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.

We dropped all the stuff off at home and started going through it with my mother and #1GF!’s friend who was in town from Florida. There only a few duplicate gifts, and nearly everything was pink. There were enough books to fill a bookshelf, which I thought was really pretty cool. I looked through them, and there were characters like Huckle Cat, Lowly Worm, The Sneeches, and The Lorax, who had been a forgotten part of my childhood the past thirty years.

Even though I think showers are a ripoff for the people who get invited to them, for the people that they’re thrown for, there’s more to it than gifts. It’s sort of an outpouring of support at a time when the road up ahead seems less than certain.

The ladies were exhausted after the day, and my mother headed home. #1GF! and her friend sat on the couch, and crashed at 8:30PM. I wasn’t opposed to going to bed, but brushing my teeth before the sun went down was a bit odd. Even a small child would complain at such an early bedtime in the summer. I read for a bit, but not for long because we were scheduled to get up at 4AM the next morning to take #1GF!’s friend to the airport.

Monday (Day 743): Early Writing

We got up at 4AM because #1GF!’s friend had to make a 7AM flight. I put on the coffee and ate my cereal at the table while reading a book. The sheer volume of baby stuff had taken over the living room, with books and diapers covering every horizontal surface in the vicinity of my usual seat at the counter. I sat and talked to her friend in that groggy manner that people have when they’re up before five and trying to communicate. The pauses to process were usually longer then the sentences.

#1GF! decided to take her friend to the airport and go to work early, instead of involving me in the process. I felt a little guilty, but her plan made the most sense in terms of travel time and gas.

#1GF! encouraged me to go to bed when they walked out into the dark at 5AM. As tempting as going back to bed at that hour was, I figured that in the best case scenario, I would waste a half hour trying to fall asleep, get a half hour of sleep in, and then wake even more tired than I had been. As comfy as a warm bed sounded, it didn’t seem worth it. I took a shower and was on the PC writing LOR 106 by 6AM.

In the middle of the day, I talked to someone about a prospective job, and went back to writing soon after. I wrote until 7:30PM, which is ridiculous considering that I started at 6AM. I think the more time that I give myself on these posts, the longer they end up.

Tuesday (Day 744): Not Quite Writing

I really meant to get started working on the novel first thing in the morning, but couldn’t seem to get in gear. I read my mail and stats until 10AM, which was a lot longer than I really needed to, but a lot shorter than I could’ve. I made some coffee and then instead of diving into the book, I worked on a logo for Macoosh. Why? Because I didn’t want to write, and because it bothered be that certain elements of her logo didn’t line up properly. She didn’t end up wanting to use any of the designs, but it didn’t bother me too much. Sometimes that happens.

I started working on my book in the afternoon, and then got sidetracked once again by upgrading to WordPress 2.8. I tested my WordPress plugins and let WordPress know that they have been tested with WordPress 2.8. Looking back, I suppose it wasn’t a day that I really wanted to write. Like a wave, sometimes a marathon day of writing LOR needs a lull to balance things out.

Wednesday (Day 745): Novel Writing

I wrote all morning and came up with a mere 700 words. It seems that the further along I get on this book, the more time it takes to crank out the words. To give myself something else to focus on, I had lunch and mowed the lawn in the middle of the day.

I stopped writing at quarter of six, and the afternoon had only produced another 700 words. When I can’t put the time into writing because reality gets in the way of fiction, a low word count is understandable. It happens. It’s not great, but external forces slow you down sometimes. When you put in a full day of effort and still come up short, the lack of words is an internal problem. And that’s not as easy to take.

#1GF! came home and I made her dinner. It was probably something awesome that the neighbors groped at the windows like zombies for, but I don’t have any notes, so I can’t be sure.

Thursday (Day 746): Winding MY Own Clock

I drove #1GF!’s mom to her last appointment. She seemed happy, but tired. Everyone seemed happy for her, and at the same time, sorry to see her go.

On the way home, I went to the library to pick up a new book. I still had twenty pages left on my old book, but I knew I would need something new in a couple of days and wouldn’t want to come back. The book that I had was due, and I knew that I could easily just renew it, but I thought that I’d finish it and have it hanging around the house for two weeks waiting to be returned.

Even though I put myself on these schedules, it doesn’t mean that they’re as hard as I convince myself that they are. There might be a day when I look back on these days when I didn’t have a boss as time I spent doing the wrong thing. A time when I stuck to schedules unnecessarily.

“Forget it,” I thought. I pulled into a spot in the parking lot, opened the book I needed to finish, and read through the last twenty pages. I didn’t rush, or skim. I took the time for myself and read. When I was done, I took the book in, put it on the desk, and walked over to the science fiction section to get a new one. It felt like I had given myself a vacation or beaten the clock, even though the only clock bearing down on me was a clock that I wind on my own.

I went to the store and did a little food shopping, but we didn’t need more than I could carry in one hand. When I got home, I put the groceries away and shuffled some of the baby shower stuff around because it still covered the kitchen and living room like pink, fuzzy moss. I called #1GF! to see how she was doing, and she banned me from putting all the baby stuff away on my own. I understood that she wanted to take part in the process, but the piles of pink clothes had the house looking like it was in shambles. I had the time to clean it up, but she didn’t want it done. I had better sense than to argue with a pregnant woman, and had no idea where any of it was going to go anyway.

Friday (Day 747): No Singing Gorilla

I started the day off by taking out the plumber’s file and calling the mediator. It’s been over two weeks since my last attempt at a resolution, and neither the plumber nor his lawyer have bothered to respond. The mediator agreed to call the lawyer, but said that it was pretty obvious that they weren’t interested in resolving the process without being taken to court. I keep giving them chances to do the right thing and settle before this goes to court, but I have a feeling that the mediator is right. They haven’t put an ounce of effort into resolving the issue.

I put the folder away, and I started in on the novel. I managed to break the 40,000 word mark, but it’s taking more and more time to crank out less and less words. With a full day of writing, I seem to only be able to get out a couple of thousand additional words these days. I think I need a minimum of about 60,000 words to have a full novel, but I’m having trouble figuring out where those words might come from. Even then, 60,000 words is a relatively short novel.

At lunch, I sent #1GF! some flowers. She called to say that she got them, and had that happy, but not happy, tone about getting flowers at work. She’s not a showy girl, but I thought it would be funny. Hey, whatever. I told her that’s what she got for leaving me alone writing all day. She was lucky that I didn’t send a singing gorilla.

#1GF! said that she didn’t want to go out to dinner, so I put ribs into the oven at 3PM to cook for a few hours in BBQ sauce and OJ. I made myself a little coffee to keep the words flowing, and spent the rest of the day working on the novel. I felt like the story was starting to come together, but I still didn’t crank out more than a couple of thousand words.

By the time #1GF! got home, the ribs were falling off the bone. We sat down and watched Weeds and The Shield because despite all the things things that we could’ve done, that was what #1GF! wanted to do.

Saturday (Day 748): Birthing Class Day Two: Panic Class

We went for our second and final birthing class in the morning. This session seemed a lot faster paced than the first class, but it may have been the style of the instructor. I won’t say that she was intense or strict, but she did inject a bit more panic into the information than the instructor from the previous week did. Even though we were hearing the stages of labor for the seventh time, they seemed a bit more intense when added to outward hand motions from the crotch and rocking back and forth.

We went through different things that we could expect, like umbilical cords drying up and falling off, and episiotomies. Episiotomy. It sort of sounds like pleaseotomy. Like it’s a pleasing little procedure. Like it’s a little cake or something. “Oh yes, please, I’ll have an episiotomy for my pocket, Mary Poppins. How lovely!”

Yea. You know what it really means? An episiotomy should be called a “we’re going to cut your vagina open so your babies head doesn’t tear it open iotomy”. That might not be enough latin in it, but it’s really the least they could do to foster truth in advertising. As a man, I couldn’t help thinking that I was glad that no scalpel would ever by stuck in my pee pee hole to make it wider. Although, it sounded better than something tearing my pee hole open. Gah.

They moved from painful procedures to all the different types of drugs women in labor may have available to manage the pain of something quite large being pushed through something quite small. Before this discussion, I was under the impression that their were three types of birth: Cesarean, epidural, and natural. It was as narrow as thinking there are beard wearers, mustache wearers, and the clean shaven.

In reality, there are a range of options that I never really thought about, and a lot of possible side effects for what I thought was a simple and defined choice. For example, I knew that the epidural is a shot to the spine, but I had no idea that it numbed the lower half of the woman’s body and put them on bed rest. It makes sense that it would, but I thought it was simply an extremely effective method of blocking out pain. How it achieved that was never something that I ever had to think about.

Trying to process, evaluate, and decide on all the different drugs and their possible side effects got a little overwhelming. After a while, I waved it off in my head and thought, “This is really complicated and possibly risky. Pain sucks, but the possibility of being left with a permanently numb leg doesn’t seem like it’s worth the risk to me. Forget it, I’m not using drugs.”

It really seemed settled in my mind until I realized that I wasn’t the one having the baby. I looked over at #1GF! and saw the glassy nervousness in her eyes. “Whatever you do, don’t say what you just thought, you big dummy. If there was a time to keep your mouth shut, it’s right now. She can have whatever she wants and we’ll figure it out and get her through this,” I thought. I turned to #1GF! and smiled. “It’s going to be fine.”

We had a lunch break, and #1GF! and I sat on a green metal bench that looked like it could use a shot of car polish to make its chalky finish look less dirty. We were sharing some animal crackers because even though we were on a lunch break, it was a little too early to really be lunch time. We were both a quieter than normal because we were still digesting the class.

“I don’t think I really knew what an epidural really was,” I said.

“I don’t think I did either. I didn’t really think about the catheter and the bed rest. It makes sense, but I never really thought about it.”

I then told #1GF! about my decision that I didn’t think I’d be taking drugs when I gave birth to the baby. She laughed at me.

“I don’t know. There seemed to be a lot of possible side effects that I hadn’t considered,” I said. “And then it seemed more confusing than anything.”

“So you wouldn’t use drugs?”

“Well, I’ve had a root canal with no Novocaine, and I probably should be on migraine medication, but I’m not. Sometimes when I have a massive migraine like the one last week, I wish that I had something available though.” I paused and took a bite of an animal cracker. “I always worry about the availability of drugs and then getting to the point where I take them for minor pain instead of major.”

“Like a crutch.”

I realized that I was on a tangent that didn’t apply to #1GF!’s situation. I shrugged. “Yea, but that’s me, and it doesn’t really apply to this. I think you take what you need when you need it.”

“Do you think you have a high pain tolerance?”

“Well, I can take a shot to the nose, and I rode my bike across town with a broken elbow…” I shrugged again. “But don’t give me a runny nose. Or a stuffy head. I turn into a total wuss.”

#1GF! laughed, and I shrugged and smiled.

“I can’t imagine birth pain. I had a kidney stone once, and passing that little thing sucked. These aren’t drugs that could ever become a crutch for you, and if you need them, you need them. There’s nothing wrong with it. Maybe you start small and work up if you need to. I don’t have an answer. We might only know when we get there.”

#1GF! nodded and sighed.

“We’ll get through it,” I said.

“If you stop playing around and do their relaxation techniques, we might.”

I laughed and waved her off. “Mumbo jumbo.”

“How are you going to relax me when I’m freaking out then?”

“You’re easy to relax. We’ll do fine. We don’t need any new age music for that.”

“We need Salt n Peppa.”

“Ooh baby babay. B b babay.”

“Push it real good!”

“Nah, nuhNAHnuh, Nahnuh, duh noonih noonoo”

We laughed and sat in the sun.

I looked at my phone. “We should probably get back.”

When we got back to the class, the instructor talked about all the crazy security measures they have so that no dingos can go in and steal your baby. It was pretty neat to hear. First of all, the ward is locked and you can’t get in without being a coach or someone giving birth. Second, parents can move their baby around the ward, but are not allowed to carry them. Babies have to be pushed around in a cart. So if you see a dingo with a baby on it’s back or something, that’s a warning sign that the dingo doesn’t know the rules, and probably shouldn’t be there.

Then came the cool part. When the kids are born, they’re tagged on three of their limbs when they’re in the room with the mother. One of those tags is a baby lojack that seals the exits and sounds an alarm if they get near the doors. The parents are also lojacked with a matching transponder. When baby and parent are close, the nurse not only has to match the numbers on the bands, but the transponders will play a song when they are in close proximity, making sure that the right baby is with the right parents.

Step away from the baby. You are standing too close. Woop woop woop.

“eeoo Shoo, dingo. Get away from that baby. Thanks, babyjack.”

After psyching up the geek in me to see all this crazy babyjack technology, we went on a tour of the birthing unit. It’s the thing that #1GF! had been looking forward to for most of the class. I was sort of interested in it too because I learn directions non-verbally rather than reading signs. Getting me on that ward would help to create a map of the hospital in my head for when I’m pushing a wheelchair full of #1GF! who won’t stop calling me a sunufabitch and asking why I did this to her.

The group filed out of the classroom and walked down the hall with some people’s anxiety pinned on their shirts as plainly as their name tags. When we got to the actual door to the ward, a nurse came out and told the instructor that we couldn’t tour it. They said that they were too busy, and the instructor mentioned that this had never happened before.

I respected their need to keep us out if it would help reduce the stress inside those walls, but the whole thing seemed suspicious. I suspected either celebrity or alien birth. I would’ve called the tabloids, but we were asked to leave our phones off while in the class. If you see a story that claims Dennis Leary or either of the Wahlbergs reproduced with an alien, you’ll know that the story should’ve been mine.

The second leg of the tour was to walk to the nursery to look at the newborns. If we couldn’t see where the newborns were brought into the open air, at least we’d get to see some scrunched up little craisin-like little newborns. The women seemed to think that was a fair consolation prize.

When we got to the nursery, there there wasn’t a single newborn in there. Not one. There were a couple of people in scrubs, but they looked at machines and wouldn’t pretend to cry or poo for any of us standing at the window. Not one cry was heard, nor doody called. They didn’t even bother to turn around. They were probably busy testing the genes of that alien / celebrity hybrid that was keeping us out of the birthing unit. The tour effectively a fifteen minute walk down the hall, and was like going to Walley World when it was closed.

When we got back to the class, we had to dance like we did the week before. I guess that moving during labor can help to loosen up the ligaments in the pelvis and move the kid down the human flume faster. One of the ways they get this movement going is to imitate an eighth grade dance.

To an eighth grader, this would’ve seemed like the crappiest dance ever. First, all the girls were pregnant, which is not really a plus at any school dance. Second, not one person was doing the robot. Okay well, maybe one was, but that guy was silently chastised by my, er his, dance partner. Chastising awesome behavior is no way to encourage further awesome behavior, is all I’m going to say about that. It’s counterproductive.

And third, the DJ only had one CD, and that CD was something by Josh Groban. Do you have any idea how relaxing Josh Groban is? Yea, neither do I because his unique brand of vocal magic only seems to entrance women over 50. I tuned him out the best I could and asked #1GF! to dance, which she chuckled at. I guess pregnant ladies don’t get asked to dance much at eighth grade dances.

Now, during this dance, you rock back and forth like you’re just learning to dance. The lady would be having contractions, so while her guts are tensing up, she is supposed to squat down a little to move the baby further down the wild ride to the outside. #1GF! is not a particularly tall woman, so with our height difference, I had to squat lower so that she could still hold on to my neck.

The whole thing ended up looking like a freaky hunchback trying to dirty dance with a pregnant lady. Had any eighth graders walked by, the odds of the being grossed out, and possibly scarred, were pretty high. #1GF! and I were trying to hold back our laughter, and the rest of the class was very serious.

Next, the ladies had to be put on the floor and surrounded by pillows. #1GF! may have briefly got one over the head. Maybe. It wasn’t long enough to stop her breathing or for anyone else to notice, but it could’ve happened briefly. She may have pushed the pillow and smiled in a “cut it out” kind of way.

Everyone else was very serious, as if to prove that they were very caring when it came to their women. I had to respect their efforts, even though none of them seemed to have any formal acting training. I thought some of the performances were a bit stiff and edgy, as if they were on stage for the first time. Once the ladies settled into their pillows, we were told to breathe colors. Let me repeat that little one there for you: we were told to breathe colors. Oh, you bet your ass I’m serious.

Now, maybe breathing colors or smelling octagons happens every now and again to the average college student headed for the white house, but if you tell a rational group of adults to breathe in yellow and breathe out grey, and none of them look at you like something’s wrong with you, then you really have to wonder about the future of America.

As they were breathing colors, the pregnant ladies were told to imagine water pouring water over their heads. Maybe they were supposed to be stuck in big, wet, tropical box of fruit flavor. Maybe they were supposed to be submarines that ran on lemons. I don’t have any idea.

The coaches were then told to simulate the water draining down their heads with their fingers. All I could think was, “Crack an egg on your head, let the yolk drain down. Crack an egg on your head let the yolk drain down.”

I resisted the nonsense until #1GF! told me firmly for the third time to simulate the water. I firmly placed my hand on #1GF!’s forehead like a wet washcloth and left it there.

“That is not water.” she whispered up at me sternly.

“Sure it is. It’s on your head. Water,” I said smiling.

“Do the water.”

I made a cartoonish angry face and made her giggle. “Are you ok? Do you want me to get help, miss? Are you stuck in a well?”

Just when we were starting to have a good time, the guy next to us swung his ass around in his water making excursion, and got it closer to #1GF!’s face than he should’ve. When he was crouching at twenty-two inches and closing, I swear a tiny fart escaped. I swear it. I looked down at #1GF! with wide eyes, but she didn’t react, so I thought it might’ve been a squeaky sneaker. Then again, the guy was seated in a chair soon after, so I may have been right.

Maybe group relaxation works for people, but if I wanted to get my palm read or expand my senses to do things that are impossible on any earthly plain of existence without prior brain injury, I’d visit a new age store and have a conversation with the patchouli smelling dude with the pony tail and turquoise bolo tie behind the counter. If #1GF! decides that she wants something like that when she’s in labor, I’ll do my absolute best to make sure that she gets all the drugs she needs to make her underwater color breathing excursion as literal and vivid as if it were led by a team hand picked by Jacques Cousteau and Bob Ross. Until then, it’s sort of mumbo jumbo that I refuse to take seriously.

Look, I absorbed all the serious information earlier because it was a lot to process. If I need to relax #1GF!, I’ve been with her long enough to know how that’s done. It has nothing to do with breathing colors, pretending she’s being drenched, or god forbid having a guy with a pinky ring and a nugget bracelet fart in her face. It’s mostly doing what I’ve always done, trying to keep her smiling and aware that she’s safe and loved.

Soon after the virtual water boarding and gas torture test, the class ended. We grabbed our diploma and headed out while everyone else seemed to be standing around talking. I didn’t know what the point of the diploma was, but I added to my resume anyway.

We missed the town car show where they block off the main strip and line it with old cars, and we missed a lot of yard sales, but the class was sort of worth it in the end. There was a lot of information that we’d probably get eventually, but getting a loose idea of how things might go before the big game wasn’t a bad thing.

When we got home, we had some lunch and finally started putting away all the gifts from the shower that had been spread all over the living room. “Putting away” was true for a lot of the stuff, but for some of the larger items, it simply meant that they were moved into the baby’s room for future processing.

#1GF! needed a nap, so I sat down and played 45 minutes of Quake while she slept. It was a very frustrating 45 minutes. If a game is fairly evenly matched, I don’t care if I win or lose. If the games are a slaughter, it’s not fun being on either side. I seemed to be on the teams getting slaughtered every time.

At night, we went to dinner at The Fours with a couple of friends and their daughter. I’m always surprised when young people are willing to hang out with old people. I don’t know why. I figure that they must have better things to do than to listen to old people talk about things that are pretty far from cool or couldn’t be texted to someone LOL BRB WTF AFAIK.

Dinner was fine with the exception of one thing. If someone says that they love garlic salt so much that they would eat it right out of the bottle, don’t stick out your tongue and pretend to shake a bottle of garlic powder on your tongue. No one who happens to catch that motion is going to think, “Oh, that dude must really like garlic salt.” What they’re probably going to do is think, “I wonder if that guy making obscene gestures at me is the same guy who was in Butts Up 12: Baloney Pony Parade.”

If you innocently pretend to have have the garlic salt in one hand and the garlic powder in the other with the same motion, you might get a drink sent to you by a gentleman at the bar looking to film Butts Up 13: Dutch Rudder Ahoy.

After dinner, we played a round of Ticket to Ride, and I happened to win. I don’t know how I won because I came in dead last with the same strategy the last time we played, and felt like I was constantly giving away routes by looking at them. I call it a fluke.

What I Learned

• Words are harder to come by as a book progresses.
• The only clock bearing down on me was a clock that I wind on my own.
• I know what an episiotomy is and I’m happy that I’ll never need one.
• There are lots more drugs than I thought to help labor along.
• They have to shrink that uterus down from baby size to grapefruit size in a few days.
• An epidural gets you bedridden.
• They have baby lojack.
• 5 minutes between contractions means fire up ROCKET CAR! and get the woman to the hospital.
• Pretending to shake garlic salt on your tongue looks an awful lot like an obscene gesture.
• Salt N Peppa’s “Push It” seems like a funny choice for a CD for the delivery room, but I think that it might get me punched in the face if it were actually brought in.

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