Penning it down

30.03.2020, Monday

This must be it. It must be the day that history takes root. I have read of all the great men and women whose journeys emerged from leather-bound books. I bought mine (a simple blue journal with rubber covers) the previous weekend and wow, I feel the words spilling out as if they had been in a dungeon for eons.

As a first I give a weather report...sunny with a pure touch of lovely cherry blossoms. Ah! The air is appealing for outdoor events but of late home has been the new office. It seems pretty much that the lock-down in our country has changed my habits. My friend called me yesterday to fix a WiFi router. I joked that unless there was a teleportation mode that I didn't know of, we could Skype things over. I almost got slapped on my face, through a call!

31.03.2020, Tuesday

My first confession in this despairing period is that I have never appreciated the hugs of people. Now I seek them as if they fulfill all glorious desires. How I want Uncle Dennis to embrace me with his heart-filled hands. I can see myself suffocating in his arms, and smelling his ever charming after shave. Now I know that he must be in his office looking out the window. He always says, "Even with these large windows people still manage to sleep in car parks, right in front of their employer’s eyes!" Then he points two fingers to his round face.

I always laugh since my brother works with him and he is ever the 'people' in mind.

By the way my brother's the one who introduced this whole idea of writing my life on paper. He says "if you want to see it you must pen it down." He is wise. I know that because every time my uncle faces some crisis in the office Collins is the tune that leads all troublesome rats to the drain.

01.04.2020, Wednesday

I have much to say, or say I, much to write. I just hope that by the end of this worldwide pandemic I will have made this new venture a habit. Twenty and one days it is for a habit to take shape; twenty and one days the government has given me to practice. In twenty-one then, I shall prevail. Thus I think that there is a positive in everything, even in lock-downs...I never could have known!

Let me not forget that today is Fool’s Day. I wonder who will fool who. Honestly pranks make life fun to live and so I have undertaken the challenge to prank my cat. Good luck to me! One thing though that has been fooled today is my diary. I unwrapped it really well on my bed, then went to my study room to journal. Along with me: a piece of tissue and a ballpoint. Its time I fooled someone around here, isn’t it?

02.04.2020, Thursday

Who said submitting reports is easy. The rain teemed down late at night with vigor making me even to thank God for the lock-down only to receive an email at 3.00 a.m., a reminder of the analysis that should be in my bosses p.c. by seven on the dot. I really appreciate all these writing stuff but I think I’ll put it on hold. I mean, how can someone email you at the third watch of the night? I thought we are in the 21^st century! With the overwhelming eagerness I kicked my duvet to see a message on how I had won a poetry competition due today, I would have jumped all the steeple-chase hurdles at Olympics with ease and do an extra round for the fans… with a final thank you curtsy.

04.04.2020, Saturday

Don’t judge me. I’ve only skipped a day. Anyone could do that. I even heard Mark Twain failed to fill his entries on the African Safari adventures he went to. If you haven’t heard of it, that is most certainly the reason. This is my “we cool” statement.

Anyway today has been a huge day. I never knew that weddings could have people for a celebration. My neighbor, one of my neighbors had this wedding planned out since fall last year, but as I heard the fiancee had it all figured out from junior high. All the same it was a fabulous occasion with it taking place at the garden of our apartment with a priest, the bride’s father and sister and the groom’s parents. Let me interject here that I love cakes and especially if they are filled with chocolate…The rest is history but I watched everything; especially the cake!

07.04.2020, Tuesday

I needed to finish researching on how to socialize when at home. “We cool?” Apparently my parents are worried that every moment I spend alone forty years will be an age to dream about. Literally, I cannot live to forty but only dream of it. My mother is trying to remind me of some pretty girls who used to pass by our house to bring eggs from their farm. Even as I write this I keep wondering why they had to bring eggs when chicken multiplied seven-fold every hour in our hatchery. Mum told me that their eggs were the best for cooking but I still doubt that.

Now she wants me to ask one of them out. She did not specify which one, but she gave me hints enough to describe Ameriolle. This one is another who always walked with her journal. How vast my brother adored her to the extent of launching a diary club so that they could share secrets; the two of them were ever in one group no matter the variety of lots cast by the club. They always giggled when reading one another’s books while I was seriously making couches with clay for our sister to seat her dolls.

12.04.2020, Sunday

My research has been so far fruitless and bitter. I’m even thinking of why I keep on filling this small book. Cooking is becoming a duty. Doing laundry should be categorized into one of the callings of the human endeavors and dishes, dishes should just do their rounds in the oceans and come back after a cool sun bath.

I guess that it is time to find a mate: a hard-working, honest, beau…. Wait a minute! I know who this could be! But I am certainly not writing this to you my journal neither will I jot another word in you.

It is becoming a thing and I am being too open…too open.

07.03.2037

Come and see the world with its new technology. Even as we mark our seventeenth anniversary, my lovely one and I are enjoying a game of Journey to the Center of the Earth. My mum, if she saw us, could have baked us a cake and laughed her teeth off saying, “See now you are forty and running around like a boy trying to make couches with mud, and what is that you are using? Oh! Whoever invented that…”

I know I said I would not write again, but you know people say things they never mean. Isn’t that right? Yeah, then we cool…

Even though paper is gold these days I still journal on a blue rubber covered-book. I have a row on my shelf dedicated to all my family’s journals. Thank you Collins for unraveling this treasure called journalism. One step at a time (now our lives are in a shelf. Huh?) Precisely not! To see it you must pen it down…and read it.