A deadbeat dad

Nobody respects me.

Not my wife.

"Sorry, honey, I'm feeling a little beat from work." The brunette, with her perfectly slender yet curvy form and dashing pixie cut, wriggled under the covers. "Maybe tomorrow?"

Not my kids.

SLAM!

The young lady twirled her head back, skirt flourishing. "Patricia's parents bought her a car for her to take to the lakes. I'm just going out with some friends to the park, I promise I'll be back in one piece." Then out of the front gate she fled.

Not my bosses.

"For the last time." A swift toss sent the papers across the desk like a basket of fish. "Your reports were due and you failed to meet the deadline, again."

"Alicia dropped them on my plate last minute, Theo, I swear I would've--"

"No excuses." The portly man chucked away the tails of his cardigan, fists against his muffin hips. "You learn to manage your time, or I will manage it for you."

"But, Alicia--"

"No excuses!"

Hell, not even my neighbor's dog.

"Grrrrrrr."

"E-easy now." Just feet away. I glanced at my gate, then back at the Hughes' apparently unshackled husky. "Easy now, boy. Vince. Vince, hey."

"Grrrrrr."

"I'm going to go in now. Okay?"

"Grrrrrr."

I bit my cheek. And sighed.

Screw it. He wouldn't do anything.

"I'm going in."

"WOOF! WOOF! GRRRARGH!"

"AAAAHHHHAAHAHAHGHHH MOMMA FUCK AHHHGGA NO!"

So, when I was leafing through my clothes after a long day in the office, and came across a notebook just laying on the carpet, I was drawn to it.

If living things couldn't give me the time of day, maybe inanimate objects would.

It is so, such it is that which is written in these pages is of sense, of nature, of normal design.

To take root in all those who apply, to enact and reform as devised. Without resistance or desire to fight.

Even if unfathomable, with rationale awry. As objects and stories dare shift through time, so will the truths these pages align.

However, whosoever writes upon these pages last,

they shall be granted eyes into the past.

The gift of questions, the gift of lies

to be laid upon their lap.

As is written, at first scribble,

'It is normal...'

Oh, thought Latimer, pencil in hand as he finished the foreword. So... kind of like a quirky nerd journal thing. Wonder what YA movie this is based off of.

Latimer Ross tapped his forehead with the eraser side of his pencil.

As he ruminated, his eyes drifted about the room. Landing, conveniently, on the framed photo by the bedside of their queen sized mattress. Across its margins was a photo of him and his beautiful knockout of a wife at an outdoor Parisian restaurant nearly a decade ago, and their two kids, smiling at the camera. It was just short of ready, on their part, but hey, the photographer snapped it a second too early by pure mistake. What could you do? Sue the guy? At the end of the day, the outcome was a more authentic slice of their high spirited, still somewhat enamored, albeit jetlagged, amateur globetrotting experience that summer. And it was nice. Always liked that picture, he did. Latimer, that.

He was also a