If you're not following me on App.net you're missing out on the occasional post about Ruby – our dog.

Ruby's lovely. Approaching her first birthday, as she's grown she's lost none of her puppy enthusiasm; as she's become more accustomed to our commands, we've tempered none of that quivering anticipation of awesome things about to happen.

Here's a flavour of her impact on our lives, just my posts:

Planning required:

"@pme Aren't the little buggers great? A good thing it's nothing like Ruby 'Chomp-all' Dog. The rest of my family hadn't quite understood the importance of putting things away. But there is an expectation that adults can put stuff in a safe place, right?"

Not quite according to plan:

"@indigo @rabryst I made sure that, if my wife was going to get a dog, said dog would be hypoallergenic, smart, and would not shed fur. Ruby has not let us down once, she's awesome. A mutant compared to all the others round here, but awesome. :)"

Conflict:

“@matigo The cat woke me, I went downstairs to feed him and his sister – and Ruby dog – only to find she'd emptied out the contents of a box all over the living room floor. Hairbrushes, broken crayons, spectacles, pencils, paper, card, sticky tape, lipgloss…

… a plastic troll too! All chewed, damp. :/

My wife can sort it out when she comes home from work; she's the one who leaves stuff out, allows the girls to, then complains when the dog chews.

Yeah, I just threw it all back in & stomped upstairs. :/"

Striving for an uncomplicated existence:

"@hazardwarning @hutattedonmyarm I didn't go looking deeper, Ruby dog wanted me to play with her ball. Simple things… :)"

And, this self-referential #QuoteSunday post:

'"Ruby dog, GET OFF MY PENIS!!!"*

• @bazbt3

Slightly* disconcerting #QuoteSunday quote.

*I mentioned my hedonistic lifestyle earlier in the evening, never thinking it'd come to this!'

True joy arrives unbidden in life, often unexpectedly, and in many different forms. Whilst bent over cleaning the cats' litter tray, wearing a gaping dressing gown with the dog nuzzling one's man-bits, trying to not startle Ruby 'Chomp-all' Turner though‽

Yeah, why not.

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FYI: I am @bazbt3 on App.net.

My youngest daughter is a Ladybird (a member of the local Rainbows – pre-Brownies.) Every week her mummy takes her down to the church hall, she participates, and then I collect her at the end of the session.

Just like did with her sister, now a Brownie.

She's usually made something, like a hat or a hanging thing, or a paper plate with paper poppies stuck around its periphery – for Remembrance Sunday.

This evening the things on the table at the end of the room defied my attempts to categorise. Unusual.

The leaders explained, for the benefit of the more dim-witted parents, what they were.

Sock monsters!

Not one alike, each the product of a child's imagination, all amazing.

Ah, but glittery glue. Lots of it.

It gets everywhere, no matter how carefully it's applied. I hate slimy sticky viscous things. But the inevitable beckoned so I picked the thing up, and immediately an antenna dropped.

Oops! I never was the most graceful individual. Clumsy, though age is improving me.

I was more circumspect when we left for the car park, not trusting my littlest offspring with the task of moving the monster from hall to car.

Me: "Er… can you please reach into my trouser pocket and get my car keys?"

We chose a safe spot on the back seat for the glue and sock, and waited for her big sister to finish Brownies.

All the while I gave a running commentary, ostensibly for my daughter's benefit but a safety blanket for me. The pressure inherent in such situations is probably beyond the understanding of a non-parent. I'm sure it would have amused any adult within earshot.

We always chat about stuff during lulls between life and life, my daughter's and I. Stars & planets, cars, condensation, school lunches and their friends and creations. Today not much chat, aside from a few words about her new thing. It's got rice and lavender inside it and smells lovely. We'd best not let Ruby dog anywhere near lest…

Daughter 1 emerged a few minutes later, we buckled up and drove home.

Home, tea, change, ready for bed, tidy, teeth, night-night…

Though I know she wants to take it to school tomorrow, I'd forgotten if she'd told me the most important thing, so I just woke daughter 2 to ask her what the sock monster is called.

A frown, obviously. "I haven't named it."

And that was that.

We have a dog. Ruby is lovely. Smelly, eats poo, she's as mad as a box of…

We have a cat. Mollie is lovely. Very ladylike, and even when she's shouting at me for being too slow getting her meals ready, delightful.

We have another cat. Loki is a right royal pain in the arse! He's coming up to 15 years old and, though showing signs of slowing down, is getting better at one thing…

Shouting, caterwauling, making frankly disturbing noises when he finds his soft toy and engages in very focused, er… 'behaviour' with it.

Ok, lots of annoying things. He's the last thing I hear at night and the first in the morning. It's got to the stage I want to launch him somewhere very, very far-away…

But no.

He's family.

To be absolutely fair to her, my wife shouldered the burden of wrapping the presents prior to Christmas. Most at least.

Today she's taking the girls to see her friend; they're off to visit a soft play place for a few hours, and I'm left in peace.

Ahhh…

But, as-ever, a last-minute rush to wrap those gifts, and an 'emergency' trip by my wife to the toy shop for the youngest recipient, left me wrapping the few allocated to those lovely people.

I didn't moan or sulk or internalise, no. I just got on with it and wrapped.

It seems my New Year's Resolutions have just been implemented. Early, too!

I'd best make some for 2016.

I just now had my Christmas Pudding. It was delicious, laced with brandy and, I think, rum, and covered with single cream – and 'twas an individual-sized portion.

Why individual?

My wife doesn't like it and my daughters (8 & 6) don't have alcohol for obvious reasons (and don't like rich fruit cakes anyway.)

Ruby puppy* sat and waited for a while, ever hopeful, but my resolve never weakened.

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*She's a lady now, our Ruby; perhaps I should start being consistent and calling her a dog.

A variation on a theme; a joke told to my daughters a few minutes ago:

"What did the Italian man say when asked why he was leading Bambi, who was wearing 2 eye patches?

'I've-a no i-dea!'"

I'm imagining your response, dear reader, is the same my girls gave me.

My wife didn't tut. Progress.

I can only now bring myself to talk about it – such is the impact on my family.

On Sunday evening, wearing my trusty grey dressing gown, I flashed Mollie, our female cat.

Swinging dangly bits, hip sways, whatever real flashers do, I did, my wife looking on aghast. Mollie's normally inscrutable gaze faltered a little before she rolled onto her back, hands clasped cutely at her chest, legs 'akimbo.' Cute.

To me it felt liberating.

Giving an added sense of perspective, Mollie is coming up to her 4th birthday – all-but 7 months spent in our home (assuming the dates we were given are appropriate.)

And then it happened.

"You do know you just flashed your daughter," my wife said.

Ah.

My children's discipline is a constant source of frustration to me. I've spent the last few years being consistent in my approach to it, even with the obvious discord it engenders. I've honestly thought I've being doing the right thing. Apparently not.

Today though, something remarkable happened…

For a long time I've been threatening (yes!) to throw toys away. My wife hates the idea and, even when I've implemented the threat in the past it's ultimately failed for a number of reasons – not limited to rescuing whatever's in the bin or forcing (yes!) me to do it. I've apparently been unreasonable.

Perspective may be a worthwhile thing to introduce at this point?

We're overrun with toys of all shapes and sizes, spent paper & card, paint pots & brushes, pens & pencils. Every room in the house apart from the 'master' bedroom, toilets and bathroom has mess wherever the girls (nearly 7 & 4) finish what they're doing. Bedrooms are occasionally, in a very real sense, impassable – bedclothes, dressing-up clothes, toys strewn across the floor, beads and sharp pointy things underfoot to cause maximum discomfort to unwary adults.

One of the very worst things to deal with is the horrendous number of stickers that appear on every surface in the house. They stick to furniture, floors, are run through the washing machine, clog the vacuum cleaner, stick to work clothes, to bare feet and cats…

It's been going on, as I mentioned above, for a few years now and despite my best efforts the lessons I've been trying to teach simply haven't sunk in. It would be fair to say that my wife and I don't exactly see eye-to-eye on matters of child discipline. You could say I've gone way past the point of being reasonable about it, but without any visible improvement using other methods (naughty step included) I thought it would eventually pay off.

Today though I'd just had enough. I'd asked the girls to get all of their art stuff together and make a pile of it, and put everything else in another pile. We'd then figure out between us what to keep and what to throw out. It worked until I figured out I'd got in the way – at which point I'd made the mistake of believing both girls' suggestions they'd have it done soon.

An hour later, and 2-1/2 hours in to the exercise, and after frequent reminders I gave up. No, I hadn't expected concentration for that amount of time, there'd been breakfast, juice, a bit of telly as a temporary reward…

So, all of the stuff not already sorted into the 'art stuff' pile went in bin bags, ditto all of the other toys. All this while the girls watched and asked awkward questions.

Then, the remarkable thing: my wife didn't stop me, nor did she suggest the toys shouldn't be binned. You could have slapped me down with a small wet fish! Amazing!

To spare my oldest daughter the pain of seeing her toys going into bags my wife decided to take her shopping – there's a rather important milestone-y family birthday party next weekend, and we'd also nearly run out of ketchup! My youngest daughter can still be bribed with TV, so that's what happened whilst I 'tidied up' in the back of the kitchen.

The back of our kitchen has in the past been called 'The Morning Room' (previous owners) and by us 'The Breakfast Room' (though we've never really used it as such), and now it's 'The Area' (christened thus by the girls) for art and general messing around. It's been allowed to fill up with colouring books, sticker rolls, beads, aprons, discarded paint pots, brushes, and especially completed works of art…

So all the paper and card and felt and plastic went in bin bags, and with it anything I deemed unusable. Anyone more sentimental than I would have baulked at destroying their children's precious memories, but not man-of-steel here, no. I thought about the implications, of course.

My wife and oldest daughter returned home from the shop some time after I'd finished. I helped with the unpacking, feeling good about something for the first time in a week-and-a-half.

We had another brief chat about what I'd done, she suggested sorting through the toys later – a not unreasonable thing to do given the circumstances – and I put the last bits of shopping away.

You could say that the morning had occasioned a cathartic response in me, the result of which is the 4 (yes four) bin bags (items taken only from the front & dining rooms and 'The Area') waiting next to the outer door in the utility room for my wife to sort out later. And, more-importantly for my sense of well-being, a sense of a job well-done and a feeling of an achieved consensus.

Success!

The very last item out of the very last shopping bag – another pack of stickers.

I like 'The Internet.' I like it a lot. I interact with an at-glacial-pace-decreasing-number of the myriad of services available 'on' it as I understand more about what I need from it. It wasn't always thus but since Q1 1997 I've found it to be indispensable.

Google is my friend. I resisted the temptation to sell my soul to it for the longest time. And then I signed up to everything. I resisted the call of Facebook for years and, though I'm yet again deactivated there, when I fell I found it useful.

Twitter and App.net (ADN) – different services, different uses. In the same way that I found Twitter to be at first exciting and for the moment and then restrictive because of the post character limit, I find ADN to be a place I can contemplate my timeline and relax into the higher character count. No-one would ever describe my posting style as abrupt, terse, or concise. Certainly not inflammatory.

Nearly everyone on ADN behaves like adults, even those not legally entitled to be called such by dint of their age. Nearly everyone has silly moments. Nearly everyone, even when arguing about deeply-held beliefs, is courteous and, I believe, most attempt to allow discourse instead or riding roughshod over what they believe to be opposing factions' opinions.

There are of course, an odd number who fail to hold to the high standards I set*, but I recognise that if an individual holds a particular viewpoint strongly-enough it's pointless to try and change it.

I even like it when things go wrong and apologies are made and attempts made to fill the cracks instead of papering over them.

I emphatically do NOT like being told to shut up and compared to a naughty schoolboy for engaging in a discussion about a subject that pains me. I'm an adult and can behave as I choose, when I choose, and where I choose.

In my entire adult life no-one apart from my wife has told me to shut up and escaped my undivided attention. In my 17 years online, no-one has ever told me to shut up – apart from a Russian youth on Twitter who misunderstood my attempts to help solve a problem because I misunderstood his poorly-phrased question. The stream of unnecessary invective thrown at me led me to the inescapable conclusion he'd recently discovered English sweary stuff and I was in the right place at the right time – for him.

One attempt at conciliation over, blocking was easy. These days though, well, I have less time to piss about around hopeless causes.

I care deeply about maintaining a positive and so-far-lifelong approach to fairness and tolerance, the same towards race and gender issues – and, trivially, not taking sides in Apple vs Android and other similar silly stuff – an approach that my parents instilled in me from an early age. Not beat into me with a big stick but showed to me with their love and kindness. I've been extraordinarily lucky that my life hasn't been blighted by nastiness, apart from the torment inflicted by one particularly difficult managing director. By the same token I've not yet achieved president-of-the-world status – but happiness means different things to different people.

It's not an exciting approach.

Anyone who knows me understands something of who I am, and may even understand most of what I mean here. Anyone who doesn't could take the time to learn.
 
But not everyone gives a damn. And, do you know, that's fine – the Internet is, after all, big enough for everyone. I have no objection to people saying what they like, when they like, where they like. Where views repeatedly and negatively impact others and the torment caused could be avoided by a moment's reflection, then there comes a point at which engagement should cease.

I have another philosophy. It's closely linked to something I wrote above. I complain. I complain about lots of things. I complain about the weather, the speed of the internet, poor web design, my iPhone 5's excellent battery life [edit may be required!], the traffic, the weather again, food, the abysmal choice of television despite the eleventy trillion available channels, Eastenders (UK), the decline of Dr Who post-Jon Pertwee and again after David Tennant, the crap £35 tablet we got as a first for our youngest daughter and which I recently inherited as we upgraded her to first class, envelopes that don't seal with my saliva, the new picture frames we must buy special hooks for, the speed at which my unattended cups of tea cool, motorists driving past past the speed limit with their phones clamped firmly to their ears prior to parking on the pavement on the yellow lines, the weather yet again, the price of bread, my stupidity in not retaining the entirety of my Asimov novel collection, hospital food and signage, the…

Ok, I complain.

You may have heard of the Psion Series 5, a brilliant but inherently unreliable portable pocket computer, way ahead of its time and genuinely useful. I'd owned it's precursors, the also unreliable but brilliant Series 3 and 3a. When the 5 arrived I saved and saved for and then and spent loads of money on it. The next logical step, I needed some home banking software to get my finances in order. I tried a few and eventually came across Nigel Bamber's Home Bank. It fitted me well, but not perfectly. I outlined the possible improvements to Nigel and, do you know, he agreed. He changed the program and I fell into his cunningly-laid trap (not true, I volunteered) and spent time designing icons for the bloody thing. I think my name may be in the credits somewhere if anyone still has a working example. Though not a complaint, I attempted to help, and found the process very satisfying.

It's pointless listing the number of times my subsequent and little ideas have subtly changed stuff, even usually for the better. I'm no improvement machine when all's said and done.

I also shout. I shout at the cats, I shout at the girls, at my wife, at aeroplanes, idiot boy racers with stereo systems more powerful than their car engines. If the moon annoys me one day…

Shouting is a waste of time, energy and opportunity. I never, ever, rubbish genuine attempts to improve. My daughters (4 & 7) often struggle against what they see as insurmountable odds. They share a silly dance, running around the room, hands waving high, shrieking "It's impossible!" It should be endearing but…

Spelling was a problem for the oldest. Maths still is. Obviously, we all start from zero knowledge and get better, all at our own pace and often despite the best efforts of professionals an an incompetent parent (e.g. me!) She's become a voracious, and I really do mean voracious, reader. Her stories are really good too. Short due to her age, her lack of concentration, but good. They show imagination possibly beyond her years. Her expression and grasp of words when reading out loud – it's a joy to me. To us.

We got her end-of-year school report today. She's not perfect but I was so, so proud reading it. 'A' grades for effort all the way down. Imagine me sat there with a big, silly, grin and tears rolling down my face. With her at 7 years old being exposed to an idiotically-extensive and advanced-compared-to-my-40-year-old-studies, you know what? I don't care about the occasional 'average' grade for attainment. She TRIES! Proud.

This unwarranted emotion may have something to do with my wife being in hospital. But looking across and, for today, having no-one to share this with right there and then…

Before bedtime this evening the same oldest daughter rushed out of the room and cried. She wouldn't tell me why. Stood there with tears pooling in her eyes, and then sobbed. So I applied the hot poker and forced it out of her. The non-trivial cause of the angst: a picture she'd been working on using a dark blue felt-tip pen had gone wrong.

A quick Google Image search and some well-chosen Leonardo Da Vinci sketches to the rescue, a chat about the evolution of a painting from outline (say pencil) sketch through shaded image to… I now have a sketchy portrait (pot belly, beard, moustache, reading glasses, interesting hair) waiting to be completed tomorrow and then coloured in.

(Unfortunately the spreadeagled man complete with anatomically-correct thingy appeared not far from the Mona Lisa whilst scrolling through Google Images, but nudity's not a big thing here. And thankfully the appendage doesn't yet appear on my portrait.)

I'm a rubbish parent though. Occasionally a complete, total, and intransigent arse. I can catalogue every flaw in my personality and the way each impacts both of my lovely daughters. Do I improve, can I improve with age?

Well, you can bet I try my very, very best to get it as close to right, as close to fair and as close to consistent as I can. So yes.

But, when all's said and done, an arse remains an arse. Me – I'm a good wiper.

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*Reverse-self-deprecation gambit.