Double Ear Infection, One Case of Pink Eye...

... and a father thankful for medical coverage! I wish I could find money with the frequency that my youngest finds illness! And the thankfulness comes from the knowledge that her medicine would have cost like $120 out of pocket.
Tonight's music is John Coltrane. Not anything that I have heard before, but it is going into the Jazz collection. What sucks the worst is that I can't find the info for the songs, so I have 10 great tracks with no names... oh well.
I think we shall speak on corporal punishment today....
How many people out there have seen a parent with a rowdy child in a restaurant or department store and thought,"that wouldn't be MY child!" Now, how many of you would actually spank your child for acting out? And I don't mean to the point of pulling an extension cord out of your purse or going to the toy section to get a length of Hot Wheels track, but a smack on the rump as a reminder who is the parent?
I really think that more of us need to, on occasion, issue out a healthy serving of spanking. I think one of the major reasons that there are so many problems with rowdy, disrespectful children is that children don't fear their parent's wrath anymore. Too many parents are trying to be their kid's friends and forgetting that the child is not their equal. When I was a kid, I not only respected my mother, but I feared her! Because I knew that if I screwed up, I would get whooped for it. Not just for doing something I knew was wrong, but for making people think I had no proper training at home(a direct reflection on her as a parent). There was none of this "Oh, come on Mom!" or any negotiation at all. The best thing you could do is be quiet so as not to expound your sentence.
Now, there is nothing wrong with being a friend to your kid, but that kid needs to clearly know the line where friend stops and parent begins. When we are playing a video game together, we can be friends, but if I am having to ask about why your grades are slipping in school, then I am the parent. There needs to be clear and concise lines between those times.
One specific time comes to mind, when we had friends over and my oldest daughter said something out of line. I gave her the hardest look I could, to try to save her some embarrassment, but she chose to blurt out "I can GLARE too!" Needless to say, I did not beat her in front of our guests, but that was the end of her evening. and she left the room thoroughly embarrassed. The next morning, she apologized for her behavior and and disrespect, and we went back to business as usual. Had I let that incident slide, or not called her out on it then, she may have continued in her decline of respect... and then I would have had to dole out a heaping helping of whoop-ass, but fortunately, in her younger years, she learned that certain behaviors from her will earn certain punishments. Also that an elevated tone of voice usually precludes these events, though she may have forgotten "The Look," since I hadn't had to use it in some time. And we all knew what "The Look" meant from our parents - it meant that that moment might be an excellent time to start thinking of your Last Will and Testament.
and MP3's and downloading movies from the Final word: do not let your kids think they are your equal. they may know more about I-podsInternet, but you know more about the things that will still apply, and be important, when they are your age.

"You don't get to be old bein' no fool!"
-Mudbone/Richard Pryor.

... I got nothin'!

Here we are, the second day of my blog, and, like the title says, I got nothin'. Nothin' except an earful of Thelonious Monk and a sudden pain in my back that is an exact duplicate of the one I had this morning before I went to work. Nice to know the pain was kind enough to take a break long enough to allow me to make it through a work day... Damned decent of it, don't you think?
I started maybe 3 different subjects and deleted them all. Couldn't figure out the best way to get to the end. Maybe my luck will be better this evening...

Happy New Year!

Well, here we go! Into 2008 with all the same old resolutions of years gone by - "I'm gonna lose weight," "I'm gonna quit smoking," "I'm gonna exercise more," "I'm gonna write that novel..." Stop it. Just friggin' stop it. You may want to do these things, and honestly have every intention of doing them, but, truth be told, you aren't going to do them... There is always something that causes us to fail... "I lost my job, and a cigarette was what kept me from blowing up the HR department!" "My grandma almost never makes that cake! Diet be damned!" "After working all day, I just don't have the energy to work on a novel." Convenient excuses...
The thing is, I believe if you really want to do it, you can and will. You won't let any outside thing stop you. If you really want to sit and think about it logically, the only thing that stops you (barring anything outside your direct control, i.e. an F5 tornado!) is you!
We are our our own worst enemy in many cases. Example, I know there is nothing really stopping me from creating the animation I have had in my head since long ago but me. No one is dragging me away from my computer when I could be creating, nor is anyone holding a gun to my head telling me not to draw. I just need to light the fire under my own ass and get jumping, and no one else can make that happen like I can... like I did to make myself start this blog.
Hopefully, I have inspired not only a reader, but myself to get the frag up and DO that thing that really wants to be done. Lose that weight, quit smoking, write that novel...

Create that animation....

I will end my first post with a quote from the person I wish most to be like:

"I think most people can do a whole awful lot more if they just try.
They just don't have the confidence that they can write a novel or
they can write poetry or they can take pictures or paint or whatever,
and so they don't do it, and they leave the planet dissatisfied with themselves."

Gordon Parks