 24, 2010 at 5:22 pm
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Love ya work! FWIW I love the sponsored posts, it usually means a giveaway to the reader and I have been lucky enough to win a couple in my time. I don't think you need to apologise at all. Happy days!
- October 24, 2010 at 9:59 pm
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Oh man, I am SO with MMBB on this one! Don't less one asshole get you down … You rock baby!
x - October 24, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Previous post: Happy Flogging UnFriday!
Next post: Guest Post– From Career Girl To Baking Queen
Mummy Blogging 101- Corporate Whorism. – RRSAHM
Mummy Blogging 101- Corporate Whorism.
Aloha,
This is one of those blog posts that has been hanging around in the back of my head for a while now. Fermenting. As most good blog posts do. And, as usually happens, something occurred recently that acted as a catalyst for the whole idea to grow into a mutant opinionated Web baby and be born into the blogosphere, kicking and screaming and burning it’s feed. Or something.
A question, on ye olde FormSpring account. E’nuff Nuffnang, apparently. Boom tish, anonymous FormSpringer.
I felt it was worth a blog post. I’ve been meaning to have a natter about this to you, my jellybeaners, for a while now.
As you may have noticed, I publish here a lot. Five days a week, in fact. Some of those posts are “high value” posts, that I know people will love to read. Sometimes, they’re “low value” posts, that may not be so much fun to read, but serve a purpose.
I do my bestest to make this a high-value kinda place to be. I try to write my low value posts as entertaining as I can possibly can, but there’s only so much one do with air conditioners.
I started this blog as a hobby, and I’ve been lucky enough that it’s grown considerably. Why? I have no freaking idea. Some days, cyber-karma treats me well and my inbox is full and overflowing with offers to do reviews, competitions, pitches and sponsored posts. And some days, I take these random PR people up on their offers.
I get to do some cool stuff. I get some cool stuff for free. Most of the time, I’m obligated to tell you lot about it. That’s why I get it. I’ve read some very boring sponsored posts, in my not-so-extensive blogging time. And I’ve promised myself that while it may be many things, this blog will never be boring.
If you don’t like my sponsored posts, don’t read them. If you feel I’m doing too many of them, then feel free to let me know (just like our friend the FormSpringer), or just vote with your mouse and unsubscribe. Never feel obligated to read my sponsored posts, or comment on them. Never feel obliged to read anything I post, unless you’re thoroughly enjoying it.
As I said, I post here five days a week. I put my blood, housework time, sweat and tears into this blog (in a totally metaphorical, non-gross kinda way). I love to write. I love that people read what I write. I love being part of the mummy blogging community.
But I also get up to 40 emails in my inbox a day and spend up to 5 hours a day on the computer.
We’re a single income family here, with two very small children. More often than not, money is tight and we struggle to make ends meet. I published two sponsored posts in the last fortnight. I know those posts are low value. So, I’m guessing, are the FlogYoBlog Friday posts (good thing because no one reads the damn things anyway). But discounting the low value stuff, that’s still six high value posts I’ve published in a fortnight. And that’s reasonable… right?
I think it is. When you consider that those sponsored posts will pay for three months of my son’s swimming lessons, something that he dearly loves, and we would never give up, but always struggle to find the cash for. Or when you take into account that the trip my family recently took to Taronga Zoo, courtesy of my blog, was the first outing I’ve ever provided for my family, for my children. That I’ve provided. That I’ve earnt. Me. Independently. Without my husband’s wage paying for it. And I was ridiculously, inordinately proud of myself. If you don’t believe me, just as the Man. Because I could. not. shut. up. about. it. all. freaking. day.
Surely, you can’t blame me for that?
There’s a lot of chatter recently about whether we should all be charging for product reviews, how much we should be charging, and whether we’re undervaluing ourselves. I’m on both sides of the fence on this one. I understand that my blog space, my writing, my time, is valuable. But, while recognizing all that, I’m happy to do, for example, a DVD review in exchange for a copy of that DVD for me, and one to give away. Why not? It’s $40 value, for me. $40 that, had it been paid in cash, would have simply been sucked into the whirlpool of family finances. Instead, I get a DVD that I can sit and watch with my kids, and all of us enjoy.
To us, to me, that’s just as good as a cash payment.
What’s could be so wrong with that…?
In conjunction with Kmart, Aussie Mummy Bloggers recently ran a Kmart promotion. It wasn’t a competion I entered. I had 10 good solid posts sitting in my drafts folder ready to go, I wasn’t planning to write that day, and there was only just under 48 hours to enter the competition. It wasn’t something that tickled my pickle, right now. But six months ago, when I was blogging day by day and searching for ideas? This competition would have been perfect. Something creative to blog about, which was fun, and may just have won me $20.
Picture stolen form Sodahead.
Twenty bucks, you say? Is that all? Well, OK, so you’re probably not saying that, but I know some people said that. Seriously, who is anyone to turn their nose up at $20? It may not be a lot to one person. That doesn’t mean it’s spare change to someone else.
It’s not always conceivable, for bloggers who are just starting out and don’t have much traffic, to charge exorbitant amounts for reviews. If your blog is big enough that you can charge a huge sum for a review, then awesome, and good on you. You do that. But don’t slag off the little guys. Everyone has their own worth, yes, and everything is relative. $20 may mean nothing to you. But hey, in the Purple House, a new DVD is a big deal.
If you spend 62 hours writing each post, and you believe your posts are worth $500 each, awesome, charge that. But if you can knock up a post in 20 minutes, then you may just be happy with twenty bucks, and that’s OK. Or, if you, like me, are happy to chatter on about a DVD in exchange for a copy of that DVD, then that’s cool too.
As long as you are comfortable with it, that’s all that matters.
And to my anonymous FormSpringer, I work damn hard on this blog. I try and make the majority of my posts high value. Occasionally, a sponsored post or a review will pop up. I’m not going to apologise for that. I love my blog, I adore all my readers, all my faithful jellybean people. But I won’t apologise* if I’m lucky enough to make a little bit of money for my family out of doing something that I enjoy so much, that I am so passionate about, and that I spend so much of my precious time on.
To quote my homegirl Holly Homemaker–
Peace out with your crease out, y’all.
* I also won’t apologise for continuing to spell apoligise with an ‘s’, as Aussies do, Mr SpellChecker-Annoying-Wavy-Red-Line-Thing. Respect.
Leave a Comment
{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
- May 12, 2011 at 3:32 am
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If it says sponser post on it, I just delete it on my google reader. I just read the regular posts, which yours are great. There are so many blogs that all they do is advertise. I don't read those posts.
- October 27, 2010 at 9:43 pm
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Well said, hon. YOu know I agree with you 100%.
But I will say one more thing: no one owes anyone an explanation. Do what you want to do, and don't feel you EVER have to justify your decision. This is your blog, and you can do what you damn well please. Why can't some people get the whole "Each to their own" that most of us try our hardest to live by.
Your blog is awesome. You work hard at it. You should be proud. xxx
- October 26, 2010 at 11:10 pm
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Go you! Any way to earn a little extra and help the family budget should be applauded. Unless you're robbing banks or little old ladies on pension days.
You know, $20 may not seem like much, but it's a lot when you need it and don't have it. - October 26, 2010 at 2:53 pm
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hi there
I've been blogging for 4 years and this year has been the first year I've been getting some sponsored blog posts and some great product reviews! I love it and it keeps my husband happy – I figure if you're helping your family and the household budget then it's a good thing. If people don't like it then I figure they are jealous the good things aren't coming their way!
keep up the good work!
Corrie:) - October 26, 2010 at 2:40 pm
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Hey. Or yo as you prefer it. This is an interesting post. I have been wondering about the whole 'sponsored post thing'. Definately food for thought here. I love visiting the purple house. Keep doing it your way Lori.
- October 26, 2010 at 8:19 am
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The only time it really bothers me is when a blog is completely reviews and giveaways. I mean giveaways are good most of the time but I get overwhelmed with those blogs and it feels like I'm getting spammed. In moderation mixed with meaningful content, sponsors and reviews are all good
- October 26, 2010 at 6:00 am
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I absolutely agree with you. Uhm, were can I get one of those paying gigs?
- October 25, 2010 at 11:46 pm
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Great post, and as you say, if you don't like it – bugger off – well that is not exactly what you said, but too right – they should bugger off. I have always found you to be honest in all you write and if it is a sponsored post that doesn't interest me, then I don't read that one. Common sense really.
- October 25, 2010 at 9:43 pm
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Hear Hear. well said and all that. I am loving my free DVD's right now and I too have gotten some flak for my corporate whorism – but I do note that most of this criticism is from people without free dvd's. mwahaha suckers!!
Lori, your blog is never boring. - October 25, 2010 at 6:00 pm
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I think there is a genuine problem here, but it's not with you or any other blogger. It's with the marketers and PR people. I don't think I follow that many blogs, yet I saw the Cottees good things in small packages 3 times, the e-printer 3 or 4 times and I swear there were 5 reviews of the Tinkerbell movie. And now, no matter how lyrically those reviews were written and how much people loved it, there is no way in Hell I'm getting that movie because it was too annoying.
Blogging is not like a magazine ad, they may be able to get lots of bloggers for the price of a print campaign but if that's how they treat us it isn't going to work. - October 25, 2010 at 4:17 pm
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Nice post
Personally I didnt do the Kmart one, because it was only for a $20 voucher, and maybe a voucher rather than guarenteed !
But each to his own!
And I like the idea of being proud to be able to earn things for your family
- October 25, 2010 at 4:00 pm
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Hey, you have people offering to PAY you to write. And you manage to make it entertaining. Go girl!!
- October 25, 2010 at 1:17 pm
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Go Lori! Your attitude towards the whole thing just screams common sense. I don't see what the problem is. I love reading all your posts (sponsored or otherwise) and I agree that if someone doesn't like what you're doing, then they can just nick off! Don't change a thing!
- October 25, 2010 at 12:25 pm
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Good on ya hun – hell, if you can get something out of this that helps make ends meet then I say – do it! Let's be honest, anyone who says they wouldn't do it if they got paid is a big, fat liar.
And I don't find anything you do awful – I may not comment every time, but I read 'em all - October 25, 2010 at 11:57 am
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Your blog – you get to choose what you do. We get to choose whether we read. How more simple could it be. Formspring, get some perspective!
You go Lori and do what's right for you!But maybe in a really backhanded, clumsy sort of dopey way (and I've not read the comment in question directly), but just maybe Formspring is giving you a compliment ….. Formspring really likes what you write about your life and wants more! What Formspring doesn't realise is that it helps for you to have food on your table to be able to write! Just trying to find a positive in all this!
- October 25, 2010 at 11:43 am
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I love your blog, sponsored or unsponsored. Go you and post whatever you want.
- October 25, 2010 at 9:44 am
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Good for you Lori. Go girl, well said. I also review and do sponsored posts and it works for me!
Mich x
- October 25, 2010 at 4:58 am
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Don't worry about it at all and don't even bother explaining yourself. You are being paid for your writing – isn't that the dream? It is mine – all it means is that you are succeeding! I'd love to have a sponsor or even simply the occasional back hander – go to John's Newsagents, where the Curly Wurlys are great! To be honest I generally skim over the sponsor posts and leave you to it, because I either don't know what the product is, or can't win anything due to my unashamed lack of eligibility. This doesn't worry me though because I know I can come back anytime for a normal post. You do indeed do far more non sponsored posts than anything so relax, and moreover – well done on making some cash – you are living the dream mate!
- October 25, 2010 at 3:53 pm
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It's your blog, do what you want with it. To whoever/whatever formspring is: get over it and read something else.
- October 25, 2010 at 1:26 am
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I love you and all of your posts. Most of your sponsored posts I can't even enter- but they are usually hilarious to read regardless so I do. There were blogs I used to read with great posts that literally turned into nothing but sponsored posts, which sucks because I don't usually read them. (Even from my own country where I'd qualify to win contests and such!)
And ignore the squiggly line thing under that "s"–I ignore it every time it wants me to capitalize the "i" in internet. Seriously? It's a thing not a person.
- October 25, 2010 at 12:01 pm
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Hey, you do what works for you! Don't let anyone make you feel bad about it!
- October 24, 2010 at 11:51 pm
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What is it with people hell-bent on passing judgement at the moment?? Seriously, if all you've got to do with your time is make narky comments about somebody's blog post, then come around to my place, cause I've got a shitload of ironing for you to do. As long as you don't mind me gaffa-taping your mouth shut, because I don't care for your dribble.
You rock Lori. As do giveaway yielding sponsored posts. Keep it up.
- October 24, 2010 at 11:35 pm
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Your blog. Your choice on how to run it & what to include. Like you said, we don't have to read sponsored posts if we don't want to. I usually do in case there is a giveaway attached – hey, if there's a prize up for grabs then I want a chance of winning it. Good on you for having the nous to earn a bit towards your family or to receive some freebies to review. If the companies didn't like it, they wouldn't do it! I love reading your blog – keep it up!
- October 24, 2010 at 10:58 pm
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Filled a comment box so decided to do a post of my own on the topic.
I think there is more than enough great content to keep me coming back to your blog. So if it puts some extra money in your family budget. Knock yourself out. And give them my email address would you, I'm trying to get to Italy here. :oP
- October 24, 2010 at 10:47 pm
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I agree with you! If I could make cheedar for what I do then I'm all for it. We work really hard at our blogs!
- October 24, 2010 at 10:08 pm
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Totally agree with you Lori! If we can get something for what we do, then great! Pfft to the high horse people who say we are cashing out, they need to get over themselves. The formsrping person is a f**kwit!!
- October 24, 2010 at 9:50 pm
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Ah Lori, ignore those anonymous commenters. Do your thing, girl.
- October 24, 2010 at 9:30 pm
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You know you are one of my favourite people so you do what is right for you! I haven't really done any reviews or giveaways as yet…might think about it!
- October 24, 2010 at 9:11 pm
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This is YOUR space to be and do and say whatever you want. That's why we love it. Any other approach would be censorship of one of the last frontiers of free expression. So, go the sponsored post and, for anyone who is offended, just do what you did when you were a kid and the wicked witch was too scary to watch – just close your eyes.
- October 24, 2010 at 8:52 pm
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I love you and want to pash you.
If I am ever asked my thoughts on sposored posts etc I shall say "What Lori said".
xx
- October 24, 2010 at 8:45 pm
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I second that. Or twentieth it or however many comments you have here
- October 24, 2010 at 8:33 pm
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Amen, sista.
P.S, Right click, add to dictionary – we will not be Americanizzzzzed! - October 24, 2010 at 8:26 pm
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There must be something in the water lately, as this is now the third post I've read by a blogger about sponsored posts.
You know what? I like sponsored posts! I usually can't participate as I'm in the wrong country or the product isn't something I'd be interested in – but I always like to read the comments that go along with it. Usually it can be quite enjoyable reading stories or seeing pictures for the give-away.
I totally agree, if you don't like it, then don't read it. It takes two seconds to scroll further down the page or hit the close button.
You keep doing your thing, Lori.
x
- October 24, 2010 at 8:03 pm
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OK – am just coming off the back of hosting Mr Woog's B'day Octoberfest afternoon – so I will wait till tomorrow to reveal my comments as am too furious to do so right now. Oh and FUCK OFF FORMSPRING COMMENTER. ps what is a formspring commentator?
- October 24, 2010 at 7:37 pm
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Such powerful ramblings Lori. I appreciate your opinion especially 'coz I'm a newbie in this field. But I am with you that there should be more respect and tolerance in the blogosphere. You can do whatever on your space coz it is YOUR blog after all. I love any posts, sponsored or not that keeps me updated on what's out there which I may need or want. So keep it coming girl!
- October 24, 2010 at 7:34 pm
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Love this. I don't get why people get their knickers in a knot over the smallest things. I really don't.
- October 24, 2010 at 7:29 pm
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For me it's all about balance, get that right and you're laughing. As you quite rightly say no-one has to read the Sponsored Posts and if they're clearly marked then they can just skip them in their reader. However, it's your blog and if you want to write them, then it's your prerogative to do so.
I have unsubscribed to a couple of British blogs because for me, they didn't have the balance right. They'd started to post 1 normal post to 3/4 reviews/sponsored posts, it was tedious wading through so many adverts, even their 'normal' posts were talking about what they did and who they saw at some mummy blogging event. Dull, dull, dull.
- October 24, 2010 at 7:14 pm
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Good on you Lori – i love your blog, and i even love your sponsored posts, especially they give me a chance to win things!
The Purple House sounds a lot like my house – i have my first day back at work after maternity leave tomorrow and the only reason i'm going back 3 days a week is because if i dont, we WONT make ends meet at my house. Like you, $20 or a free dvd or a free book is a big deal….so you do what you have to for your family woman, and you do it with your head held high! - October 24, 2010 at 6:50 pm
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LOVE your blog and I have never thought you posted to much sponsored stuff. I mean expecially if the reader has the option to win something, right?
How could you complain, its not like your doing in daily.
I also think its awesome that you provided the family day out to the zoo, if you can stay at home with your babies and make a little extra cash or prizes on the side then great!
Keep on keeping on girl ; ) - October 24, 2010 at 5:46 pm
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All I can is say is wow you get 40 emails a day? Dude, you're like a freaking CEO or sumthin. Hehe.
Seriously though, some people need to take the freaking BIG stick out of their own arse! So there.
- October 24, 2010 at 5:40 pm
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I said my piece about this at amb, people need to lighten up about this, if I am happy to try and win twenty bucks, then let me be. Hey, maybe I might even get to buy myself a new tshirt for once if I win a twenty, if not, I still enjoyed writing the piece. I love the comps on blogs. Hopefully people don't read them, more chance for me to win!
- October 24, 2010 at 5:39 pm
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I do sponsored post too, because money is tight. Being broken and not able to work is all well and good, but at the end of the day, not having any money is HARD.
- October 24, 2010 at 5:22 pm
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Love ya work! FWIW I love the sponsored posts, it usually means a giveaway to the reader and I have been lucky enough to win a couple in my time. I don't think you need to apologise at all. Happy days!
- October 24, 2010 at 9:59 pm
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Oh man, I am SO with MMBB on this one! Don't less one asshole get you down … You rock baby!
x - October 24, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Previous post: Happy Flogging UnFriday!
Next post: Guest Post– From Career Girl To Baking Queen
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Running Away Again.
Shit People Say To Mummy Bloggers – RRSAHM
Shit People Say To Mummy Bloggers
My bloggy mate Emma and I saw this awesome vlog called Shit Mommy Bloggers Say last week… and we felt inspired.
So… enjoy. Shit People Say To Mummy Bloggers.
It’s just like Amway!
Leave a Comment
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
- January 18, 2012 at 8:48 pm
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haha, 'digital parent? Is that like a tamagotchi?'
So funny - January 18, 2012 at 10:54 am
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That was a crack up! Very well done:)
- January 17, 2012 at 4:37 am
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That was awesome and too funny!
- January 16, 2012 at 10:52 pm
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BAH! AHAHAHAHAH!!!!
Thanks, Lori - January 16, 2012 at 10:18 pm
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Hahaha! Too funny!
- January 16, 2012 at 9:26 pm
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Oh well done ladies (and Mr Brain). FAB!!!
- January 16, 2012 at 8:24 pm
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Love it
- January 16, 2012 at 5:25 pm
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LMFAO
This is PERFECT!
Everything I've heard said to me or other bloggers lol. - January 16, 2012 at 5:22 pm
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LOVE it!
- January 16, 2012 at 5:09 pm
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HIlarious! Love the props! x
- January 16, 2012 at 5:04 pm
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Did you mention Dooce? I loved this!!
- January 16, 2012 at 2:27 pm
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Love love LOVE! Clever chicks x
- January 16, 2012 at 1:03 pm
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Beautiful work, ladies. 98% of that resonates with non-mums too
- January 16, 2012 at 12:56 pm
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Hahahahaha!
- January 16, 2012 at 12:01 pm
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Bahahahahahahah!! Love it!
- January 16, 2012 at 11:48 am
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LOVE IT!
You forgot the common one from parents (as in your parents, my parents) "Just be careful ok?"
Yep. Ok.Mr Emmasbrain channelled mr Black perfectly with the "You're on that bloody computer again" errr it's for, uhhh work.
Lucky Mr Black doesn't know that tweetdeck is actually twitter…yet. - January 16, 2012 at 11:33 am
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Oh God, you with that tea cup and cat? Pure gold, someone give this woman an award!
- January 16, 2012 at 11:32 am
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Excellent. Perfect for a Monday morning. This is a good reason for not telling people you blog. I'm not paranoid I'm avoiding the people with the weird questions.
- January 16, 2012 at 9:30 am
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That is hilarious! love it!
- January 16, 2012 at 9:27 am
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LOVING!!!!!
Oh my god … Lori, you channeled somebody in my family giving me grief right now. Made me laugh, hard.
You guys are hilarious, props to the Brains. X
- January 16, 2012 at 9:25 am
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Love the teacup lady. Funny. What a great way to start a Monday morning. Anytime anything mildly (and I mean barely) amusing happens, I get asked, so is that going to go on your blog?
- January 16, 2012 at 9:13 am
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GOLD! 3 yo keeps asking "why you laugh so much Mummy?"…
- January 16, 2012 at 8:56 am
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Cant type anything coherent 'cause I'm laughing too much
- January 16, 2012 at 1:06 pm
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OK, I put a 'nice' comment above, but here is the real one. I wasa bot nervous about saying this, and I hope other readers don't take it the wrong way.
Lori, I just loved seeing you clowning around and having fun. It made my heart smile.
But the bit I loved best was where Emma said 'husbands' and you both looked at each other.
I laughed out loud.
Because I get that black humour.
It tells me that you're healing, and you're gonna be OK.
x - January 16, 2012 at 12:01 pm
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Pure GOLD. I don't know how you managed to interview so many of my friends and family without me knowing about it, but it was awesome.
x - January 16, 2012 at 11:26 am
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Awesome. I love it. You made my day!
- January 16, 2012 at 9:15 am
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You guys are fucking FUCKING hilarious! LOVE Mr Emma's Brain in this as well. What a way to start the week. Thank you you cray bitches.
PS Woog is Hungarian for LARGE x
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I wear make up like a mask.
I love it, the craft and artistry of it. When I was a child I dreamed of being a special effects make up artist, a mortician, a beautician and a nail technician. That was, of course, not even a considerable option– I was ‘smart’, and had to ‘make the most of that talent’. A university degree wasn’t required to be a make up artist, so, in patriarchal eyes, that was never, ever going to be a suitable occupation for a prodigal daughter.
I don’t think running away to the circus to be a clown was on the game plan either, really. But that’s the way things turned out. And in that ‘immature’ occupation, I found that intense satisfaction that comes with playing with colors and shades on faces, rekindled and begging to be quenched.
I became, overnight, a ‘professional’ clown, fairy and face painter. For the first three or so months of my new job I was awful to the point of feeling a stomach churning sense of sympathy and regret for my pint-sized party guests as they left the fairy’s face painting chair with a childlike rendition of a butterfly, or a pussy cat, or the eternally popular SpiderMan, slapped onto their face in the most precise way my nervous hands could manage. Which was, in all honesty, not very precise at all.
But somewhere along those first few months, clowning morphed from weekend cash–in–hand to a full time, phone answering, party booking occupation. Being the soapy mind-sponge I am, I began to take in the material around me– magic tutorials; balloon bending instructions; tomes of face painting leaflets written by faux–fairies all around the world; and skinny yellow readers written for people with a evading age of twelve that, nonetheless, gave lessons on juggling, story telling… and clown paint.
Osmosis by fascination.
It took six months to develop a paint and a face that was my own, that belonged to Lilly. The features were mine but exaggerated, playful, large smudges in primary colors. Happy yellow stars on smiling cheeks. Cornflower Blue crosses wiped from across eyes. A tiny dot of a red nose, a geisha–style love heart over my lips.
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| Lori, clown- circa 2005. |
And long black eyelashes extended from the corner of each eye, a traditional sign of shock for mimes, femininity for speaking performers.
My costume and make up was malleable, and came in graded layers of formality. Being a clown-chameleon is essential when you consider the humid heat of Australian party season and the simple pain–in–the–arseness of costuming up to complete formal attire– a wig, a white face, and all the literal bells and whistles that went along with my babydoll smock, oversized bloomers and humongous shoes– three of four times a day, three or four days a week. For a parade or a formal function, a gig where a clown’s purpose is simply to provide color and movement, a full regalia was almost always necessary. But the closer your potential for direct interaction with the public, the less of a masquerade you become. A too–muchness about you tends to make a clown unapproachable and potentially terrifying to most small children and any clown–phobic adults. So you loose the wig and instead construct high, bunched pony tails stuffed with flowers. You make yourself up only with brightly hued, long lasting crayons, leaving out the layer of white grease paint used to make your face a blank canvas, with it’s smeary un-washability and distinctive, nostalgic smell.
As I developed my own mask, my face painting gradually improved, too.
Learning to make tiny chubby faces resemble cartoon heroes, small animals and ethereal butterflies wasn’t so much akin to shaping balloons (everything is just a dog, with parts shortened or elongated); or feeling a magic trick suddenly ‘work’ with the sound of an audible ‘clack’ deep in your psyche (practice, practice, patter, practice. Over and over until you watch yourself in the mirror and your motions are so fluid that to you, the trick the obvious and vulgar– that’s when it becomes smooth enough to fool people. The magician’s oxymoron, the perfect misdirection– trick yourself into believing you are doing nothing at all, and let your audience visualize their own illusions from the vapors of your actions). Face painting is a talent built and learned slowly, patiently. You gather knowledge on what to use, how to use it, how to elicit the trust of the little people sitting before you. There’s all those social skills that make or break a performer– when to back off, when to launch for laughter, how to adjust your body language to mirror your audience, how to make big kids feel cool enough to play along with the little ones by suggesting a camaraderie, some kind of secret adult role that frees them to play like a child. (‘Play like a child…’ And that’s a beautiful thing. It occurs as I’m writing this, that eventually you do that for the last time ever. Do you remember the last time you were a child, before you grew up completely…? Was it with the permission of someone else, someone older, doing you a favor you never even thought about…?)
All those social restraints and rules are so relevant when you’re sitting, a head lower than most of the children standing around you, hot and slightly flustered and losing track of who’s next in line. Being a face painter in a busy venue often feels like being in the eye if the storm– a calm renaissant absorbed in colors and brushes and paint stains on your fingers; while a seething mass of excitement shuffles and drones around you. I find a day spent face painting peaceful and purposeful. I enjoy being trapped in a bubble of self–silence and concentration, speaking only to ask what my next earnest, innocent canvas would like to be transformed into today, maybe inquiring as to what their favorite colors are if the hues of the chosen design are interchangeable. Children are sweet in their intense concentration while having paint applied to their skin. Something about that earnest look reminds you that, in the world of a little person, wearing a mask for a few hours is a Very Big Deal indeed.
The whole point of face painting is not just to paint, but to make. To change structure and depth. Use light colors to accentuate, dark shades to deepen. Ovals of black paint to extend or widen nostrils for dogs, cats and bunny rabbits. Lines that extend from ears, along the hollow of jawbones, and over the chin and upper lip; then dot that crescent with sharp, white licks of the brush for teeth to make sharks and crocodiles. Your tiniest, skinniest brush tracing the newly formed, natural wrinkle lines on skin to accentuate them and draw age onto youthful faces. Paint the lips of little girl’s ruby red to enhance the entranced expression on their face when you flip the mirror
their way on your mini-project’s completion.
All tricks and glamors, designed to fool the eyes.
And adult make up, it’s much the same. Light make bigger, dark makes smaller. Sharp lines always look unnatural. Skin infections are wholly transferable. You’re always putting make up not onto skin, but into what is already on that skin– for perfection, a palette must be clean.
The point of wearing make up is to look like you’re not wearing any make up at all, and so few women achieve that illusion. While clown paint and face paint are just that– paint– the point of adult make up is still to wear a mask… just not to let anyone else know you’re doing it.
To be continued…
{ 4 comments }
Shhhhh….
Today, I woke up earlier than I have in months.
Roused from that blackness by the sound of myself… giggling. Surprised by something I haven’t heard for such a long time, I wasn’t sure it was possible anymore.
My own laughter popping and breaking like fat iridescent bubbles in sunshine.
I think, for today, for now… that’s all I’ll write. I’m not accustomed to keeping things close, it feels like an act of physical exertion to hold things within my fingers rather than infusing them into words.
But I’ve had so very little of this, and it feels like something… real.
And happiness can be soap bubbles, too. Maybe the vibration of speaking too much could break them.
***
Posted, by me, earlier today on IG and various social networks…
The fact that any of you think of me at all is just so beyond awesome it baffles me… I’m not sure what goodness I’ve done to deserve this the pouring of love and support I get, but I’m always, always grateful for it.
You guys are… tops.
{ 5 comments }
I slither ahead of Dear Brad, bound the dead weeds and sticks that cover the bottom few stairs leading to the open doorway. Tentatively, I step into the room and I’m stupidly surprised at my own reflection when the massive mirror picks it up. Should I cast a reflection if I’m not really here, not so much adding to the history a place as recording it? I imagine I’d feel the same about any reflection, in any old building I explore. But– with the exception of the laundry in the House in TinyTrainTown– mirrors are generally the first things to go in an abandoned structure. They break so easily, with such a gratifying shattering sound.
“Hello…?” I call out, loudly enough that it echoes. I’m not expecting a reply at all. I’m just listening for shifts in sound, shifts in weight, something to indicate there is someone nearby or on the floors above who heard me. “Is there anyone here? I’m a photographer… erm… a writer? I’m doing a piece on the history of the Mountains…?”
Again, nothing. “I’m not sure we should be in here…” whispers Dear Brad, having crept up behind me while I’m calling out.
I look at him, head cocked to one side and eyebrows raised. “Of course we shouldn’t. Let’s go.”
(Let me interrupt my own monologue here to say– I know. This was an incredibly stupid, illegal thing to be doing. But, hey… when opportunity leaves the door wide open– literally– sometimes you should take the risk and run with it.)
We creep up a narrow, white washed well of stairs and tentatively peer through the door at the top.
And find ourselves in some other kind of world. This is is the delicate guts of one of the state’s most opulent hotels, built purely for the purposes of decadence and indulgence.
And oh my… it is beautiful.
The roof is alabaster smooth, perfectly finished to meet walls with molded and carved plaster cornices, more artistry in the sweep of decorative practicality than in the construction of my entire house. Hallways are polished wood, floors carpeted in running rugs of deep wine burgundy with olive trimmings, thick timber kickboards where walls and floors meet. There are tiny rooms here and there, tiny hallways twisting off left and right. The further we venture, the bolder we become, pushing open heavy, solid wooden doors to either closing them again quickly and moving on in nonchalance, or to stop and gasp, press the shutter button on my camera and then bathe in what once was, what almost still is and what, if new owners suceed, will be again one day soon.
This hotel is a gorgeous place. The upstairs rooms are spacious and sunny, huge and sprawling. Some are empty of everything, some have become store rooms for curious collections of hotel hubris– fans and bedsteads, linens and bedside tables, boxes of documents and crockery. There are rooms still furnished in their entirety, a thin ghostly coating of dust dulling reflective surfaces. In one room there is a bed, made but rumpled, as though someone slept there just the night before and housekeeping has not yet come to call.
If this where a dream,this would the part of the building you would be trapped in, trying to run… running, perhaps, fast as you can, every corner you turn ridiculously, horrifically, leading you into the very same hallway full of very same eerily sunny rooms that you have just run through, eyes wild with fright, feet not even moving, not even close to touching the ground beneath you.
We slip back down a fight of stairs, back along the hall, further from the open door through which we entered. It feels like being in the midst of a children’s treasure hunt on a massive scale, an enexpected gift with a thousand tiny, loosely wrapped packages to search through. Hallways, narrow and wide, long and short; stairwells that lead you up one flight to a polished wooden landing, up two flights to another wing of pristine cream and eggshell hallways, more wings of eccentrically cluttered or cheerfully barren hotel suites. Stairs that sink down into a dark basement; short thuds of stairs that lead you only the same floor you’re already on but sunken slightly in order to accommodate the topography of the hotel’s inconvienant mountain top locality. Everywhere are signs of decadence left silent– glittering chandeliers. Intricately molded ceilings and hearths. Marble fireplaces. Ornate cast iron gas heaters made slim to sit as flush with the pressed metal walls as possible, warming the chill of winter wooden floors on the softly manicured feet of ladies. Huge mirrors with tarnished gilded frames brace long stretches of hallway walls, fixed interminably to their spots years ago and untouched by time or vandals. We pass a large, curved room, dappled glass windows across its length on the hallway side, French doors and wall to floor plate glass on the opposite, positioned to soak in a breathtaking, lusciously rampant view.
‘The Shipley Room’ reads the sign above two lacquered, dark walnut doors… it’s identical to the one in the bag I’m carrying with me. The door handles are brass, worn at the top from years of hands twisting them open, over a century of gentlemen holding the door graciously for ladies as they pass. But not for us, not today (I try not to tell myself that Dear Brad, bless his cotton socks, wouldn’t have bothered to hold the door open for me anyway, whether this room was filled with revelers as it was, or only the ghosts of them as it is now, much as I know it to be true). These doors are locked and there is so much more to see here, so many more things to drink in, that it doesn’t occur to me to mind at all.
We pause, drawn into the salon in the fashion the architecture intended– this is, perhaps, the essence of a ’drawing room’. It’s central to lobby and restaurant, the ballroom and casino, and stairwells and gently curving walls seem to sweep people into the wide foyer at the room’s entryway. The doorway is huge, eight foot across, and the fore-walls only partitions, really, a cut out space gr
adually glancing wider as it moves in to it’s axis with the walls sitting at shoulder height at the doorway entry, welcoming rather imposing without an actual door to close of this social space. It’s designed to flow and funnel people toward it, to cater for large, slow moving crowds tipsy on entertainment and night air.
This room centers on the bar at one end, wide and smooth and tucked into an alcove in the wall designed just for that purpose, another social trick of old-fashioned design. A swinging kitchen door is concealed to the left. Windows step high to let the sun in and add to the ambiance without brilliant views causing unnecessary distraction from the delicate past time of polite conversation. Opposite the bar is another of those gigantic gilded mirrors, creating the illusion of more space– and more people– than there actually is. The fireplace is one of the biggies I’ve ever seen, tucked into an angled mantle in the middle of the room in order to spread its warmth both sides of the curved walls. Juxtaposing such careful, deliberate planning and design are chairs, hundreds of them piled eight foot high, an ugly statement in the open places. There’s an occasional heavy, rustic black wood table nestled amongst them– stark fat toadstools in a spiny forest of black aluminum.
Just a few feet further down the main hotel corridor and we reach the hotel lobby, remarkably plain and modern in comparison to where we’ve just been– this is, obviously, not a place designed for loitering or mingling. It’s business and functionality, bellboys on minimum wage rustling in from behind the scenes like apparitions to move luggage to rooms before guests place their key in the lock, creating the illusion of homeliness- your things, of course, they’ve been here all along, just waiting for you to catch up.
The ballroom takes my breath with the hugeness of it, the entire vastness of it’s space. A fireplace- always fireplaces in the Mountains. Another longer, less obiqiutious bar. Chandeliers dangling from the ceiling like costume jewels made of solitaires; a raised platform for a band to play bluesy tones in a an acoustically perfect setting.
There’s one or two final doors, at least one sweeping entryway left to discover before we reach what will be the end of the line– not that we know that right now, the stillness of the hotel lulling us into a false sense of security, it’s air of homely comfort persuading us to stay longer, rest a while, take in the beautiful views, like a siren’s whisper. I stop to open the first door, and find myself thrilled to discover that just within is another door, this one heavier, with lead–lit glass panels in the higher half etched with the words ’Day Spa’. There’s a tingling thrill of touching history– the spa, the place where guests would soak up the majestic hydration this hotel was built around. The legend it was built upon, a monumental institution on top a cliff in the middle of unexplored hinterland.
The cynic in me is well aware that, in all likelihood, inside that door, I would have found naught but sanitized commercial disappointment– a day spa in the modern sense, bathroom fixtures and white basins and pedicure chairs.
I never got to find out, either way. At that moment, Dear Brad (d*ckhead) takes it upon himself to try the ornate–but–still–probably–recently–installed–fire–doors that mark the end of the hallway. The small olive plaque screwed into the wall next to them simply says ’Casino’. Dear Brad jumps back in over-confident shock as, three inches open, the door triggers the security alarms, and some kind of peaking hell splits audibly open above us.
It’s so loud I can’t think and somewhere beneath me the five year old in my mind is hysterical, hands over her ears and shrieking; that shattered smoke alarm of PTSD screaming at me that something is wrong here, something is very wrong here. Adrenaline peels off my consciousness in strips as I run, long strides made easy by my pumping heart. Past the ballroom, the lobby, the bar and the Shipley Room. It’s then that both Dear Brad and I become confused, lost and disorientated– there are too many stairs here, too many ups and downs and it begins to feel like a game of snakes of ladders. We pass the bedroom with the crumpled bed for the second time and I spot a small, dusty security camera in the corner of the hallway. And I laugh. Dear Brad looks at me and shakes his head, not finding it funny at all, but really, there doesn’t seem much else for it at this point.
Mirth controlled, we backtrace steps and find the original dusty staircase we came up (Narnia, but not quite…. the book before, The Magician’s Nephew, jumping in puddles and running through attics… It felt more like that). Down again, back through the spierwebbed exercise room; the shrieking, panicked alarm growing fainter and further away as we reach the door to the outside. Dear Brad pulls the door closed, latches it shut, and we leave, me still snapping pictures, both of us attempting to appear naively innocent and slightly baffled and curious by this unknown bleating warning sound in the distance– playing the part of unaffectedly tourists, sight see–ers stopped to stretch our legs. We nonchalantly slip back over the fence, return to the car. Stand next to it and smoke cigarettes for twenty minutes, waiting for security or police or… someone. No one comes.
I go back once more, early the next morning and alone, Dear Brad having departed (he sent me a text later on, though, remember? Lovely…). I follow the same path, only bypassing the road front entrance and sneaking to the side, where the outbuildings begin. I’m expecting not much at all, expecting the door Dear Brad latched on the way out yesterday to be closed still, probably locked tight by a security guard whenever they ended up getting here.
I turn the corner cut into the rock… and the door is open again. Wide open, just as it was when we first saw it.
I try to ignore how weird that is. I ready my camera, jump the overgrown thickets on the stairs, and step over the threshold.
The alarm, the same neon blue flashing sound from yester
day, it peals and shrieks again, immediately this time around. And I leave quickly, as we did yesterday, but without the panic and the laughter and the running.
Weird. Dear Brad and I… we just found ourselves extremely fortunate, it seems. This hotel– and whatever secrets she may hold– are much more protected than they appear.
{ 2 comments }
Continued from the Patchwork Hospital, last month- sorry it took such a long time for Part Two. I got… distracted.
There’s a hotel, just past Katoomba- it may be at Medlow Bath, or one of those other tiny villages that you only just see as you cruise past them, driving music pumping, on the highway toward Lithgow. It is all those things that appeal to me about the Blue Mountains of NSW, epitomised and structured and– currently– being refurbished. It’s a glorious, majestic, glamour of a building, the main structure stacked on top of– well, built into, actually– the side of the mountain.
It may have been opened in 1901, the premiere luxury hotel for economically well–off Mountain travelers. Perhaps- just perhaps- it was originally opened as a ’hydrotherapy centre’, it’s siren song fueled by the rumour of underground springs- a flowing, crystal clear sub-terrain stream of mystical spring water. Some kind of life elixir that promised health and healing, a balm to the strains of upper-class existence. Unfortunately, by the time the this establishment, with all it’s flourishes, lead-lit glass and sculptured carpentry was actually opened, the river od mystical waters had dried up. Whether it ever actually existed is a historical anomaly- no one knows for sure.
Not that it mattered. People still flocked to the decadent hotel, dressed in their finest, to partake in the opulent accommodation, be seen in the even more opulent casino room. To honeymoon and bushwalk, canyon and relax.
This hotel may been closed for refurbishments for as long as I can rememeber. It’s one of those things, like the random concrete sculpture, that I like to drive past with unassuming people who don’t know it’s there. Because they almost never fail to say something long the lines of ’What the f*ck was that??!’
I’ve wanted to explore here since the first time I did that myself.
There doesn’t seem to be much to see, many places to go, when you first pull up directly in front of the chain link fence with it’s huge gates that surround three quarters of the property. The far side, the back entrance, ti doesn’t need a fence- the buildings sits only five metres from a cliff face, a gradient so steep it’s almost vertical, covered with the barbed wire of the bush- a dozen different hard-limbed trees and plants, thick scrub to impede movement and break ankles. The hotel (maybe- all this is in theory, of course) directly on the main road, and Dear Brad and I aren’t the only tourists and explorers who have stopped here today for a sticky beak. An older couple are wandering the forecourt of the building, well inside the security fencing; and there’s another car parked here, too, who’s occupants are yet to show themselves. There’s someone else actually parked inside the grounds, again within the fence, one of the makeshift gates slightly ajar. There’s four of five large buildings that make up the property, most of them branching to the left of the original hotel and casino. Only one tall rooming house has been built to the right of the original, and it’s one stark white, ugly against the softness of the original cream, desolate against the perfectly clear skyline behind it. The Person With Keys, the one parked inside, is throwing random, indiscernible junk from the front door of the white building into a shiny silver skip-bin sitting angled near the building’s steps.
This feels stupid, unnecessarily risky, and I’m breaking rules… I’m almost positive that this particular place can not really be classified as ’abandoned’. Caution versus Bravery, and Bravery whispers that if I don’t do this now it may just be years before I come back here again. And by that time this endless construction work– which actually doesn’t seem to have begun– will be over and I’ll have to pay a few hundred dollars for the privelege of checking all this out.
“Come on, then,” I say to Dear Brad, who seems as hesitant as I am, and I sling my camera bag round my neck and walk through the front gate, trying to swagger along as though I have every right in the world to be here.
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| The view over the Blue Mountains. |
We pass the older couple, who smile and say good morning, and we reply in turn. There’s a certain surreality in feeling as though you’re taking a casual morning stroll through the windswept grounds of a neglected hotel, the moulded Taj Mahal roof of the casino as a backdrop.
Like the PatchWork Hospital, the gardens here were once gorgeous. While not yet quite as rampant as the hospital grounds, given another few years they certainly could be. Leaves and weeds form heaps around roses that are aaphid infested and badly need a prune. The rudiments of catering white goods– coffee pots and industrial toasters, along with random chairs and tables- are stacked against the ochre-colored walls of the hotel wing that skirts the side of the courtyard. There’s a pool, a dolphin dry docked and suspended mid leap, the only water against the deep blue of the pool’s sides a few inches of murky green curdled algae-sludge layering the pool floor.
Between the casino on one side and the pool on the other there is a rotunda, a circular driveway to pull into while you register your stay or return your room keys. Despite the huge pillars, it takes a moment to realize that’s what it is, exactly– creeping weeds and disheveled gravel have blurred the boundaries and lines of the through-way.
This is the drive past facade, the public front of the majestic, antiqued hotel. Combined with the casino, with it’s dramatic domed roof and carved wood and stained glass doors, set high in contrast against the skyline as the valley falls away behind it; it’s all stark and gothic and fraught and brings a sense of tough but somehow sheltered people, dressed in all their finery but living here, in the unforgiving Australian bushland, with the somewhat desolate, bone–chilling cold of mountain winters. Silly feathers and fuss, the almost willful, blind ignorance that comes with having enough money to close your door on the hard parts of life; contrasted with the rugged savagery of actua
lly surviving in this environment a hundred years ago.
The public front of the building is too easy. The chain link fence sections off these main buildings– connected, it seems, so guests did not get wet feet or freeze the tips of their noses while traveling between dining room and bedroom, bedroom and casino– from the next squat structure to the left, which is old and white and looks like an oversized shoebox with tiny squares cut down the length of it’s side for peeking porthole windows. Dear Brad and I turn and walk back the way we came, aiming for the gate again in order to walk the perimeter that bit further and find a way over to the next stretch of security fencing.
“Fire truck.” says Dear Brad. He’s stopped just inside the gate and looks thoroughly confused.
“What?”
“Fire truck!!”
And that’s just what he means… fire truck. As in, a real, read and shiny full-sized tanker parked right here, behind my car, lights flashing and firemen– paid fireman, not volunteer– in big black shiny jackets climbing up and down into the cab and looking as though they are actually preparing to leave again. One of them sees me looking his way and smiles and waves, and I wave back, again with that surreality– I’m standing directly behind the ‘No Trespassers!!’ sign and nobody is even the slightest bit fussed. Person With Keys is still dumping random things in the skip bin, seemingly also nonplussed by flashing emergency lights, nor trespassers with cameras.
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| Back of the hotel, looking north. |
The firies drive off, and one waves to me again, fingers flicking a small salute off his helmet as they pull out on the highway.
Dear Brad and I look at each other, and I’m imagining that, by now, I appear just as confused as he is.
“What the…?”
“I have no idea. But they obviously didn’t mind us being here, so lets go…” (Yes, I said that a lot to Dear Brad this weekend. Anyone who comes exploring with me hears “Come onnnnnn, let’s go!!” on a semi-regular basis.) I don’t care how chilled the local fire brigade are about harmless but still illegal trespassing… The local cops may not feel the same way. And my theory always is- get in, get out. Loitering attracts more attention than stealth movement.
And there’s so much more here to see.
Further down the fence line– the entire property runs for a good five hundred metres along the main highway, and sits directly opposite a tiny sandstone train station– the chain link stops and only the original fencing remains. It’s short and squat, all five foot high concrete pillars connected by concrete spans at the bottom and top. Again, too easy– one leg over, then the other, choose a branch from one the olive trees just inside the fenceline with which to steady yourself, the drop the six foot or so onto the other side,where the ground is slightly lower.
There’s a mismatched group of three or four outbuilding on this side of the fence, most of them still connected to the main hotel buildings with long, tacked on corridors. This is obviously the lower socio-economic end of the Hydro Majestic, and it seems the small white shoebox building we toward first was either the (very) public accommodation for coachmen and traveling servantry, or the staff quarters. It’s dark and dingy and the rooms closest to the road have the feel of dampness, of places so shaded by thick tress that they get very little sunlight at all. And, of course, without the heavy fencing and their imposing security signs making a veritable fortress of this side of the hotel, this building has become an easy target for vandals. It’s not so much graffiti, not even evidence of squatters leaving behind piles of chip packets and soft drink bottles or impromptu fireplaces. The evidence points toward simple, wanton teenaged destruction– things broken, moved and dismantled; order made into mess simply because it’s here and unprotected and they’ve never had so much freedom and power over any environment before in their lives.
In the far back corner of the shoebox building is a kitchen, stripped of anything useful. Every other room, opening methodically off the dark central hallway, is a tiny sleeping space with an identically sized tiny window. The contents of each room differs– some are filled with furniture, some have nothing at all. The roof has come down in some places, throwing merciful thick fingers of slanty sunlight to dry the dampness caught in carpet and upholstery.
The first two rooms are strewn with papers. Cardboard filing boxes are stacked atop one another, drunkenly squashing each others corners and creating compressed heaps of paper. The boxes not stacked up are strewn like snow drifts, piles of looseleaf printed A4′s acting as a slippery, shifting sandhill carpet. I pick up a few of them, shake my head, let them float back toward the floor.
“What are they?” asks Dear Brad.
“Receipts. And invoices and envelopes and stationery and brochures. I’m guessing when the new owners come looking for all the past paperwork from the hotel… this is where they’ll find it.” And again, I wonder… how the hell did it all get here? Who’s job was it, to file and store documentation? What point did they decide ‘Oh fuck it, I’ll just stack all the paperwork here in an unlocked moldy old boarding house?’
Behind the shoebox is another, slighter smaller white Fibro building, fewer windows, more doors. It was, apparently, the care-takers shed on one side, his equipment shed and maintenance room on the other. The tools are, of course, gone, but most of the fittings and random accessories are still here. There’s a calendar on the wall, stopped at March 2007. Screwed to the door of what I’m assuming was, once, the caretakers office– a desk, chair, even a stained and crazed coffee cup still sit dustily inside the small nook– is a sign, obviously salvaged by maintenance when there still was maintenance here. It reads ’Shipley Room’, lettered gold on dark olive paint. It’s from within the hotel proper, and I find myself bre
aking the rules again… coveting. I source a butter knife from the floor, carefully untwist the screws from the thick wood. And take it home for the fairy garden. Righteous bubble broken, I gather intermittently as we pick our way back toward the exit- a red ’fire phone’ with only the handset and cradle, no buttons, lays in a heap of plastic bags and crockery on the floor; so I salvage that, too, and nail it to a pole in the garden for my kids to play with.
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| Inside the staff quarters. |
The guilt is only slight. Skip bins… they nullify the notion of stealing, somewhat.
The last outbuilding appears to be the oldest, older even than the hotel itself, ad the romantic in me imagines a pumping station for the ghost of underground springs. Two squat stories of hand-pressed brick, it’s last incarnation seems to have been as an engine room, boiler room and storage shed. The bottom floor is boring, greasy and mechanical. On the far side of the external walls there’s a rusted metal flight of stairs leading to a landing that looks rotted with concrete cancer. I start up them and on the fourth step the entire staircase swings lazily with my weight.
“I’m not sure it’s safe…” I call out to Dear Brad.
“I don’t think so, either.” He replies, and twenty seconds later he’s past me, up on the second floor anyway, laughing and telling me to get a move on, if it held his weight it will hold mine.
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| The bathroom in the sky |
He was lucky it was worth it. Upstairs was another living quarters, same dusty rooms with worn out furniture stored here that has long been forgetten, or that has no place else to go. But, strangely, what was left of the tiny bathroom was… amazing. A small shower next to a large window that looked out over the valley behind the hotel. Hectares of sweeping greenery, too high and close to view the steep drop off of the cliff so you appeared to be standing on the very top of the world. It’s the coolest bathroom I’ve ever seen In Real Life and again there’s that tugging, pensive sadness. The feeling of things being left to fall part, to rot in the absence of every day interaction with humanity.
Miraculously, the rickety stairs don’t collapse on the way back down. We head toward the back of the hotel, toward another outdoor stairwell, this one a huge set of stark silver fire stairs that are attached to the side of the main bulpilding– a legality necessity that is also an ugly modern eyesore. But the view from the top is breath taking, too huge to take in all at once, so gloriously lush that it catches your breath deep in your chest. It doesn’t take long before vertigo chases me down, down, down until I’m just one flight from the top, a comfortable threshold where I can be sure I’m placing my feet on something solid, where I’m no longer dizzy and my body trusts itself to stay vertical and not slide itself awkwardly through a gap too small for me to fit through anyway and send me plummeting toward the emerald green ground below.
 |
| The hotel, built into the rock |
“Hey… can you see that?” asks Dear Brad softly once he’s caught up again at the foot of the fire stairs, “that door, at the back there… it’s open.”
And damned if he wasn’t right- there was a door, at the very back of the hotel, right against where the cliff drops away. And it was standing open, unlocked, exposing an almost empty room with a huge mirror mounted on the far wall. Seemingly out of place and jarred with the old–fashioned decor, the only objects with the room were two or three huge gym–sized treadmills, a dainty coating of dust and the beginnings and trendilling ends of silky spiderwebs ornating the curving handles and blanketing the running belts.
Continued tomorrow… (really tomorrow, this time. Promise.)
{ 0 comments }
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: Steamy Windows
MeltDown. – RRSAHM
MeltDown.
I fly into Melbourne on Thursday night for the ProBlogger event, which runs Friday and Saturday. Saturday night. I leave Etihad stadium after a full day of brain stretching to catch my eight pm flight home from Sydney.
I never check my laptop in when I fly– who does that, trusts their prized possession with baggage handlers who are likely to play tarmac soccer with it….? But I’ve been lugging the combined thirty kilogram weight of three bags around for two hours now and I am so damn tired.
I’m picked up from Sydney airport at ten pm. I sleep for nine hours, wake still exhausted to the bone. I collect my children from my mum’s house and meet up with friends for a day out. After running around, driving another two hours in between stops and starts… it’s seven o’clock and the gloaming is beginning by the time we finally get home.
My house if full of people– my cousin, The Doc, my mate Kristabelle. I never mind the company but tonight there is just too many of them and I need a break… the noise of constantly interacting with other restless souls for four days straight has become an almost unbearable din.
I open my laptop, trying not to think too hard about the forty emails I have to answer and two articles due tomorrow. I turn around to put something in the dishwasher, turn back…
“Oh no…” It’s a whisper that feels like a whimper. “Oh no, no…”
The screen is shattered, a huge crack running diagonally across the entire seventeen inches of screen. My stomachs drops and flips and I feel so stupid- if it were physically possible, I’d kick myself in the face. Who is stupid enough to check in their laptop?? Especially on a discount carrier that essentially use streamlined buses with wings for their aircraft and have you walk across a virtual frozen tundra of tarmac to board?
I look around my house, at four loads of unfolded washing and no less than eight bags of clothes, mine and the kidlets, that need to unpacked following our four days away from the TinyTrainHouse, lest we have no clean underwear. I think of washing that should be done and lunches that need to be packed and writing I’d really like to do and so many emails to be answered and a million other things….
And I start to cry. I can’t help it. Obese inflated tears roll down my cheeks and I sob noisily, gutturally, so fed up with the way things are always so damn difficult and so tired of being tired all the time.
My mate Kristabelle… she’s all kinds of awesome. I connect my laptop to an old TV and finish what must desperately be done tonight while she cleans the worst of the mess in my house. She sits with me, on the edge of my bed, as I cry pitifully, a slick layer of shiny tears across my cheeks, my eyes swollen and sore.
“I miss him” I sob to her, “I miss so much, and I just want him back.”
“I know” she says, all there is to say, “I know…”
She stays with me until I have cried myself to sleep, and then she returns at half past seven the next morning. Gets my kids up and dresses, wakes me as she’s leaving to walk them to daycare for the day.
And I catch up, enjoy the day that goes too quickly. At the end of it, there’s still so much to do, the never ending list of things I’m not quite on top of.
But it feels manageable again, as though I can handle it… Just.
Maybe it’s just having someone in my corner. Some people are real and unafraid and so generous of spirit it makes me want to weep.
People like that are rare. A friend like Kristabelle…. I’m very lucky to have her.
***
I begin to wonder if breaking a computer screen is akin to breaking a mirror.
 |
| Kim from MM, With Some Grace and I at the #PBEvent. Why do I somehow feel as though I jinxed myself…? |
In the days that follow I get locked out of my email account and lock myself out of my house (again). I discover first hand the catastrophic difference the carbon tax is going to make to the average household and almost faint when I open my electricity bill. I fight with a good friend, yell at my kids. I discover my travel insurance doesn’t cover those people dense enough to not carry valuable goods on the plane with them. Insomnia kicks my arse and I find myself awake, clenching my teeth and wired with anxiety until four or five AM.
It’s been a bad week.
The next one has to be better.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
- October 22, 2012 at 8:38 pm
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Ugh! Don't you just hate it? I have days like that too. Although it's really awesome how you feel like you can conquer anything after a meltdown.
- October 20, 2012 at 11:13 pm
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Same here. Shitty week – one thing after another. My dad had 2 moles taken off his back, got told they were cancerous. Fought with my brother all week. Parked my car in its usual spot on the street outside my house… and when I went to go out in the morning, i saw that someone had hit my car overnight, denting the side panel and putting a huge crack in the windscreen rendering it not roadworthy… And then to top it all off, they drove off without leaving a note! A hit and run!!! Next week must be better. Fingers crossed!
- October 20, 2012 at 9:13 pm
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Can we start a donation fund to buy Lori a new laptop ?
- October 20, 2012 at 8:11 pm
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I'd like to buy you a replacement if you need one. Your blog has saved me more than once.
- October 20, 2012 at 7:55 pm
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Oh crap. There's always a straw to break the back, you know. I get it, I do. Big hugs to you babe. Hope you are feeling a little better by now. xx
- October 20, 2012 at 6:47 pm
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Opportunity for Toshiba to be perfect and lovely!! Hint hint!
- October 20, 2012 at 3:23 pm
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I agree with Jess as it happened to me recently. Expensive, both financially and also emotionally. Hang in there Lori. X
- October 20, 2012 at 3:19 pm
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Aww love, I'm sorry you're having such a shitty week. If it's any consolation, meeting you and Grace was probably my favourite things about Problogger. You haven't jinxed yourself – but you have every right to feel shithouse. Kx
- October 20, 2012 at 3:17 pm
- October 20, 2012 at 10:15 am
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Oh man Lori, that's awful! I think all the bloggers all over the world would be deco to see that happen to their laptop.
Hope things get better for you soon. Xxx - October 20, 2012 at 3:56 pm
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Oh sweetie, I hope it will too. xx
- October 19, 2012 at 10:34 pm
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Please check your emails, Lori, I might have a spare.
- October 19, 2012 at 10:16 pm
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I think you have more gorgeous friends than you know. I just wish I were in a position to help more. It's a goal I'm working on. Then I will annoy you
Just remember it's ok to have those moments. You've been dealt a shitty hand. I'd throw some tantrums myself. - October 19, 2012 at 6:39 pm
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Next week is going to be HEAPS better. Pinky swear xo
- October 19, 2012 at 6:22 pm
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Fark, what a week Lori. May this one be better x
- October 19, 2012 at 4:40 pm
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That is a tough week for sure! I hope some kindly computer sponsor happens across this and sends a lovely new laptop your way – you deserve it x
- October 19, 2012 at 4:33 pm
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Hugs sweetie
- October 19, 2012 at 2:25 pm
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Oh, love! Whatta shitty week! Big hugs!
And no, no, no – broken computer screen doesn't isn't akin to breaking a mirror. Shit just always happens in a pile.
It doesn't surprise me though you've got people looking out for you, Lori. You're very much loved. Take care of you xxx - October 19, 2012 at 1:41 pm
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I'm so sorry you had such a shitty week, but I'm glad you had someone there to help take some of the weight off. It's funny how being upset over something lame like that happening brings EVERYTHING to the surface.
When it's shitty, the shittiness tends to cascade and build like an awful, humongous shit avalanche, doesn't it? I'm crossing my fingers that things look brighter when you wake up tomorrow.
(The electricity thing? Not just the carbon tax but also a 17 per cent price hike by the power companies that came into effect in July…oh, don't get me started on the price of power these days!)
- October 19, 2012 at 1:21 pm
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It's always worth looking for You Tube videos that show how to replace the LCD display in your model of laptop. If after watching that, you feel that you could do it yourself, have a look on ebay for the required parts. It would cost you a lot less than paying someone else to do it. The only thing is that doing yourself will void your warranty if you are still within a warranty period. Good luck!
Previous post: The Muse Wars- Round Four
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Moving On is Letting Go – RRSAHM
Moving On is Letting Go
Moving on… it must mean letting go.
There are things stuck in my head like fresh chewing gum on the bottom of a shoe… I lift, I pull, I stretch, and still the things that shouldn’t be there will not release that sticky, sugary bond. Ideals and illusions that were part of my core identity, my sense of self. As much as it hurts to give that recognition… eventually, I have to. To let it go, first I have to know what it is I’m releasing.
That image I had of what a family consists of- mum and dad and 2.5 kids, having picnics on the weekend and living in the suburbs.
That’s not mine anymore, and it won’t be coming back, never in the simple, wholesome form it was.
I need to let go of that.
I am no longer someone’s wife, someones best friend, half of a shield of love projected into the world… I have to let go of that.
I’m no longer a suburban hosewife who cooks roasts and ferries her kids to Playgroup and daycare and swim lessons. I have to let go of that too.
All of that was a part of me, and before it was a part of me it was something I wanted- all I wanted, really, a completion of life, a definition of being OK.
As I let go of that, I have to allow myself some release from what has happened as well. This doesn’t define me.
This is something that happened, once. It happened to me and around me and for a while it consumed me.
But its not all of me.
I was married. I have known my soulmate. We lived, we loved, he died. Part of me, not all of me. It’s not OK, never will be…. but eventually it must be.
Even if just so I can embrace a new concept, a new vision, a new ego, a new identity… a new version of me. Because if you let go of things, you leave a hole, and something has to fill it.
So fill it with a new concept- that of a family being a mum and her two kids. I know that’s a family, I know it can be one, because I came from a family just like that myself.
Fill that hole with a picture of myself… Single and alone and tougher than I should be. Worthy of love– I have to be, I had it once– but accepting that I may never have that kind of love again… What are the chances of finding another best friend? But I was lucky, very blessed, to have had it once.
Part of me, not all of me. Not OK but it has to be.
Fill the hole with the word “survivor”. Fill it with pride in myself. That’s impossible, right now, when I feel like such a… nothing, a non–entity; a breathing, parenting vessel of pain.
But– with all the luck in the world– that too will pass. And I’ll start to feel real again. Finish the letting go, let it all drain out. And begin to fill it with something new again. Moving on.
Because this is just something that happened, a tiny part of me…. not all of me.
And it’s not OK. But it will be.
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
- January 30, 2012 at 8:49 pm
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I try hard to not it define me. But I haven't been real successful so far. And I'm not the person I was before. So at the moment I'm in limbo. I don't know who I will be. And the lost children walk with me every day, yet I'm not a mother. The world only sees a woman, they don't see the lost children, the anger, the bitterness, the sadness, the grief. It still overwhelms me every day.
- January 25, 2012 at 12:10 pm
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Where have I been for the last week? Can't believe I missed this post. It's wonderful. Thanks for writing it. It shows us all that when something devestating happens you can move on.
- January 18, 2012 at 6:30 am
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This is a beautiful post. Very inspiring.
- January 18, 2012 at 2:47 am
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I agree… a great post.
- January 17, 2012 at 10:20 pm
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Do you have any idea how amazing you are? Most people are never able to achieve this level of insight. And you, not only are you able to understand whats happening – but then you express it, so unbelievably eloquently so that those of us who are far less amazing than you, can learn and grow by your example.
I think it's really hard to be changing – it's so much easier when things are solid, predictable. But I think (not that it's worth anything) that who you are – this new Lori, is going to be in a state of constant flow for awhile as you grieve, let go, and move on. And living in that fluid place is hard, too – it's hard to be changing, but it's also an opportunity to give shape to the solid, stable Lori that is being made, day by day.
Lots of love.
Forgive my wordy comment…. - January 17, 2012 at 8:53 pm
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You fuckin' rock.
That is all.
xxxx tpc - January 17, 2012 at 8:24 pm
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You remind me so much of a friend of mine Lori, a woman who lost her husband to a brain tumour when she was aged under 30 with 3 young children.
Your both tough as fucking nails. Oh, and super awesome! - January 17, 2012 at 4:25 pm
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Made me cry x
- January 17, 2012 at 3:10 pm
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What a beautiful inspiring post. That's all!
- January 17, 2012 at 2:55 pm
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It's good to hear those words from you. You really are a source of hope and strength to others. XXOO
- January 17, 2012 at 1:57 pm
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You are nothing short of extraordinary Lori. much love x
- January 17, 2012 at 1:04 pm
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You always astound me with your writing.
- January 17, 2012 at 12:53 pm
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It's taken me over three years to get to a place where the new normal feels more than just bareable… but ok. She is still a huge part of my life, moving forward does not mean letting go of them… it's about forming a new relationship… and seriously, yes, you can still have a relationship with the dead (and not in a icky paranormal kind of way)but in a spiritual, philosophical kind of way. It takes time.
xx
- January 17, 2012 at 12:10 pm
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Your words make the new concept so clear, so possible. You can do it.
- January 17, 2012 at 11:12 am
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Hugs Lori
Letting go doesn't mean not remembering or not missing letting go means that you can remember with less pain …
I am not sure that we truly ever fully let go of our loved ones but as you say we no longer are defined by them or the events in our lives.
You will get there I promise, I know this for fact.
C xx - January 17, 2012 at 10:22 am
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You're right. There will, one day be a new normal. A new Lori. When I put myself in your shoes though, fear takes my breath away. The fact that you're still standing, still parenting. I think you're stronger than I'd ever be. And yes, I know it's because you have no choice. But I STILL don't know if I could. I don't know if I have that in me.
Something that happened to you. It's actually a good way of looking at it.
Lots and lots of love to you, Lori.
- January 17, 2012 at 9:17 am
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Lori, one of the best posts you've written so far. Caro x
- January 17, 2012 at 7:59 pm
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Lori, you are strong & brave & you will be ok xx Beautiful post
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Next post: Bonsai.
Random Ramblings of a SAHM: RUOK- Part Two.
Shrunk – RRSAHM
Shrunk
Charlie the wonder shrink seems to come through with the goods every time, and this time is no exception.
After missing three scheduled appointments due to sick children with screaming temperatures and aching ears, I fall into the big white chair in Charlie’s office with a valid sense of relief. I talk for the next twenty minutes, unravelling for him what my life has become over the last six months or so.
I cry occasionally, silently, and I wipe the tears away quickly while I’m looking over into a corner of the small office, unable to look at people directly when I cry for the fear that I will see pity on their eyes; and that will break whatever strength I have remaining.
I tell the truth, that I sometimes sleep with random people purely for the thrill of it; and I can’t look him in the eyes then either.
I confess that I am afraid of myself, afraid of what I will become… whatever I seem to be manifesting into.
And I walk away feeling somewhat normal in spite of my self; somewhat reassured that I have not yet reached the limits of human endurance, of our natural capability to cope… people’s minds survive much worse than this.
It’s still the smoke alarm, explains Charlie, the same one the PSTD made faulty. It’s been shrieking at everything for a long time now. Perhaps it is something with limits, and they have been reached– the batteries drained. Desensitized, so to speak.
And, in turn, from one extremity to the other; the malfunctioning smoke alarm that is my brain no longer goes off at the mere suggestion of smoke.
It takes a whole fucking bonfire.
Small amounts of stimulation– the kind ‘regular’ people live on, thrive on, day to day; they are no longer enough to penetrate my psyche. My emotional self is a body part with the blood flow restricted– poke me with a pin, I’ll feel nothing at all except perhaps the slightest pressure, the slightest knowledge of something on my skin.
Hack at me with a machete… I’m guaranteed to feel that.
That’s why it takes so much to feel alive… why I’m walking around seeking something, something real, even in my sleep.
There’s more, of course– if only it were that simple– but I’m exhausted just writing that out, never mind thinking too hard about it.
I need a vacation from my head, just for a moment… sometime to release the pressure before I have to jump back into my own mind again.
***
There is nothing like being very, very sick and in charge of two small children to make you feel more terrifyingly vulnerable and perfectly mortal than you ever imagined possible.
Charlie the shrink tells me that, in it’s essence, the safety net that protects most people from the world has, for me, been stretched so far and hangs so loosely around reality that it’s not surprising I am hyper aware of potential consequences, potentials risks and possible flow on effects.
People can’t die like that, in front of you, right there.
Wrong.
That would never happen to me.
Yes, it would.
With those truths in place in my psyche; leave me fevered and sick, unable to move from my bed with my tiny daughter burning up beside me, and when my subconscious whispers…
“She could die..”
There is no resounding voice to say “Don’t be silly.”
It’s the inherent fragility of myself, worn down and exhausted and sicker, now, three times in the last year, than I have been in my life; that beats at the back of mine and taunts me in fevered dreams. It’s the aloneness of it, the fact that the only person I can call right now for real, psychical help is my mother, and she should be with my gran, and can’t afford to catch a virus for that very reason…
What would happen to us, without her? I have morbid visions of waking near dusk from a fever–induced coma and finding my daughter still and dehydrated beside me.
It’s not as dramatic as that, of course. But we sleep for nearly forty eight hours straight, waking only once so my mum can drive us to the local doctors, falling asleep in the waiting room with my daughter on my lap.
I hate this. I hate that the responsibility always falls on my mum, not that she ever complains, but I am continually overflowing with gratitude for her– she does so much, picks up so much of the slack that I unintentionally leave laying around, for others to trip and fall on.
I hate this constant, grinding illness my body seems to be working itself through– a grief sickness, a mourning illness, the toll that trauma has taken…
The loneliness is sharper, when I’m sick– all I want is to be wrapped up, to not be the one in charge. I spent a night at a man’s place not long ago, and the essence of it’s comfort was this– if someone came into that building, in the ink of night, with a darkness or threat in their intent; I wouldn’t be the one who would have to get up swinging, grit my teeth against the shaking fear and face that threat.
Laying there, in that dark… someone else would have done it for me.
It’s not a lot, it’s nothing at all. But the weight of responsibility is so much heavier when I can’t stand up without feeling faint, when moving my muscles hurts enough to make me cry.
* Kids and I are on the up and up… slowly. My Gran is still well and truly hanging in there– reports tell me my uncle snuck her in Macca’s for lunch on Friday, which was exceptionally well received.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
- July 2, 2012 at 11:11 pm
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I get so much of this.
- June 29, 2012 at 10:29 pm
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Your words often given meaning to what I'm feeling – they are very powerful. I am a single mum without family support who recently left an abusive relationship. My toddler often gets sick with asthma/croup/excema etc. I also struggle with depression and anxiety.
The stress often gets me sick…and not just your run of the mill cold kind of sick.
I feel exactly as you wrote, so incredibly vulnerable. I worry in the wee hours about everything, how we will cope, will her asthma be too much for her little body…catastrophising over every single thing. I want to escape my head and thinking for a few minutes.
Thank you for making me feel a little less alone.
- June 28, 2012 at 6:40 am
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My heart goes out to you. You SO need and deserve a break from life. And illness. You are doing great, don't doubt yourself and how *awesome* you are doing with your home, kids, life, etc. You have come so far. Your mum is probably more than happy to help in any way she can. Wish I could too, but it is a bit of a commute from Florida I hear. Sending you some healthy vibes and rainbows. Hang in there and thank you for your honesty. It is refreshing. Lisa
- June 28, 2012 at 4:08 am
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I think you are truly incredible. One day, one foot in front of the other, one effort and yet you do it so remarkably well. I'm so happy that I found your blog and I really hope things get a wee bit better soon. Heart breaking yet simply inspiring. Be strong and you keep telling it like it is. Fab honesty. I just wish for you so much it wasn't true xxx
- June 27, 2012 at 5:57 pm
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I read everyone of your posts and although I know its from place of pain it still amazes me that your raw honesty is somewhat comforting. Most of us are afraid to give any acknowledgement to our feelings, never mind write them down for all to see.
Just on a side note, I've been married for … too long sometimes … and its no guarantee that you wont feel alone or be the only person that's responsible. For everything. All the time. Just this week I said "outloud" that by the time I go to sleep at night I'm exhausted, not from my day (which is hectic enough) but from having to drag my husband and 2 children along all day. They wont get up if I don't nag. They wont eat. They wont go to work, or pack their school bags, or clean up after themselves or even go to training for their sports or ANYTHING if I don't force them to. I spend the whole day being cheeleader to everyone else trying to get them to find the motivation to do something, be something and there's no one doing that for me.
I get tired too. I get scared too. I also want someone to tell me that it'll be better and I'll be ok but for now, don't worry about a thing. Its taken care of.
But on the flip side, I also know that since I am so strong … I can also make myself feel better and turn things around and carry on again, even if I have to drag them along to do it.
- June 27, 2012 at 2:26 pm
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You are so strong and brave. I am in awe of how you manage day after day with everything. You're amazing.
Can I just say I think it's freakin' awesome that your uncle smuggled Maccas in for your gran? I can picture it in my head like something out of Mission Impossible
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Kuta and Bali and Coming Home. – RRSAHM
Kuta and Bali and Coming Home.
It’s only after flying out of the place that I appreciate its organised chaos for what it was. Pangkalan Bun is, by Indonesian standards, not a ‘city’ but a ‘town’. In comparison to Jakarta, Bali and Kuta (which is all I have to compare it to, really), Pangkalan Bun was quiet and peaceful; it’s pace productive but slow.
Surabaya Airport is mind-blowing after five days in Borneo. It assaults the senses. Noise- not unpleasant but just so there, constantly burbling. So much colour, brightly jarring after the thousand shades of green in the jungle. Cloying smells, tangled luggage, a rush of people.
Again, I’m struck by the politeness of people. It’s efficient disorganisation. Everyone seems to know exactly where to go and what to do. Except us. Not that anyone seems bothered by that at all.
Erin and I nearly faint with happiness at the sight of a Starbucks. And we shop, in a way that only women who’ve been moored in the jungle for five days can.
***
Arriving back in Bali is a let-down and a God-send, both at once. Our hotel in Kuta was nice but nothing special on the first night we stayed here, before we went to Borneo. It now feels like the absolute mecca of luxury.
Even the artificial ’fresh laundry’ scent pumped into the tiny elevator is invigorating rather than gag-inducing. The beds feel like fluffy clouds. We order room service and Bintang. And I sleep, uninterrupted and with no bad dreams, for twelve hours straight.
***
The next day, I find enough energy to get up and dressed by midday. There’s four hours to fill between hotel check-out and leaving for Denpasar Airport to fly home. Still exhausted and slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of people around us after days of relative quiet, Erin and I decide on doing nothing more ambitious than a shopping trip to Kuta Square.
That may have been a mistake.
Kuta Square is a temple to human consumerism. There’s a department store with a whole floor devoted to tacky ‘I Heart Bali’ souvenirs. Cultural significance is of no concern here- everything from bongo drums to dream-catchers in every lurid color of the rainbow.
Our simple, un-ambitious plans for a roti roll and a pedicure are scrapped as the rain begins to pour down. We duck into a decent looking cafe, orders burgers and more Bintang, and marvel at the fact that we are eating food without rice- every meal in Pangkalan Bun, including breakfast, was served with ‘nasi’. Bacon, chicken and beer taste like some kind of manna from heaven.
Where Borneo is a Muslim country, most of the Balinese are Hindi. The sculptures and idols, the tiny temples we drive past- they’re intricately made, whimsical and exotic (and, in all reality, probably what Erin and I should have spent our afternoon looking at).
Hindi shopkeepers prepare small baskets to their gods, filled with offerings- flowers, incense, the occasional cigarette, biscuit or packaged food. The offerings are placed them on the the ground near the entrance to their stalls and shops.
I didn’t take any photos in Kuta. Have one of Erin and Garry instead.
Erin and I sat in the cafe in Kuta and watched tourists- mostly Australian, men in Bintang singlets and women with their hair in tiny braids- step all over the tiny, colorful offerings perched on the sidewalks. They never looked down. They had not even the slightest idea of what they were doing.
It almost makes me want to cry, and all I want to do is go back to the hotel. We order more Bintang. And breath gaping sighs of relief between us, when the hotel driver arrives fifteen minutes early to pick us up.
***
I have dinner with Erin at the airport and hug her as hard as I can. I will miss Borneo. I will miss the jungle.
I will miss Erin, most of all.
***
My five and a half hour flight from Bali to Sydney gets diverted from Sydney airport at the very last minute. I spend fourteen hours stuck on a plane.
Returning home feels strange, boringly familiar yet reluctantly light all at once. Real life sucks me back into its vortex. Twenty-four hours after touching down in Australia, it feels as though I never really left at all.
After three days on board the klotok, we were left with the irritating sensation of ‘sea legs’. After spending all that time trapped in a plane seat, it feels as though I have the aerial equivalent. My centre of balance is continually shifting. There’s a subtle, disconcerting inertia that causes an unsteadiness within me; I don’t feel properly anchored to my surroundings.
‘Plane legs’, perhaps.
Or maybe it’s just the phenomenon of being able to feel, for a short while, the sensation of the world turning beneath your feet.
Me, carrying bananas at the second feeding station.
***
More photos and video, coming soon.
Please donate to Orangutan Odysseys here- they made this amazing trip possible.
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October 26, 2013 at 9:46 pm -
Lori, just been reading through your Borneo blog , bringing back old memories and adding a few facts and figures to my Borneo Apple Photo book which Im giving Mum for her 75th bday , cant wait , thankyou for writing such an amazing diary of our most wonderful trip …hope you are enjoying Melbourne . Looking at joining Garry and a few friends at the TOP fundraiser end of November ,
lovin your blog when I find time to read it! Em x
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