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?”

The little girl shrugged and grinned like she hadn’t really thought about it. #1GF! stepped in, and I realized just how much better with humans she is than I am. “Well, thank you!” she said with an incredible amount of gratitude. “Aren’t you the sweetest thing! That is so, so nice of you.” The child beamed even brighter.

With #1GF!’s reaction, I realized that even though my reaction was social and okay, there was a better way to react than I did. The kid doesn’t know us all that well, so it was probably a pretty big deal for her to come over. Instead of thanking the child on an adult level (probably like I had), #1GF! thanked the little girl as if she understood the size of the offer from a child’s perspective. That woman teaches me a lot about people just by being herself.

Once the mother and daughter headed for the water, I called my sister to congratulate her on getting her master’s degree and winning an award for a project she had worked on. She hadn’t actually graduated yet, but the ceremony was only a few hours away. My sister mentioned that she enjoyed the “Eye of the Tiger” snippet that I left on her voice mail to get her through her finals. I told her that I played it off the radio because she had scratched my “Eye of the Tiger” 45RPM when we were kids. She denied said scratching, as she has done over the last few decades.

My memory pales in comparison to my sister’s regarding childhood events, but I remember something like, ”It’s the… eye of the click thrill of the fight, rising… click Tiiiiiiiger.” It made it impossible to respond to the imaginary Clubber Lang’s prediction for pain when my damned psych up song kept skipping. I think that might be the reason that I’m not a world class boxer right now. That and lack of training or skill. Oh, and that boxing rule that doesn’t allow pulling shirts over heads.

I got off the phone and eased back into my chair. I left my sunglasses off for a bit to avoid having raccoon eyes, but I can’t sit in the sun for long, especially without sunglasses. It’s not that I get constantly accosted by the paparazzi looking for official beard man signatures to sell on online auction sites. It’s just that I involuntarily scrunch up my entire face to keep the light from reaching my retinas. It makes my face tired, and I look like I’m on the verge of dropping a stubborn Klingon off at the pool while growling at the kids who refuse to stay off my lawn. The sunglasses didn’t stay off for long, and I ended up with a slight sunburn, complete with glasses marks.

While I sat there digging my toes in the sand, I thought that #1GF! and I should’ve called people to come down for a day at the beach. It was supposed to rain, and I thought I’d be applying a few coats of polyurethane to our newly stained door, so we never made any calls. I mentally shook my fist at the weathermen who seem to think that they’re successful if they can predict the weather as well as a coin toss.

After a couple of hours, we walked home, and #1GF! wasn’t happy that I wouldn’t let her carry anything but the baby in her belly. No one would stop for us in the crosswalk, despite stopping being the law, and #1GF! being unmistakably pregnant as hell. I found that even when I was standing in the street in the crosswalk, most people would pretend that they didn’t see us and zip right by. And they were coming from a direction that indicated that they probably lived in town and know better, the bastards.

We went home and showered off the salt, and after I got out of the shower, #1GF! told me that even though Die Hard is one of her favorite movies, she had just seen the beginning for the first time. I just looked at her and said things like “Haaaaaans Gruuuber” and “Haaaaans. Bubbie”, until she stopped paying attention.

I made dinner for #1GF!, which consisted of beans, fries, and sausages topped with peppers and onions. It was a summertime meal, but #1GF! avoided the onions on the basis that they were red and not yellow. They tasted the same, which made me wonder if the baby was going to give me trouble with what she would and would not eat, or be a fat and happy baby like her dad had been.

I took out the hose to water the plants, but #1GF! seemed a little adamant about doing it herself. I didn’t feel like arguing over something so small, so I went back in to keep an eye on dinner.

After supper, the two of us finished off the first season of The IT Crowd through Netflix On Demand (The IT Crowd Season 1 On Netflix, or Episode 1 on Daily Motion for the non-Netflixiers). If you haven’t seen the show, it’s a British comedy about two IT geeks and their non-technical boss trying to get along in their basement office. It’s a must see if you have geeky leanings or have ever worked in tech support.

Monday (Day 736): Party Protection Suit

I had my cereal, and then put the first coat of polyurethane on the door. Ninety minutes later, I changed into my writing clothes, sat at my desk, and worked on LOR week 105. At 1PM, I changed back into polyurethaning clothes, and put another coat on the door. That coat only took an hour because I somehow gained skill or didn’t have to set up and lay out the tarp.

I changed again, had a sandwich, and worked on LOR until 5PM. Guess what I did next. Ran interference for a tractor trailer full of beer with my Trans Am and kick ass mustache? That’s negatory, Snowman. Gave up my job as a pool cleaner to take a rag tag bunch of misfit little league players to the championship? Nope. Perhaps then, I, a former greenskeeper, lived a Cinderella story and sank the winning putt to become Masters champion? Gunga… gagungalunga? Sigh. Not quite. I changed my clothes and put a third coat of polyurethane on the door. I know. It was a letdown for me, too.

Each coat took about an hour to an hour and a half, which ate into my Monday writing time, but between the writing and the poyurethaning, it was like a non-stop party around here. That’s why people don’t visit me on Mondays: When some people see the essence of party that I bring on Mondays, it’s like their seeing the ark of the covenant being opened. It generally takes Keith Richards style fortitude to simply keep people’s skin from melting off. Woop. Woop?

Once #1GF! got home, we ate leftovers, and I went back to writing soon afterward. She had her party protection suit on (as she wears every Monday) to protect her and the baby from any stray party radiation that might be lingering in the room. I didn’t finish writing LOR 105 until about 9PM. Woop woop.

Before I went to bed, I deemed the door project complete, and took the painters tape from the hardware. That’s when I found out that I had missed tiny strips around the locks and handles on both sides of the door. I specifically placed and replaced the tape to avoid that sort of thing, but I missed a couple of spots anyway.

The project would not get a check mark. I would have to get a tiny paintbrush to stain those small areas, let them dry for 48 hours, and then poly them. I would not be taking down the tarp on Tuesday as I had planned because that little taping screw up would drag the project out at least another few days. I think I may have unconsciously screwed it up on purpose just to keep the fun going another week. Woop woop.

Tuesday (Day 737): The Rift In The Space Time Continuum Under The Sink

As I opened my eyes, I thought, “Great. It’s Saturday. As long as #1GF! isn’t awake, I can just roll over and… aw crap hell fart nuts.” I have no idea what is going on with my waking sense of time lately. It’s like my mind is intent on torturing me by feeding me false information about it being the weekend. Even when you work from home and have no commute, the realization that you can’t roll over doesn’t feel any better when your brain is playing pranks.

Once #1GF! was off to work, I got dressed and went to the hardware store to get paintbrushes to finish the door. I also picked up a watering can because #1GF! had mentioned it a couple of times. I did the food shopping on the way back. I put away the groceries, laid out the tarp, and touched up the tiny spots on the door with stain. Even though I was rolling on the party train and scheduled to get off at Amusington, I decided to stay on and ride all the way to Funville.

I grabbed the parts of the crib, and loaded them into the tub, one at a time. For the next hour or so, each part got scrubbed clean of any possible leftover baby goo that it could be hiding. I leaned all the parts against the wall to let them dry.

I went into the kitchen and made chocolate ice cream for #1GF! from a recipe in Cooks Country, using only a mixer and a microwave. By the time the ice cream was in the freezer, the crib was dry, so I went into the baby’s room and put it all together. It was remarkably easy.

I put all the tools away and sat down at the PC for the first time of the day. I helped a reader understand what was involved with getting a website set up for his business, and he pointed out that I really know a lot about web stuff. I never really think I know enough to consider myself an expert, but I have picked up a lot of information on the subject over the years, I suppose.

As a bit of a diversion, I made a FB page for logical quoting because over the years I’ve slowly stopped following the grammatical rules of American style quoting. Don’t ask why. Please don’t. Fine, I’ll tell you if you really want to know.

American style quoting requires that all punctuation be placed inside quotes, no matter if it’s logical or not. If you’re American, that’s the way you were taught to write. So, when you write that someone called you a “dork,” you have to put the punctuation inside the quotes. When you put the comma outside the quotes, you’re following logical, rather than American style quoting.

As much as I try to keep my grammar under control, I’ve been flouting American style quoting for years because it’s… well, illogical. This is especially true if you do any technical writing. Suppose that you’re giving someone an instruction on how to get their IP address on a Windows machine. With American style, one of your instructions might be something like,

2. Now, open the command window by typing “CMD.”

When the punctuation falls inside the quote, your reader may take the punctuation as part of the command and type it in. Your instruction, while grammatically correct according to your grade school teacher, fails to communicate your instructions correctly and may lead the reader to error.

With logical quoting, the final period would fall outside the quotes and would read,

2. Now, open the command window by typing “CMD”.

The instruction is more likely to be interpreted as intended, but is grammatically incorrect under the American style rules. Why is this important? It’s really not, but I set up a FB page for fans of logical style quoting anyway. It currently has three fans and may not need a page of it’s own, but if “not being on fire” can have its own page, so can logical quoting.

#1GF! came home and saw all the dishes and bowls drying on the counter from making her ice cream. “What did you do?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nothing,” I said trying to cover up. “We’re making corn chowder tonight.” I held up a magazine to offer evidence of said corn chowder diversion tactic, even though I knew that #1GF! would be aware that bowls to be used in a future cooking endeavor would not already be cleaned and sitting on the side of the sink. That is, unless the robot had accidentally torn a hole in the space-time continuum in the basement somewhere underneath the kitchen sink by throwing a ball against it over and over like I told him he shouldn’t. Had #1GF! known about the robot, this may have been a workable ruse, but she still believed the robot to be an ordinary shop vac. I pressed on against the stern warnings of logic and pointed to the article. “See? Here’s the recipe. Corn chowder.”

“What did you do?” she repeated as she made a quick scan of the counter for any stray, but freshly baked cakes or cookies that may or may not have fallen through the rift in space-time. “Did you make me ice cream?”

“I can’t really say,” I said while folding my arms. “Corn chowder,” I said as if throwing a sponge on the beach to stop the tide.

She opened the freezer and reached for the yogurt container with plastic wrap sticking out of the top. “You did!”

“Don’t… touch it,” I warned. “You can get at it at 8:30 when it’s fully frozen.”

#1GF! retracted her hand. “You are spoiling me.”

“You’re making a baby.”

“And what happens after the baby?”

“Oh, well then I spoil the baby, and you spiral into depression.”

#1GF! tilted her head down and looked at me through her eyebrows.

“Okay, maybe I’ll have a hand in the creation of two spoiled girls. Now help me make some chowdah.”

#1GF! helped me make corn chowder from scratch. The recipe said that it should take about 35 minutes to make, but it seemed to take nearly an hour. There were potatoes to scrub and cut, an onion and bacon to chop, and corn cobs to scrape and puree. It wasn’t difficult by any means, but it was a slow process.

The meal was good, but even at it’s best, corn chowder isn’t remarkably delicious. It was simply corn chowder, and didn’t seem worth the trouble or expense. The heavy cream, bacon, a pound of potatoes, six ears of corn, two cans of corn, a couple of boxes of chicken broth, and onion ate up the money, while the measuring, chopping, pureeing, and sauteing, ate up the time. I’m not sure if it was really worth either.

After dinner, #1GF! tried the iced cream. She liked the silky consistency, but we both thought that it tasted more like mocha than chocolate. It also left sort of a chalky aftertaste. I’m not sure if it was supposed to come out that way, or if I did something wrong. If there is a next time, I may try to use brewed coffee instead of the powder that the recipe suggested. And maybe I’ll use less of it.

Wednesday (Day 738): Point The Knobs West

I spent a couple of hours in the morning compiling LOR 106, and made a list of things that needed to get done for the day. I wanted to sit down and work on the book, but my list of tasks ended up being longer than I expected. It’s hard to relax and dedicate time to fictional characters when there are things looming overhead in the real world.

I checked an item off the list and cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom. I discovered that playing Slayer while cleaning really helps to move the job along. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before, but that bathroom was scrubbed in record time (despite the frequent and involuntary breaks for headbanging while no one was looking).

I scanned the list for the next project, and spent five minutes wondering what “clean store” meant. Did I have a treasure trove that needed to be cleaned out and moved before the robot found out about it and inadvertently broadcast its location to anyone within Wi-Fi range? And what was in this secret store? Gold doubloons? PC Parts? While I sat hoping that it wasn’t a store of food that was old enough to be wearing their own fuzzy little sweaters, I realized that I was trying to remind myself to clean the stove. The instruction seemed so mundane that I can’t say that I wasn’t disappointed. I added “Sacrifice speed for precision” to the list, even though it is a very foreign directive for a Yankee to apply to language.

I was going to grout a quarter-sized section of grout that had been missed on the bathroom floor and apply sealer to it, but a quick survey of my disorganized pile of leftover house materials showed that I didn’t have any grout left. I did find some paint stripper that I had forgotten about, which gave me another avenue for getting a check mark for the day.

#1GF! has been bothered by a couple of glass knobs that the painters felt the need to not only prime, but then paint, so I tackled stripping the paint off of those. Priming the knobs might’ve been an accident, but then why paint them? Why make a mistake worse? Did they think I’d ask, “Hey, who primed this glass knob and didn’t paint it?” Wait, am I questioning motive again? You’d think that I would’ve learned not to do that long ago when it concerns this house.

I donned some gloves and went outside to strip the paint off the knobs. I used biodegradable stripper that seemed to work just as well as the high octane stuff. Once those knobs were clean, I stripped the paint off of the other knobs that had caught a bit of overspray. The whole project didn’t take me very long, and I completed it without getting any caustic chemicals on my face or near my junk, which is always a plus.

When I put everything back together, the hall looked a little funny. Half of the knobs facing the hall were metal, and the other half were glass. It was as if when the doors were hung, someone said, “No, no, don’t point all the glass knobs into the hallway. The homeowner is a stickler for logic. Point all the glass knobs west.” I reversed half of the knobs in the hallway, and by the time I finished up, it was already 3PM.

I put everything back in order and then sat down to write. I only got out about 900 words out before #1GF! got home. The fictional world had not only been pushed aside by the obligations of the real world, but it had been soundly defeated by them for the day.

Thursday (Day 739): Mr. Unbannable Vs. The Doughnut Eating Doofus

The door had been given another 48 hours to dry, so the first thing I did after I got up was to apply the first coat of polyurethane to the small spots on the door that I had stained on Tuesday. I couldn’t find the paint brush that I had bought for the job because I put it in a safe place, and now had no idea where it was. I checked the upstairs and then went down to the basement to see if I might’ve put it down there. I hated involving the robot in anything that didn’t involve staring at a wall, but I didn’t have a lot of time, and I was running out of options. I shook my head and dove in.

“Robot.”

The robot spun it’s head around like it had been waiting for me to ask it a question. It sounds weird to say about a robot, but when you deal with a robot for an extended period of time, even poorly programmed AI will start to anticipate certain events.

“Where’s the paintbrush?”

The robot’s eye flashed red three times.

Sometimes rephrasing and being more specific helps. “Robot, do you know where the foam paintbrush is?”

The robot’s eye turned green.

“Well, where is it?”

The robot’s eye flashed red again.

“Is this your idea of keeping a secure spot secret?”

His eye went green.

“You know that this isn’t a security issue. I need the paintbrush so that I can get that door started before I leave. Now where is it?”

The robot flashed red once and more slowly.

“Do you think this is a test or something? Because I’m getting a little aggravated here.”

His eye flashed green and then quickly to red.

I rubbed my face. “Robot this is not a security issue. If you’re trying to keep something secure from me that I put somewhere to keep secure, do you really think that you’re securing anything from anyone?”

The robot flashed green, then red, then yellow. He then shut down and pretended to sleep.

“You don’t know where the paintbrush even is, do you?”

The robot’s eye slowly faded to red.

I sighed. “Watch the window.”

The robot turned back to the window and fell asleep. I could hear his discs spinning down as I walked up the stairs.

“What’s the matter,” asked #1GF! as I emerged from the basement.

I didn’t tell her how absolutely fucking stupid I thought my robot was. “I can’t find the damned paintbrush.”

“I think I have a bag of cheap paintbrushes somewhere down there if you can find them.”

I shrugged. It was better than waiting half a day until I could get to the store. I sneaked down the stairs and looked over the pile of house materials that I keep meaning to organize. The robot didn’t stir. In a paper bag stuck in a wicker basket, I found a bag of paintbrushes just like #1GF! said. “Jackpot,” I said under my breath. I went upstairs, laid out the tarp, and put a quick coat of poly on the missed spots on the door.

I got dressed and ran out the door to take #1GF!’s mom to her appointment. It was amazingly quick, and I had her home within three or so hours of leaving the house. That doesn’t seem amazingly quick on paper, but it was fast for these appointments.

#1GF! had a friend visiting for the weekend, so I went to the food warehouse to pick up giant boxes of snacks. While I was rolling through the aisles picking up more Cheez-Its than a pack of hungry humans could consume in a week, I got a call from a friend’s wife asking if I was at her hospital. It was an odd question, but she said that I had just been paged. I told her that I wasn’t there, but I should probably think about going there if they were paging me. While I was on the phone, I swore I saw my uncle walk by, but when I looked up he was gone.

I stocked up on giant boxes of stuff and headed home to find a place to store them. I had to actually move a shelf in the pantry just to fit the boxes in. After I put everything away, #1GF! called to check on me. I told her about the various things that I had picked up, and I was told that I was no longer allowed to go to the food warehouse by myself again.

Okay, so I will admit that I might have overbought some stuff that we didn’t really need. Sure, a little math showed that we might have stockpiled enough dust cloths to last well into next year, but it’s not like I went crazy. I put the four pound can of corn back, and I resisted the temptation to squat a couple of bags of rice or try to lift the jugs of pickles over my head like the head of a Gorgon in a jar.

“You can’t ban me,” I said to no one in particular, as I put another coat of poly on the missed spots on the door. “I’m unbannable.” It was then that I realized that the door was open, and anyone walking by would be hearing a voice behind a blue tarp using made up words like “unbannable”.

I finished touching up the door, ate a quick lunch, and put all the tools away. I opened my toolbox to put away a screwdriver, and at the bottom of the box, I found the foam paintbrush I had been looking for. I looked at the robot.

His eye turned green and he let out a ding.

“I needed this eight hours ago, Robot.”

His eye flashed green.

I shook my head. To avoid thinking about finding and slapping the shit out of the lazy, powdered doughnut eating doofus who programmed my robot’s logic circuits, I went back upstairs, leaving the robot to guard his window. I quickly checked my e-mail, and then vacuumed the bathroom in preparation for sealing the grout. And that’s where the fun ended.

I can’t be sure, but I think that it might’ve been the handful of Sun Chips that I had with lunch that triggered a massive migraine. I took aspirin and drank a Coke at the first warning signs, but this was one of the worst migraines I’ve had in a while. It was so bad, that I realized that I was randomly groaning as I walked around the house trying to ignore it. I hoped that the windows weren’t open so that the neighbors didn’t think that the “unbannable” lunatic behind the blue tarp was making nasty with some woman while his lovely and pregnant #1GF! toiled away at work. Or that I didn’t have a woman over and was groaning away by myself. Or with the robot. shiver.

Once I was aware that I was groaning, only a few more made it out into open air. I tried laying down. I tried rolling into a ball and putting my head on the cold, smooth wood of the hallway floor. I tried pressure points, stretching, and everything I could think of, but this headache was still gaining in intensity like an avalanche. Although I was trying hard to resist it, it was pretty plain that I’d be jettisoning my cargo before it was all over.

Light was already starting to bother me, and laying down and covering my head wasn’t helping. I knelt in front of the toilet on the freshly vacuumed bathroom floor, and thought, “You throw up and try to get what’s left of those chips out of your system and you’re going to feel a little better. If you don’t, you’re going to feel worse than you feel right now for a long while.”

Then I said out loud, “Okay. Time to man up.”

I threw up and felt better for a good ten minutes. It was the best ten minutes that I had experienced in hours. I was what you’d call grateful. Then, after a healthy dose of mouthwash, I lay face down on the bed and fell asleep. When I woke up, it was already 6PM. My eyes opened and I did a status check. Pain seemed to be minimal, if not nonexistent. I didn’t want to move because I didn’t know if moving would make the pain return. I lay there moving my eyes as if the migraine was a raptor that would attack the moment it saw movement.

I eventually sat up to check the time, and the migraine came back, although not as strong. It was only half as bad, which I accepted like a gift. At least I was functional, and daylight wasn’t pumping pain into my eye sockets. I went back to the door and started cleaning the leftover stain and polyurethane off of the windows. I wasn’t moving fast, but I was trying to make up for lost time.

#1GF! came home a short while later and we went to pick up my parents from the airport. I explained to my parents that I wanted to have their fridge stocked with a little food before they came home, but that I couldn’t because I was sleeping off a migraine. They seemed to understand. We dropped off their luggage at home, and we all went out to dinner. I filled up on pasta and bread, which seemed to reduce my migraine down to almost nothing by the time the day came to a close.

Friday (Day 740): A Diaperman’s Platter

I cleaned the poly and stain off of the windows, and then #1GF! and I went to the airport to pick up #1GF!’s friend, who was coming into town for the weekend. We took a wrong turn, and got behind some airport busses that I assumed would know a secret back way into the airport. It didn’t seem like we were headed in the right direction, but I assumed that not one, but two airport buses in a row would be heading for the airport. They weren’t. They led us through the streets of Chelsea until #1GF! stopped the madness and turned us back around. That’s what you get for following instead of running on instinct. You generally end up somewhere you don’t want to be.

We finally made it to the terminal and picked up #1GF!’s friend who had been on a flight where she couldn’t watch TV because the man next to her was so big that he couldn’t fit between the two arm rests in his seat. From what I gather, the man took a couple of seats worth of room. She didn’t say anything to him, so I can only assume that she was intimidated by that much sexy in one place.

We all went to lunch at The Fours, and then sat around the house doing a little bit of nothing. The ladies went out shopping for bedding, and I elected to stay home. #1GF! was nice enough to ask me if I was okay with whatever she got, and I said that I didn’t care.

“It could be girly,” she lightly taunted.

I still told her that I didn’t care. Either I would be sleeping on a bed with flowers or something girly on it, or I could start caring about bedding. Either could lead to a loss of man points, but caring about bedding was a -22, while sleeping in a flowery bed that a lady picked carried only a -2 because, well, men don’t care about bedding.

The ladies headed out and I wrote LoR and a quick post. By the time I finished the post, it was already 6:30. The ladies came home, and we went to a local restaurant for dinner. #1GF!’s friend and I split a fisherman’s platter, which ended up being a mistake. A number of scallops and clams on the plate tasted like a baby’s diaper, or in #1GF!’s friend’s terms, “manure”. I actually spit one of them out into a napkin to avoid the havoc that it could bring to my system over the next day or so.

#1GF!’s friend was staying over at #1GF!’s mother’s house, so we dropped her over there and headed home.

Saturday (Day 741): Birthing Class Part One

#1GF! and I got up early and went to birthing class. I was trying not to have any preconceptions, but they told us to bring pillows, and everyone that we had talked to said that the class was a giant waste of time. I tried to stay positive and supportive, but I have to admit that I was expecting the worst.

I made the drive to the hospital in decent time, and threw on the blinker long before the turns so that #1GF! would be confident that I would know where to go had she been spilling amniotic fluid all over the inside of ROCKET CAR!. I think she was fairly impressed, although she didn’t show it.

When we got to the classroom, I was surprised that there were chairs. I was sure that we’d be sitting on the floor and singing kumbaya or something. To have actual chairs lulled me into a false sense that my preconceptions might’ve been wrong.

The class was five hours long, and it included two movies. I don’t have a problem with horror movies, and I watch the needle going in at the doctor’s office, but I looked at the floor during the whole second movie where they showed a birth. The lady on the screen was annoying as hell, and we were warned that she’d be naked and we’d be seeing a birth from the grassy knoll downtown, if you know what I mean.

There is no mental [CTRL]-Z once you’ve seen something. None. Once you see something, you’re stuck with that memory until years of disuse grind it away. And even if you think you’ve forgotten something, one day, two girls one cup might suddenly pop into your memory when you’re watching Angela Lansbury and trying to enjoy a cup of tapioca.

That said, if I have to see a stretched out vijay with a bloody baby shooting out of it, I’m only watching it as many times as necessary. In my current situation, that amounts to once. I’m not watching random babies shooting out of foreign vijays, and having them stuck in my head for all eternity. Therefore, I kept my eyes on the floor most of the time. I looked at #1GF! halfway through the movie, and I could tell by her wide eyes and the hand covering her mouth, that she probably should’ve done the same thing.

The movie ended, and they completely lost me when they turned down the lights, put on new age gong music, and told us to relax our partner. I looked at #1GF! with a grin amid a room full of pregnant ladies and whispered, “Get ready because I am gonna make out with you right now.” She was the only pregnant lady laughing. The rest of them were laying on pillows and singing kumbaya while their partners, coaches, or whatever the term is for the person that is going to get called a sunufabitch in the delivery room rubbed their backs.

You know what I think of forced relaxation time? It’s annoying. If you want to relax, stay home and draw a bath and put on Kenny G or whatever new age crap you want to. I’m not closing my eyes or filling my lungs with joy or any of that new age nonsense. I’m not in a class for a nap, teach. I’m in class to learn what to do while we’re driving down back roads at 85 MPH in Japanese version of The Dukes of Hazzard, and the baby shoots out of my lady says, “Yo! Let me drive ROCKET CAR!, Pops! Next gen D2.0 in the hizzy!” You tell me what to do in that situation and stop trying to make me group hug with a bunch of strangers, and I will be sure to give the class a passing grade.

Hey, don’t think that I won’t do whatever #1GF! needs at the delivery, but I’m not sitting in a room full of strangers listening to new age music and having a group massage. That’s not me. Want to relax me? Put on some death metal and put my car on the highway for a couple of hours. Want to tense me up? Do all that group hug hippy stuff or repeat, repeat, repeat, the same information to me over and over and over.

There were lots of little breaks for the ladies throughout the morning (which is understandable for ladies who have small humans leaning on their bladders), and on one of the breaks, #1GF! ran into a co-worker’s wife, who already had a kid. She mentioned that she had dropped the class because it was useless. We stood there with our name tags, and wedged sticks between the sides of our slowly closing minds.

The class was only a couple of half days, and after the mumbo jumbo morning, I was still hoping that it might get better. I mean, it was scheduled to end at 1:30, so maybe the good information was scheduled for the latter half of the class. Except at noon, we had a lunch break. What the flying hell. Did we somehow sign up for the touchy feely bizarro logic birth class? If it’s a half day, why not cut the class a half hour, and let everyone go to lunch after the class? Is 1PM outside the realm of lunchtime for people? I mean, they told everyone to bring snacks to tide them over, so getting rid of the lunch break would’ve made sense.

Now, I’m not going so far as to say that the class was useless, because I did learn a couple of interesting things. I now know the difference between false labor and the real deal, which could be useful, and where the ligaments that get stretched during pregnancy are, which is not so much useful, but interesting. But, the five hours of instruction could’ve easily been replaced with a two page handout that covered everything.

I kept wanting them to pick up the pace and cut the repetition, and spent a fair amount of energy trying not to get irritated by the amount of time dedicated to common sense. Oh, I should try to massage her shoulders to help her to relax? Really? Shoulder rubbing you say? Hmm. What about flipping her on her back and rubbing her belly until she falls asleep? No? That worked for that crocodile guy who got stabbed by the fish there. What about pinching her and telling her that she doesn’t look very pretty? Oh, okay, that’s not considered relaxing, either. Well, if you say I should, then I’ll try to steer clear of those two things. I wish that I had a pen so that I could write all of this down. I have so much to learn and I don’t think I could possibly remember all the common sense items, given that they were repeated a mere twelve times. Oh, and do you think that we might have another half hour of introductions so that I can learn the names of all these people and their career aspirations? Even though I’m never going to see any of them again, it might prove to be really useful information… I really wondered if the class was geared for hippies with learning disabilities.

After class, we got some subs and went to #1GF!’s mom’s house to see #1GF!’s friend who dropped out of birthing classes when she had her first child. She seemed amused that the classes don’t seem to have changed much in the last quarter of a century.

We all sat down to eat our subs, and one was the wrong sub, and the rest were mounded with onions, tomatoes and pickles. There was easily a whole onion on mine. I’m into toppings on subs, but I think the sheer volume of toppings might’ve been to mask the fact that the subs weren’t that good. I didn’t eat a quarter of the toppings, and they ended up going in the trash because no one at the table had any use for a plate of chopped pickles and onions. Go figure.

#1GF!’s sister was supposed to show up, and we weren’t supposed to be there when she arrived. #1GF! and I went home, and I played Quake while she napped. After seeing the movies and sitting through that class, I think our activities were perfect ways for each of us to wind down.

At 6:30 we ate leftovers, and after dinner, I think that Stephen Hawking came over to discuss some new ideas he had. I think he was a little unhappy about the lack of ramps at my house, but he didn’t make a stink about it. He was also nice enough not to comment on the state of my robot’s logic circuits. On the other hand, I’m not sure that he didn’t beam us over to his house with his transporter. It’s hard to say because I failed to make any notes for the rest of the day.

What I Learned

• You don’t need an ice cream maker to make ice cream.
• I have a lot more web information than I think I do.
• #1GF! does not factor rifts in the space-time continuum into her deductions.
• Corn chowder is a lot of work considering the payoff is corn chowder.
• Eco paint stripper works as well as the high octane stuff.
• Multiple Airport buses following each other are not necessarily going to the airport.
• Birthing class really should be condensed to a handout and a two hour Q&A session.
• I now can tell the difference between false labor and the real deal.
• I know what those ligaments are that #1GF! feels stretching.
• Although counterintuitive, more is not always better when dealing with sub toppings.

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