My motherfucking kids are doing this thing where the little one (2.5) wakes up the big one (4.5) at some ungodly hour. Together they tunnel out into the main zone of our place, raid the kitchen for snacks and ipads and cell phones and shit, and then they retire to the small one’s room and sit in there in the dark, snacking and watching shit on youtube. This happens every single day.

Now, there’s the upside to this, which is “hey, at least they’re not waking me up,” except for the fact that they’re TOTALLY waking me up. I am a pretty light sleeper and all it takes is one teeny ‘click’ from out in the house and I know what’s going on and it makes my blood boil and then BOOM! I’m up at 6 or 530 or whatever and I’m suddenly down the hall in my underpants, pissed off (for two reasons. Firstly, I’m being robbed of my sleep, which, as a parent of small children, is precious, and second, because every night before bed and every morning I tell them NOT TO DO THIS and they persist in ignoring me) and saying the same thing every single day, which is this: “Did you wake him up?” (she says yes, she did). “Did I say you could play with the iPad?” (he indicates that no, this exchange never took place). “Is your clock green?” (this is in reference to the clock in my 4 year old’s room which is designed to turn green at 7am, thereby indicating that it’s an okay time to get up and make noise/move around. The clock is an authority figure in my house, fourth in command after me, my wife and the nanny. The response to the question “did your clock turn green?” is always “my sister woke me up.”

At this point, I snatch up all the various apple devices and put everyone back in their rooms and demand silence and darkness until shit gets to be a decent hour, but by then (now, actually, if we’re being honest [it’s 615] I’m too pissed to get back to sleep. It ruins my mood almost completely and it happens every day. I guess, when it all boils down, I kind of blame youtube.

See, I love the fact that my kids can get on ipads and play angry birds or whatever games they want. Those are interactive activities, a lot of them are even educational, and by and large I’m much happier with them playing engaging games that at the very least deal in letters and physics and hand-eye coordination than I am with them just sitting there and watching a bunch of animated bears talk through the crisis of who tossed the ball through the windowpane. Is it father of the year material parenting? Eh, we’ll have to wait for the 2013 nominations, but I doubt it.

However, the thing is, on Angry Birds, there’s now this portal to Youtube which is the only thing my kid even uses Angry Birds for anymore. So now, instead of him playing some interactive game, he’s back to passively watching shit, except now it’s the mindless drool of user generated content. And he’s doing it in this crackhead way, back in his sister’s room under the covers like a sneaky addict. This fucking kid is four and he’s already (metaphorically) sucking the proverbial dick for cheeseburgers (or however that old saying goes). Sigh.

I’m 36. Four years ago I was 32. This doesn’t seem like a big deal at all. Four years ago my son was a baby and I was just beginning to write this blog. Things seem like they were about the same.

Man, TEN years ago doesn’t seem that far off to me. When I was 26? Shit. I was engaged to be married and writing that song about Juggalos for Greatest Story Ever Told. I don’t know how much life (re) definition you can pack into four years.

What I’m getting at is this: High school was so insanely sticky. I remember everyone. I still feel a great affinity for or enmity towards the random smattering of people that I attended high school with. How was that four years more significant than this current slog I’m in, where I wake up, take a little boy’s games away, yell at a little girl and then stew in my juices til it’s time to go to work. At work, everyone’s nice, but I definitely don’t see myself hating or loving any of them the way I did with the people I went to highschool with. Hell, four years from now, this is just gonna be another bit of grey matter in my memory banks. Why highschool? Was it that great? Not really.

Fuck, college was way more fun, but I only have ONE friend from college that I still keep in regular contact with. He’s okay. He’s got a dog named Kevin.

Man…I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but as I live out this groundhogs day I’m reminded of high school. That was only four years of my life but it seemed dynamic, and miserable and awesome and scary and everything constantly seemed different and big and full of oversized personalities. Now I’m surrounded by things that really ARE changing (new people to love literally strolling out of other people that I love, people dying, moving, becoming rich, becoming very different and weird etc.) and it just seems like a grind. I don’t mean to complain. I’m not unhappy. Fuck, I think I was more unhappy in highschool. I guess I got more blowjobs in highschool than I have in the four years since my son was born…but that’s probably based on 2 factors:

1)   There was a greater pool of potential workforce for the job, and more significantly:

2)   It’s much easier to get a blowjob when you live with your parents than when you live with your kids.

Hmmm. Nice. Real fuckin nice…