From the mouths of babes

I don't get children.  They're like a completely different life-form, from another planet.  They look like little versions of us, but that's where all notions of expecting anything like reasonable behaviour or debate end.

You can't communicate with them properly and the slightest disagreement with whatever thought process whizz through their developing brains results in the most bizarre displays of behaviour.

Don't like what you're given for tea?  Well, normal people just tuck in, chew on it till it no longer resembles the thing that caused mental trauma when it was first sighted, put themselves in their happy place and swallow.  "Mmmm, that was DELISH!", we purr politely, pour platitudes on whoever provided the meal, while grumbling to ourselves.  But we get over it, move on.

Toddlers?  They haven't developed the social inhibitions that prevent us from throwing our cutlery around, spitting food out, launching our plates across the room and throwing ourselves to the floor, banging our fists and sobbing.  There's no reasoning with them.  You just have to wait until the tsunami settles back into the ocean and pick up the wreckage left in its wake.  The wreckage is often still a bit wriggly, teary and snotty; still as unreasonable.

And those charged with the care of them are hit by tidal waves of tantrums at least four times a day.

Of course, when you don't have one of these little critters  in your family, you find them utterly hateful - because they are!  But when your family is blessed (for want of a better word) by one, that particular one is so fucking funny.

Little Con, now two and a bit, is adorable.  For all her tantrums and tears (and all the snot that seems to have been part of her for about 18 months), she's so lovely.  I like the effect she has on the little dog: one moment he's being a total pain in the arse - not dissimilar to a tantrum-afflicted toddler himself; Little Con arrives and he's a different dog.  He sits, calmly.  He sits, watches.  He sleeps.  He lets her flick his nose.  He lets her kiss him (he likes to lick her tongue).  She tells him off:  "Boo-HAVE ROCKY!".  He knows his place when she is around.It's brilliant.

Con herself called me Rocky long before she learned to say my real name and, whenever she arrives at my folks' house and sees that my car is there, she runs into the house calling for him - not for me, for the little dog.

So Little Con may well have saved Rocky from the risk of being destroyed because of attacking a child.  Because of her, and despite his barky protestations, he's actually quite tolerant around them.  Just as well, since he can't leave the house or get back in through the front door without being accosted by four of five of the local kids who insist on running over to him, while screaming "It's the little dog!" (scaring the shit out of him).  They all gather round, stroking him and cuddling him two and three at a time; the smallest of them insists on having his tongue licked by him too.

"Does he bite?", they ask as he barks and growls at them.

"Any dog might bite", I issue my disclaimer, "you should always be VERY careful near dogs and try not to scare them."

"Is that a different dog?", tongue-lick boy asked me tonight.

"No, he's just had a hair cut".

Gonna set my soul on FIRE

I can't believe it, let's just check the date... Yep!  I go on holiday next week.  I'm looking forward to it immensely.  The memory of last year's trip there needs obliterating.  I'm going to have the holiday that I was supposed to have, only more fun!  I didn't really take much in last year as I wandered around in a haze of despair.  This time will be much different and happier.

I retrieved some shorts that Bomb had "borrowed" (without asking) from the drawer where they'd been kept at my mum's.  I wouldn't have fit in them when I went to Vegas last year, but I do now!

Yay! For being shat on and losing loads of weight as a result!