This is week 118 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 819): Swearing In Old Movies

We woke up to screaming for the second day in a row. The baby got fed and changed, and then I stayed with her so that #1GF! could go back to bed. I ended up watching the original version of The Taking of Pelham 123 with Walter Matthau. It wasn’t bad. The pacing wasn’t as slow as most 70′s movies, and the swearing seemed more natural than it does in film today. Once and a while, a guy would throw out an F bomb, and it would smoothly merge into the flow of dialogue instead of appearing like something that was thrown in to keep the ratings board on its toes.

The main activities of the day were feeding and changing the baby. A neighbor brought over some baby gifts, and she got a tour of the house. We were still under the impression that it might be Labor Day weekend, which was reinforced by all the Labor Day sale ads on TV.

At 2PM, my parents came over. I made toffee chocolate bars and didn’t like them, but they seemed to go pretty fast with everyone else. My parents brought a blueberry pie, so I had a slice of that instead. There’s nothing like sitting around eating a piece of blueberry pie when the rest of the world is working. It was Sunday, so most people weren’t working, but we didn’t know that because the days in Newborn Land were so well blended together.

I gave my parents a couple of warehouse sized cans of tomatoes to take home, and they gave us some fresh tomatoes from their garden. We sat around the table eating and talking into the early evening, and then they headed home.

#1GF! and I were eating some leftover lasagna, when we finally figured out that it wasn’t Labor Day weekend. I got a call from a friend who laughed at me and told me that it was actually Easter before telling me that I needed to go out and get a damned job.

The baby slept most of the day, which made me think that the night was going to be pretty rough, which somehow, it wasn’t. It was oddly quiet. I lay there in the dark trying come up with new book ideas that I was sure that I’d eventually have time to write.

Monday (Day 820): Edible MP3 Players

I woke up to the baby crying, which is getting to be the normal way for me to wake up these days. I sat with the baby while #1GF! went back to bed to get some rest. The baby slept on my chest while I sat watching TV.

We eventually found our way out of the house in the afternoon to pick up a baby care reference book. We didn’t need anything else, and there’s not much you can do with a live scream bomb strapped to you, so we drove around aimlessly. It was just nice to be out of the house and in motion while expending zero effort.

When we got home, I made fettuccine alfredo, but the baby had a fit before we could enjoy it. I walked up and down the hall with her screaming in my ear. After an hour, I had to hand her over to #1GF!. The baby was frustrating to troubleshoot, and loud as hell. #1GF! ended up feeding her even though it wasn’t her time to eat. I couldn’t blame her. If I produced baby food, I would’ve tried to plug up the baby’s scream hole with it, too.

Once the baby was down, I shoveled down a lukewarm, semi-clotted alfredo, and went to check my e-mail. I had an idea for something that I really thought would be cool while I was cooking, but lost it in the scream blitz. I’ll remember it when a major company is making millions off of the idea five years from now.

I’ll be sitting on the couch with the robot, and I’ll be like, “Fuck. You see that shit, Robot? They’re selling edible MP3 players now. I thought of that five years ago and the baby screamed it right out of my head.” The robot will probably just beep in agreement because I’m the boss and he doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t know what an MP3 player is. #1GF! will probably be in the kitchen stirring medication into my prunes.

And I’ll make such a big fuss about it that my daughter will end up telling people at school that her dad not only wrote over twenty unpublished novels, but he that he is the original inventor the edible MP3 player. She’ll eventually bring in the shop vac and tell the class that it’s a robot. All because of colic. Great. Thanks colic. Thanks for making me lose the idea that will eventually cause my little girl to wear headphones all the time to drown out the taunting.

Tuesday (Day 821): All About Nipples

In the pre-dawn hours, we stared at the baby when she was quiet, changed her when she made a mess, and fed her when she cried. The morning was quieter and smoother than normal, and I wanted to keep it that way.

My mother called early, and the ring of the phone startled me pretty badly. The screaming has made me a little high strung. #1GF! walked in and handed me the phone. I explained to my mother that she had inadvertently caused me to launch a full bowl of Cheerios all over the kitchen. #1GF! took a look at the mess and walked away laughing.

“Do you guys ever fight?” asked my mother.

“No, not really. Once in a great while we catch ourselves talking in a less respectful tone, but that’s about as crazy as it gets around here.”

“You two are amazing.”

“It’s pretty good, yea.”

#1GF! vanished for a little while I was on the phone, and once I hung up, I walked into a room where she was trying out a breast pump for the first time. I guess I wasn’t supposed to see that show.

After you’ve seen just about all there is to see on your lady, including the inside of her womb, it’s sort of weird to see her ducking for cover to hide something. “You have to get out of here,” she said while trying to cover up, wave me off, and gather the tubes and hoses at the same time.

“But it looks so weird,” I said while staring like a monkey seeing a space ship for the first time.

#1GF! grimaced. “I feel like a cow.”

“Mooooo!” I said before my brain could catch up with my mouth. It was not the correct thing to say, and I was summarily ejected from the room.

Once the equipment was packed back into it’s secret hiding spot, we spent some of the warm, summer midafternoon out for a walk. As we strolled along the beach, we talked about how lucky we were to have three months off together. Not many people we know have had that opportunity as responsible adults.

We walked along sand dunes that were gradually drifting onto the hot asphalt, feeling the warmth of the sun on our shoulders and listening to the scratch of the sand under the carriage wheels. We were quietly enjoying everything through the glow of our newly realized luck.

Like having a bags thrown over our heads and being thrown into a black van, the baby abducted us from the bright streets of Luckville by blowing up into a full scale fit. She didn’t give the slightest warning. We were a couple of miles from the house, and were standing over her stroller with sand dunes on one side of us, and beach houses on the other. We had to start troubleshooting right there in the street before the noise started setting off car alarms.

We had to change her in her carriage in the street, which was a strangely tense experience for a new parent who hasn’t mastered changing a baby away from home. I kept thinking people would come out of their houses to tell us to get that half-naked scream machine out from in front of their house, but it didn’t happen. Most people were at work or living in their winter houses.

Changing the baby didn’t help, and the baby wasn’t going to stop sounding the alarm until she got what she wanted. And it seemed like she wanted to eat. There was no way that we were going to make it home, so we had to roll the stroller out to an isolated spot on the beach so that #1GF! could feed her. There was really no other option.

Like a fire truck, I think of relative isolation as 500 feet. On a beach on a warm day, 500 feet would’ve put us offshore. I got us to a spot that was maybe a hundred feet away from people, and I was still trying to shield #1GF! the best I could. We sat on the beach, and #1GF! fed the baby.

After she was done, I packed the baby back into the stroller, and helped #1GF! off of the soft sand. I’m sure that she could’ve gotten up on her own, but it had only been four weeks since her surgery, and I was trying to make sure that she didn’t put any unnecessary strain on her mending stomach muscles.

After it was over, we walked off the sand feeling like we had just passed some sort of test.

We walked home, and I stood outside talking to the neighbors before going in to give the baby her first real bath. Because newborns aren’t mobile, they don’t really get dirty. They barely have the motor skills to smile, so it’s not like you’re going to find them rolling around in the yard or putting peanut butter in their hair.

Even if you wanted to put your kid in a bath, you can’t give her anything more than a wiping down with a wet washcloth until her umbilical cord stump falls off and heals up. That stump had been gone over a week, and we were finally ready to give the baby her first real bath. We put a tub into the kitchen sink and bathed her. It took two of us to do it. One controlled the fidgety limbs, and the other washed the baby. Then, we’d switch for rinsing. It was over in a matter of minutes, and the baby came out fine.

I felt the need to celebrate my minor victory over bathing, so I made a eyebrow-twitchingly bad pot of coffee. I was obvious that I had completely forgotten how to make coffee over the last few weeks. I could barely drink it.

The books say that you should get a baby used to bottle feeding early or you’ll have a hard time introducing it later on. Because the first feed on the beach, the first change in the street, and the first bath weren’t enough milestones for the day, we decided that I’d try to feed the baby with a bottle.

I sat on the couch, taking #1GF!’s instruction on how to hold the baby to feed her. Once she was positioned correctly, I gave her her first bottle. The poor kid was getting more milk on her shirt than in her mouth because she couldn’t keep up with the bottle’s flow rate. I had to switch to a slow flow nipple to avoid wasting the milk. Who knew that there were nipple speeds? These are things that men generally don’t need to know. Once the baby wasn’t drowning in milk, she took to the bottle just fine.

Afterward, #1GF! looked on with quiet excitement. “Do you feel good that you took part in the feeding?” she asked.

“Um, yea sure,” I said.

“You don’t?”

“I fed her. It took a while.”

“You don’t want to feed her?”

“No, no. I’ll gladly feed her to take the pressure off of you. No problem.”

“But, don’t you feel a bonding when you feed her?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Um, not really, no.”

#1GF! gave a short “Hm” to indicate that my position was perplexing.

I think that she was asking because the baby books suggest that having the father feed the baby can calm the jealousies that men harbor for not being able to feed their children from their own pointless nipples. Yes, the books really say shit like that. It’s as if the only male they consult when writing these books is Janie’s sensitive husband, Lawrence, who cries at movies and just adores romantic evenings and salsa dancing.

Here’s something for all those lady baby book writers who enjoy using their expertise with babies as license to explore the male psyche: Men aren’t jealous of breast feeding. A lot of men like the boobs, but we don’t wish we had a set hanging off of our own chests.

If a man is jealous of a woman breastfeeding his baby, then one of two things are going on: 1. The baby won’t be enough to save his fucked up relationship, or 2. There are too many women living in his house, and he’ll probably calm down after he syncs up his periods with them.

For a man, the transfer of food is a necessity, not a jealousy inducing bonding experience. Fuck. Those books act like men are mentally three years old. I mean, we’re at least fucking fifteen, ass juice.

I changed the baby after the feed and somehow ended up with shit nuggets all over one hand. It’s odd having shit on your hand and not being revolted, but with babies, shit is a fact of life. When you’re changing diapers eight to twelve times a day, you get desensitized to shit faster than a German porn star. I had to do the rest of the change with one hand.

The ladies of the house both fell asleep, and I made a dinner of antipasto, sausages, fries and corn on the cob to quell my jealous rage at the world for giving me hairy man nipples instead of supple, nourishing lady boobs. It worked quite well. After dinner, we watched Adventureland, which had enough funny moments to be watchable, but not enough to be recommendable.

Wednesday (Day 822): I [heart] [picture of french fries]

I spent my morning watching home shows and minding the baby while #1GF! caught up on her sleep. We were dressed by noon, and out the door by 1PM. We dropped a car at the mechanics, went to the drugstore, the supermarket, and a home store. It was an uneventful series of stops.

We then went into a craft store, and I saw an iron-on transfer in a wire rack that simply read “I [heart] [picture of french fries]. I really wanted to buy it and put it on a T-shirt because nothing so far in my life has expressed my love for fried potatoes so concisely. I soon realized that the iron on was made for children, and concluded that people might mistake my colossal love of french fries for an fairly significant intelligence deficit. Sadly, I left the iron on where it was and moved on.

We left without the purchase and were back at home by 4PM. I made dinner at 5, and there were no french fries involved, even though I still hearted them. A lot. I mean that french fries. Call me.

I was playing with the baby, and for the first time, she smiled like she knew that I was there. I know. It was close to impossible for her to smile on her own at four weeks old, so it was probably just gas, but it looked and felt like a genuine smile to me.

Her smile soon faded into fussiness, so #1GF! and I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what was wrong with her while she screamed in our ears. There was enough walking up and down the hall to wear a path into the hardwood. Once the baby fell asleep, #1GF! and I flopped in front of the TV because we didn’t have the energy to do anything else. This baby is turning me into a couch potato…which is one potato that I do not heart.

Thursday (Day 823): Pink, Pink, Pink, And Pink

I got up and watched the baby so that #1GF! could take a nap and take a shower. I went out to mow the lawn once she was up. By the time I was finished sweeping the clippings off of the walk, it was already 1PM. It now takes half a day just to get one simple thing done.

Once I got back in, the baby had a fit that took us a half hour to troubleshoot. To help us become better parents, she wailed at full volume the entire time. It was only 1:30, but it felt like late afternoon. I took a shower and could feel myself starting to crash at 3PM.

The baby had a rash all over her face that was getting steadily worse, and we finally gave in and called the doctor about it. We didn’t want to be paranoid parents calling about minor issues all the time, but when combined with the nonstop screaming, we didn’t want to take a chance that there was something really wrong with the baby. The doctor told us that it was probably just a heat rash and told us to keep an eye on it.

After we gave the baby a bath, #1GF! wanted to go for a walk. She was gathering all the necessities to take the baby out, but I wasn’t going to go because I was afraid that the boredom of walking would push my level of tired up too extreme levels, possibly leaving me fast asleep a couple of miles from home. #1GF! was okay with that, but she was going on a walk with or without me.

I suddenly realized that #1GF! slept less than I did, and if she could find the energy, so could I. We walked to the post office and the baby started fidgeting and getting loud. It looked like the walk would be cut short, but luckily, some bumpy pavement calmed her down.

#1GF! picked up an iced coffee from a local bakery and I sat at one of the wrought iron tables outside with the carriage. While I was waiting, an old lady stopped to look at the baby. The baby was dressed in pink and covered in pink blankets and in a stroller that is pretty much made up of pink dots. “Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.

I smiled. “She’s a girl,” I said. She seemed nice, but I was ready to stop her gnarled fingers from getting anywhere near the baby if they ever came near.

“Oh she’s so cute,” she said. I continued smiling as a reply.

The woman wandered off, and a postman cleared out the mailbox forty-five minutes before the scheduled collection time. I felt like I had witnessed an injustice. All those times as a young man that I ran to the mailbox to get something in there before the scheduled collection times were probably a waste. I shook my head like an old man. An old man sitting in front of a post office.

#1GF! came out of the bakery with a decaf iced coffee, which is as pointless to me as chewing nicotine gum. Even though she is allowed to have cup of coffee or a glass of wine a day, #1GF! doesn’t. This baby was an unexpected gift, and she wanted to give her the best opportunity possible, even if it meant going beyond what is required. I had to respect her for that.

We made it just in time for the baby to start crying. Instead of thinking “SHE’S CRYING AGAIN?!?!” we thought “Hey, our timing is getting a little better.”

I ate leftovers over the sink for dinner, and turned on the PC to research literary agents once the baby had settled down. It took hours just to find nine that might be interested in my manuscript.

With all the resources available, you’d think it would be simple to find a few agents, but you have to sift through them to find the ones that are more likely to be interested in your work. Then, you have to find their requirements for submitting a manuscript, which are all different. Then, you have to cross-reference the information with other sites to make sure the agent you’re about to query isn’t a scam artist or too busy to take on any clients.

I was up until 12:30 AM researching, two hours after #1GF! had gone to bed. The baby was quiet, so I had to take the time where I could get it. When I finally got into bed, I lay in the dark thinking of book ideas and came up with something new. I also came up with an idea for vinyl mustaches that could be stuck on the bathroom mirror to make clean shaven people look awesome. Yea. I know. All these ideas, and so little time for execution.

Friday (Day 824): It Was A Really Tiny Suitacase

I was up at 7. I threw down a bowl of cereal and brushed my teeth before taking the baby out of the bedroom to let #1GF! get some rest. It was cold in the morning for the first time this year. Nothing was on TV, so I sat watching the news because I didn’t have the brain power to do something else.

Once #1GF! got up, she announced that we were scheduled to meet her family for lunch at a restaurant. With the baby’s inclination toward sudden and ear-piercing screaming fits, being in the middle of a crowded restaurant was not where I wanted to be. Plus, the baby was only four weeks old, and I didn’t think that it was a good idea to take her relatively useless immune system anywhere that there would be a lot of strangers. Yes, I’m captain paranoid. Yes, that’s why #1GF! didn’t tell me about it ahead of time. She sprung it on me at the last moment to weaken my defenses, and I caved.

We went to lunch, and for the most part, the baby was fine. It’s amazing how fast a baby can get you moving in a public place with the mere inklings of a screaming fit, but the baby never reached her boiling point. Although it was tense a good portion of the time, I managed to eat a chicken pot pie and talk to other adults without interruption.

After lunch, we picked up #1GF!’s car from the mechanic. As soon as #1GF! got out of the car, the baby started screaming. I twisted my arm around ROCKET CAR!’s inflexible Recaro seat to let her chew on my finger. It quieted her down a little, but I knew that there was no way I could drive a stick with my arm bent back as if it were being used by police to subdue me. I’m not sure that I could’ve driven an automatic that way, because it felt like a good bump under ROCKET CAR!’s suspension would’ve dislocated my shoulder.

As I sat there with the baby chewing on my finger, a car pulled in next to mine. A scruffy guy opened his door and dumped part of a beer onto the ground. He was the driver. I’m all for live and let live, drink if you want to drink, but I wanted to punch the guy in the fucking face. Two worlds sat side by side and I was glad his car was in park.

Once we got on the road, ROCKET CAR!’s stiff suspension jiggled the baby into a state of calm. We made it home without a lot of screaming.

#1GF! went to feed the baby, and I tried to make lemon tea cookies. They’re basically a small cookie with a sandy texture that has a dollop of lemon goo in the middle. I never made them before, and I completely fucked up the goo. It was more like juice than goo. I got irritated and drowned the cookies in it, asking if they “liked that shit” when I poured it on them. They didn’t come out like they were supposed to, but they didn’t turn out too badly. (Feel free to make fun of me for this paragraph. I not only made tea cookies and used the word “dollop”, but I admitted to getting aggravated over making cookies incorrectly…Oh, would you look at that? One of my balls has packed a tiny suitcase and is trying to leave my nutsack. That’s just great. These goddamned old-school balls have no respect for a guy trying to broaden his horizons.)

Later in the afternoon, some friends called, and we went out to meet them for a walk on the beach. When we got home, I had a sandwich for dinner out of pure laziness.

We put on The Soloist once the baby was relaxed, and she freaked out within two minutes of me pressing the play button. I’m getting the suspicion that the baby can hear the press of a play button or the twisting of a stove knob through walls and closed doors. We ended up spending enough time trying to calm her down that the movie wasn’t worth it anymore.

Saturday (Day 825): Solitaire And Screaming

I did the morning shift with the baby and was dressed by 10AM. It seemed like I was somehow ahead of the game. While watching the baby, I sat at the table and played solitaire. It reminded me of a old woman who used to mind me as a child while my parents worked. She seemed like she could sit at the kitchen table smoking Parliaments and laying cards atop the giant, orange flower patterned vinyl tablecloth all day long. I could suddenly picture the metal drawer that held the cards, and the way she would point a tobacco stained finger at cards when I got stuck. In the quiet of the morning, I could almost imagine the feel of the fuzz on the underside of that tablecloth against my legs. And I realized that playing solitaire while sitting at a table is something that people do only when they’re waiting for something.

In the afternoon, we packed up the baby and went to visit my parents. My father’s tomato pots had migrated from the back yard to all over the front lawn. I understand that tomatoes grow better where the sun is, but it seemed like a warning sign of a future that I was doing my best to ignore. I brought them some lemon cookies, and they seemed to enjoy them. We fed the baby twice and changed her once in the short time that we were there, and left before she had a chance to meltdown.

When we got in the car, #1GF! suggested that we go out to dinner, but I had the feeling that the baby would ruin any meal that we tried to pay for. As if trying to prove me right, the baby freaked out with twenty minutes left to drive, and screamed the rest of the way home. When we got her in the house, she ate more than ever, and then power puked all over the couch. I was in the line of fire and had to change my clothes.

I made boxed mac and cheese for dinner because it required minimal effort to be considered dinner. We ate, and went to bed soon after the baby. I lay in bed listening to the baby’s sounds, and even the crickets were getting in the way of me hearing her breathe.

What I Learned

• Swearing in old movies fits in the dialogue better than modern movies.
• A newborn can make you think it’s a holiday, even when it’s not.
• The baby can hear the click of a play button or the twist of a stove knob through walls and closed doors.
• Breast pumps are weird.
• Changing a baby for the first time in public is a little stressful.
• I can now give the baby a bath without breaking it.
• I lost the knack for making a good pot of coffee.
• I can now bottle feed a baby.
• There are different flows on nipples. Some are fast, some are slow.
• Baby book writers think that men are jealous of nipples and have the mental age of three year olds.
• They make iron-ons that say simply “I [heart] [picture of french fries]“.
• Even smiles that are caused by gas feel real to a new parent.
• Those mailbox collection times are not very rigid.
• I learned to make something like lemon tea cookies.
• #1GF! can be sneaky when she knows my answer to her question.
• A tight suspension will calm a baby right down.
• I may one day have tomato pots all over my lawn.
• Solitaire is nothing more than waiting with cards.

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