According to Sun Tzu, the great teacher and tactician, there are five constant factors which govern the art of war. Here is how I am using them in my campaign against the noisy giants.

1. The Moral Law – Constant practice makes perfect and prepared. I work every day ensuring my skills are up to snuff.
2. Heaven – Be aware of, and use, local conditions. Some tactics may work in some weather, and not in others. The straightjackets the noisy giants use, despite foiling my escape, preserve my body heat and keep me well rested – ready to pounce at any minute.
3. Earth – understand distances. I used my “loud sleeping” tactic to force a move to the side of the bed where the scratchy one sleeps. Although he’s the heavier sleeper, when they do get me up, this means they are both awake. Tiring two foes for the price of one diaper.
4. Commander – the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and strictness. Let’s remember, just because I’m held against my will and paraded around like a spoil of war, I’m only destroying them because I never want to have to make that point again.
5. Method and Discipline – I’m slightly inverting the great teacher’s writing. He says that conduct of an army and the infrastructure supporting it can win or lose a battle before it is ever fought. In this case, I’m looking from the noisy giants’ perspective and sabotaging their long term capabilities.

I plan to continue my lessons from Sun Tzu and other great tacticians as long as I am able. It is dangerous enough getting my updates out, I feel it is important that future generations may be able to learn from my hard won lessons.

The Thirty-Six Strategems advise us to “wait at leisure while the enemy labors.” I deliberately planned no offensive last night, and undertook a well-deserved deep sleep*. The noisy ones were unprepared for my tactics, as usual, and were up throughout the night checking to ensure I hadn’t escaped.

Hahaaahaahaha. They’re exhausted! This is too easy.

*Have you tried these? They’re new to me, but amazing! I recommend giving it a shot.

Change of tactics last night. I undertook a dual-win strategy with my relationship with the noisy giants – what happens if I let them sleep?

Providing two 3-hour unbroken stretches of sleep, I not only continued my strategic erraticism, but also wanted to see how they react to an unplanned kindness. I read somewhere that belligerent abusiveness with unconnected kindness is how cult leaders begin to brainwash their intended inductees.

Note to self: plan for larger delays in deploying milk bombs. The scratchy one does much of the burping, but premature release unexpectedly caught the useful one this morning. Thus, disappointingly failing to drive a wedge in loyalties. The scratchy one is less inclined to dress me, so a proper disguise for my escape relies on the kindness of the useful one. This detail requires additional rumination.

I have to call the experiment a qualified success. With more sleep, they were up and out of the apartment early, and I had another necessary opportunity to reconnoiter the area, but the chance was lost. They might be smarter than they look, as I suspect they poison my meals – I immediately fall asleep as soon as they leave the apartment, and lose another valuable opportunity to understand the layout and plan my way out of this hellish place.