This really is it

no time to review this cuz the kids are screaming again lol I hope it doesn't suck

This here now this little nothing burger you think is just a quick layover to your soon-to-be-something sandwich with the nice ciobatta bread and the mushroom meat that tastes just like mushrooms but guess what babe that sandwich never comes.

That sandwich is the illusion par axcallance, a fiction that puts all non-fictions to shame which, by the way, non-fiction? Why not call those books true? A mystery for another time which, remember, will never come.

And what’s more (more!), we know that it will never come. We know that we’re stuck here in the present but we pretend as if we don’t know and pine for something other than this that will happen soon or did happen then because maybe we can outsmart the whole thing and sneak into the future before it becomes the now, a future of good times and easy living where you’re not yet tired and upset and thinking once again about the future that, once you arrive there, you are sure, will be a peach pastry puff worth every pound.

It is always now.

It is the bark of a dog named Robert that wakes a toddler named Wilder who’s scream sends

It is the barking of the dog named Robert that wakes up the child named Wilder who’s screaming makes the dad named dad sprint upstairs from the basement where he was riding the off-brand peleton and watching the on-brand The Bear hoping for a nice sweat before the day began.

And sweat dad did, so much so that when he got into Wilder’s room he was terrified that his son, who hates anything being wet, would notice his sweaty dad or a drop of sweat on his sheets or just the general out-of-breath huffing of a man desperately clinging to the little control he’s got left in the form of an exercise ‘routine’ and go ‘WHY ARE YOU WET” and run out of the house and never come back.

But that does not happen. What happens instead is that dad, who had already started writing the ‘this is it’ part of this essay in his notes app, rubs Wilder’s back slash tummy slash side for a while and realizes that the it he is currently in, the it you are reading about right now, is indeed the it that he will write about in his piece which he’s on his way to now do when the backstabbing dog named Robert barks AGAIN waking the toddler named Wilder up again who’s ‘why does this shit keep happening’ boss-vibe screams make the dad named dad return to his bed and rub his back until finally Wilder falls asleep and dad checks his CCTV monitor to see the baby named Emma June is now awake.

So now the dad goes into her room and changes her diaper and she is smiling the whole time because she knows dad needs this and he sits her in her bouncer and she is happy as a clam (???) so dad goes back to his computer and starts writing when Wilder screams for more milk so dad gives him more milk and tries to write again when Wilder screams that he needs to pee…and poo, the second part coming as he realizes he’s got a nighttime diaper for the peeing part.

So dad takes Wilder to poop and pee on his potty and brings Emma June in the bathroom too with her bouncer and now we’re all hanging out for an impromptu family meeting where all are in attendance except that absolute dipshit Robert who started all this and, spineless pup that he is, refuses to be there to finish it.

Wilder poops and dad gives EJ milk. Dad then burps EJ and wipes Wilder’s butt and brings everyone out to the living room and then the two kids somehow magically play for a little while so dad can write this which he is doing right now.

You’re caught up now. You’re experiencing my now as I am, or at least the parts of it I’m able to transmit to you via this ancient technology they call words. EJ is crying now and I should go get her but I feel like there are bigger points to make? Maybe I wrote something earlier that could work? Hang on.

Oh yea I forgot I had this great joke - remember that game ‘Don’t Wake Daddy?’ Besides the dark undertones of an angry dad whose wrath the family fears so much they build their lives around not waking him, the entire game is built on a lie.

Don’t wake daddy? Daddy is awake and trying to eek out the last dregs of his pre-parent life. No, the game is called Don’t Wake Baby.

Or maybe Don’t Scare Doggy.

Except the scaring of the doggy and the waking of the baby is sort of the whole thing. We’re terrified of life being interrupted by the stuff of actual life. That’s it.

Maybe I’ll make a game called “Bark Bark Doggy And Wake Up Baby Let’s All Gather In The Bathroom for Poop Poop Toddler and Burp Burp Baby and of course Dad Dad Daddy.

Oh and PS - Lauren is not home. She said she needed “space” and lives at an AirBnB in Orlando now.