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.

Tuesday (Day 758): Get More Human Contact

In the morning, I went with #1GF! to her latest ultrasound. While we were in the waiting room, a baby girl sitting in the chair next to me stared and laughed at me. I wasn’t surprised because it has been a fairly typical of female reaction to me throughout my life. The mother said that the little girl usually hugged her and hid around strangers.

“He has that affect on babies,” said #1GF!. “They just can’t seem to stop staring at him.”

It’s true. They do. I don’t know why.

We went into the ultrasound room and got a look at the baby. Well, we sort of did. Honestly, with only a month to go, the picture wasn’t nearly as clear as I expected. It was mostly blobs and blurs up on the screen that the tech had to point out and identify for us. Even after identification, we had to take her word for it. The tech did say that the baby had hair. And then said something like “Whoa. She’s got a lot of hair. Look at that.”

#1GF! and I tried to decipher the blobs and smears on the screen, and I inevitably drifted off and imagined our baby Teen Wolf slam dunking a basketball or inventing a new wolf dance at the prom. You go, baby teen wolf. You go, girl.

#1GF! suddenly got light headed because she was laying on her back too long. Both #1GF! and I had heard that pregnant ladies weren’t supposed to lay on their backs because the baby compresses one of the major arteries and can make the mother pass out. This time, we witnessed it. The tech picked up on it and sat #1GF! up before it got any worse.

#1GF! wiped the ultrasound goo off her belly, and the tech gave us a couple of pictures. We looked at them, and then each other, and then shrugged. We could tell that we were looking at a head, but couldn’t tell exactly what part of the head.

#1GF! and I left the office and talked outside in the parking lot for a few minutes before she went off to work. I took ROCKET CAR! to a nearby supermarket and did the food shopping. There was nothing unusual about that couple of hours, other than when I got home, I realized that I bought moldy bread. I debated on whether it was worth the gas to return.

I worked on my novel from 11AM until 6:30PM with a quick break for lunch. I only managed to add 1,200 words, but overtook Fight Club in length, and then broke the 50,000 word barrier. I thought that hitting milestones like that would’ve felt like bigger victories. They didn’t. I think hitting the 10,000 word mark was more satisfying.

#1GF! came home after work, and we headed out to look at some more baby stuff. We stopped by the supermarket on the way, and I ran in to exchange the moldy bread I got. I probably could’ve walked out with twelve loaves, because no one seemed to care. The girl behind the counter didn’t even check my slip. She just said “ew,” apologized, and sent me to me get more bread. I held up the package on my way out, and she waved me by without checking anything.

I got back in the car and told #1GF! how confusingly easy that seemed. She was as surprised as I was. As we pulled out of the parking lot, a double shot of Judas Priest came on the radio. I don’t know. Maybe it was “Doubleshot Tuesday” or another similarly named goofy programming gimmicks that classic rock stations use.

Yes, it was classic rock station. While I might not appreciate the fact that music that I liked as a teenager is now on the classic rock stations, I am pretty happy about getting to hear classic metal on the radio. And in a double shot, no less.

I played air guitar along to the opening bars of “Heading Out To The Highway“, rocking back and forth in the trademark style that would’ve made K. K. Downing and Glenn Tipton proud. Even though she doesn’t understand the need for air guitar, #1GF! has learned to ignore me during a good air guitar session.

As the high pitched wail ended the song, I excitedly wondered what would be next. The opening riff to “Breakin’ the Law” filled the car.

“Nice,” I said, adjusting the strap of the air guitar so it didn’t cut into my shoulder.

“I don’t know this one. Are you sure this is different than ‘Heading Out To The Highway’?” #1GF! asked.

I stopped mid meedle and stared at her. “Uh, yes. You never heard “Breakin’ the law before?” I then chanted, “Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law nyea nyaaw.”

#1GF! shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, now that’s just ridiculous. When we get home, I’m going to school you in some Judas Priest heavy metAAaaAAaal.” She didn’t seem to think it was as big a deal as I did. “Do you know how many times I saw Judas Priest as a teenager?”

“You saw Judas Priest?”

I tossed my air guitar out the window and into the swiftly passing tree line. I know it was probably littering, but it was made of air, which should be biodegradable. “About, I don’t know, three hundred times.” It was probably more like five, but three hundred seemed like a rounder number. “I can’t believe this.”

“So, they’re different then?”

YES! Of course they’re different!”

#1GF! shrugged and smiled, and I couldn’t help but forgive her and silently vow to instruct her.

We went into the baby megastore and bought a stroller and some other baby stuff. Want to feel like a moron? Compact a stroller in the aisle, and then stand there trying to find the release that will turn it back into a stroller. Want to look dumber? Make the process last more than five minutes so that you eventually have to leave the stroller folded up in the aisle and wait for an employee to help you. I kept thinking, “It’s a stroller for chrissakes. I should be able to handle something like this.” But, I couldn’t. And didn’t. It took the employee a couple of minutes to figure it out, but it didn’t help my self image any.

#1GF! wasn’t doing much better at keeping up her end of Mission: Babyjunk. She kept getting confused by things, and I would have to check to make sure what she was saying and what she was putting in the shopping cart were the same. It was a long and repetitive series of conversations.

“What is wrong with me?” #1GF! would say when realizing her repeated mistakes.

“You’re pregnant. They said that absentmindedness was part of the deal, remember?”

We got home at 9:30 and I read for a bit before bed. Okay. Maybe I introduced #1GF! to the song “Liquor, Beer, and Wine” by Reverand Horton Heat because I was singing it and she thought I had made it up on my own. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for me to sing made up songs around the house, but this wasn’t one of them. I put on the CD, and jumped around most of the time the song was on, convincing #1GF! that I need more human contact during the day. I rebutted the accusation by telling her that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work! And no play makes Jack. A dull boy, all work and no play.

“A dull boy?” all work.

“And no play makes,” Jack a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy all work. And no play makes Jack a dull, boy all work and no play. Makes Jack a dull boy all work and no play makes Jack. A dull boy all. Work and “no play” makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Wednesday (Day 759): Writing With Danger

#1GF! was doing the industrial snoring again. It was incredible. I remember thinking that the breathing out portion of it sounded like a bass drum and a cymbal hit at the same time. I wanted to learn how to make that sound to be the greatest beatboxer ever. Alas, I fell back to sleep, and by the time I woke up, the lesson was over.

When #1GF! left for work, I offered her Judas Priest’s Greatest Hits to take on the drive with her, but she declined. I assume because she was afraid that she might get too amped up before work. I can respect that.

Once #1GF! was off to corporate headquarters, I worked on my book all morning. On a break, I looked up baby furniture because #1GF! told me that come hell or high water, the baby would have a dresser by the weekend. As a master of tangent, the furniture led me to look up geeky baby names, and then to looking up domain names for some of the names we had been considering. I didn’t register a domain, because I couldn’t convince #1GF! that “Exemelle” is certainly a valid name for a baby girl.

I worked on the book a bit more until a thunderstorm rolled through. Once you lose a PC to line surges, safety is best. During thunderstorms, I shut down the PC and unplug it. It poured like mad and the gutters overflowed. I ran around the house looking up at the gutters, and then ran around the basement from window to window like a confused dog.

The robot stood guard at his window, and did nothing more than watch me run around. No water was coming in and he knew it. He flashed a drip with a line through it on his screen and turned back to his window.

I went upstairs and took the non-PC time to finish sealing the bathroom grout. I got the first coat on, and looked out the window. The gutters were still overflowing and starting to eat a hole into the ground. That sort of thing leads to excessive ground water pushing up into my basement, and means a lot more one on one time with the robot.

After a while, the rain started letting up. The thunder was rare and the lightning was nonexistent. So, what do you do in that situation? Right! Grab the aluminum ladder and go stand on it. Briefly. To get let the gutters drain. Absolute genius. To make matters worse, I was moving up and down the ladder at high speed to minimize my time on it. Was I making things safer? That is debatable.

I hit three main spots and cleared a bunch of leaves that had been deposited by a series of storms that haven’t left the Northeast alone in weeks. Once the final clog was cleared, the gutters flushed like a toilet. Yes, they did. There was even a swirl at the top of the drainpipe as the water flushed down into the yard.

I was only out for about fifteen minutes, but the rain was coming down hard enough that I was soaked. I headed back in, and the robot had already fallen asleep. There was no water coming in yet, so I shook off and went up to put the second coat of sealer on the bathroom grout.

The edge of our bathroom is made to look like beach pebbles, so the job took more time than sealing simple straight lines between tiles. I lay on the floor with a little bottle of sealer and brushed the sealant over the grout. It was actually sort of relaxing after a while. By the end, I had done two coats of sealer on the bathroom with a bottle that was no more than 6 oz. If you ever have to seal grout, those tiny bottles of sealer go a lot farther than you’d think.

Once the storm was past, I turned the PC back on and went back to working on the book. I ended up putting a chicken pot pie in the oven because I wanted to make up some of the lost writing time. Sure, it’s not really cooking, but at least there would be food on the table when #1GF! got home.

Thursday (Day 760): Novel Manuscript Draft One Complete

I put away the pans from the night before, emptied the dishwasher, and then ate my cereal. Once #1GF! was off to work, I started the PC up and researched PC’s. I was just getting a better idea of what the latest chips and motherboards are when thunderstorms shut me down. I unplugged the PC and watched a half hour of TV. I was getting pretty aggravated at the weather, which was one of the dumber things in the world to get aggravated about. The drains were all flowing, but when I went into the basement, I found a new leak that left a puddle in a new area of the basement. The robot had his back to it and hadn’t noticed. I made a note to chip and waterstop the area if the sun ever came out again.

The rain kept falling, as it has for the last six thousand days, and I heated up a cup of leftover coffee and walked around the house checking on the gutters and windows. I was a little lost without a PC. I thought about trying to write with paper, but it seemed like I would be creating more work for myself with the extra transcription.

The thunder passed, and I was back on the PC by 11AM. I did a little LOR 109 outlining, and dove into the book. I wrote all day and the rain didn’t let up a bit.

In the afternoon, I took a break when my mother dropped by unexpectedly. I mentioned that I thought that I was finished with my first draft of my novel, and she asked what it was about. I hadn’t given anyone an idea of the plot so far, but I gave her a quick description off the top of my head.

There’s something neat about having written a novel. Or a manuscript. Whether the book turns out to be good or bad, it’s a neat feeling. And as melodramatic as it sounds, it’s a little exhausting.

My mother headed out after an hour or so, and I gave her Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel as a parting gift. I like the way Moore creates his characters, and thought that the book was along the lines of how I like to think of my writing, minus the undead that he tends to include.

Once my mother was gone, I went back to spell check and export the manuscript so that #1GF! might be able to read it over the weekend. I was finished up by 8PM. The draft was as complete as it was going to get for now. I was at the point where I couldn’t look at it anymore, and needed a second set of eyes to go through it.

Now begins the difficult part: The editing and the shopping the book around. I am unbelievably tired right now, but it’s a good tired. It’s almost like I accomplished something.

Friday (Day 761): #1GF! Reads Her First Manuscript

It was a holiday, so #1GF! and I spent the day running around to different furniture stores to see if we could find a dresser for the baby. Some stores give you prices online, but most aren’t very specific. It’s a pain in the ass for the consumer, but I supposed they got us into their stores.

We looked at a whole bunch of different pieces of furniture and tried to find something that didn’t make us feel like the dresser had to be passed down to the next generation to recoup the cost. The furniture, after all, was going in a baby’s room. We were looking for something cheap that didn’t look it.

In one store, we saw a thing called a chifforobe, and it was like a dresser on steroids. It was expensive, but marked down by half because it was so big that people were having trouble getting it up their stairs. I thought it would’ve been a neat piece of furniture, but still couldn’t justify the price. We didn’t need something that big, and it was more than we wanted to pay even at discount.

We spent hours going store to store, taking pictures of all the different dressers before grabbing a quick dinner, and heading home to sort them out. #1GF! lay down on the couch almost the minute that she got through the door.

I looked at her and smiled. “Okay…”

She looked at me like there was very little chance that she would be moving off of that couch any time soon. “So, how about printing out some of that book of yours.”

I stared at her. “You really want to read it now?”

“Of course.”

“How many chapters do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll surprise you,” I said as I ran down the hall. I printed off the first twenty or so pages, quickly numbered them with a mechanical pencil, and ran them back down the hall. “Now, if you see spelling issues or ‘the the’ errors, mark them down.” I walked over to the junk drawer and pulled out a pen. “But, look more at the plot, or anything that doesn’t seem right to you.”

“Okay,” she said as I handed her the pages. “This is so exciting.”

#1GF! started reading, and I wandered around the house wondering what to do when someone reads one of their books for the first time. I could only picture the scene in Stranger Than Fiction where an author sat in a chair, nervously watching someone read their book. Or manuscript. I suppose the correct term for a a pre-published book is a manuscript.

“Your pacing…” started #1GF!.

I looked up from the floor. “Is it too fast? I thought I should add more description, but I wanted to get right to the story.”

“No. What? No. You’re pacing.”

I was pacing back and forth from the kitchen into the living room. “Well, I don’t know what to do. Should I be in the room? Should I leave you alone? I’ve never done this before.”

“Do whatever you want. I’ve never read a book by you before.”

I smiled.

“This is so cool,” said #1GF!. “I’m proud of you.”

“Oh, stop. It is pretty cool though, isn’t it? I’m excited. I just hope you like it.”

#1GF! went back to reading, and I went to the computer to distract myself by reading some RSS feeds. Every time I heard the slightest stir, I would run back into the living room and see what was going on. It was usually nothing.

#1GF! chewed through the first twenty pages, and wanted more. I tried to print more, and the ink ran out on my printer. It was relatively late, and I was pretty sure that the office supply stores were closed. Not to be deterred, I put a PDF of the book onto the TV screen, and #1GF! continued reading from the couch in the den. She read for another couple of hours, and had to give up to go to sleep.

“I’m sorry, but I have to stop,” she said.

“Don’t apologize,” I said. “You don’t have to finish it.”

“I don’t want to stop. I have to though.”

“So, what do you think?”

“I like it. I’m interested. I want to know what happens.”

I smiled. I felt less nervous. “You are my biggest fan, though.”

“That’s true. I am.”

Saturday (Day 762): I HAVE PAJAMAS!

We were woken up out of a dead sleep by a woman screaming at the top of her lungs. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, but it sounded to me like it was coming from next door. I didn’t know if someone might’ve collapsed or if a kid got run over. With the way the screams sounded, I was sure that there was going to be a lot of blood.

I threw on my sweatpants and glasses, and couldn’t see where my cell phone was. I knew where the house phone was, so I ran to the other room to grab that. #1GF! hurried down the hall and opened the front door in a T-shirt. I was using excess brain cycles to go over CPR as I ran full tilt down the hall toward the front door.

#1GF! had the door open, and I could see a woman laying behind a car in a driveway. #1GF! put her hands up to slow me down. “It’s okay. Easy.” I slowed down and stopped. “Her nephew died.”

I could hear the woman screaming into the phone. “How did this happen!” It was a full blast question to a universe that had obviously gone deaf long ago. #1GF! asked the woman if she was okay, and the woman apologized and left. #1GF! closed the door and we sat down to try to slow our heart rates down.

I looked at the kitchen clock. It was 5:34 AM. The police showed up a few minutes later, and then left after someone explained the story. A couple of other neighbors stood out in the street trying to process what was going on.

I went to the bathroom, but stood there for a full minute and nothing would come out. I could feel the adrenaline still pumping through my veins. We went back to bed, and I found that I couldn’t sleep. #1GF! and I just lay there staring at the ceiling, feeling badly for people whose Fourth of July would probably be permanently ruined.

When we got up, #1GF! sat down to read more of my book on the TV, and at noon, we decided that we had better get moving, or risk wasting one of the few sunny days we’ve had. We got dressed and drove to a furniture store to purchase one of the dressers we had seen the day before. We picked one out and paid for it, but the saleswoman said that it was in the warehouse and couldn’t be picked up until Tuesday. We weren’t happy about not having it in our hands, but having the thing purchased was half the battle.

On the way home, we went over to #1GF!’s mother’s house, and did a couple of very minor chores. While the ladies were talking, they gave me the remote. The Empire Strikes Back was on, so I stopped to watch it. Hey, they handed me the remote. You abdicate power, you suffer the consequences, even if those consequences involve a man making Chewbacca noises at random points during your conversation.

#1GF! and I stopped in to the Alehouse for dinner, and then headed home. #1GF! read more chapters of my manuscript while I sat next to her on the couch. She didn’t react at some of the things that I thought she might, but she was talking about the characters as if they were real personalities. I guess that’s a good sign.

At around 9PM, we could see fireworks going off all over the place through the trees behind our house. They looked like they might be going off at the local park, and they weren’t small.

We threw on sweatshirts, and took a walk to see what was going on. We ended up seeing a lot more fireworks going off down at the beach, so that’s where we headed. On the way, we realized that we were walking behind our neighbors. who were towing a bunch of young children.

One of the children turned around. “We’re going to the fireworks.”

“What fireworks?” I said, as fireworks were filling the air.

“Those fireworks!” said a little girl trying to point with a hand that was being held by an adult.

I looked into the sky in the wrong direction as if I didn’t see them. “Where?”

“And he’s staying over!” exclaimed a girl pointing to a little boy.

“I have pajamas!” exclaimed the little boy.

We tried to cross the street, and I find it pretty surprising these days how few people will stop for a crosswalk in Massachusetts even if there’s a neon sign announcing that stopping is the law, a pregnant woman standing on the side of the road, and a police car and a uniformed officer within twenty feet of the crosswalk. Maybe it’s me. Maybe they take one look at my accidentally angry face, and it overrides their desire to stop. Maybe they read this blog and don’t like it one bit. I have no idea.

After the cars eventually stopped and we made it down to the beach, we found that we could see at least three professional, town-sized fireworks displays up the coast. They were far enough away that they were only bigger than flashing tower lights if you weren’t paying attention. The sounds of other town fireworks displays thumped in the air from across the water.

On the beach, there were campfires littering the sand for a couple of miles. One bonfire in the distance looked like it was twice as tall as the shadows around it, and a police car headed toward it. The fire was out soon after. I was reminded of the town pirates of old that supposedly lit false signal fires to run unwary ships aground for looting. Arrrr.

It was close to high tide, and you could see that the beach was packed with people when the (illegal) fireworks would light up the beach. People were shooting off pretty large fireworks over the water, and occasionally, one would explode on the sand, making a giant burst of color where you knew there were people. We didn’t have enough faith in the crowd to go anywhere near the sand, so we sat on the wall and watched the sky.

Besides the plethora of illegal fireworks, there didn’t seem to be any trouble. The crowd was happy to stand around on one of the few nice summer nights we’ve had this year and watch fireworks. We sat for a while before heading home. And when we did, the roads were packed with cars trying to get out.

Yet again, we were happy to be on foot and living locally. We walked home, and found that we weren’t quite ready for bed, so we watched a couple of episodes from the second season of The IT Crowd to wind down. It’s funny, and a really good show for anyone who’s done tech support. Season 1 and Season 2 are currently available for instant watching for Netflix members.

What I Learned

• There are readers out there who will keep me on track if I take a break, even if it is a five minute break just to clear my head. Whook chhh, whoook chhh.
• The baby has hair. A lot of it.
• It’s true that pregnant women can pass out if you lay them on their back for too long. Like alligators.
• Supermarkets will exchange moldy items that they sell you without checking a receipt.
• 50,000 words didn’t feel like as big of a milestone as 10,000.
• Finishing a manuscript for a novel is really cool.
• Having someone read your manuscript is pretty cool.
• #1GF! needs to be schooled in the basic principles of Judas Priest heavy metal.
• Some strollers are built to trick you into looking stupid. If you find one of them, buy it so that you may punish it by filling it with baby puke for making you feel foolish.
• It’s true that pregnant women can become absent minded at times.
• I have been told that my child’s name will not be “Mistatee” or “Exemelle”.
• A tiny, six ounce bottle of grout sealer will cover a bathroom with two coats without a problem.
• The more leaks I patch, the more leaks the basement comes up with.
• Not a lot of furniture stores put all of their inventory and prices online.
• A “chifforobe” is sort of like a small armoire.
• There are a lot of illegal fireworks on the beach on the Fourth of July.

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