Gratuitous wrestling photo

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been in a pub brawl. My eyes were puffy and swollen. My head was pounding. Once I came to, I realised I’d been fighting off a cold and not a burly bouncer named Sue.

Before children came along, I succumbed to viruses with ease. I had yet to build up the stamina required to parent through pain. I sat in bed and read magazines. Sometimes I watched a video. Who was I?

Unfortunately, since my daughter’s nose has been running for the past thirteen months it was only a matter of time before I caved. The following is a guide that you probably shouldn’t follow:

1. The flip-out sofa

I once swore that no flippin’ flip-out sofa would grace our house with its presence. Now we have two. Catching 40 x 5 second grabs of sleep in a tiny couch doesn’t sound like fun, and it’s not, but any longer and a toddler may confuse you for a WWF wrestling ring and perform a corner slingshot splash across your unsuspecting torso.

Tip: Never spend more than $20 on these things, they will see you through the darkest of nights.

 2. The medicine cabinet

It used to be in an ice-cream container. Now it’s spread across three shelves. I can dowse you in pinetarsol, de-lice your scalp, sooth your gums and clear up three different rashes but all I get is two paracetamol, Vicks on a tissue and a desperate yearning to lie down.

3. May day! May day!

You think you could by dying but suddenly your other half has a work meeting. Your sister calls, you tell her how sick you are and her phone starts breaking up. You are no longer responsible for the state of the house. You are on a Las Vega buck’s night and what happens in the house, stays in the house. At some stage you will blow your nose on an infant’s sock. You no longer care.

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Any tips for parenting when sick? Was Junkyard Dog your favourite 80′s wrestler too?

The post How to parent when sick appeared first on TINY SAVAGES.

The last time I spent a night away from my family was in 2009. I drove to the Victorian town of Daylesford for a relaxing weekend and managed to chafe two layers of calf skin off during an ill-conceived trek on horseback. I spent the next day walking with an imaginary equine between my legs. I called him Shirley. Shirley made it incredibly difficult to sit down or converse without painfully extorting facial muscles.

Securing a night off alone from family responsibilities is a privilege in our household. Our military obligations as parents mean that when our children take us down, they take us down together. We are Spartans. One of us is worth a thousand men.

Sometimes Spartans require a break from household warfare and since the mistreatment of Helot slaves as entertainment went out around 371 BC, I chose the next best thing – aeroplane travel and a buffer zone of 877 kilometres.

When Kidspot announced their masterclass and launch party for the Voices of 2013 campaign, I explained to my husband that I needed to put faces to names. I needed to board a plane. I needed to network. Given he knows I require 1.7 glasses of Shiraz or a natural affinity with someone to emerge from my shell, it was very kind of him to concede defeat.

I love air travel. It challenges my anxiety and despite possessing an uncanny knack for thinking how unnatural it is for a gigantic white machine with wings to be up in the air right at the point of take-off, there’s something about floating above a huge mass of water that makes you appreciate your insignificance. It’s humbling.

It was during a Kidspot masterclass panel, that someone vouched for showing humility. This followed on from award-winning film-maker and photographer Hailey Bartholomew’s keynote speech, in which she beautifully articulated her own humble beginnings via a video that spoke to the heart on raising small children and fearing that the world is passing you by.

Humility in blogging can feel in direct conflict with the self-promotion that is required in sharing your work and spruiking your wares, “Like my page!” and “Vote for me” and “I love your blog!” The networking can be enough to make the most resilient of Spartans retreat inside their armour.

There are people in blogging who navigate this terrain with a grounded dignity, who are generous with their knowledge and talented to boot. They might not shout the loudest but there’s beauty in their words, their creations, or their love of all things retro. And sometimes it takes being three thousand feet in the air to appreciate the quality in being grounded.

To celebrate humility, maybe you’d like to share a blogger or creative type who flies beneath the radar?

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The Arts Centre Melbourne’s new Winter season begins this year on July 26. Running for three weeks, there will be over a dozen events featuring theatre, dance, puppetry, music and digital installations.

The theme this year is Arts, science and technology. The Arts Centre chose the theme because:

We look to science and technology to progress and improve our lives. We are confronted with and challenged by the effects of our discoveries on our environment and the impact of new technologies on our daily lives.

I simultaneously love and hate technology. I am immersed in it and frequently inspired by it, but damned if it hasn’t been at the expense of my attention span…..sorry, what were we talking about again?

To celebrate the 2013 winter season, I have two A-Reserve tickets to give away to Proximity, a fusion of dance and live videography presented by the Australian Dance Theatre, valued at $130. To enter simply leave a comment below describing what technology has done for you.

Fine Print:

1. Comments open Monday May 20 to Monday May 27 (11:59pm)
2. Only Australian residents are eligible to enter.
3. Winner must be able to attend on August 15, 2013.
4. Winner will be notified by email and will have 24 hours to respond before a new winner is judged.

Good luck!

The post Arts Centre Melbourne Winter Season Giveaway appeared first on TINY SAVAGES.

Insert post in here……

I’ve been blogging less of late. I’ve been critiquing blogs at uni. I’ve been researching them at work. Echo Chambers, hall of mirrors, homophily, the microblogging world of Twitter. I’ve been investing my resources elsewhere and now I’m not sure how to redirect them back to this space. Do I just keep tapping at the keys, is that how it goes? Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how.

I referred to a ‘How To Blog’ reading in The Online Journalism Handbook and Bradshaw and Rohuma described a blog, in genre terms, as follows:

The post How to blog appeared first on TINY SAVAGES.

I was five minutes late to a Mother’s Day event at my son’s kinder and missed the entire thing. There were wee children singing and I missed it. Now that I have sufficiently indulged in some self-flagellation by imagining an entire scenario where my son was singing despondently while searching the crowd of proud mothers for my face, I’m okay. It is possible he was searching for a cupcake anyway. We won’t talk about child number two who favours her father so much that I spend Mondays trying to win back her affections by saying, “Daddy ate all the chips” when she goes looking for them at 9am.

My own mum is off exploring the world, so Mother’s Day did feel like it was missing something this year. I had a really nice morning out at Circa a few weeks ago to celebrate Mother’s Day and have a squizz at some of Target’s new stuff and we were asked to write on a blackboard what we wanted to thank our mums for. I said I was joking, but three weeks in and I’m not so sure.

Blogging has done a stellar job of trying to Spackfill the gap my mother has left. I was treated to one of the greatest meals I’ve had in recent memory at Joe’s Bar in St Kilda last week. Executive Chef, Kat recently returned from an overseas trip and you can see the influence in the new Winter menu. There’s a bit of a “new Mexican” thing going on and I think Kat’s creating food you won’t find at other places in Melbourne. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried a jalapeño popper and the desserts are out of this world.

Last but not least, a massive thank you to Kate from Uberkate for offering a piece from her Ubercircles collection. I’ve had my heart set on one of these for such a long time and I am just so very appreciative. Anyone can start a blog, I’m not doing anything that anyone else can’t do so when someone else acknowledges what you’re doing, it’s kind of nice.

How was your Mother’s Day? Do you have “that” month too, is it May?

Disclaimer: Writer was invited to attend Target Morning Tea and sample Joe’s new menu. Uberkate necklace was gifted and I am still beyond excited about that.

The post Around the traps in May appeared first on TINY SAVAGES.

Yesterday, during a commute across town, I was briefly hit with a moment of creative clarity. I felt inspired and fired up. And I didn’t have a pen.

I’ve resorted to the voice recorder while running around a local park but since I can’t successfully navigate the West Gate and Bolte bridges at the best of times, it wasn’t really an option.

I haven’t been running as much (see: never) of late. Exhaustion via exercise seems to work for me because it empties out the noise. It happens between the 2.7km and 3 km mark. Sometimes two or three ideas hit me at once. You can’t focus on trivial crap because you’re too busy regretting that Rogan Josh with seventeen different spices.

Do you know the feeling I’m talking about? Have you systems in place? I often think of Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk where she mentioned Tom Waits telling his creative anxiety, “Excuse me. Can you not see that I’m driving?” Well I’m not sure I should be telling these feelings to leave. I’m in short supply and working with limited genetics and brain power.

If there is a common theme to my creative process (and I’m not sure if legally I should even be using that term) it’s music. It frees my head.

(warning: clip contains french kissing…..almost forgot what that looked like!!)

Do you get struck anywhere in particular? Does music help you too?

The post When inspiration strikes appeared first on TINY SAVAGES.

Our family day carer was fine but so careful with money I was worried that one day I’d open a cupboard and 300 children would tumble out. The amount of times she requested tissues, I was sure she had an illegal tissue box operation on the side. When a place in the CBD became available, we jumped ship.

I only worked two days but my son would latch onto that glass creche door with suction cup hands and tear streaked face. I’d meet my husband for coffee and we’d be miserable together, “It feels like someone has broken my heart,” he’d say.

There were frequent colds, day carers going on holidays and an accident which required several weeks off work but I had a renewed lease on life. I was more motivated and eager to learn. I enrolled in University, I made plans. Then my son contracted a nasty infection at childcare. They sent out this information to an incorrect email address. He had a febrile convulsion. There was a one in five chance it could happen again. I was out. Done. Mentally I could not do it anymore.

Less than three years off long service leave and I walked out the door. I am incredibly lucky that I had that choice, many don’t. My story is not unique or special. It’s perfectly middle class. But it’s also very common. The Australian Bureau of Statistics says:

The growth in employment for women has been mainly in part-time employment, which may provide opportunities to combine work and other commitments

I look around at friends and family and many have changed career paths, started a business or begun study. Some even started a blog.

Right now I juggle university with some paid writing, blogging and a part time social media role. It sounds messy, and quite often it is, but it works because it’s flexible and I never knew how great it felt to do something you enjoy. I’m a late bloomer and I don’t know how long it will all last or what it will lead to but that’s half the fun.

It’s for many of these reasons that if someone wants to pay a blogger either with cash or through an experience or via products, I will never begrudge it. We’re all just trying to make a living. We’re all just getting by. Quite frequently there is negative sentiment surrounding this topic, and I’m not suggesting that any of us are perfect, but sometimes it pays to acknowledge why many of us ended up here.

Was your child a suction cup kid too? How do you juggle work with children?

The post Work, babies, anything appeared first on TINY SAVAGES.

One of the joys of immersing yourself in nine different social media platforms is that you get to indulge your mood swings with hundreds, sometimes thousands of people. There’s a certain level of vanity required in writing a blog, “Hello, look at me. I have something to say!” and sometimes during a difficult period, or even during your period, it can be difficult to avoid feelings of paranoia.

Such as:

Somebody ignores your comment on Twitter

They hate me

You read a vague blog post about someone’s hairdresser’s cousin’s uncle being a shit writer

They are talking about me!

Somebody writes a passive aggressive tweet loaded with sub text

Are they talking about me?

You notice that a Facebook friend is friends with a friend you’re not friends with.

She doesn’t like me.

No one likes your Instagram picture

Are people ignoring me?

You go to the park in tea-stained tracksuit pants and your child throws a tantrum

Somebody is going to take my picture and put it on a hate forum

You didn’t get invited to an event

What is wrong with me?

A person you haven’t heard from in ten years just looked at your LinkedIn profile

Someone is talking about me

Fortunately these feelings of pestilence and paranoia have a habit of disappearing following a good nights sleep, a cuddle or the realisation that Nanna doesn’t give a crap about The Twitter.

Do you ever get paranoid or is just me? It’s just me isn’t it?!

The post Inside the mind of a paranoid narcissist appeared first on TINY SAVAGES.

Then we had kids.

We had good intentions. We eventually made it to Bali after a few false starts but I still get chills when I think about that trip. In 25 words or less: Toddler. Plane. Eye rolls. Crying. Hot. Morning sickness. Dollar Cornettos. Hot. Delays. Three people dribbling in the back of a cab. Never again.

Overseas travel now consumes our thoughts instead.

We sometimes like to torture ourselves by pouring over the magazines my husband brings home from travel centres. As our dreams fade, the mags edge closer to the place beneath the sink which is one painful step closer to its recycle bin fate.

We debate the merits of Thailand versus Vietnam. Fiji versus the Gold Coast – a place that we swore to avoid but now find oddly appealing. Sometimes my husband gets ahead of himself and mentions somewhere like Boracay – a place that requires two flights, a bus and a boat and I start mentally preparing my own one way ticket to No Frikking Way.

Last week, something weird happened. I pulled the stroller out of the boot of my car. When I tried to unfold it, I found a book had wedged itself in the undercarriage. A pristine book with all its stickers still in tact that I don’t remember buying.

 Yes. It would appear that my 4 year old stole a travel book.

I have had to return to the store with my tail between my legs, but the scariest part is, I’m now concerned the child is inside my head, peeking at my pipe dreams. It’s creepy. Nonetheless I’m taking it as a sign and my husband’s got a brand new stash of travel mags.

Does travel consume your thoughts too? Has your child ever stolen something?

The post Travel pipe dreams appeared first on TINY SAVAGES.

Sometimes my house resembles a circus. There are no bearded ladies, strong men or unicyclists. Instead there is juggling and the attempted taming of beasts. There is walking a tight rope while talking to a spouse because the beasts have sucked you dry and you’re not even sure if you still like each other. Well it turns out if you haven’t had sufficient sleep, you don’t like anything much at all.

Sometimes I look at the surrounding chaos and I can literally hear circus music in my head. Accordions and pianos and maniacal grins while people scream and fight and ask to be fed. Again. Sometimes the music starts at 6am, other times it goes all night. You wake up in a single bed, disorientated, wondering if you pulled at the pub until you realise your bed mate is a gigantic stuffed crocodile and not Adam Levine.

Yesterday I said, “We should be on Supernanny” and I wasn’t even joking. I need Jo Frost to turn up in her fancy looking taxi and humiliate us on international television because nothing else is working. I’m tired of words like ‘naughty corner’ and ‘time out’ and ‘go to your room’ and ‘positive reinforcement’. I just want Jo to turn up so I can nick off to a hotel somewhere and close the blinds and sleep. I’ll listen to her stern words, look at her charts and nod my head but I’d probably sit through a Rob Schneider gig if someone promised me a night off.

Every time I think, “Just as well the animals are cute,” they try biting my arm off as a reminder of who is boss. If you think I’m joking, you should see the incisor mark beneath my husband’s left nipple after he took a wildling home from the park before she was ready. I heard them from three blocks away.

I am failing as Ringmaster. I am swinging from a trapeze, hoping I don’t fall off. And sometimes I think I probably just need to let go.

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Is your house a circus too?

The post The Circus appeared first on TINY SAVAGES.