So, the question of today is - How do you get a four year old to listen without instilling fear?
Any suggestions? Anybody?
And don´t give me this super nanny shite! Nor beating or shouting down. I hope there is a way that will suit us all - our way - we did it ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur way! (Sid, not Frank).
Yes, all extremely coherent.
And I am wanting to pick out a day before Christmas to try for the last time to give up smoking. What have I tried? - therapy, acupuncture, will power, will power again, smoking two packs in one sitting and a bit more will power. Oh, and that bloody Allen Carr book - "90% success rate". Here's the deal, you read this book and if by the end of it you are still smoking they will refund you the price of the book. And I presume this is how they base their "success rate" - by amount of copies sold compared with number of refunds. I have the book, given to me as a present from my sister (bless her), I read it, did all it said and after putting it down I was lighting up after about four hours. Whether this says anything about the book or about my lack of will power is up for debate - but please, do you think I will trek all the way across town to the nearest Allen Carr clinic to pick up the ten pounds - or whatever it cost - refund? Will I heck! Or could I be bothered to post it off? (Does the refund include postage and packaging?). No, I have better things to do like cigarettes to smoke, lungs to bleed, shortage of breath to suffer and clothes to clean - and extra money to make!
But one favour I ask from the Allen Carr foundation - please don't include me in your 90% if indeed these results are based upon how I think they are. For how could they possibly know otherwise?
So, I am back at that square, yes, number one, as concerned with smoking. (And it seems, dealing with my kids)

Once again, sitting up late wasting my time watching mindless videos on youtube.
But has anything of interest happened today? Probably, but I'm bound not to find it on youtube.
So, did anything interesting happen to me today? Apart from the nonsense discussion we had in class, which is only memorable because of it's nonsense, I have to claim defeat and say I had a boring day.
Pulled a wood splinter out of my right forefinger that has been lodged in my skin for the past few days.
Cleaned out the ashtray in the basement room.
Watched a teenage girl cram the last three bites worth of her kebab into her mouth, glancing over at me as if I were about to steal it. She could not have been more than fourteen but had the movements and demeanor of an overweight mother of five. Was she happy? I don't and shall never know, and I don't want to care, but, some bleeding heart mentality inside me wants to send her off to some mountain retreat/boot camp to learn that the point of playing is that there is no point.
My eldest had a plait in her hair. First time I had seen her with one. She rode her bike to school again.
Remembered that I owe money to the library

Walked with the youngest in the pram and the eldest on her trike to the kindergarten this morning. It's about 2 k's - good going for a four year old first thing in the morning. Left them in and took the bus to work. Had to buy smokes in the kiosk by my stop, walked in, old arabic guy chatting on the phone in a language I will probably never understand, phone had a cord and as he didn't want to interupt his conversation he told me in english to come around the counter and take my own pack off the shelf. I did so, and took out the correct money, placed it on the counter and walked out smiling to myself at his ability to trust so off handedly. I don't think he even counted the money before I was leaving - just engrossed in his telephone conversation, that 'other' voice we all seem to recognize, penetrating our eardrum over miles and miles of cable (or waves, for that matter).
It reminds me of an occasion when i first visited finland on a youth trip back in 96 and talking with an old Indian man. What he was or what he did, didn't really matter - we were supposed to give time to this man and listen to his words merely because he was from India, old, dressed all in white and had lived at a Mahatma Ghandi ashram. He spoke of the invention of the mobile phone and how he saw it as a great way to communicate since years ago, if you wanted to communicate with someone on the far side of the valley, you would have to go to a mystic, give them your message, they in turn would meditate for hours on end, enter the ether or whatever, spiritually connect with another mystic on the far side of the valley who would in turn pass the message on to the intended recipiant - all this would take hours if not days - and then, to hear the reply, well...
Believe what you like from this, but the point was that he believed it and as such, was greatly appreciative of the appearance of the mobile phone since this way, any tom, dick or harry or...(insert three stereo-typical Indian names) could communicate, without, I suppose, the years of tantric training the former form of communication must have entailed.
Or perhaps it is just cheaper...
During the same meeting, our old, Indian, all in white, I've lived with the Great Soul, technology enthusiast, smacked hius hands together to kill a mosquito. One of the Finnish participants of our group, whose name has also left me but who I now imagine to be the managing director of a mid-sized haulage company, commented something along the line of; "You talk about this and that, about doing this, building that and reaching out. But what did that mosquito ever do to you?" I could see all that had been said by this man crumbling around him as he quipped, as it sounded to us, some glib remake about maleria.
Perhaps he changed jobs after that day. Perhaps that was him in the kiosk this morning. Why not? They would be around the same age.

This is me. And this is my first blog though I have been keeping a written diary on and off for the past 12 years - so, if keeping those is anything indicative of how I shall keep this, you'll hear from me again about this time, twenty to one in the morning, next june.
wow, I feel so 'now'.