Don't you just love your children!
We have been having a few problems with my beautiful daughter, 18 going on 32!, starting at University and finding it a bit overwhelming........especially with the boyfriend dumping her in the middle of the first three months. We've had floods of tears, "I want to drop out......NOW!!!!!!!!!" as well as other assorted dramas and issues. She came home for a week and agreed to go back to at least finish the first period and reflect on what she wanted to do.
We breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday night as we dropped her off at her student accommodation and left her happily contemplating a huge roast beef dinner that her flatmates had cooked to welcome her back. After several hours in the car, driving at night on busy roads, I decided to go to bed early at 10.15pm as I was rather tired (well, completely shattered if you must know because I'm not a spring chicken any more!). I carefully set the alarm on the phone and as soon as my little head hit that fluffy white pillow I was off.......................
The alarm jolted me awake and I remember feeling terrible. I am not a bad sleeper and normally feel refreshed when I wake up. I put it down to the fairly stressful time that we had experienced over the past couple of weeks and set off downstairs to feed the dog and make my wife a cup of tea. She had disappeared into the other bedroom so as not to disturb me when she came to bed. The dog happily gobbled up her breakfast and the kettle boiled. It was pitch black outside as I let her into the garden.
I climbed wearily up the stairs with two cups of tea and opened the door to my wife's room. She sat bolt-upright and said "What an earth are you doing! Do you know what time it is and why have you fed the dog?" She then started to laugh...........that sort of laugh that TV presenters get when they 'corpse' and cannot control themselves. It seem to go on and on and she seemed less and less in control........."You only went to bed 10 minutes ago!".
As the old and weary brain slowly spluttered into life, I went back and checked the phone. The alarm had not gone off, but I had received a call.
As I had not answered the phone, the caller (daughter) had sent a message.
"My laptop won't start up and all my course work that is due to be handed in tomorrow is stuck on it and I'm panicking as I haven't backed it up and I don't know what to do"
I called her back and said I would be there in the morning with a spare laptop, flash drives and that I was sure that I could sort it out and collapsed back into my barely warmed up bed.
It was still dark as I scraped the ice off the car windscreen at 5 am this morning. The dog had not been very understanding about having her breakfast 6 hours early and looked like she was sulking as I left to drive into the misty countryside. When, a few hours later I stopped to text and say that I was about 30 minutes away, I found the second text from her ladyship.
"Its OK, I've fixed it, don't worry about coming up".
Now why am I rambling on ? (hopefully giving the reader a smile or perhaps a chuckle). What has this got to do with stopping smoking and the whole purpose of this site?
The point is that during the last couple of weeks, with all the stress and worry that occasionally goes with having children, I did not even think about lighting up. 6 weeks ago, my cigar consumption would have doubled and solved nothing!
And anyway.................as the sun shone down in the student car park on a crisp and frosty morning, my beautiful daughter hugged me and said "Thank you Daddy, I knew you would be there for me."
Lolly. x 
