You've won a burger
Dear Diary. 1-year-old woke me up at 6:30 am by standing next to my side of the bed and gently calling my name: "Paaaa-uuul. Paaaa-uuul." I initially thought he was a ghost who had come to inform me of my death during the night and to escort me to the afterlife. Then I realised it was just 1-year-old. I got out of bed and went with 1-year-old to the living room where we watched YouTube videos on my laptop, even though the recommendations of every child organisation on the planet say not to let kids watch screens at 1-year-old's age, because it could harm their development. But it was 6:30 am for crying out loud. I didn't even want to be awake, let alone looking after a one-year-old. So I let 1-year-old watch YouTube so I could lie down for a bit more.
6-year-old woke up next, followed by Girlfriend. Girlfriend left for work. I got 1-year-old dressed. "6-year-old, get dressed," I said. I went to check on 6-year-old. Instead of getting dressed, he was making a motorbike out of Lego. I put 1-year-old's shoes on and glanced at the clock. We were going to be late. "6-year-old, it's time to go," I said. I looked down at 1-year-old. He had my ukelele in one hand and one half of a toy Ferris wheel in the other hand. Then he sat in the pushchair, still clutching the ukelele and Ferris wheel. I shrugged. Then I went to check on 6-year-old. I was relieved to see he was almost dressed. We left the apartment. We walked to school. 6-year-old got to school on time. I took 1-year-old to nursery. As soon as we entered 1-year-old's classroom, a kid called Pol walked up to 1-year-old and snatched the ukelele out of his hands.
"Pol, give 1-year-old back the ukulele," said the practitioner.
Pol gave it back. I punched Pol through the window and he flew through the glass and over the fence. Last I saw Pol, he was shaking his head and bits of glass were falling out of his hair.
I went home. Started going through some old work I did three years ago. I'm constantly shocked by how lazy I used to be and how shoddy my work was. Any shortcut I could find, I had taken it. It's a wonder I live the lifestyle I do today and can afford to have two kids.
The delivery man came with a box of 242 nappies. I said thanks and then dumped them in the bedroom.
Girlfriend came home from work. She had picked up 1-year-old from nursery. 1-year-old wanted to watch YouTube again. We ended up watching someone's fan-made edit of Peppa Pig where Suzy Sheep offers Peppa Pig some tea, Peppa Pig says no, and Suzy Sheep says "Fuck you" and throws scalding hot tea in Peppa Pig's face, causing Peppa Pig to shoot through the ceiling like a firework. What I like most about YouTube is that it's educational.
I went to the gym. I tried to lock my locker but I realised the locker didn't have a key so I had to move all my stuff to the locker next to it. Then my wallet fell out of my pocket and all my cards fell out everywhere. I had to get down on my hands and knees to pick them all up.
I did some light weightlifting and then I went swimming. I was doing backstroke while writing a rap song in my head about being an incel when I smacked my head into the side of the pool. I hit my head right in the area of the hair transplant. I stopped swimming while the pain in my head subsided. It only hurt for a few minutes so I think the transplant wasn't damaged. Brain damage remained a possibility though.
I went home. I hoped when I got home there would be no one home so I could catch up on work, but Girlfriend was home with both kids.
"Get your computer, right now," hissed Girlfriend. It sounded urgent. So at Girlfriend's request, I grabbed my laptop and opened it.
"Go to the webpage of Fock Viu," she said. "There's a competition and only the first five people win."
Fock Viu is a local burger restaurant.
"What's the prize?" I said.
"A burger," she said. "I saw it on Instagram just 15 minutes ago! We can win!"
So I went to the webpage of the burger restaurant and entered the competition to win a free burger. 6-year-old entered too, though under a fake name, fearing disqualification for sharing my last name. We were greeted by an animated gif of Leonardo Dicaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street holding a stack of banknotes in one hand and flicking them off rapidly with the other hand in a 'Making it Rain' gesture along with scrolling text reading "YOU'VE WON A BURGER".
"Well, where's my burger?" I said. "What is it, an imaginary burger? I am supposed to close my eyes and imagine I'm eating it?"
6-year-old laughed. But it turned out I was right. Because later Girlfriend checked her email and discovered she hadn't won anything. 6-year-old and I hadn't won anything either.
"Can you go to the supermarket?" asked Girlfriend. "We need chicken skewers for dinner. And eggs." I took 1-year-old with me. Luckily we only live a minute's walk from the supermarket, which is a perk of living in a Spanish city, where everything is close together.
Usually outside the supermarket sits a homeless man, but today he wasn't there, though a can of Fanta and a packet of cigarettes indicated his recent presence. Last week I was feeling generous and gave him 20 euros. I regret it now because he probably spent it all on alcohol.
I put 1-year-old in the trolley and put some grapes in the trolley, and the next thing I knew, 1-year-old was dropping grapes through the holes of the trolley. I only found out when 1-year-old said "ay" "ay" and pointed behind me, and I turned to see a grape on the supermarket floor. I picked the grape up and then I ate it because it's a shame to waste food.
Then 1-year-old wanted to play with the sticker machine at the supermarket. You weigh your food and the machine prints a sticker for you to show at the till. 1-year-old wanted to print stickers for everything in the trolley, even the stuff that already had bar codes. Then he printed a sticker to stick to himself. When we got to the till, I had to quickly peel the stickers off everything in case the cashier accidentally scanned one of the stickers and charged me for something I didn't buy.
We went home and had dinner. I put the kids to bed. I can't wait until I'm old. I'll use all my free time to play video games. I particularly want to go back to a game called Natural Selection, a multiplayer game where a team of space marines fights a team of aliens. The only problem is that by the time I'm old no one else will be playing that game anymore so I'll have no one to play it with.
We're remodelling the kids' bedroom and I realised we forgot to factor in the handle that opens the shutters over the window. We have to redesign the bedroom again now.
Girlfriend was watching the news so I sat down on the sofa to watch it with her. There was a news report about Catalan exports breaking records: a 100 billion euros in a year. What are they exporting, golden ham? Then a report about a man who broke into a rich person's house and emptied casks containing 2.5 million euros of wine.
I just realised that the news doesn't make you smarter, it makes you dumber instead. The reason is that when you're watching the news, you're actually watching other people's news. Because the news is generic content for millions of people. This means most of the news is irrelevant to any one person. As an example, there was a news report about old people going to university to study for degrees that typically only young people study for.
I pointed all this out to Girlfriend.
She said, "When I was at university, I had a 70-something-year-old man on my sociology career course. He did one or two classes. He was the oldest person on my course, but not the only old person."
"Old people shouldn't be allowed to do uni courses," I said.
Girlfriend looked at me in shock. "Why not? They have a right to be there just like anyone else."
"Yeah, but he's not going to take it seriously," I said. "He doesn't have to do a career afterwards."
"So what?" she said.
"Well imagine he's there, in the classroom, while everyone else is studying. He's 75 years old. He doesn't have to be there. So he starts smoking a spliff and drinking a beer while everyone else is trying to study. Then he starts backchatting the teacher and making comments about how things were better back in his day. And imagine he's in your group for a group assignment. He'd be hogging the computer for hours, not knowing how to type because he can't find the place to put the ink ribbon."
"Well back then we didn't use the computer so much," said Girlfriend. "We had a computer lab, and we'd have disks, you don't remember those."
"Floppy disks," I said.
"Yeah," she said.
I can't believe she thinks I don't know what floppy disks are. She must think I'm from Gen Z.
Anyway, that was today. I went to bed.
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