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

Sunday (Day 805): The Tapioca Peninsula

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

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

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

When they headed off to join the oiled up masses enjoying surf and sand, #1GF! and I sat on the stoop with the baby. Traffic zipped up and down our street.

“They’re really flying down the street, aren’t they?” noted #1GF!.

“Yea. Traffic at the beach is probably horrible on a hot day like this.”

“And they think that they can get around it.”

“I know. This street is a peninsula on a peninsula. If you don’t have a boat, this town is one way in, one way out. Take all the side streets you want. It’s not going to help.”

#1GF! nodded in agreement. “I think you like saying peninsula, too much.”

“Peninsula. Peninsula peninsula.” I smiled. “It is a funny word.”

#1GF!, as usual, shook her head.

“Hey, what was with all the tapioca comments?” I asked.

#1GF! shifted the baby. “When we met him at dinner last time, your routine kept referencing tapioca. Remember? It was a running joke all night.”

I can remember lines from sitcoms from twenty-five years ago, but most of the things that I say to entertain people are improvisational, situational, and flushed from my brain before I get in the car. My memory was still somewhat foggy as to the referenced pudding. “I guess. Kind of. It makes sense now. I started to think that the kid was losing his mind. It’s good to know it’s me.”

The next door neighbor walked across the lawn and sat on the stoop for a few minutes to talk and look at the baby. The relaxed atmosphere made me feel like I had lived in a beach town my whole life. She sat for a few minutes, before heading out to enjoy what was left of a hot summer day. Because I didn’t want to seem like a massive dork, I waited until she left before pulling out the Rubik’s cube that has been regularly stashed in a side pocket of my cargo shorts.

I handed my phone to #1GF! to time me with, and let her confirm that the cube was indeed scrambled. One minute and twenty-six seconds later, the cube was solved. It was a best time for me. #1GF! looked impressed, which is always important. To celebrate my victory over the cube, I cut the rose bushes in front of our house down to mere stubs. They were all dead, and tall enough to touch our gutters. There was a time in history where a man would kill a mammoth and haul it back to impress a woman. How that impulse regressed into dominating colored cubes and rose bushes remains a mystery, but it is a sad state of affairs for man.

I had been avoiding it all summer, but I brought down a fan from the attic to cool off the living room. We have ceiling fans, so I didn’t think it was necessary, but we had finally hit the point in the summer where air movement was no longer a matter of choice, but of necessity. Partly because it was hot, partly because I needed to cool down #1GF!, who wasn’t informed that I was going to chop down the roses against her wishes.

It was too hot to cook, and because #1GF! had been really strict about nitrates through her pregnancy, she suggested that we get something that she had been looking forward to for nine months: a pepperoni pizza. The baby had been quiet since her bath, so I thought that pizza might be a good distraction from the heat.

I went out to pick up the pizza, and sat in 2 MPH traffic all way across town thanks to tourists clogging the roads with their cars, and spilling their ice cream and suntan lotion soaked bodies into crosswalks regardless of the color of the traffic signals. ROCKET CAR! was not happy with the painfully slow pace and growled the whole way without once letting out a carefree, turborific whistle.

The heat and the tourists might’ve tainted my mood a bit during the ride, but when I got to the pizza shop, one look at the drenched clerks made me happy that I didn’t work at a pizza shop on sticky summer days.

As soon as the pizza hit the counter, the baby started crying. I’m not sure if it was colic or simply an expression of her dominance as the new head of household. In the hours of crying that ensued, the pizza slowly lost it’s magic to the stale summer air. By the time the baby siren had stopped, it had transformed from something fun and relaxing to something cold and rubbery that belonged under a dorm room bed. Pizza had officially become a waste of fifteen bucks.

Monday (Day 806): The Hot Blur

The only notes that I have from this day were that the day was brutally hot, that I shaved six seconds off of my best Rubik’s Cube time from the day before, and that I put in my contacts and shaved so that I would feel a little more human. Other than that, it was a blur of feeding and changing.

Tuesday (Day 807): This One Goes To Eleven

I ran out to the store for milk and a tomato at 9AM, and it was already hot and humid out. The day wasn’t going to get any cooler, so we reserved our energy by staring at the baby and listening to the radio until we had to go to the baby’s two week checkup in the afternoon.

A two week checkup is a simple appointment to make sure you’re not feeding the kid pencil shavings or keeping the baby in a crate. They check the baby out, and you get to ask any questions that you have such as, “what’s this rash, how big of a drawer does a sleeping baby need, or simply, is it Tuesday?”

The first thing that they want to do at these appointments is weigh and measure the baby. The measuring is easy: They put the baby down and after two pencil marks on the exam table paper, the baby is measured. Weighing the baby is a whole different story. Because they’re so small, a newborns’ clothes are heavy enough to throw off their weigh in. That means that newborns have to be buck naked to be weighed. What they don’t tell you before telling you to strip down your kid is that newborns do not like to be naked. At all.

Within seconds of being exposed to the relatively warm exam room air, the baby had a complete meltdown. The baby ended up being 8 lbs, 1 oz, which was a normal weight gain. Her stubbed umbilical cord was bleeding a little, but the doctor said that was normal, too. I gathered all that information on my own because #1GF! was thoroughly rattled by the screaming in the small space. She was singularly focused on calming the baby down, and wasn’t retaining a thing.

The doctor was understanding and suggested that #1GF! stay and feed the baby to try to calm her down. As she walked out the door, we could hear the nurses outside asking the doctor what she did to the baby to make her scream like that. If pediatric nurses are talking about your kid’s lung capacity, you know that your kid’s volume goes to 11.

The feeding worked, and the baby ended up quiet enough as we walked out the door, people were looking into her carrier and saying that she was cute. She fell into a post-feeding nap once she was strapped into the car, so #1GF! and I got some iced coffees and took a drive. It was nice to be together in a confined space that wasn’t the house without hearing any screaming. We smiled and barely said a word as we aimlessly drove.

On the dark side of the paranoid parent, I didn’t want to show the baby to anyone at all because she was only a couple of weeks old. Babies aren’t known for having great immune systems, and I didn’t want anyone touching her just yet. Right or wrong, I wanted to protect that kid because you never know who might be unwittingly carrying the bug that puts your kid into the hospital.

The kitchen people had asked to see the baby, so we dropped in to their shop on our way by. They were nice, saying how alert and smart she was, but it’s hard to take compliments on the brain capacity of a two week old. It was nice though.

We headed to my parents’ friends’ house on the way home, and within five minutes of stepping onto the porch overlooking the bay that my parents and their friends were enjoying, the baby siren started warming up. We quickly packed up before the baby started freaking out. We were still new to being outside with the baby, and weren’t really great at dealing with her at home, so having her freak out in confines of the car, wasn’t something we wanted to experience.

Now, let me say this. Both of the visits were on request. It’s not like I’m running around forcing people to look at my kid. Even though I think that she’s the most incredible thing ever, I realize that part of that feeling is genetically induced. I understand that most other people don’t share the genetics to see what I do. If people ask, we show. Otherwise, we figure people are busy enough with their own lives.

We headed home, and the beach was packed with people. The baby was winding up to go ballistic, so it was a bit of a tense ride that lent contrast to the waves of beach goers lazily trying to beat the heat. We made it home before the siren made it to full power, and #1GF! fed the baby to diffuse her for a little while.

We ate leftovers for dinner and opened all the windows to let in the late day sea breeze. I’m telling you, living within sight of the ocean in the late afternoon on a hot day, makes up for the horizontal snowfall in the winter, and the tourists clogging the roads all summer. Okay, it doesn’t make up for the tourists, but the relief of a sea breeze after an incredibly hot day, is worth a good portion of the trouble of coastal living.

We sat down to watch Get Smart, but the baby threw another fit that we couldn’t troubleshoot. The baby is awesome when she’s sleeping on you or quietly taking in all the new sights and sounds around her, but when she freaks out and you can’t figure out why, it’s insanely stressful. And loud. It’s really, really loud. All you hear is “I’M DYING! I’M DYING! I’M DYING!” and that’s how you react to it. It’s usually just gas, but to a baby, a bad bout of gas might seem like they’re dying.

Once the baby was asleep, we sat on the couch with a couple of containers of ice cream and finished the movie. A light sea breeze was just picking up, but the lingering heat of the day was turning the iced cream to an indecisive consistency hovering between frozen and soupy, which was enough to fill in and smooth over the cracks and chips in my jangled nerves.

Wednesday (Day 808): The Test Walk

It was hot as hell and twice as humid once again, but we decided that we were going to take a walk to drop a movie in the mailbox. That was the pretense, anyway. Actually, we were taking the baby out on her first test walk.

I wasn’t too keen on it because I wasn’t sure how much #1GF! should be exercising, but #1GF! wanted to walk, and the look in her eye told me that I would have a tough time dissuading her. I also wasn’t sure how the baby was going to react to being outside, or how we were going to react if the baby threw a fit a mile from the house. Then again, you never really know what is going to happen until you try, right? Right.

We busted out the stroller, got the movie in the mailbox, and made it home a mile or so later, without incident. The baby handled everything fine. I, on the other hand, was sweaty and gross thanks to my body’s spectacularly overbuilt cooling system.

I showered once we got back, and then called a friend who already has a kid. “You didn’t tell me about all of the screaming,” I said jokingly.

He actually sounded sympathetic. “Oh, there’s a lot of screaming, huh?”

“I think five hours straight is the longest so far, but it’s a few hours every night.”

“Yea, once you go through a few hours of straight screaming, you can understand how weaker people throw their babies out of windows. You don’t condone it, but you stop asking yourself, ‘how could someone do that?’”

I hung up the phone and started making enchiladas. I can’t say that I was happy to know that other people had to deal with screaming babies, but I was happy that the jangled nerves at the end of a screaming session wasn’t something unique to me.

I took out a game called Beggars & Thieves to read the rules, and got bored with them before I could really figure out what the game was about. I dropped the rules on the table and stared out the window, knowing that even if I did figure out the game, everything is so random with a two week old, that games aren’t on the radar anymore. You generally can’t find the time to play even a quick game, and when you do have a spare few minutes, you never know how long it’s going to last. You have no idea what you have time for, so you spend your spare time marveling at the baby or staring blankly at a wall. I put the game back in the forbidden game closet of mystery, hoping to get a look at it when the baby was older.

Thursday (Day 809): The Stump And The Dump Seagulls

I can’t remember anything about the first twelve hours of the day, except that it was a blur of feedings, changings, and sleep, the details of which are forever lost to history. I could make up something like “Slayer came by and dropped off a Slayer onsie for the baby”, but you’d know that what I was telling you needed to be wrapped up in a diaper and thrown out.

I did note that the baby’s umbilical stub was bleeding more than usual, and at some point during the day, the thing fell off, and I found it roaming the inside of the baby’s onsie. It was a cool milestone, but sort of gross. I called #1GF! and held up the brown, quarter-sized scab. “The baby’s umbilical stump fell off!”

“Ugh. Good. Finally. That thing was gross.”

I shrugged and pretended to pop it in my mouth and chew it. The horror and revulsion on #1GF!’s face were absolute comedic joy. I think it’s the most grossed out that I’ve ever seen her. Once she realized that there was no way in hell that I would eat a chunky, black umbilical scab even for a joke, she calmed down and I threw the stub in the trash for some dump seagull to enjoy.

In the evening, I made dinner, and #1GF! and I took the baby out for another walk. Children were out enjoying the summer evening, and ran over to the carriage to see the baby. One reached in to touch the baby, but I gently deflected him before he could get his hands all over her. He only managed to touch her hat (which she was wearing despite the August, New England temperatures). I considered it a good save, and the kid was none the wiser that he got deflected.

We were home from the walk without incident by 7:45PM. We watched a lot of Blind Date for some reason, which says something about the level of brain function that was available when we weren’t soothing the baby. I was averaging in the 1:30’s on the cube, which wasn’t bad.

When the baby let us, we sat down to watch I Love You Man. There were countless baby-related interruptions, but the movie ended up sucking anyway. It was like someone wrote a buddy comedy for men without checking with an actual man to see what they consider funny. Not even the gag reel was funny.

Friday (Day 810): Shit Fountain!

I got up, went down to the basement to empty the dehumidifier, and then took the baby out of the bedroom so that #1GF! could sleep. I sat watching crappy cable movies while the baby slept next to me on the couch. It was hot and humid once again.

While #1GF! was sleeping, I took the baby in for a routine diaper change and just about midway through, I was attacked by a shit fountain. I know my call of “Oh my LORD!” was a little louder than it should’ve been, but shit fountains and shit fountain defense procedures were still new to me. I’m telling you, do not underestimate the blast radius of a newborn. Their pushing power is simply astounding.

I did some laundry, and was showered and dressed by noon, two hours earlier than anticipated. I felt like I was ahead of the game. Then, I did the cube in 1:14, a new personal best. I felt like I was way ahead of the game, although, I wasn’t sure which game I was playing exactly.

Saturday (Day 811): A Decade Of Bullet Points

I showered early, and #1GF!’s family dropped by in the morning to see the baby. I proved to the kids that yes, I could indeed solve a Rubik’s Cube. I did it just under two minutes, which was pretty slow, but enough to impress them for a solid two minutes and fifteen seconds. I think that the pressure of being watched slowed me down a lot.

I made homemade fluff for peanut butter and fluff sandwiches for lunch by melting some marshmallows in the microwave and stirring them up. I’m not sure if that’s what fluff is, but it was either that or jelly.

I lent one of the kids some juggling clubs that I got when I was a teenager. You don’t meet many kids who can juggle, and clubs seemed like the next logical step in her juggling progression. She was already starting to get the hang of it before they headed home.

Midway through the day, a guy I was pretty close friends with during my teens and twenties left a message on my answering machine after about a decade of silence. I heard the message coming through, but couldn’t make it to the phone in time. The guy was up the street at the beach, and apologized if he had reached the wrong Jon Dyer.

#1GF! wanted me to go meet my old friend down at the beach, but I felt bad because I hadn’t left #1GF! and the baby alone since the baby was born. She convinced me that they’d be fine. I called the guy back and walked down the beach to meet him in the late afternoon to hit the bullet points of the last ten years.

I brought up the point that I had a two week old at home, and he seemed a little stunned, and then burst out laughing at her name. If you don’t name your kid Mary, then you have to expect things like that are going to happen sometimes.

I only stayed out for about an hour before heading home. It’s hard to cram a decade into an hour, but it was hot out and I wanted to make sure that #1GF! was okay.

When I got home, everything was going fine. I mowed the lawn, weed whacked, and cleaned out the gutters. Then, I showered and made dinner. From a quarter of a mile away, we could hear megaphones announcing that the state and MEMA were closing the beach due to dangerous rip tides. I had never heard that before. It was as close to martial law as you can get in a beach town. I imagine that there were a lot of hot and aggravated people on that beach and clogging the roads on the way out of town.

We ate dinner and watched people screw up their houses in a show called Renovation Realities because there’s something very entertaining about watching people screw up on TV .

An ocean breeze picked up as the sun was going down, and it was the best breeze of the summer. It swept in a moist and cool calm that could’ve stopped a riot if given half a chance. It was a good reward for a long, hot summer day.

What I Learned

• Pizza is a waste of money with a colicky baby.
• Newborns do not like to be naked.
• Having the umbilical scab come off makes the baby seem a little more normal.
• After hours of screaming, the mere hint of crying gets the nerves tingling.
• Sea breezes in the summer make up for horizontal snowfall in the winter.
• Newborns can be walked for a short time.
• There is no time for games.
• Pretending to eat an umbilical scab after it has fallen off is pure entertainment.
• Newborns create a need for bad television.
• Shit fountains in the middle of a diaper change are startling.
• I can solve a Rubik’s cube in a minute fourteen.
• You can make mock fluff with a microwave and some marshmallows.
• No matter how cool you think your kid’s name is, someone out there is going to laugh at it.

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