'My gut feeling when I saw the title was "dick". It's been a rough week. My kid won't listen to me and do what she's told, just put your fucking pajamas on kid. She was sent to bed with none of the nightly fun privileges she normally gets. Spent twenty minutes sobbing in her room. Makes me feel like shit. The drunken Somali kid that I didn't beat up when he wouldn't get out of my shop a week or two ago... You might have seen him mentioned in a conversation with steve a little bit ago.... Well he came in the shop and wouldn't leave and I gave him a little beat down... I could have used my words... I tried to use my words but he wasn't responding well, I started to give him a gentle hustle to the door, he started poking me in the ribs telling me something along the lines of "hell no bro." He just didn't want to get pushed out the door, I could have used my words, I worked ten years in a bar and never laid a hand on a patron... I picked him up and slammed him on the tile floor. It was the absolute wrong way to handle shit... They just opened a fancy grocery store right around the corner from my house. People go in that place, mouths a gape, like they just entered Dolly Land or the Magic Kingdom. That store is the end of on street parking at my house. Shit annoys me. Third shooting of the week happened at 4:30 this morning a few blocks from the shop. So we have one shooting half a block from the shop, one half a block from the house and now a few blocks away. A family friend got sick two days ago and died this morning. I only met the guy a few times but he's important to a bunch of other people in my family. Guy was only a year older than I am. I never heard anyone say anything but what a great guy he was, he was my sister in law's best friend. People are all kinds of fucked up over it. I feel tired and ragged out. I feel like a dick. I have little patience or love for people right now and an just going to have to act the part. Ah well. Wish I had something profound or uplifting to say.
Sometimes you have to choose between being a dick or being roadkill. My kid? I gotta lean against the door to keep her from getting out when she throws a tantrum like that. It opens in, which means I'm right up in there with her, which means she tugs on my leg and stuff... but it's all about boundaries. She's mad, she's not getting her way, but she's safe and she's learning that daddy's in charge. Makes me feel like shit, too. I still do it. Had you beat the kid up a week ago he wouldn't have come back. Or, he would have come back with a gun. All you can do is use your best judgement and hope you guessed right each time. If you didn't second-guess yourself you'd be incapable of learning. If you had to choose between "the end of on-street parking" or "the end of shootings" which would you choose? 'cuz the grocery store is gonna clean up the neighborhood. Their investment far outranks yours. That's one thing about gentrification - it's hell on crime. Grace under pressure is a great attribute to have. For some of us, it's more of a goal. Take care of you.
Gentrification is great for coffee shops as well. I said in a comment the other day that in five years you'll be able to by a scented candle or a dog coat on every block and that in away the neighborhood won't be much different than it is now, filled with things that I dislike which only tangentially effect me. My gentrification goal is to have a hot summers day where I have more customers than I see men without shirts walk by. I know that day will come. The Somali guy is really a sweet hearted looser. He gets sooooo high on crack and malt liquor that he's not captain of his own ship any more. He's also a real pain in the ass and makes a huge scene every where he goes. People say I should call the cops on him but I just can't. He's already a burden on his strict Islamic family and they aren't rolling in dough to pay his tickets or fines.
Not gonna lie, dude. I did a thunderous demographic analysis with veen's help when we sited the birth center. But before I put my faith in my own math (15-minute isochrones containing the highest number of white women 25-35 with some college education, from census data), I mapped out all the Whole Foods Markets. 100% correlation. Out of 150 midwives in LA, there are 4 that aren't within 10 minutes of a Whole Foods. Then just to see, I looked for a negative correlation - I decided that Five Guys' market demographics probably overlapped the alternative birth community by coincidence at best. 0% correlation.
cgod and kleinbl00 we ought to have an entire post on how to best handle tantrums. My daughter is very smart, I would be shocked if yours weren't too. As such, she has become adept at trying to manipulate situations to her advantage. I would welcome a post on dicipline at some point. Good luck fellas
I'm not a parent, but I feel your pain. Children are born as an virtual tabula rasa, with none of the understanding of the world that you've accumulated, and it can be very annoying and even maddening when coupled with children's naturally-overblown ego. They want to the world to bend to their will, and when that doesn't happen, they feel either very angry or very sad about it. But ego-breaking - the process in which the child understands that the world won't bend on its own - is necessary in a child's upbringing, and as heartbreaking as it may feel for you as a parent, it's what has to be done. Your parents probably felt the same when they were raising you, but you never got to see their tears both because you were occupied with yours and because they'd never let their kid see them. As pragmatic as it is, think of it as present joy versus future happiness: it's better for both of you if you break a few lectures to her to make her a better person. Stay strong. I can only imagine how hard it must be to raise a child, but you're doing God's work by letting her learn how the world works. She'll thank you later if you keep being a good father.My kid won't listen to me and do what she's told, just put your fucking pajamas on kid. She was sent to bed with none of the nightly fun privileges she normally gets. Spent twenty minutes sobbing in her room.