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

Sunday (Day 812): Playing Operation While Drunk

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

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

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

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

After a lot of zeroing in on the ten little targets, we clipped her nails without drawing blood. Well, I did. #1GF! wanted nothing to do with the process.

By the time we ate a little lunch, it was late afternoon, and I still hadn’t showered or brushed my teeth. I remedied my hygiene situation before cleaning the kitchen and getting some ribs into the oven to slow cook for a few hours.

I was in the kitchen anyway, so I made some chocolate chip cookies for anyone who might show up unexpectedly to see the baby. I tried using brown butter to make the cookies chewier, but I’m not sure if it made a difference. Hell, even a bad homemade chocolate chip cookie is still better than a store bought one, so I wasn’t all that concerned about having to hire more staff for the complaint department.

In the evening, #1GF! and I spent hours pacing up and down the hall with the baby because she wouldn’t stop crying.

Monday (Day 813): Pwning Housework

Being up and showered before 8:30AM made me feel like such a civilized human being that I could’ve sat down for a spot of tea and biscuit at a ladies luncheon and pwned that motherfuckin’ shit. That feeling soon bled out, leaving behind nothing but the shell of a domesticated man. I cleaned the bathroom, sealed the counters, vacuumed the rugs, and swept the floors. I pwned housework, which is a lot sadder than it looks in print.

The baby was eating like a maniac all day and it shortened every activity we planned, and eventually, every thought in our heads. There was no defining when she was going to want to eat beyond knowing that it would be soon. We eventually gave in and spent our time waiting.

My aunt visited at 2PM and my parents at 3. They stayed for a few hours and were all on the road by dinner time. I made dinner after they left, and the baby started crying just as it was ready. No amount of troubleshooting could point us to what the problem was. We got her calmed down enough to give her a bath, but afterward, she went right back into meltdown mode.

When we finally got her calmed down, I watched twenty minutes of Top Gear before falling asleep on the couch at 8:30 PM. I was sleeping deeply by 9PM, when the sound of choking had #1GF! and I leaping out of bed and throwing covers like the capes of a dynamic duo. I don’t think there’s a more effective alarm to get a parent out of bed and completely awake than the sound of a baby choking in the dark. I’m telling you, it’s like exercise. Your heart pounds, and you can’t even fathom that you were the least bit tired thirty seconds before.

By the time we were cribside, the baby had already resolved the situation herself. I took the baby in the other room and changed her. My intention was to give #1GF! a little break, but babies aren’t interested in intentions. She ate on the hour all night long.

Tuesday (Day 814): A Hurricane Of Tigers

The morning was a blur of baby care, but #1GF! and I managed to take the baby out for a walk in the early afternoon. We got a couple of chili dogs and ate them on the sea wall while the baby lay quietly in her stroller. Everyone around us was out enjoying a warm summer day, and we were poking our heads out of the baby care bubble to join them. All of them were blissfully unaware of the scream bomb quietly ticking away under a blanket in the carriage.

After the chili dogs settled, we walked to the post office to pick up a book of stamps. We ended up sitting on a bench in front of the post office watching the traffic go by. Ever do that? Just sit on a bench on a main street and watch the traffic? It’s like thumbing your nose at the rat race without putting out the effort to wiggle your fingers.

On the walk home, we bumped into one of my parents’ friends, and stopped to talk for a minute before dropping a bill at the light plant and heading home. It was a really decent way to spend a Tuesday afternoon.

When we got to our street, I popped the stroller up onto the curb instead of using a nearby wheelchair ramp. “Why would you do that?” asked an exasperated #1GF!. “The ramp is right there.”

I dismissed the question with a wave of my hand. “Why do I bungee jump? Why do I fight with switchblades? Why do I jump over mountains or eat kryptonite sandwiches?”

She paused. “You don’t do any of those things.”

“I know. So, if I want to pop a three inch wheelie to get a stroller up a curb, let me get a little crazy.” As usual, she shook her head at me.

We got home at 3PM and #1GF! fed the child. The day was a pleasant combination of sunny and breezy, and it was nice to know that the world was still right where we left it.

We tried to go to #1GF!’s mother’s house at 4PM to give her some face time with her new granddaughter, but had to leave an hour later than planned because the baby wasn’t in the mood for schedules. The baby wasn’t in the mood for much, actually. In the hour that we visited, we fed the baby three times and changed her twice. We left during the windup phase of one of her fits, which erupted into a full maelstrom of screaming in the car.

We calmed the baby down halfway through the ride, and went to pick up some takeout because #1GF! was looking for a treat. I agreed, and accidentally woke the baby when I closed the car door to go into the pizza shop. Awesome. The food wasn’t ready, so we had to sit in the car trying to calm down a baby that we had no idea what was wrong with.

The baby screamed the whole ride home and long after we she was home and fed. It was 8PM before she calmed down, and it felt like midnight. The baby was changed and relaxed a half hour later, and everything for her parents was an adrenaline soaked blur. Like the eye of a storm passing over, the calm was short lived. The baby resumed a gail force blast of screaming that we couldn’t stop if we boarded up our ears with plywood and some three inch screws.

We used perfectly logical troubleshooting to get her to stop crying, but it was like trying to reason with a hurricane of tigers. We had done every step twice and were out of ideas.

We reached for a straw and tried to give her a pacifier, even though we said we wouldn’t give the child a pacifier until much later, and only if absolutely necessary. After a few hours of screaming, all good intentioned parenting rules get tossed out the window because all you want is for your kid. To stop. Screaming.

The baby wanted nothing to do with the pacifier anyway, so our meaningless rules became even more meaningless. The baby was going to cry until whatever was bothering her was gone. What that was, we had no idea. There is no logic in colic. There is only satisfied and unsatisfied. Colic makes you appreciate even “mildly satisfied” because “unsatisfied” is so loud and nerve rattling.

The baby fed, cried, burped, cried, and eventually burned out at 10PM. It was only a two or three hours of screaming, but fifteen minutes filled with full on, non-negotiable screaming can be a long fucking time. A couple of hours will noticeably slow you down.

#1GF! and I ate cold takeout and tried not to make any noise that would restart the alarms. I was breathing through my nose, using only one nostril, only when I had to. There was a new queen in town, and her wrath was inversely proportional to her cuteness.

Wednesday (Day 815): The Massive Blur

I took the baby out of the room in the morning to let #1GF! sleep, and watched an hour of crappy TV before the baby wanted food. Once #1GF! was up, I got dressed and went out to do the food shopping. I felt bad about going out and leaving #1GF! at home, but food hasn’t magically appeared under my bed since college.

I got home, put the groceries away, and then sent #1GF! out to give her a break from the baby. We heard people say that giving the mom a little time of her own is a good idea. #1GF! didn’t really enjoy her time away, and came home just in time to catch the start of another baby freakout. It was the first time that I just wanted the baby to shut up or tell me what was wrong. I quickly remembered that she doesn’t speak English, and that she’s doing the best that she can. When you’re not sure if the random periods of screaming will last three minutes or three hours, some amount of frustration is inevitable.

When the baby starts screaming, you cycle through the troubleshooting options until one works, repeating steps at times. The baby’s screaming because she’s hungry, but she won’t eat, so you check her diaper and burp her. And she screams. You try to entertain her. And she screams. Five minutes later, she calms down because you feed her. You throw up your hands and write “WTF?” in the air. It’s like troubleshooting a PC with bad wiring.

Once the baby was asleep, #1GF! and I ate leftovers and watched Mad Men on demand. Going to bed after a day filled with screaming, knowing that there’s a very good chance that you’ll have to be up in a couple of hours to face the same, sucks.

The sleep deprivation and hours of screaming were turning everything into a massive blur. There was no day or night, just awake or asleep, calm or cacophonous. This was the first day that I asked #1GF! what day it was and she had no idea.

Thursday (Day 816): Well, I’m Her Dad

I was up and dressed by 8AM, making me feel like I was goddamned Superman. I straightened up the house a little, and one of #1GF!’s friends came over with her kids. We showed the kids around the house, they looked inside the forbidden game closet of mystery and saw the Mr. T head. The boy asked who it was. My head was immediately filled with phrases like “I pity the fool” and “first name Mr, middle name ‘period’, last name T!”, but my tongue was bound up by the frustration of not being able to properly relay the awesomeness of Mr. T in less than one hundred and fifty words to a generation who missed out on him.

“That’s Mr. T,” the mother said. The kid stared blankly, so the mother continued, “From that Rocky movie?”

“Oh yea,” the kid said as he walked to the next room shaking his head. “That movie was so stupid.”

Damn these kids today. I thought about throwing them out and telling them never to come back. Then, I realized that it’s not their fault that they were born fifteen years after the Mr. T cartoon was canceled. I pitied the fools and fed them cookies until they were ready to leave.

#1GF! and I ate lunch and timed a walk so that it would fall between feedings. Yea. Not only are we taking walks, but they actually require timing so that we don’t end up far from home with an angry baby. Walking is something you do when you have too many DUI’s and someone steals your ten speed. It shouldn’t be something that requires the effort of planning.

On our way home, a cop saw us with the baby and stopped us to talk about his wife’s impending delivery. I guess parents do that. Babies are so exciting for some people that they can’t help themselves. It’s understandable.

We got within ten minutes of home when the baby freaked out. I was ready to walk the ten minutes with our homemade siren and feed her when we got home, but #1GF! was panicked. I don’t think that baby cries have the same initial effect on fathers as they do mothers.

We stopped at an out of the way park bench overlooking the bay, and #1GF! fed the baby. A dog named Houston really wanted to get a taste of the baby, but I warded him off. His owner was apologetic, but if she had the fucking dog on a fucking leash, it wouldn’t have been a problem.

When we got home, I made #1GF! a pork chop dinner, which turned out dry because I can’t cook a pork chop to save my life. The baby slept on me, and #1GF! cleaned up the pans. Once the baby was confirmed to be soundly asleep, I went to the basement to grab some diapers and empty the dehumidifier.

I dug through our giant box o’ diapers looking for the correct size, and the robot glanced over at me before turning his attention back to the window he was guarding. He looked bored enough to shrug, if he had any shoulders. It made me want to dump some water on the floor just so that he’d have something to do. Instead, I just shrugged at him and filled my arms with diapers.

I went upstairs and checked my e-mail. There were a few feature requests for my WordPress plugins, a few “your beard is awesome” e-mails, and a few ads promising me that they could make everything from portfolios to appendages a lot bigger than I’d ever need.

I didn’t have any more rejections for my book, which you’d think would be good, but rejections are at least something. In the publishing industry, it seems that the step below rejection is being ignored. I was getting pretty good at sitting on that step.

I shut off the PC, and #1GF! and I gave the baby a bath. The little one was starting to freak out, so I went with my gut and did the first thing that I could think of to distract her. “Trick or treat [kiss]. Smell my feet [kiss]. Give me something good to eat [kiss].” Somehow, it calmed the baby right down. I looked over at #1GF! as if to say, “Am I the best or what?” She was welling up. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I love the way you deal with her.”

“Well, I’m her dad,” I said.

We both smiled at our good fortune at being able to make statements like that.

Friday (Day 817): All That And A…

I got up at 1:30AM and 6:30AM with the baby. I’m sure that I missed a feeding in there somewhere. I took the baby out of the room later in the morning so that #1GF! could catch up on her sleep. While the ladies slept, I sat on the couch watching The Fantastic 4, which didn’t leave a lasting impression on me.

#1GF! got up a couple of hours later, and we finished up watching a Mad Men disc. I got dressed and was thinking about running errands, when our friend’s daughter showed up. She parked her car in the driveway and went down to the beach. I love when people we know park in our driveway and go down to the beach. It makes me feel like I have something to offer.

Because everything has to be timed to avoid screaming, #1GF! and I waited for the end of the next feed cycle before making a trip out to the food warehouse. We planned to fill up the car with enough diapers to absorb a small pond, but were disappointed to find out that the warehouse carried everything but newborn diapers. What the hell, warehouse?

You can’t leave a warehouse store without spending a hundred bucks, so to make up for the lost diaper purchase, I bought a six pound bag of chocolate chips. For those who don’t understand just how big that is, the bags of chocolate chips that your grandma gets in the supermarket to make her toll house chocolate chip cookies are twelve ounces. Take eight of those and stack them up, and you’d have the warehouse bag.

It was a such a big bag of chips that it had it’s own gravity. I’m serious. Sugar packets were orbiting that bitch when I pulled it out of the crate. Yes, really. It was such a big bag that I wanted to carry it around on my shoulder and resurrect the phrase “all that and a bag of chips”. Hey, if they had the diapers, I would’ve bought them, but if you don’t have what I need, I’m bound to spend the extra money on way more than I need of something. That’s the whole point of the warehouse stores, isn’t it?

After the warehouse, we went to a department store so that #1GF! could get some clothes that weren’t hanging off her new, post-baby body. I carried the baby around, who was being surprisingly quiet. Quiet always carries a bit of tension though. You never know when the eye of the storm is going to shift and leave you in the middle of a torrent of screaming.

#1GF! was intense in her shopping because she knew that once the baby starts screaming, whatever we’re doing is finished. As she looked at clothes, I stood next to her holding the baby and wearing a giant pair of lime green ladies sunglasses that I grabbed off a nearby rack. I wore those sunglasses with the tag dangling down my nose for ten full minutes before she noticed. I’ll wait to entertain her, even if the joke isn’t all that funny. Thankfully, the baby slept through through the whole thing.

Despite being a little anxious about the length of quiet we had left, #1GF! and I were enjoying our time off together. As we walked down one of the aisles, I turned to #1GF!. “Hey, I’m pretty smart. Why couldn’t I start a business that makes good money?”

“Writing is your business,” she said while scanning the sides of the aisle for more clothes.

“But, it makes no money.”

“You’ve got to stick with some things to see a payoff.”

I didn’t like that answer. “I feel like I’ve put a lot of time into writing, but don’t see a payoff. Of course there’s the soft payoff in getting a little minor fame and getting to talk to tons of people that I wouldn’t normally get to talk to, but being able to live off of the words like they live off of me seems like it’s a long, long way off.”

She looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “I stuck with you longer than you’ve stuck with writing.” We looked down at the baby. I couldn’t argue. You can’t give up something you love just because it isn’t adhering to your timetable.

We headed home, and as soon as we crossed into town, the baby started yelling. She made it three hours without freaking, and we were actually pretty happy about that.

Saturday (Day 818): Heavy Metal RoboOoOoOoOot

I woke up to the baby screaming, which appears on my list of worst ways to wake up just below “gunshot” and “punch in the ding ding”. #1GF! was sleep deprived, so I sent her back to bed and took over the baby watching duties. I got the baby to sleep, and sat on the couch trying to avoid getting sucked into any infomercials.

I was dressed by 9, which was a hollow victory because the baby was already tearing into her second major freakout of the day. Just as she was drifting off to sleep, the phone rang to start the third. I was ready to rip the phone out of the wall so that I could go and beat some poor telemarketer with it until he screamed like the baby. Then I realized that revenge is a long road, and my misplaced rage would probably have dissipated before I got done googling the address of the telemarketer’s secret lair. I shrugged it off and put my energy into getting the baby back to sleep.

It was raining, and on a routine check of the basement, I found a new leak. That hadn’t happened in a while. I mixed up a small amount of hydraulic cement and sealed up a tiny hole in the foundation. It was hardly worth the effort.

The robot saw me coming, and didn’t bother cleaning the webs off of himself before wheeling himself over. The wispy webs floated on the air behind him like ghosts, until he stopped, and the momentum turned them into a grey, slow motion, hair whipping headbang. I wanted to sing “heavy metal RoboOoOoOoOot, but didn’t want to encourage him.

By the time he got over to me, I was already finished patching. I wiped off his screen and he flashed a fancy question mark at me to ask what was going on. It looked suspiciously web 2.0 enough that I wondered if he had been interfacing with the router without permission. “Nice touch on the question mark, pal. Very shiny. I’m impressed. There was a small leak, but I’m all done though. No assistance needed.”

The robot made the wzhhhew of a light saber starting.

I had to smile. “That’s pretty good too, but I’m still all set.”

“I am your father,” said a scratchy recording from his tiny speaker.

“Okay, now as much as I appreciate the references, I’m only going to say this once: Stop interfacing with the router or I’ll move it upstairs.”

A router with a line through it flashed on his screen.

“Exactly. Leave it alone.” I pointed at him to make my point.

The robot brought up what looked like a tiny version of Galaga.

“Is that Galaga? I loved Galaga! Oh, I could sit and play that…” I caught myself. “No more router, robot.”

Suddenly, his screen went pink and pixelated, and started pulsing. Whatever he was trying to display was way beyond his resolution capabilities. I was sure he was malfunctioning, when the the sound of groaning crackled through his speaker. And then another. And another. “Jesus CHRIST!” I said as loudly as would be expected of a man who is being shown pixelated porn by a very stupid robot who would soon have firewall rules named after him. “Stop stop stop.”

The robot stopped whatever his tiny circuits were trying to play back and his screen went blank.

#1GF! leaned down the stairs, “Everything okay?”

“Yup. It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

“It sounded like you hurt yourself.”

“Nope. It’s nothing. I’m fine. I’ll be right up.” I waited a couple of seconds for the cellar door to close. I bent down to address the robot with maximum clarity. “Erase it all and stop touching the router.” I pointed at him to show that I wasn’t kidding. “I mean it.” He flashed twice, beeped once, and rolled back to his corner to guard his window.

I went upstairs and headed out to the library to pay a fine on a baby book that I couldn’t return because at the time it was due, we were in the hospital having a baby. The irony was not lost on me.

Later, #1GF! and I drove all the way to a Chinese restaurant to get dinner during a lull in the screaming. It was only 4PM. We never made it past the parking lot because I just wasn’t hungry. #1GF! seemed disappointed, and I felt bad about it, but it’s hard to be hungry just because the baby is sleeping.

I didn’t feel like going home, but I knew that the baby would be spazzing soon. It was the perfect rainy day to be home, but being home isn’t enjoyable if you feel trapped by the walls and isolated by the weather. Then, sometimes, there’s nothing you can do but accept your fate. We went home and heated up some lasagna and sat in front of Mad Men.

As was becoming the norm, the baby had a meltdown at 7:30PM. I was jangled after a couple of hours, but couldn’t help but laugh when the little peanut started ripping out these adult sized farts. No wonder she was crying. If you trapped an elephant fart in my colon, I’d probably be crying too.

Once the baby was quiet, #1GF! and I plopped back on the couch. #1GF! turned to me. “Hey, if it’s Labor Day weekend, then I haven’t been off of work this long since I was a teenager.”

“It’s cool, isn’t it?”

“Totally.”

I thought for a second. “I guess it could be Labor Day weekend, but I’m not sure. There were some ads on TV about Labor Day sales, I think.”

“It could be.”

“Yea, I suppose it could be. I’m not sure.”

“Happy Labor Day?”

“Sure. Same to you. Happy Labor Day.”

It was not Labor Day. The two of us were so far into the bubble that we were not only unaware of the date, but we thought it could be a major holiday. It was sort of bad, but sort of cool at the same time.

What I Learned

• Clipping a newborn’s fingernails takes a pretty steady hand.
• There is no logic in colic.
• All well-intentioned parental rules fly out the window after a couple hours of screaming.
• A baby choking in the dark will turn a dead sleep to starting block ready.
• I cannot express who Mr. T is in a single phrase.
• When thinking about using the phrase, “I felt like fucking Superman”, consider that you might be conveying an unintended meaning and change it to “goddamned Superman”.
• Newborns blur time to the point where you think it could be a holiday when it’s not.
• They make six pound bags of chocolate chips.
• The food warehouse doesn’t carry newborn diapers.
• Sometimes you have to stick with things longer than you expected to see a payoff.
• Don’t make plans after 6PM, because that’s baby meltdown time.

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