This is week 125 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 868): All Kinds Of Pie

The baby’s cousins came over for a visit, and I did “up high, down low…too slow” with them. You know that game. They high five you, then when they try to low five you, you pull your hand away. The kids liked it just as much on the thirtieth time as the first.

When they tried to do the same to me, I threw a wrench in like I always do.

“Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jowwwaaaan.”

“What, honey.”

The little cousin held her hand up. “Up high.”

“A pie?”

“Yea. Up high?”

“Well what kind of pie are we talking about here.

“Up high.”

“Blueberry…Blackberry…lemon…rhubarb…it better not be mincemeat. I am not a fan of mincemeat pies.”

“No. Jon. Listen. Up. High.

“I forgot apple. Your grandma makes a great apple pie, doesn’t she?”

“Yes. No. Jowan. Up. High.”

“Oh, see, I thought you brought me a pie.”

“No.”

“Are you sure.”

“Up high, Jon. Here. Right up here. Up. High.”

“Fine. But, I’d rather have an apple pie than a high five. Are you sure that the pie you brought isn’t in the car? I’d better go check.”

Her shoulders slumped. “There is no pie, Jowan. Up. High. Up High. Don’t you get it? Not pie. Up high. Up here. Right here. Up high.”

“This seems like a ripoff.” I slapped her hand up high.

“Down L…”

I slapped her hand before she finished. “Too slow.”

“Up high,” she said again.

We played until I learned to play the game properly.

#1GF!’s family headed out, and we started preparing homemade chicken soup for dinner. Our recipe originated from reading the back of a dried chicken soup packet and eliminating anything I couldn’t instantly pronounce. It’s not complicated, and it’s hard to beat on the heartiness scale.

A lot of people have a roast chicken and then use the carcass to make chicken soup. You want to know the secret of a good chicken soup? Don’t use a chicken carcass. Boil a whole chicken for an hour (until the chicken juice runs clear but before the chicken falls apart in the pot), take it out, and shred the meat into strings by hand. Throw the meat back in the pot and dump the carcass. It takes a fair amount of time to do it this way, but the heartiness and consistency will keep you from ingesting a red and white can of chemicals ever again.

Macoosh came by later and ended up staying for dinner. It was rare that we got to see her, and it was good to have her around for a few hours.

Macoosh headed back into the real world, and I got the baby to fall asleep in my arms, which never happens.

Monday (Day 869): Treat Me Like A Car…When I Feel Like It

I woke up feeling wide awake and thought it was 6AM. I wanted to bound out of bed and attack the day. Unfortunately for me, it was really only 1AM. Will the perks of parenthood never cease? When 6AM really arrived, I took the baby out of the bedroom and she slept on my chest for a couple of hours while I watched Sons of Anarchy. It was an interesting twist on a drama, but I never got engrossed enough that I could see myself remembering to watch it.

Once #1GF! was up, I made a list of things that needed to be done around the house and attacked it. I went to the local home megastore to pick up some caulk and spray foam insulation. I was going to get some weather stripping, but realized that I already had some at home.

When I got home, I caulked the attic windows for a quick checkmark. I went downstairs to install some weatherstripping, but what I had on hand was compression weatherstripping, and there was no groove on the door to install it into. The only way that I could get that checkmark would be to take the door frame apart. I debated about the value of that checkmark while pulling on various boards, but soon moved on to something else.

I started installing insulation on the heat pipes in the cellar, and realized that the clips holding all of the pipes were too small to hold an insulated pipe. If was going to insulate the pipes, I was going to have to replace every clip along the way. It’s called scope creep, folks, and it happens as much at home as it does in the business world.

I went to the local hardware store to pick up some clamps and extra pipe insulation, and a guy on a bike did not like the speed at which I entered the store’s parking lot from the main road. He threw up his hands at me in aggravation. I shook my head. I’ve been run off the road on a bike by a car, and I’m all for people going green if they want to, but those people who want their bikes treated like cars should invest in a fucking air horn, and get the fuck out of the middle of the road. Unfortunately, the hardware store didn’t have any of what I was looking for, so I picked up some foam weatherstripping.

I went home, put the weatherstripping aside, and checked the bulkhead for leaks. I couldn’t find one, despite a small puddle on one of the stairs. I checked some bricks around the bulkhead for cracks, and couldn’t find anything there either. I moved on and insulated the one of the doors with the cheap, foam weatherstripping. I took another checkmark.

I went to another home megastore to pick up insulation, clamps, and some Rustoleum for any painting that I might do in the future. I got home at 8PM after talking to an ex-coworker in an aisle for over an hour. My day was pretty close to over, and despite all my good intentions, I had only two minor checkmarks. Insulating a door and caulking two windows, two projects that are as difficult as squeezing toothpaste, had taken me all day. It was a little sad.

I ate some leftover chicken soup and watched a new show called Flash Forward with #1GF!. The baby was asleep. #1GF! went to bed, and I wrote down a couple of days worth of notes in my notebook.

Tuesday (Day 870): Wrapping My Pipe

I went to the basement at 10AM to insulate the heating pipes. “This won’t take long,” I told #1GF!. She rolled her eyes. “Couple of hours, tops,” I reiterated. At noon, I emerged for a sandwich. At 2PM, I realized that I was one clip and one piece of insulation short of finished. I wasn’t happy about having to go back to the hardware store, but I was happy with my ability to roughly estimate materials.

I went back to the store because #1GF! was not going to let another project die at 90%. I felt the same. I bought insulation, clips, two extra pieces of insulation, and two extra clips. When I finished, I only had two pieces of insulation to return.

I thinned the spider population as I insulated, and was finished up and showered by 5PM. I felt like I hadn’t seen the baby all day, so I took her. She cried on me for a while and fell asleep soon after. It was the best I was going to get.

#1GF! and I sat down to watch another episode of Flash Forward. While I thought that the show had a great concept, some of the acting bordered on awful. #1GF! had a hard time with Harold from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle in a serious role. We weren’t sure that we’d be watching more than two episodes.

Later on that night, several fire trucks showed up to pick up a neighbor. When strobes of red and blue light fill your living room, it’s not a good sign. #1GF! went over to check on the wife, and I watched the baby.

Wednesday (Day 871): Urination Theft & The Restaurant Mall

We gave the baby a bath and then took a drive to look at some leaves. The trees hadn’t really turned yet, but we drove on routes 117, 62, and 2A, which run through the birthplace of the American Revolution. It was all very historic with its wooden fences and small towns.

As the miles passed, I stared out the window and thought about the concept of malls and how ingenious they are. If you have a store there, your foot traffic is all people who are looking to spend. If you’re looking to spend, there are ample opportunities to do so. Everyone knows why they’re there. It’s the perfect storm for buyer and seller.

I tried to apply the mall concept elsewhere, like say online. I ended up spending quite a few minutes dreaming up a business that is already known as Amazon. I then tried to apply the mall concept to sports and gyms, but failed.

The best I could come up with was a restaurant mall. Inside would be set up like a city in a movie set, with cobblestone streets, an artificial sky painted on the ceiling, lights that approximated day and night, etc. All the restaurants could offer outdoor or indoor seating year round.

I explained the idea to #1GF!. “It would be good for people because you could always find somewhere else to eat if the wait at your favorite restaurant happened to be too long. And you wouldn’t have to get back in the car and waste time driving.”

“Uh huh,” said #1GF! absently.

“Maybe part of the mall is all romantic hideaways, and another is a constant party for the younger crowd. It would be pleasantly and unmistakeably artificial. You could eat dinner, take a stroll down one the streets toward dessert town.”

“I think I could get on board with something that includes a place called dessert town, but aren’t you talking about a food court?”

“And that’s the problem. The only thing I can’t figure out how to solve is getting past the perception that the restaurant mall is just a food court. Well, that and the billions required to develop it.”

“Yes, the billions.”

I smiled and turned to #1GF!. “This is just like old times isn’t it?”

“With me driving aimlessly and you thinking up crazy ideas?”

“Aaaand how.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

We stopped at a Dunkin Donuts to unload some excess liquid we were transporting. I always feel a little weird about using the bathroom and not buying anything, even when it is a chain restaurant. I have no idea why or if it’s a common feeling for people.

After our urination theft, #1GF! fed the baby in the car and headed home. We tried to take Route 20, but missed the turn and ended up on route 9, which was efficiently less scenic. We got home around 5PM, and ate leftovers for dinner.

Thursday (Day 872): From Now On Astronomy And Astrology Are The Same Thing

I think I woke up at 1AM. Or 3AM. Or 1AM and 3AM. I have no idea what the red blur on the clock really was, but I know it wasn’t 6AM. The baby was making regular and unignorable noises, so I took her out of the room to let #1GF! catch up on her sleep. As if to foil my plan, the baby was awake and hungry within an hour. I woke #1GF!, ate breakfast, took the baby back after the feeding, and sent #1GF! back to bed.

Before I knew it, it was 10AM. I felt a certain panic that the day was already slipping away from me. I went out at 11AM to pick up a tuck pointer to help dislodge some of the neglect that had crept between the bricks over the last few decades. I brought it home, inspected the worst side of the house, and wanted to repoint the entire thing. I could hear #1GF! in my head telling me to take it easy. If I didn’t focus on the big issues, I would never finish. I spent a couple of hours chipping and patching the obvious problems, cleaned off the tools, and went inside to dispatch a sandwich without the dignity of a plate or chair. It was devoured while standing over the sink, which had been my preferred method of sandwich eating for over twenty years.

With the fuel delivered, I grabbed a tube of Seamermate and a ladder and sealed a leaky seam on one of the gutters. Knowing that rain was coming, I reluctantly went around the gutters, cleaning out the leaves and debris. It wasn’t something that I wanted to do, but the little splashes of stinky garbage juice to the face really made the whole project refreshing.

As I was cleaning, noticed that a hole looked like it had been punched by a hammer in one of the new window frames. To make up for destroying the window, the culprit had filled the hole with common household caulk. I already had one brand new frame replaced for the exact same reason. My original contractor was a gift that just kept on giving. Like fucking herpes.

I was back inside by 4PM, and debated on doing more repointing because there was still daylight left to burn. Instead, I decided to shower and spend some time with my new family.

Neither #1GF! or I wanted to cook, so I ran out to get pizza. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Didn’t I swear off of pizza just a couple of weeks ago because it was an exercise in aggravation? Sure, but Thursday had traditionally been pizza night, and the baby was sleeping. There was no way that she would cry. We had the magic colic medicine.

When I got home, we barely managed to get through dinner before the baby woke up screaming. I took her, and she immediately threw up all over my shirt. As soon as I changed, she threw up again, this time going right over a burp cloth and onto my pants. Fifteen minutes later, she avoided the burp cloth yet again, and threw up on the shirt I had just changed into. Two shirts, a pair of pants, two burp cloths, and one and a half baby outfits were retired in a thirty minute period.

Soon after the baby had calmed down enough that she wasn’t screaming or making her parents change their clothes, we got a call for PC support from #1GF!’s family. PC support is always a patience building exercise, but I found that it’s even more interesting when you’re flying blind (i.e. you can’t see the user’s screen) and holding a baby. After a lot of “Well, what do you see?” and “Hold on a sec,” I got the problem resolved. I think tech support is how Buddhas and serial killers are built.

By 8PM, it felt like midnight. I was sitting comatose in front of the news, and I saw a story that there was a Harry Potter exhibit at the Science Museum. 1.) How is that news, and 2.) Since when is an exhibit about fictional witches something that belongs in the Museum of Science? Maybe I just didn’t understand science anymore. From that point on, I decided that I’d try to use “astronomy” and “astrology” interchangeably in conversation.

Friday (Day 873): Star Trek Waffles, Suicidal Milk, & Big Dig

I got up early and sent #1GF! back to bed. I lay on the couch with the baby on my chest, keeping guard over her until she summoned the one from whom she feeds. Because laying on a couch in silence in the pre-dawn light with a warm baby on your chest isn’t the most energizing experience, I fell asleep for a few seconds. I awoke as if I had been shocked. Nature was giving me a good hard slap in the face for falling asleep with an infant on my chest. I lay there watching the baby sleep, and then moved her to her swing for safekeeping once she woke up.

I didn’t have my book, so I went into the bedroom to get it, and accidentally woke #1GF!. I eased out of the room and let her drift back to sleep. The baby wouldn’t fall back to sleep because she was bent on having a one-sided baby chat with her father. She eventually woke up #1GF!, who took over her care.

I hadn’t gone food shopping in a while, and the milk committed suicide. I found it a few days after the fact, proving that I thought of it as nothing more than a gallon of milk. I told the reporters that showed up that the milk seemed nice, and although it hung out with cereal and cookies once and a while, it mostly kept to itself.

There was nothing edible in the fridge, so I dug around behind the bags of frozen vegetables in the freezer to see if I could rustle up a breakfast-like substance. What I found was a box of Star Trek waffles. Yes, they do exist, whether they should or not is still up for debate. I ate them and quickly realized that I should’ve left them in their cryogenic state for future generations.

I had a cup of tea and thought about the projects that I would be taking on that day. I was either going to repoint the fireplace, weatherproof the attic, or blow it all off to hang out with my ladies. I opted for door number three.

We went out to pick up some stuff at Target and Walmart, and ended up feeding the baby in the car in the Target parking lot. We would’ve fed her at Walmart, but whip out a breast anywhere near a Walmart and you’re bound to have five grubby kids hanging off it before you can shoo them away.

We continued the shopping trip by dropping into Babies R Us to pick up some things for, well, the baby. A woman in the store “Awwww’d” at the baby as I passed. That was sort of neat.

Once again, we thought about buying a funny Halloween costume for the baby just to entertain ourselves. There was a Frankenstein with a flat head and bolts in the neck and a giant crab with multiple arms. Even though the baby didn’t have the motor skills to stand (never mind trick or treat), her confused face peeking out of either of those costumes would’ve been pretty funny. It wasn’t twenty dollars funny, so they stayed on the rack.

After Babies R Us, we went to the supermarket. Well, I did. The baby and her mama went to Marshalls to look for whatever it is that babies and baby mamas look for in Marshalls.

I ran through the grocery store, shoveling food into the cart, not knowing how long I actually had before the baby sonically exploded in #1GF!’s arms. I made it to the last aisle in record time.

I looked in the freezer case for some chocolate ice cream, and scanned for my favorite, Big Dig. The stores never carry my favorites. When I saw an actual container of Big Dig in the freezer, it felt like my lucky day. I burst out with “NICE!”, and whipped the freezer door open to collect my prize. In my excitement, I startled an older woman nearby who was making her ice cream choice with the same care and attention that some women reserve for online dating services.

When I got outside, #1GF! and the baby were already in the car. With the doors closed, I could hear that we had pushed the baby too far. She cried the whole way home–possibly from hunger, possibly from being overtired.

Once the groceries were unpacked, #1GF! told me that she wanted quiche for dinner. I think we might’ve talked about it at one point during the day, but babies are mind erasers. Despite doing the food shopping, I didn’t have the ingredients for a quiche. I suggested something else, but #1GF! inexplicably had her mind set on quiche.

She ran out to get some cheese, and I stayed home for some quality time with my pretty little barf machine. Not moments after her mother left, I moved the baby slightly and she never settled back down. In fact, she screamed until her mother returned. Once I handed her back to #1GF!, she calmed right down.

I made dinner and #1GF! put the baby to bed. A call came in on our house appraisal, and with the money we sunk into the house, we were still in the hole tens of thousands of dollars. That was nice. It was a down market, and it’s never a loss unless you sell, but it even unrealized losses aren’t great to hear.

I went into my office to see if I could load Counterstrike on my PC because some old friends were getting together online to semi-relive the regular Counterstrike LAN parties of 2001/2002. I doubted we’d recapture the fun, but I thought I’d get involved.

I tried to be quiet, but the minute I turned on the PC, the baby started making small noises in the adjoining room. I was making a bad choice. I was opting for my own fun at the expense of the baby. I shook my head and shut the PC down. There would be other games. I was no longer the center of the universe, and I had to make good choices for the person who was.

#1GF! and I ate dinner and watched 7 pounds. At the 33 minute mark, I waved a hand at the screen. “Bah,” I said like an old man who was one question away from talking about how things were better in his day.

“What?” asked #1GF!.

“I have it figured out.”

“Oh, come on. You do not.”

“I do.”

“What happens then?”

“Well, if I tell you, it will ruin it for you. I’ll write it down and we’ll see if I’m right after the movie.”

I wrote down the ending on a scrap of paper, and quickly lost interest in the plodding, painfully obvious plot. I became more interested in the baby monitor. The baby made a small peep like she was in distress, and I wanted to go in and hold her hand or something. I turned to #1GF!. “Do you know how your mother feels, you know, since you had the baby?”

#1GF! got dragged out of the movie. “No. What? No. Wait, what?” She hit pause with a sigh. “What are you talking about?”

“I think I understand my parents more now that I am one. There’s an inescapable impulse there. I know that the baby is fine and she’ll never remember any of this, but I wanted to help her when she made that small cry. I have this sudden need to smooth out even her smallest problems.”

“I get that, but what does that have to do with my mother?”

“Has she ever given you stuff that you don’t need?”

“Sure. That happens to everyone.”

“Well, I think I’m starting to understand the parent’s viewpoint in that scenario.”

“Oh, good.” She nodded for a second, waiting.

I motioned to the movie. “Go ahead.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. I already know what happens, anyway.”

“We’ll see.”

After the movie, the paper had the correct ending on it, but #1GF! didn’t seem impressed.

At 11:30PM, we had to wake the baby because she hadn’t eaten in five and a half hours. That was a new record for her–one that we would pay for later.

Saturday (Day 874): Reading And Writing

Ah, payback. I woke up at 1AM, 3AM, 5AM, and 7AM because the baby was noisy or restless all night long. I finally got up with the baby at 7AM, and sent #1GF! back to bed. I sat on the couch trying to get the baby back to sleep. Once she drifted off, I started reading. I zapped in and out of consciousness for a few seconds at a time.

#1GF! got up and took the baby, so I jumped into the shower. While I was in there, I was suddenly stuck trying to plot out some scenes in my next novel. For some reason, the steam helped to loosen up the ideas. I wrote them down as soon as I was dry enough to handle a notebook.

In the afternoon, I returned some books to the library and picked up a few replacements. One was on writing, one was on publishing, and one was for #1GF!.

When I got home, I researched more agents before making pork chops and spaghetti squash for dinner. The baby had really bad gas, so I sat her on my lap while we ate. She eventually freaked out and I couldn’t calm her down. I handed her over to #1GF! and went to check my e-mail. #1GF! had the magic touch and finally got her to sleep.

What I Learned

• The baby’s nose gets clogged when she sleeps on her stomach on my chest. Flipping her onto her back unclogged her nose.
• Compression weatherstripping needs a groove. No groove means you can’t use it.
• A tuck pointer makes repointing infinitely easier.
• Star Trek waffles are not worth eating.
• My original contractor is like a herpe that keeps surfacing.
• Astronomy is to astrology as science is to Harry Potter.
• I feel like I understand my own parents a little better now that I am one.

Reclusive author, J.D. Salinger passed away in his New Hampshire home a couple of days ago at the age of 91. He was most famous as the author of The Catcher In The Rye, which has sold over 65 million copies since it was first published in 1951.

I put together a music playlist in Salinger’s honor.

One Hit Wonders Of The 60s, 70s, 80’s, 90’s, & Today

I compiled over 175 one-hit wonders spanning five decades from 60’s through the 2000’s. There are a few good, a few bad, and a few downright ugly songs on the list, but all of most of them will drag you kicking and screaming down memory lane. The list is by no means complete, and all the song titles are available below the player.

Enjoy!

At a time when my feedreader is choking on the bones of abandoned blogs that are being voraciously devoured 140 characters at a time, my blog is turning eight years old. That’s a long time for something to exist on the web without a viable business model. I think I know how the dinosaurs felt.

I had to drop to a weekly posting schedule to make room for a book and new baby, but 548,083 unique visitors still managed to drop by here in 2009. Even though that was down from 1.3 million visitors in 2008, I still feel the same awe that I felt in early 2002 when there were twenty-nine people a day reading along: I still wonder who those other twenty-six people are.

So, Thank You (Yes, You)!

The blogsphere is now packed with leaner, funnier, and better marketed blogs than this one, so I want you to know that I appreciate you spending some of your time here sifting through the literary rubble for something amusing to pocket week after week. I really do. So even though I can’t pay you in money, when you die, on your deathbed, you’ll receive total consciousness. So you got that going for you…which is nice.

Whether your one of the site’s 400 subscribers or just someone who checks in once and a while, thanks for helping to make this another great year.

Gunga galunga…gunga — Gunga galunga.

-Jon Dyer

Once again the MaBeGroMo basic period has come to a close. You’ve listened to a number of unsolicited opinions on your new testosterone-driven look, and none of them deterred you. You went against the grain in a small way and did something that probably feels a lot better than it looks.

Congratulations!

Right now, you’re probably at the point where you unconsciously rub your beard or mustache to help you through tough decisions. Well, one is upon you: Do you take a picture of your beard and trek back through the snow to civilization, or do you make the run at the “MaBeGroMo Champion” title?

Before you decide, give you’re beard a good rub and look over this list. If any of the following apply, you might not be ready to give up that beard just yet.

You May Not Want To Give Up Your Beard If…

• More than fifty percent of your vocabulary has devolved into well-timed grunts and staring,
• You spend a lot of time battling Sauron,
• You can’t remember how it started, but you’ve been wearing an animal skull as a hat for a while now,
Continue Reading…

I put together Better Blogroll over two years ago to give Wordpress users a lot more control over the way that Wordpress handles and displays their blogrolls. Since then, it’s been downloaded 13,666 times (No, I couldn’t believe that number, either).

Two main updates went into Better Blogroll 3.0. First, the plugin now includes the ability to display link ratings as defined in your WordPress Links Manager.

More and more people have been using the plugin as a replacement for the default WordPress links widget, and many have been asking that the plugin be available without the link randomization that Better Blogroll was originally written for.

Randomization is still available, but now the links can be sorted by title or rating as well. With the addition of category groupings introduced in version 2.9, the plugin can act like a very configurable version of the basic WordPress Links widget.

For more information about Better Blogroll, head on over to my Better Blogroll Widget for Wordpress Page.

Originally aired on CBS in 1978, The Star Wars Holiday Special tells the story of Chewbacca and Han Solo flying to Chewbacca’s home world to celebrate Life Day, a Wookie holiday that is similar to Christmas.

It marks the first appearance of Boba Fett, if that’s enough to get you to watch all two craptastic hours.

Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Art Carney, Diahann Carroll, Harvey Korman, and Beatrice Arthur, and Chewbacca’s father, Itchy star.

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

Happy Life Day, pal.

Enjoy.

With two weeks to spare, the annual beard shaving pictures and story are now available. This year, the mountain man makes another trek into the city using several well thought out aliases to avoid being recognized as the R&B powerhouse, MC Butterworth.

Check out Beard Shaving 2009 so that you too can see why it’s better that I don’t have a boss.

The Quest For Every Beard Type

Due to the requirements for an in-production beard based short film (and pure pogonotrophic laziness), a mere two new styles were accomplished and added to The Quest for Every Beard Type. The total number of beards completed rises to 27 out of 36.

I spend all this time making a personalized photo Christmas card to send out to family and friends, and #1GF! comes home, takes one look at it, and says that she’ll get a card at Sears instead.

I don’t know what gets into her sometimes. Maybe “Merry Christmas” isn’t politically correct anymore.

Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” has been around since 1958, so there’s no doubt that you hear it a thousand times a season when the radio stations switch over to the all-Christmas format.

At some point last season, I was sitting on the couch reading a magazine, and the song came on the radio faintly in the background. Brenda Lee’s twangy country vocal and the low volume caused me to hear something that wasn’t there. From then on, I couldn’t help but hear the song without smiling.

I wish the same problem onto you:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Shun those razors like Angela Lansbury in a string bikini, Gents, and join men the world over who are making their annual migration into the state of beardedness.

The fifth annual MaBeGroMo starts today.

Thirty days of no-shave earns you a “participant” title, and those completing the full 75 day extended challenge may rightfully claim the title of “MaBeGroMo Champion.”

Banners and Badges

If you’d like to advertise your participation in Mabegromo, or simply show support for those making the migration, there are three Mabegromo banners available for you to download and put on your site this month:

240×120

125×125

120×80

Good luck. Hopefully, I’ll see the new, badass version of you in thirty days.

Happy bearding.

This is week 124 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 861): Turn Around, Bright Eyes

All I know about this day was that I made a pro/con list to help me decide whether to take the job with my old company, and we started watching Frost Nixon, but ended up too tired to finish it, even though it was only 10PM. There are no other notes from the day, so I’m going to assume that Bonnie Tyler came by singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” until I told her to get the fuck off of my lawn.

Monday (Day 862): Guiltily Pushing All In

I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that someone was in the house and lay there straining to hear the smallest noise over my paced breathing. It took me a while to piece together that the pillow next to me wasn’t #1GF!, and that #1GF! was probably the person prowling around in the kitchen. I got up to verify because there’s no sense in getting murdered over a hunch. It turned out to be #1GF!, who mouthed, “Sorry” when she saw me squinting at her.

I went back to bed and had a dream that I was in class, and a guy kept kicking my chair to intentionally annoy me. I turned around and broke his finger. He stopped kicking my chair almost immediately. I then had to go to a college function to meet a prospective employer. The businessman looking to hire me clapped me on the back and told me that I was lucky that he smoothed over the finger breaking incident with the dean. I rolled my eyes internally and smiled at him like he had done me a favor.

This is week 123 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 854): The Golden Turrets

In the morning, #1GF! was outside with the baby talking to the neighbors because that’s what it’s like around here in the summer. It’s a genuine neighborhood. #1GF!’s family was supposed to visit, but bagged on us. I have to say that I was a little disappointed.

#1GF! looked up cars because she made a deadline that we were going to get a new car before her maternity leave was over. As we sat on the couch talking over the blander points of family sedans, the second feeding of the day came up. The baby fed and fell asleep on her mother after arching her tiny back and stretching her arms so that her fists were alongside her ears.

“We have a baby,” said #1GF! with a bit of amazement.

“Yes, we do.”

#1GF! and I took that baby out for a walk in the early afternoon and the same issue came up. #1GF! turned to me. “You know, sometimes I can’t believe that we had a baby.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Sometimes I feel like we’re just watching her, and I worry that someone is going to come by to pick her up.”

“It’s all very unreal, isn’t it?”

“It is. I sometimes feel like this can’t possibly be happening.”

I hugged her. “It’s happening all right. And no one is going to pick her up. I shredded the receipt.”

This is week 122 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 847): Enjoying The Bone Alone

I got up at 6AM to take over watching the baby, so that #1GF! could catch up on some sleep. Once the ladies were both out cold, I started reading one of #1GF!’s library books because I had no books of my own left to read. I was so far outside of the target audience that I quickly drifted off and started thinking about the plot to my next novel.

#1GF! was soon up to take over the baby care once again. I put ribs in the oven at noon, put the baby down for a nap, and then went to waste some time mashing up songs with Audacity. I gave up after a few hours of getting nowhere.

The baby had been asleep for hours and the house was quiet. I cut some potatoes and set them on the stove to boil. I dried my hands on a kitchen towel and looked around for something to do. Instead of starting something productive, I found myself simply waiting for the baby to wake up. I soon realized that I was leaning against a counter and staring at the cabinets.

My mother wanted a picture of the baby, so I imported the contents of the camera. The sheer volume of pictures that #1GF! had taken seemed almost excessive, given the amount of time the baby had been outside of the womb, but I couldn’t blame her. I found seven decent shots and created a four by five inch collage with Gimp, and saved the copies onto #1GF!’s thumb drive so she could have them printed at her leisure.

I wanted to eat dinner with #1GF!, and because 6PM on was prime scream time for the baby, I timed the ribs to be ready at the blue hair special hour of 4PM. After four hours in the oven, the ribs were pulling away from the meat with zero effort. They were just begging to be eaten by any nearby carnivore. No, really. I could hear their little voices calling through the oven door. At 4PM, I took that sweet barbecue pan out of the oven and gently placed it on the stove.

The minute those ribs touched the cook top, the baby woke up and initiated a sonic bombardment that would run over two hours. The baby wasn’t even close to the kitchen. Not only does the baby seem to know that she should start screaming at dinner time, but she manged to evade my dinner timing trickery. #1GF! and I definitely enjoyed the ribs, but we each enjoyed them by ourselves against a backdrop of screaming.

This is week 121 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 840): The Avalanche

The first thing I did in the morning was to spill a full bowl of Cheerios all over the kitchen floor. The room looked as if someone had placed a tiny charge at the bottom of my bowl and set it off as I walked across the kitchen. I shook my head and surveyed the havoc for a second before #1GF! walked in. “Don’t come in here,” I said, holding up a hand. “It’s a mess.”

She surveyed the room, lifted an eyebrow and smirked, waiting for the explanation of why the floor looked like a birds eye view of the sinking of the titanic.

“I have no idea what happened,” I said. “I couldn’t repeat it if I wanted to.”

#1GF! shook her head and walked away to tend to the baby.

Once I got the kitchen cleaned up, that minor incident was enough to tilt my mood into a general malaise. I walked into the other room with #1GF!.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you?” #1GF! asked. “They’re just Cheerios. You’ve got twelve cubic feet of them in the cabinet.”

This is week 120 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 833): Catching Stupid

I took the baby out of the bedroom at 7AM and tried everything to calm her down so that #1GF! could get some rest. When I finally gave up, I put her in her swing, and she promptly fell asleep. I sat at the table reading.

Once #1GF! was up, we gave the baby a bath, got showered and walked down to the town “Endless Summer” festival that takes over the main street of town every year.

The festival drew more derelict looking people than a Walmart on a Saturday, and was just about as exciting. As unusually snobby as it sounds coming from a guy who wears a hobo’s beard and hasn’t held a traditional boss/slave job in more than a couple of years, the whole thing made me want to sell the house and move to a new town.

We left the festival soon after we arrived, and sat on a bench under a pergola near the main bath house. A woman walked by in an extremely short skirt and stripper shoes, saying “…and once I signed that contract with god, there was no turning back.” I was intrigued to know the actual terms and conditions of that contract, but I wasn’t interested enough to sit through the horror story that probably led to it’s creation.

This is week 119 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 826): Rejections And Yelling

When I woke up, I took the baby out of the room so that #1GF! could catch up on the sleep she lost overnight. The temperature outside was hovering in the 60’s and you could feel fall creeping around the creaky hallway floor.

Once #1GF! was up, I grabbed a sandwich and we sat down to watch Kitchen Nightmares. I glanced out the window and noticed that the neighbors were all out working on their houses. I felt like I should be doing something too.

I changed the baby four times before noon, which seemed like a lot to me, considering it was only my portion of the changings. The baby soon fell asleep, #1GF! jumped into the shower. I sat by the window reading a book. So much for keeping up with the Joneses.

The baby woke up before the shower was over, and I tried to keep her quiet long enough for #1GF! to dry her hair.

As if the cosmos was determined to cram something useful into my day, a neighbor came over and asked me to help move a twenty-nine inch tube TV. Do you remember how big those suckers are? The larger models that were introduced at the end of the tube TV life cycle aren’t quite a one-man job to carry, but not quite a two-man job, either. They’re perfectly balanced to pry themselves away from your meager three-fingered grip and through the floor, unless of course they force you backward, using a couple of your ribs to cushion their fall. When you have two people, it’s more of the same, just with more fingers and ribs getting in the way. Luckily, this TV didn’t have to go more than a few feet, so the job was done in under ten minutes.

This is week 118 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 819): Swearing In Old Movies

We woke up to screaming for the second day in a row. The baby got fed and changed, and then I stayed with her so that #1GF! could go back to bed. I ended up watching the original version of The Taking of Pelham 123 with Walter Matthau. It wasn’t bad. The pacing wasn’t as slow as most 70’s movies, and the swearing seemed more natural than it does in film today. Once and a while, a guy would throw out an F bomb, and it would smoothly merge into the flow of dialogue instead of appearing like something that was thrown in to keep the ratings board on its toes.

The main activities of the day were feeding and changing the baby. A neighbor brought over some baby gifts, and she got a tour of the house. We were still under the impression that it might be Labor Day weekend, which was reinforced by all the Labor Day sale ads on TV.

At 2PM, my parents came over. I made toffee chocolate bars and didn’t like them, but they seemed to go pretty fast with everyone else. My parents brought a blueberry pie, so I had a slice of that instead. There’s nothing like sitting around eating a piece of blueberry pie when the rest of the world is working. It was Sunday, so most people weren’t working, but we didn’t know that because the days in Newborn Land were so well blended together.

This is week 117 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 812): Playing Operation While Drunk

There are milestones in taking care of a newborn that everyone knows such as first steps or first words, but there are also less noted, but just as memorable mini-milestones such as the first day home from the hospital, the first diaper (as well as the first literal shit storm), and the first marathon screaming session.

Today marked several mini-milestones worth noting. Not only was it the first time that the baby managed to defy the laws of physics to throw up and fill one of her own eye sockets with barf, but it was also the first day that she threw up on my face. Yep, the little tyke threw up directly on my face. Oddly, she didn’t seem to notice either instance. Like a college student bound for disciplinary action, she threw up and moved on.

In addition to the vomit related checkmarks, we also clipped the baby’s fingernails for the first time. Big whoop, right? Clipping fingernails counts as a milestone? If you’ve cut a newborn’s nails before, you know it does. If you haven’t, a newborn’s nails are tiny and as thin as paper. If you don’t cut them, the baby shreds her face at night. Sure you can try filing them, but the nails are so thin that they flex under the pressure of the file. You have no choice but to clip them.

Newborns have minimal control over their bodies, so as a parent, you spend thirty seconds at a time trying to load a nail into a clipper before the baby moves or jerks it out of place. It’s like playing Operation (the wacky doctor game) while drunk, if the game were rigged to spurt human blood. If the baby fidgets when you finally get the courage to apply pressure, you can easily end up cutting the tip of her finger off. Yea, I’m serious. And no one wants to remove body parts from a brand new baby.

This is week 116 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 805): The Tapioca Peninsula

I watched the baby in the morning while #1GF! tried to catch up on sleep lost during the overnight feedings. I was hitting my limit on watching TV, but before I realized it, the television had eaten the morning and part of the afternoon. At 2PM, I jumped in the shower, and thanks to the 90 degree, muggy weather, I was sticky and sweaty ten minutes after I toweled off.

Our friend’s daughter dropped by to take advantage of the beach (and our free beach parking) before she left the country on a foreign exchange trip. She brought an ex-boyfriend along, which seemed a little odd, but I’ve found it’s better to keep quiet about things that seem odd in other people’s relationships.

The pair of them came in for a minute to see the baby before heading down to the beach. We had met the ex once before, and he seemed like a pretty nice kid, but he made so many references to tapioca during the conversation, that it started getting a little odd. I didn’t know if I had had barf on my shirt that looked like tapioca, if the guy just had just visited his grandparents, or if there was a new, trendy fascination with gummable puddings sweeping the minds of young people. I was perplexed.

This is week 115 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 798): The False Zen of Parenthood

The nurse brought the baby in at 2:30 AM to feed. I had dropped her off at the nursery a little over an hour before, so we were not running on a lot of sleep. I swung my legs over my cot, put my elbows on my knees and ran my hands down my face. Even though it was dark in the room and I wasn’t awake enough to know what was going on, I knew exactly where I was. I stared at the floor and tried to keep my eyes open, groggily accepting whatever the nurse needed to do. Within an hour, the baby was back in the nursery and we went back to sleep. We both slept like rocks.

At 6:30 AM, #1GF! tried to wake me by whispering my name a few times. It didn’t work, so she whispered louder. Any kid who grew up with The Amityville Horror knows that if you hear loud whispering of unknown origin, you listen to that shit or the room fills up with flies. I sat bolt upright. I was bleary and suddenly on high alert. There was nothing in the room but an apologetic #1GF! looking down at me from her craftmatic hospital bed.

This is week 114 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 791): The Stubborn Baby Vs. Professor Falken

It was the second day the baby was overdue, so #1GF! and I went out went out for a walk to help shake the baby loose. It didn’t help. In keeping with an ancient Dyer tradition, this baby wasn’t going to jump just because someone told her to.

The day was a prickled mess of waiting and pacing, broken up only by the wake of a close friend’s grandmother. One of the bereaved walked up to #1GF! and told her that she was “the cutest pregnant girl that she had ever seen in her whole life.” Not a bad compliment, especially for a wake.

Because #1GF! was two days overdue, I constantly asked her if she needed anything, and jumping up over the smallest noises. She couldn’t sneeze or shift in her chair without me hovering and asking if she was okay. I felt felt as useless as Professor Falken watching WOPR slowly cracking the launch code.

I didn’t sleep too well.

This is week 113 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 784): The Veto Factory

A bucket and a half of water-stop concrete went into the cellar this day, my friend, and nary a grain did return. That cellar, she swallowed them whole. It took me a few hours to finish sealing the remaining cracks in the basement floor, and when I got upstairs, it was only 2PM. I felt like I accomplished something and still had a good portion of the day ahead of me.

#1GF! made me an egg salad sandwich, which she secretly prepared while I was in the cellar. She took a nap, and I looked up baby names.

Once #1GF! got up, we went through the list of baby names together. I tried slipping a few previously rejected names back into the list, but #1GF! was shrewd and fast on the override button once again. I expect that #1GF! must be running out of vetoes, or the veto printing office must be running on a twenty-four hour schedule.

For post dinner entertainment, we watched Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist. #1GF! seemed to like it, but I was always getting pulled out of the story by the reactions of the characters. When a Yugo makes a u-turn at a relatively slow speed with no oncoming traffic, there is no need for a passenger to freak out unless the character is written to be very nervous. I would’ve been able to tolerate being yanked out of the story all the time if the movie kept me laughing, but it didn’t. The movie wasn’t horrible, but it could easily have been titled “Michael Cera Infinitely Acts Nervous”.

This is week 112 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 777): Ice Cream Dirge

I made blueberry pancakes for #1GF! and then went out to clean out the gutters. I wore no shirt, a tool belt, and had six pack abs. I fed a bunny who was perched on my shoulder, and #1GF! looked upon me lovingly and wondered how she could deserve such a perfect life. Or something like that. I know there were blueberry pancakes and gutter sludge, but beyond that, my notes are a bit fuzzy.

The sky was blue with only a few puffy clouds who were gracious enough to apologetically skirt the sun like people ducking around tourists taking pictures. The sea was green and clear. It was 82 degrees, and there was a breeze. It was an absolutely perfect day in terms of weather, so I packed up a couple of sandwiches, and #1GF! and I went to the beach.

The only thing that was odd about the next three hours on the sand (other than the superb weather) was that the ice cream truck switched from its mangled version of “Turkey In The Straw” that inexplicably skips a lot of the notes, to some sort of ice cream dirge. It was the most depressing song I’ve ever heard coming out of an ice cream truck.

As we walk back from beaches, I saying to #1Helga, “In United States, trucks play ice cream song. In Russia, song play YOU!” #1Helga just looks at me likes I am crazy peoples while ice cream dirge make me sick for homeland and frozen borscht truck.

This is week 111 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 770): Bad Radio and Yard Work

When I look through my wall of CDs these days, I rarely find anything that I want to listen to. I might stop at a few times and think that I’d like to hear a song from this CD or that one, but it’s rare that I want to listen to a CD the whole way through. Sometimes, I miss having a whole house audio system that shuffles through the songs in my library and plays them to any of the rooms.

That was one of the best features that I built into my first house. I have yet to build it into this one, and instead, lazily rely on the radio to shuffle songs for me. And radio is a poor shuffler with a library of old songs. Familiar songs. Songs that are like a worn out pair of shoes that you know you shouldn’t leave the house in, but put on because, even though they have no spark or zip, you’re comfortable with them.

I never bother changing the station because the dial on the radio is off just enough that the numbers are misaligned from the needle by at least a couple of points. It doesn’t matter much because I know that the other stations are just as bad as the one playing. It’s all the same ten to twenty year old songs that are safe, hummable, and boring.

Usually, just to get something unfamiliar, I’ll put on gummy teenage pop radio. I’ll listen to songs about riding disco sticks until I can’t take it anymore and favor silence.

This is week 110 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 763): Fireworks I Couldn’t See

I woke up thinking about all the minor chores that I should be taking care of, but quickly found that a bit of nice weather sapped any motivation that I had for doing them. I couldn’t simply pretend that the list didn’t exist, so I couldn’t bring myself to sit on the beach. As I sat on the stoop eating a PBJ, I felt like running errands would be a fair compromise between work and play. I’d be driving in the sunshine most of the time, yet accomplishing a couple of things on the way. By the time I finished my sandwich, I realized that it was way too nice of a day to waste running errands.

#1GF! wanted to go to the beach, so we went for a walk along the shore. The nice weather had dragged out the locals and tourists, packing the beach with people. We didn’t walk very far, and took a couple of breaks so that #1GF! could rest.

This is week 109 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 756): Clive Owen Staring At Things

I made #1GF! breakfast and then we watched home shows all morning. #1GF! wanted to clean up baby stuff, but I took the morning off. I rejoined her at noon. Some things got put away, but we basically shuffled stuff around the house to make them appear more organized.

It wasn’t quite rainy out, so we couldn’t justify sitting around the house for the rest of the day, so at 2PM, we thought about going out and shopping for more baby related stuff. What type of stuff, we didn’t know. By that point #1GF! was getting swollen, so the idea of going out died in committee.

We spent the rest of the day sitting on the couch and watching movies like it was a rainy day. We watched Paul Blart, Bunny Chow, and The International. It didn’t seem possible, but each movie ended up being worse than the one before it. They were all utter crap.

The only thing that I found slightly interesting in that five plus hour marathon was that in Paul Blart, some of the scenes for the West Orange Mall were shot in the South Shore Plaza, where a lot of people on the south shore of Massachusetts get their mall fix. During the movie, I was more interested in figuring out where they were in the mall than at the plot or the “overly zany” action. Most of the time, the figuring wasn’t worth the effort because what do you do with that knowledge once you figure it out? “Oh, yea, I know that elevator. Maybe I can ride it one day to remind me what a waste of my life Paul Blart was.” Yea.

Even though I thought he was funny in The King Of Queens, Paul Blart was one of those movies that put Kevin James in the same category with Jack Black. You can see their potential, and you want their movies to be funny, but they just don’t seem to work. At all.

Monday (Day 757): Readers Cracking Whips

Wrote LOR from 8:30 to 5:30. On a break, I opened Facebook to see who was being clever today. Within thirty seconds of poking around, I was told by a Facebooker to get back to writing. You know, having readers who know your writing patterns and bust on you to keep you on track is pretty damned funny. I shook my head and randomly laughed about it for the rest of the afternoon. On my only other break, I went out in the sun for three minutes while I ate my lunch, but none of my neighbors tried to send me back to the keyboard. It was a little disappointing.

This is week 108 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 749): Father’s Day

My parents were supposed to come over for Father’s Day breakfast, and I overslept. I planned to make Belgian waffles, but #1GF! didn’t think we’d have enough food, so she ran out to pick up muffins and sausages. I showered in about ten seconds, and didn’t have one thing prepared by the time they got to the house.

My parents brought me a gift for Father’s Day. Considering that I’m not officially a father yet, and Father’s Day gifts are only supposed to travel from child to parent, I felt bad that they only Father’s Day gift to my father was breakfast.

We didn’t end up playing a game or anything because my father didn’t feel like it. It was Father’s Day, and he was the only official father in the group, so the call was his to make. We sat and talked around the table for a few hours, and I made a couple of sandwiches later that were eaten by under protest of not being hungry.

My parents went home, and #1GF! and I cleaned up. I’m not a clean cook by any stretch of the imagination, but a waffle iron always ends up being a damned mess no matter how neat I try to be. I sent #1GF! out of the kitchen because she mentioned that she was tired, but couldn’t figure out why. I explained to her that she was making a baby, and should be laying on the couch or something. She dismissed me, but headed for the den to do as she was told anyway.

It was so windy, rainy, and dark that if felt like winter. We watched movies and TV for the rest of the day to complete the feeling. I found the TV boring, but didn’t make a move to try something else because the weather seemed like a perfect excuse to do nothing. I doubt that we’ll have moments to sit around like this once the baby shows up, so I thought that we should take advantage while we could.

Monday (Day 750): LOR 107 All Day

The first waking thought of the day was what a good life I have. The second was that it was really awful that either #1GF! or I would inevitably die one day and leave the other behind. As I lay there in bed, I found this to be a pretty odd thing to wake up thinking about.

Once I got moving, I sat down and wrote LOR 107. I took a break for lunch, and ended up thinking about how one could produce an illusion of time travel through faster than light speeds. For example, say you were watching an event on earth with a telescope. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, you should technically be able to outrun the image of the what you saw, point your incredibly powerful telescope at the earth, and wait for the event to happen again when the image from the event caught up to you. I was feeling a little smart when I found an almost an identical idea in a book that I was reading. I wasn’t happy to find out that science fiction writers (and probably a lot of other folks) had thought of this idea years ago.

This is week 107 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 742): Baby Shower

I drove #1GF! to family’s house for a surprise baby shower. I enjoy ladies and all, but then there are a ton of them in a big group, it’s a little weird. I stayed for an hour and greeted everyone, and then got out of there to let the ladies do their thing.

I somehow missed a turn and ended up taking a tour through Brockton on the way home. After a circuitous route back to where I should’ve been in the first place, I called my father, who was visiting at his cousins. He wanted me to visit, too, but I was picking up some grout sealer and going home to seal the bathroom tile while I had a little time.

I picked up some grout sealer at a home megastore, and got one coat of it on the bathroom floor before #1GF! called to be picked up. It was 3:30, and she asked where I was. When I told her I was at home, she was not happy about having to wait another 45 minutes for me to come get her.

I don’t know anything about showers, so I thought I had until 5 or so. I figured that I could get one more coat in and get on the road. I got in the car and practically flew to her family’s house to get her. When I finally got there, everyone was gone, and I had to commandeer my mother and her vehicle to have enough room to get all the presents home. It was unbelievable. As I was loading the stuff into the car, I kept thinking that if I was the one having the shower, I would probably be able to fit my gifts into my pockets, and still have room for a frog and a ball of twine.

This is week 106 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment. This one is weighing in at a hefty 7,200 words.

Sunday (Day 735): Seeing From A Child’s Perspective

I made breakfast for #1GF! and we relaxed in front of some home improvement shows for an hour. I don’t know if it was inspirational, but I mowed the lawn and weed whacked soon after.

#1GF! hadn’t been to the beach all year, so we grabbed our chairs and walked down to the beach in the afternoon. It wasn’t too hot, and the tide was following a breeze out to sea, making it feel more relaxing than the surrounding crowds would indicate.

One of the neighbors showed up with her six year old a little while after we did, and sat near us without noticing that we were there. They eventually noticed us (after I waved for a while) and the mother and daughter walked over holding hands. The mother looked down at the little girl and said, “Okay, go ahead.”

The little girl looked at her mother and then at us. She was only slightly taller than #1GF! and I, even though we were sitting down in some low slung beach chairs. Her small face broke into a grin, framed by her bob haircut. She craned her neck up toward her mother and leaned in against her leg. She whispered, “No, you say it.”

The mother grinned. “Well, she just want you to know that when she’s older, she would love to babysit for the baby.”

The child beamed and nodded. Her bob haircut jiggled back and forth.

“Aw, thanks,” I said taking a pragmatic approach to the bucket of cute standing in front of us. “How old are you now?”

“Six,” said the little girl.

I’m not sure at what age girls start babysitting, so I took an educated guess. “So in… seven years then?”