Dee-dee, ghosts and Colombian cocaine
Dear Diary. 7:30 am: I wake up to the sound of 1-year-old and Girlfriend playing. I get up and take a piss, hopefully in that order.
7:50 am: Girlfriend leaves for work, leaving me alone with 1-year-old. I'm now his sole guardian. The only thing preventing him from sticking a fork into a plug socket is me. Don't worry, 1-year-old, Daddy's got this. We can do this. Right?
8:00 am: 1-year-old wants to go outside. He's like an insistent dog that wants to go for a walk. He even carries my shoes over to me and puts them down at my feet.
8:20 am: I'm carrying 1-year-old towards the local playground. I see the words "I AM MYSELF. I CAN'T BE ANYONE ELSE" on a t-shirt in a shop window across the street. The words actually bring tears to my eyes. Maybe I'm emotional because I'm tired.
Here's a photo of 1-year-old on the swings. He was laughing a few moments before I took the photo, but as soon as I whipped my phone out, he stopped laughing and became stony-faced instead.
8:40 am: We pass a bank and 1-year-old wants to use the ATM. He thinks it's some kind of toy. He likes to put a bank card in and watch it come back out again. However, the last time we played with the ATM, 1-year-old dropped my bank card and it fell into a drain. I couldn't reach it so I had to leave it there, hoping that's an enterprising thief wasn't going to come along and figure out some way to reach it. Later I had time to report the card to my bank and they sent me a new one, albeit with a fee of €3.
The ATM I'm currently standing at has a camera that records you as you make transactions. I suppose the idea is to deter wannabe ATM thieves, though maybe it's also posting the recordings to some weird fetish site for all I know. There's also a screen that shows you the footage live – it's grainy footage of a closeup of your face. It makes me feel uneasy, as though I'm about to commit a crime and this footage will later appear on Crimewatch.
I point to myself on the screen and say. “Look, 1-year-old. That's me. That's Daddy.” I look like a tired old bag or a turnip that's been left in a cupboard for too long. I wonder if women still find me even remotely attractive. I reckon those days are long gone. The last time a woman showed interest in me was seven years ago, and it was my now-girlfriend. Not a single woman has flirted with me since then.
Even though I'm wearing a new tailored shirt, it only serves to accentuate how old my face looks. From the neck down I look like a teenager in a pop group but from the neck up I’m a tired, middle-aged man. It's depressing.
8:50 am: We get back home. I decide that now will be a good time to make a cake. 1-year-old helps by smashing eggs into the side of the bowl. The trouble is that he doesn't know when to stop. Once he's broken the egg, he just keeps smashing and smashing, as though he's a gangster and the egg owes him protection money. I imagine all the other eggs watching from the fridge in horror.
9:20 am: I take the cake out of the oven. It looks like shit and tastes like shit too. Maybe next time I should follow a recipe.
9:30 am: I drop 1-year-old off at nursery. He doesn't want to go – he wants to keep exploring the city with me and I can't blame him. If I had to choose between seeing all the sights of an exciting city or being trapped in a prison with thirty snot-nosed kids then I know which one I'd choose.
12:00 pm: I begin to feel a bit rough. I wonder it's because all I've eaten so far today has been cake and a bowl of olives. Then I remember that I haven't taken my hypothyroidism medication yet. It could be that.
12:10 pm: I'm doing some work on my laptop. My fingers are feeling a bit sore though so I'm using Google's voice-to-text recognition software instead of typing. However, I think it's haunted. I said "comma" and it wrote, "call Nana". I feel like Google is telling that my nan will die tomorrow and so I should call her to talk to her one last time.
12:43 pm: I said 'comma' again just now and this time Google wrote: "Call Ma." Fuck me. I'm scared to keep going since my mom's been dead for almost ten years. "Call Ma." Creepy.
1:29 pm: I've discovered that Google is better at understanding me if I enunciate my words as much as possible, like a Shakespearean actor. I've also discovered that using hand gestures helps as well, even though Google can't see me. So I'm waving my hands around as I talk, like a wizard creating a spell. I hope the neighbours can't see me or they'll think I'm possessed by the demon in The Exorcist.
4:35 pm: Now I'm in my father-in-law's language school, working in one of his spare rooms.
I'm working on someone's thesis. The topic is cocaine farms in Colombia. Today I hope to have the literature review finished.
But not only is it unethical being a ghost essay writer, but it's also lonely. I get no praise for a well-worded sentence other than my own voice in my head. There's no one to talk to.
5:33 pm: I've been here for almost two hours and my fingers are getting uncomfortable. I'll have to stop. My literature review is still a couple of hundred words short but I can finish it tomorrow.
6:54 pm: I get home but Girlfriend and 1-year-old aren't here. I decide to do just a bit more work. I whip out my laptop and boot up Google's voice-to-text recognition software again.
7:13 pm: This time Google doesn’t understand me when I say “teeth”. It thinks I’m saying “chief” instead. This leads to sentences like “Remember to brush your chief twice a day”. Another word that Google doesn't understand is "campaign". It thinks I'm saying “compiegne” or "campaigne" instead – anything but "campaign". Why the fuck does Google think I'm French only when I say that one word?
Anyway, Girlfriend and 1-year-old come home, we have dinner then we put to 1-year-old to bed. He doesn't fall asleep straight away though. Instead, he stands up in his cot and cries, calling out "dee-dee", which I think means "Daddy". I go back to 1-year-old's room and put him back down in the bed. He immediately curls up and falls asleep. Another day over.
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