Free advice

Following up Mel’s idea of Protesting SOPA, here is my free advice:

Driving in Europe

I actually mean speeding.
You are in general granted a tolerance of 10% of the speed limit throughout Europe. Try to stay within that. Except in Switzerland and the Netherlands. Honestly, it is so not worth the few minutes you gain. Very expensive. And don’t think that you can get away with it. Swiss precision is not a myth and Big Brother had to come from somewhere. Consider your wallet warned.

Sleep training

My son George had a lot of problems with sleep. A LOT. I wrote also a lot about this (it tends to be a consuming issue). My advice in a few words (a matter of speech) for any of you sleep deprived new or older parents is this: do whatever you need to do to get your child to sleep. Your child sleeps, you can sleep and try to find a better solution another day. Don’t listen blindly to any “specialist” who wrote a book. Listen to your child and to your needs. It might be very hard to believe, but this period does not last forever. It also applies to success, so don’t get cocky if you think you have it all figured out. You don’t, you just get lucky and pray you stay this way. I know this is not what you want to read, but there is no magical solution, no miracle worker device.

When I say do whatever you need to do, I mean just that. If you can’t do CIO, rock, sing, hold the tiny hand, co-sleep, stay on your head, nurse till the rain stops (or the nipples shrivel and fall, whichever applicable), listen to rain forest or vacuuming sounds all night, as long as it gives you sleep. Don’t be scared that they will go to college rocking themselves to sleep – they grow out of it, or at least the vast majority. If your child doesn’t, than at least you will be rested enough to really think about how to tackle this problem.

If you decide to CIO, stick with it at least three days. For better results, I hear it’s better a week, but small targets make daunting goals achievable. So start with three days. You will soon learn if it works for you and your child. And leather, rinse, repeat, for every sleep regression.

You never know before hand if one particular method works or not. Just like you never know before hand how your child will be, some are good eaters, some are good sleepers, some a quiet, some (cough* George *cough) are louder than a brass fanfare in a German Beergarten, you find out in time.

And never forget: you will get through it. I promise that this won’t last forever. Just like your infant changes into a toddler in a blink of an eye, so will this deprivation pass. And you will live to tell about it. And give others advice like this.

Baking

A tip I learned from a French pâtissier: Try to do your dough mixing by hand (in French the process is called pétrissage, comes from stone, turn the flour into dough, basically). It might be more time efficient to do it with a domestic apliance, but if you do it by hand, the ingredients are brought together by the heat your hands produce, you can learn to tell the difference between different stages of the process and it gives you an immense feeling of satisfaction that surpasses the pain you might get from mixing all that dough.

Also, most doughs behave better if the ingredients are at room temperature. Heating them quickly is better than having a go with cold ingredients, but slowly bringing them to room temperature is irreplaceable.

Baking and dough mixing is not fast-food-ish. At all. Oh, but the goodies you can make yourself…

Stuff I learned from my MIL

If it is your first time here, you need to know that my MIL is a dunce. With a big ego, thinks she knows absolutely everything and she really does not like me (I am on a perpetual process of cleaning up my language, for George’s sake) (and because I aspire to be a lady) (a polite one).

Don’t waste your time and energy with stupid people, even if they are important in your life and make your living hellish. Choose your battles wisely and only fight those you think you can win, but expect to lose many of them. It is a fact of life that stupid people are very resilient, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many in the world, would there? You will never win, so let them be.

There was a joke, which went something like this: Why does a bench brake under a stupid person? Because the smartest gives up the first. Be a bench. It is better than fighting the stupid.

And since I have fought many such pointless battles, and expect to still do in the future, due to my inability to keep my mouth shut, I can tell you one thing: getting stuff off your chest does not really help. You think it does, but especially with morons, it is a waste of time and energy. Again, save yourself the trouble.

Although knowing that you lose even when you are right is perhaps the toughest lesson to learn as an adult. But no one said life was fair.

There. This is my free advice of the day. I hope you can use it. Or at least, I hope I did not waste your time.

Advertisement