Saturday
Dear Diary. My day begins at 5:20 am with 3-year-old saying "I'm cold, I'm cold." So I get up and go to 3-year-old’s room and somehow he's on top of the duvet. No wonder he's cold. So I put the duvet back on him. I go back to bed.
Ten minutes later, 3-year-old calls out, "I'm hungry. I'm hungry".
So I go to the kitchen, get a piece of apple, and then bring it to 3-year-old. 3-year-old is eating it and he loudly says, "Daddy, you can't eat the stalk,"
"That's right," I say.
"You can't eat the stalk!" he says again, loudly.
"3-year-old, you're goingto wake up the neighbours."
"You can’t eat the stalk, daddy. No, no, no, no, you can't eat it. There's no stalk here daddy. No, no, no."
And then he finishes the apple and he lies back down. I go back to bed.
Three minutes later, 3-year-old calls out, "Daddy, is it good morning yet?"
I say, "No, it's not morning yet. If you want you can come and sleep in our bed."
3-year-old starts crying, "Daddy, I can't find little Tigger, daddy."
But he somehow finds little Tigger himself and then he comes to our bed with both his little Tigger toy and his big Tigger toy. The big one is as big as him. And he gets into bed with Girlfriend and me and with big Tigger, little Tigger. Big Tigger is pushing me in the back. Big Tigger is almost pushing me out of the bed.
Then 3-year-old says, "Is it good morning yet?"
I say "No, not yet."
3-year-old says, "What shall we do today, daddy?"
I say, "I don't know. Let's try to go back to sleep."
"Is it morning yet?"
I let out an exasperated sigh. Yes, it’s morning," I say.
So we get up. Now it's 7:15 am, which is technically morning, I guess. Some people even get up at this time every day to go to work.
We go to the living room. 3-year-old walks over to the window and says, "Why is it dark, Daddy?"
"Why is it dark?" I say in disbelief. "It's dark because it's still nighttime."
"Is it dawn, Daddy?"
No, it's not dawn, the sky is still dark, it's still nighttime. All the street lamps are still on. It's still nighttime, okay?
Plus I'm cold because I'm standing in the living room just in my underpants. There's a fleece hanging off the back of a chair. I put the fleece on. But there's nothing for my legs. All my trousers are in my bedroom, and Girlfriend's sleeping in there. So I wrap a blanket around my legs. The blanket, combined with my thin frame and bald head, make me look a like white Gandhi.
Gym
It's 12:30 pm. I'm walking to the gym. Sometimes it's horrible being a parent. Because not only do you have to spend hours and hours of your time with your kids, but you also feel guilty about not spending enough time with them too.
Like now. It's the weekend and I feel like I should be spending the day with 3-year-old but instead, no, I'm going to the gym. And this is giving me guilt. My mom actually had a lethal dose of guilt. She killed herself from the guilt of moving us to a smaller house. Guilt is a dangerous thing.
But I have to spend time by myself though because otherwise, I'll go mad.
I feel tired. I can feel my eyes trying to close. I went to bed at 10:30 last night which is still too late. I should be going to bed at 9 or 9:30, I noticed every night it's the same. I think, "What's one hour difference going to make? I might as well stay up an hour longer." on my laptop. Last night Girlfriend and I stayed up watching Adele videos. Instead of going to bed, we were watching Adele music videos.
Actually, I was half-watching Adele videos and half-researching tattoos. Because in my hopeless quest to become more attractive, I've decided to get another tattoo. I only have one tattoo at the moment, and it's on my back. It says Semper libre in Gothic font, which means 'Always free' in Latin. And no one ever sees it, of course, because it's on my back. So I was thinking about getting one on my arm. And Jesus, it's hard trying to decide which tattoo to get because it's permanent. At the moment, I'm stuck between deciding between a minimalistic tattoo of a triangle or an entire tattoo sleeve.
Mother-in-law
We go to Girlfriend’s mom's house for lunch. She's called Evil Mother-in-Law, which means 'Pain' in Spanish, which is a fitting name because she really is a pain. A pain in my fucking ass.
She's 69 years old, and the chances of her actually 69'ing someone at her age at non-existent.
She does old people things like hoard crap she'll never use in the belief it'll one day come in useful. Though to be fair, I do that too.
Recently she bought a new bin for her kitchen, but do you know what? She's kept the packaging on it: a clear plastic bag that you're supposed to throw away. I guess she's done this to make the bin last longer. It's utterly bizarre. It's the same with her remote control - the control is still in the plastic wrapper it came in. Drives me mad.
We're just about to eat lunch when Evil Mother-in-Law turns off the light. Now the kitchen is in semi-darkness even though it's the afternoon.
Girlfriend says to her mom, "Can you turn the light back on?"
"No no no," says Evil Mother-in-Law. "It uses too much electricity, it costs too much money."
And this is from a woman who stays up until six o'clock in the morning reading books and watching TV. She must have a lamp on for that?
Another thing. Evil Mother-in-Law won't let 3-year-old use new paper. She'll only let him draw on used paper, paper he has already drawn on. She's worried about the cost of paper, you see. Even though it costs like one cent per sheet. And it's not like paper grows on trees, am I right?
By the way, Evil Mother-in-Law is the richest person I know. That is not a lie. When her husband died, she inherited close to 2 million euros. God knows what she'll do with the money. She hasn't given any to me, that's for sure, even though she obviously should have.
Plus she's inherited her apartment (four bedrooms, three bathrooms, all for her) while the hungry and homeless of Girona claw at her door begging for scraps.
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