DISCLAIMER: Similar events did take place. However, this author makes no guarantee as to the accuracy of the depiction of events presented below. Some parts of this harrowing account may have been exaggerated for dramatic effect.
Reader discretion is advised.
No one asked, but I wasn’t kidding when I said I collapsed on a giant bear last night. Whenever I’m over at my cousin’s house, this is where I sleep:
Why? Does there have to be a why? (Because it’s hilarious, that’s why.)
Anyways, I got up early to write yesterday’s article. It takes me awhile. Then I go off to have breakfast. I am asked by my niece if I either have a girlfriend or am divorced. This is an incredibly silly question.
I play basketball with my brother and nephews. There are three of them, but I am literally twice their height. For once in my life I actually succeed at basketball.
We go inside and play some cards. I do not win. My younger nephew cheats. He is OK at the game but pretty good at cheating. He is also a small, hyper bean of a boy. He is two years older than his sister but they are the same size. He is pretty much constantly laughing. He is able to fit inside an ottoman full of stuffed animals. I swear that looks funnier than it sounds.
We do some things. I don’t remember exactly what. I have to carry these small children a lot. You can imagine how tiring that gets. It’s also apparently Father’s Day, so my family and my cousin’s family go and take one big family photos because we don’t have enough family photos already. That’s not sarcasm, that was literally my mother’s reasoning for taking the photos. Pretty much no one likes taking photos, except all the mothers. Go figure. When we’re taking the photo I realize pretty much everyone around me is in all white, except for my brother and nephews who have matching blue striped shirts. I am wearing black. There’s definitely a metaphor in there somewhere.
I have some fried rice for lunch. Unfortunately for some reason it had some shrimp in it. Shrimp is one of the several thousand things to which I am allergic. I do my best to remove the shrimp. I get a little allergic reaction anyways.
Right after lunch three of my nephews’ friends come over. There are now half a dozen small children on sugar highs running around. I am not able to keep up and take an impromptu nap for like fifteen minutes. Am I getting old?
Somewhere in there I try to run up the stairs and manage to slip and fall before I set foot on the stairs. I do everything in my power not to break the several devices which I am holding, which I do manage to do. Unfortunately I cut my finger instead. How on earth did I manage to cut my finger and draw blood from hitting it on the floor? I feel like that would be a new high of ineptitude for most people. Not for me.
Somewhere I find time to watch some of the fish just outside. It’s strangely calming. I like water. I like fish. I used to have a small blue fish I called, I kid you not, “Bluey” because I was six and it was blue. I watch these fish the way I used to watch Bluey.
My sister killed Bluey.
My nephews and niece show me the six different birds that they play with a lot in person. I think I mentioned them before. I don’t like holding them. The talons feel really, really weird. All the birds have clipped wings, which makes sense because the six birds would be zero birds if they could fly away. But it makes me sad to think about them. They will live their entire lives in cages, and for the fleeting moments when they are let out they can see the skies above but they can never touch them. They can see the domain that they were meant to rule over but they will never be allowed to take their rightful place. Reminds me of us. We don’t have clipped wings – certainly we have the potential to make something of ourselves, claim our own place – but with the way most of our lives were headed you’d never know that.
Anyways, I proceed to be violently murdered by a small deer. (Another game, of course, don’t worry about it.)
For dinner I make myself a quesadilla because that’s one of the few things I can actually make without burning something and my dad got way too many tortillas anyways (he picked those up instead of the tortilla chips my mom told him to get). The other kids have some pizza, which, hilariously, has no tomato sauce and no cheese either. I guess it had little crumbled bits of cheese on top, but certainly not cheese on pizza in the traditional manner. It was very funny looking.
I also had to talk to my other cousin for a few minutes there. She’s really nice, but you know how sometimes you don’t exactly know someone’s name but it’s been long enough that it’s awkward to ask? Yeah. That’s me and my other cousin.
We all watch Pixar’s Luca after dinner. The movie is fine. Kinda generic, not gonna lie. I’m disappointed that I didn’t have an Italian accent ingrained in my brain after watching it the way, say, Scottish gets ingrained in my brain after Brave. The dad character is fun.
My niece orders my sister and I to drink our milk, because “we are making our own milk”. I always find it funny when the kids boss me around, or at least try to, and funnier still when they say nonsense like that. Then I pull open my laptop and write this up. It’s 11:30 as I write this. I need to find a way to do these faster. But as we always say, midnight brain is midnight pain. I can make it through six more days of this.
…day 2 survived.
