This is week 119 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 826): Rejections And Yelling

When I woke up, I took the baby out of the room so that #1GF! could catch up on the sleep she lost overnight. The temperature outside was hovering in the 60’s and you could feel fall creeping around the creaky hallway floor.

Once #1GF! was up, I grabbed a sandwich and we sat down to watch Kitchen Nightmares. I glanced out the window and noticed that the neighbors were all out working on their houses. I felt like I should be doing something too.

I changed the baby four times before noon, which seemed like a lot to me, considering it was only my portion of the changings. The baby soon fell asleep, #1GF! jumped into the shower. I sat by the window reading a book. So much for keeping up with the Joneses.

The baby woke up before the shower was over, and I tried to keep her quiet long enough for #1GF! to dry her hair.

As if the cosmos was determined to cram something useful into my day, a neighbor came over and asked me to help move a twenty-nine inch tube TV. Do you remember how big those suckers are? The larger models that were introduced at the end of the tube TV life cycle aren’t quite a one-man job to carry, but not quite a two-man job, either. They’re perfectly balanced to pry themselves away from your meager three-fingered grip and through the floor, unless of course they force you backward, using a couple of your ribs to cushion their fall. When you have two people, it’s more of the same, just with more fingers and ribs getting in the way. Luckily, this TV didn’t have to go more than a few feet, so the job was done in under ten minutes.

I went back to my house and washed my hands so that I could play with the baby. #1GF! was holding her, so I rubbed from the back of the baby’s scalp to the front in a gentile swipe. The baby’s eyes closed like a doll’s. I did it five or six times, and #1GF! would laugh every time, causing the baby’s eyes to pop open.

At 2PM, I sat myself at my desk to get some queries out to agents. I spent part of the time reformatting and spell checking my manuscript, and then dove into getting the queries written and sent. At the end of four hours, I only had eight queries completed.

My goal was to get ten queries out a week, but it was a lot more time consuming than I anticipated. Maybe the difficult part is recompiling the submission package to meet each particular agent’s guidelines. Some agents want three chapters, some fifty pages, some want you to include a synopsis, and some want nothing more than a query letter that addresses specific questions about your credentials and the marketability of your manuscript. Others want some combination. And from what I’ve read, sending something outside an agent’s guidelines earns you a quick form rejection.

Once you have all of the information compiled the way the agent wants it, you need to find a way to break the ice with her so that she might actually read past the first paragraph of your query. That means looking up an article she may have written or knowing something about their current client list.

Imagine doing this with someone you’ve never met and have no ties to. Now, imagine trying to do it ten times in a day. It’s as fun as cold calling someone with a “great offer” at dinnertime. The day is gone before you realize it, and you have nothing more to show for it than a head full of useless facts about about people that you’ll probably never hear from, who will probably never see your query under the pile on their assistant’s desk.

At the end of the day, I had sixteen queries sent out, four of which had already been returned with rejections. It wasn’t the best way to boost an ego, but rejection is a major part of the game. You write your book and then stand on the porch with your two black shirts, two pairs of black pants, one pair of black boots, two pairs of black socks, one black jacket, and three hundred dollars personal burial money, and you wait without encouragement until you’re invited in. That’s just the way it goes.

I made enchiladas for dinner while #1GF! continued looking after the baby. I took over after dinner because #1GF! hadn’t had a break for hours.

I had the baby for a mere hour and couldn’t get her settled down. She cried, cried, and cried, and when she was done with that, she moved on to yelling. At one point, my frustration hissed out of me like an overpressured radiator, and I gave the baby an angry “SHHHH”. I felt immediately bad about it because I remembered that she was just a baby, and you can’t be angry at a baby for doing what babies do. My frustration was immediately replaced by the awareness that the baby was a gift, so I smiled and tried harder to calm her down. It still didn’t work. #1GF! took her for ten minutes and she fell right to sleep.

I went to check my e-mail and found that some douche nozzle was selling my beard chart on a T-shirt without telling me. I know it’s not high art, but I’ve had offers to have that chart appear in a few books, and I’ve turned them all down. If I wanted someone else to profit off of my work, I’d go get myself a boss. I sent a note to the parent company to let them know that I wanted the T-shirt removed from their store, and they took it down.

#1GF! fed the baby and went to bed early. A day of taking care of the baby combined with night after night of sleep loss were taking their toll. For some reason, I only feel that I can relax and work on my book when both of my ladies are asleep, so I continued my agent research until about 1AM. I only managed to find a few more prospects.

The baby woke up just after I shut the PC down. I was still wide awake, so #1GF! and I talked while she fed the baby. It was sort of nice sitting there as a little family when most people were asleep. It would’ve been nice to be sleeping, but you do what you have to.

Monday (Day 827): TLA 4eva

Ha! After all the previous confusion about when Labor Day was, it was finally upon us. I woke up at 8AM, and #1GF! was already feeding the baby. I grabbed a waffle, reheated a cup of coffee from the day before, and then brushed my teeth. I walked down the hall to see what I could do to help. I could hear Kitchen Nightmares on. I thought #1GF! only watched it because I did. Everything was under control, so I went in for a shower.

When I got out, I took the baby and spent some time trying to figure out why she was freaking out. It turned out to be a bad bout of gas. We gave her a bath and put her in her swing to see if it would calm her down.

Now, we didn’t like putting the baby in a swing because it was like giving over the baby care to a machine. We’re normal (ahem) humans and should be able to rock a baby to sleep. Unfortunately, the record seems to disagree. The swing not only stopped the baby’s crying, but it put her to sleep. If it ended up being a crutch for her later on, we’d deal with it later on. When you’re constantly facing hours of screaming, you sometimes take the path of least resistance. I gave in to the baby’s new, robot overlord, and it worked it’s magic. The baby was soon asleep.

It was already 11:15AM, and we hadn’t done anything but give the baby a bath. #1GF! went in for a shower, and I made coconut biscotti and read a book while it baked. After her shower, #1GF! dusted the house and then took a nap on the couch. We still hadn’t done much, but we gave ourselves a couple of imaginary checkmarks for having cookies and clean place to eat them in.

We went out for a walk around 4PM, and the kids across the street asked if they could see the baby. We said sure they could, and waited. The little girl looked at us. “Well, we can’t…um…cross….”

We’re new to the whole parenting thing. We walked the baby over to them so that they could see her.

“My aunt is having a baby,” said one of the kids.

“Oh, so you’ll have a baby cousin,” said #1GF! “That’ll be fun.”

The little girl got fidgety, “Well, they’re not married, but we call her my aunt. I’m not sure if the baby is really my cousin.”

#1GF! and I looked at each other and smiled at our own lack of wedding rings.

“He’s your cousin,” I said nodding reassuringly, which the little girl seemed to like.

We walked to the post office, and #1GF! stopped into the bakery to get an iced coffee.

“I can’t believe we’ve been off together for a month. Seriously. When was the last time you had a month off? High school?”

#1GF! shrugged and sipped her iced coffee. “Um, like probably.”

“This is the 2000’s. You should’ve totally like texted me that.”

“You don’t text.”

“I know. You’re so 2008 and I’m so two thousand and late. LOL BRB WTF?

“IKWYM 459 JD + #1GF! TLA 4eva.”

I shook my head. “4eva. Perfect.”

When we got home, we went out to do the food shopping. #1GF! ended up sitting in the car because the baby was freaking out once again.

During the trip, I finally figured out where supermarkets keep fresh basil. Its not in with the other herbs on the vegetable rack like you’d expect. It’s actually stocked with the tomatoes, which I found completely by accident. I had looked for basil on three other occasions in two different supermarkets and failed to find it. I was under the impression that it was some sort of specialty item that no one carried. I felt like shaking my fist at the basil and saying “I gotcha now, you sunnufabitch.” Why didn’t I just ask someone? Because I like having something to shake my fist once and a while. Happy?

We made it home a little more frazzled than we left, and I put the groceries away while #1GF! fed and changed the baby. I took the recycling to the basement, cleaned the dehumidifier filter, and straightened up the house a little before taking the garbage out. I stopped doing minor chores just in time for the baby to freak out again. Forty-five minutes later, the baby was being fed whether that was what she was yelling about or not.

I started dinner, but #1GF! told me to forget it. We’d have leftovers if the baby ever calmed down. I leaned on the counter and made some notes about the day in my notebook.

Sometimes having a baby is like having a new boss who has no patience, doesn’t speak English, and yells all the time. Then at other times, when the baby is smiling at you, you understand exactly why you do it.

Tuesday (Day 828): They Grow Up So Fast

I took the baby out of the bedroom, and sat on the couch reading a book. While reading is not necessarily a constructive activity, I was happy that I had broken free of the tractor beam of the T.V. screen. I read until noon, at which time I got dressed and had lunch, not necessarily in that order. It’s really not a bad life. Not at all.

#1GF! and I went out for a walk and noticed that the normal crowds of bronze, shirtless old men wearing gold chains had been cut back to skeleton crews. They would soon be packing their leathery skins into their parkas until next season. It was a sure sign that fall was coming.

I had no job, my brain had gone to mush, and I was out walking during the day for fun. With the exception of a few query letters, I hadn’t written a paragraph since the baby was born.

I came home and read on the couch again with the baby sleeping next to me. I finished that book before dinner. I checked my e-mail and had another form rejection. I tried Oxyclean, and dead or not, Billy Mays was full of shit. That stuff doesn’t whiten anything. I shook my fist at the laundry and went to the kitchen to make dinner.

Pesto is a really simple pasta sauce consisting of pine nuts, basil, olive oil and grated parmesan. I typically made the dish by putting dried basil in olive oil for an hour to reconstitute it. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Now that I had an actual package of fresh basil, I was going to make pesto with it.

You want to make pesto for yourself, you say? No problem. It’s one of the easiest pasta meals to make. You throw 1/3 cup pine nuts in a food processor with a third of a cup of olive oil and chop ‘em up. Throw in about half of a small Stop & Shop package of basil (say 15-25 leaves of varying sizes) with a pinch of salt and chop that up. Now throw in 1 1/4 cups of fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and pulse until blended. It takes less time than boiling water. Mix that shit in with pound of whatever pasta you’re into and you’re good to go.

I threw in a couple of cloves of garlic with the pine nuts (because my problem with authority extends all the way to recipes) and it was, by far, the best pesto that I’ve ever made. It would be fresh basil from there on out.

Before we knew it, it was 8:30PM and the baby was working her way into a full-volume freak out. She seems to regularly scream at night. We went through the normal troubleshooting options, and as usual, none of them were working. When we were changing her, the baby had to move up to the next diaper size. Our little girl was no longer an N. She had bumped up to a Size 1. It didn’t help to stop her crying, but it was a mini-milestone for us to think about while her screams bounced around the halls.

Once the ladies of the house were calmed down and in bed, I went back to researching agents. I worked for hours, only managing to add eleven names to my list of potential agents. The hours I put in seemed ridiculous for a few names, but each of those names had the potential to publish a book, and without any other contacts in the publishing world, it’s all about potential.

Wednesday (Day 829): Hey, Kids!

I took the baby out of the room to let #1GF! sleep once again, and sat on the couch reading another book. Once #1GF! was up, she sucked me into watching Bad Boys on cable for the hundredth time. It wasn’t half as good as one of my all-time favorite action flicks, Bad Boys II. Yes, I’m serious. No one ever believes me on this one. Bad Boys sucked. I won’t fight to keep that one from wherever movies go to die. Bad Boys II, on the other hand, contains one of the most over-the-top and underrated car chases I’ve ever seen on film. That’s a fact.

I took a shower at 12:30, and #1GF! and I went out for a walk along the beach. The slowly moving parachutes of the para-surfers were the only indication that there were other people out enjoying the shore.

We were walking by a giant dune and #1GF! turned to me. “I can’t believe we’ve been together almost eight years.”

I nodded. “I know. It seems crazy, doesn’t it?” I smiled. “It won’t be long before you’ll be lovingly spooning tapioca to me in the home.”

We pulled over to the side of the sand-swept street to give a Chevy Suburban plenty of room to get by. As it passed, one of our neighbors waved and yelled “Hey, kids!” out of the back seat. There was no one else around but us and the baby. It’s funny to think that you’re old, and still be known as “the kids” to people who aren’t your parents.

When we got home, I made a quick pan pasta sauce with the remaining fresh basil, and ruined it at the last minute by adding too much salt. To make dinner more delicious, I turned a loaf of garlic bread into a black garlic rock.

I was more irritated than I would’ve thought a man could get about screwing up dinner. I like my food and I don’t like to screw up. When I screw up and it affects my food, it causes issues. I was aggravated enough to let it show.

After dinner, #1GF! and I tried to watch Dexter, but the baby has a sixth sense about when we put in a movie, even if it’s on mute behind a closed door. She was completely inconsolable for two solid hours. #1GF! and I walked up and down the hallway so many times that we wore a trail into the floor that should be apparent to woodland creatures long after humans are gone.

I had turned on my PC at some point during the early evening in the hopes of checking my agent query letters after the ladies had gone to bed. At 11PM, the baby was still screaming her lungs out. When she finally calmed down, she had been screaming for three straight hours. My nerves were too jangled to care if an agent thought my book was marketable or not. I shut off my PC without checking anything and went to bed.

Thursday (Day 830): Post Or Die, The Ink Runs Dry

I woke up, and my first thought was not “what a glorious morning not to be working,” or “isn’t this perpetual state of weekend awesome?” The very first thought in my head was, “How the fuck is it Thursday already?” I was as surprised at the thought as you are, given the nature of my life. I mean, how did I know that it was actually Thursday, anyway? Shh. Don’t question miracles. Let’s just agree that it was amazing.

I took the baby out of the room at 6AM so that #1GF! could catch up on her sleep. I read on the couch for a bit before dozing off. The days and nights of screaming were taking their toll. I woke up in a panic that I might kick the baby off the couch with my big, dumb man legs or something.

Because my fatigue was affecting my logic circuits, instead of just sitting up and staying awake, I turned around the other way on the couch so that my head was near the baby. I crimped my body into an uncomfortable position on half of the couch and fell briefly back to sleep. I woke up with my brain battling my body on whether or not sleep was really good idea when you’re a klutz sharing a couch with a newborn.

The brain won, and I sat on the couch reading until 8:30AM. I changed the baby and brought her in to feed at 9AM. While the baby was busy, I ate, brushed, and showered. I then reclaimed her so that #1GF! could do the same.

Once we were showered and ready, the baby fell asleep, so I took the time to send out four more agent queries. We were planning to run some errands, but decided to wait until after the next feeding so we didn’t get caught in a store somewhere with a loud and hungry baby.

We made it out the door a few hours later. I dropped in to check on the status of some contact lenses, and then stopped by my parents’ house to hang out for a little while. My mother can’t seem to stay outside of a two foot radius from the baby. It’s understandable, but it’s really funny to see a grandma from this perspective.

We left with a couple of tomatoes, and I convinced #1GF! to stop off and treat herself to a Blizzard. I think the things are one of the grossest desserts you can buy, but she likes them. She stopped after a little persuasion, and I held the cup for her while she drove. The baby wasn’t really psyched about being out of the house, so my other hand was twisted back over the seat trying to soothe her.

We went home and ate leftovers for dinner, and I was going to send out more queries, but something held me back. I felt like the queries were causing me to stagnate. Maybe it was the ingrained “post or die” mentality of blogging, but spending all the time trying to sell someone on what I had written instead of moving forward on my next book made me feel like I was standing still. It was worse than standing still. It felt like I was pointing to a high school trophy and trying to convince people how good I was, rather than moving on and creating a new accomplishment. Fiction doesn’t stagnate like blog posts do, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was wasting my time on marketing at the expense of production.

I gave up on the queries and read at the table while I waited for the baby to doze off. I put down my book, and just as I started making notes about the day in my notebook, my pen died. It was a crappy pen, but it had been the pen that I had become used to writing with over the course of a year. I stared at it as if I had eye beams that could generate ink, before shaking it and giving it one last try. I quietly said, “Come on, man,” to it when it refused to write. With hundreds of thousands of words of faithful service behind it, that pen deserved a sendoff like Spock at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. What it got was me quietly saying, “Aw bitch,” before unceremoniously throwing it in the trash.

I pulled open the junk drawer and pushed aside batteries, rubber bands, and an unexpectedly large number of twist ties to find a replacement that I could conscript into service. #1GF! walked in at the sound of my rummaging.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“My pen died. Now, I need a new one.”

“Hold on a second,” she said, as an idea carried her into another room. I continued pushing around the bleak prospects of second hand advertising pens while I waited. #1GF! returned to the room.

“What about this?” she said as she pulled out a silver pen with a magician’s flourish. “I got it years ago as a gift and never used it.”

I looked at the lean, polished pen and shook my head. “I don’t know. I think it’s a little too fancy for me.”

“I’m not using it. It’s been in my desk for years.”

“Thanks, but it’s too fancy. My readers call for the mention of “ass juice” at least once a quarter, and I’d feel pressure to go highbrow if I wrote with a pen like that.”

#1GF! shrugged and returned the pen to her desk, and I grabbed a cheap, plastic pen from a finance company that I had never heard of. It narrowly suited me, but that’s how they all start before I fall in love with them and they die on me.

The day wound down, and #1GF! finally put the baby to bed at 10PM. I straightened up and set up the remote controls for easy reach in a night feeding. The mouse on the DVR was flashing a red light at me, so I reset it. When the light turned green, I gave it the thumbs up. I suddenly felt really uncool about giving an impulsive thumbs up. I quickly realized that I was wasting brain cycles on how uncool it is to give a thumbs up to a fucking computer mouse with no one else in the room. This is what newborns do to seemingly normal human adult brains.

I went back to writing notes for the day, and the baby started choking while I was writing this line. You have no idea how fast you can move until you hear your baby choking on vomit. Then, when you run in to the room in a complete panic, you find the baby either asleep or smiling at you. This is what babies do.

Friday (Day 831): The Rock Fails Where The Reed Succeeds

I took the baby out of the room at 6AM, and I was already showered and dressed by the time I tried to give her a bottle at 9AM. It doesn’t seem like much, but at the time, it was a major accomplishment.

The baby was spazzing and wouldn’t take a bottle. I thought it was a matter of time, so I tried to impose my will as a parent on the baby by being persistent. I was actually thinking, “Spaz all you want, but you will be fed, baby! Mark my words. You will be fed.” The baby was having none of it. I eventually had to give her up so that #1GF! could calm her down. I lost a test of wills with someone who had only been breathing air for five weeks.

#1GF! got the baby calmed down enough to eventually take the bottle. After she fed, we gave her a bath. It all went fairly well, and the baby was soon napping. I went to work on writing queries.

It was 9/11 and all the publishing houses were in New York, so I decided not to make my slim chance slimmer by sending out my queries on a historically tragic day. I don’t know if that mattered, but waiting a day to click send wasn’t going to kill me.

Before I realized it, it was already 2PM. The baby was up, so I played with her for a bit while #1GF! checked her e-mail. The baby eventually went back to sleep, and we used the baby monitor for the first time. I wasn’t happy about it. It seemed like we were cheating at parenting. Being able to move outside of a three foot radius of a sleeping baby allowed me to get a lot done, so I got over that feeling pretty quickly.

As soon as I made dinner, the baby had another fit that we couldn’t figure out. It was as if she knew exactly when dinner was ready or when a movie started, and didn’t like it one bit. We eventually got her calmed down enough to run some errands after dinner.

We went out to pick up my contacts, and ended up at Babies-R-Us. I don’t know how it happened, but I have to admit that that store had some cool Halloween costumes for babies. There was a Frankenstein suit (complete with a flat head and bolts in the neck), and a robot costume that I couldn’t stop laughing at. The baby is way too small to go trick or treating, so they stayed right on the rack where they belonged. I’m practical like that. On the other hand, #1GF! went crazy buying little outfits even though the baby’s closet was already packed full of clothes that have never been worn. She’s a mom with a job. I wasn’t going to set foot on that battlefield.

Saturday (Day 832): Faith A Faith A Faith

I got up at 7AM to the sound of rain hitting the windows like popping corn. Our experience in the house has told us that when the rain falls horizontally above, there will be basement issues below. I threw on some jeans and work boots, and my first bleary act of the day was to go into the basement to check on things. I walked the perimeter, and the basement was bone dry. The robot rolled over and flashed a thumbs up on his screen. I blinked hard and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes as a reply.

I threw on a coat and walked the outside of the house to make sure that the drainpipes weren’t planning to send anything in later in the day. Of course, one of the drainpipes was clogged and the gutters were overflowing on one side of the house. I went back into the basement, grabbed a ladder, and fished a wad of leaves out of the murk. The water rushed down the pipe like a toilet flush.

Puddles were mobilizing to threaten the window wells, so I dug out a trench that leads water away from the house to frustrate their advance. I used the dirt to fill in some low spots to prevent future puddling. I leaned on my shovel and nodded despite the pelting rain. It was the best I could do.

I came in, peeled off my wet clothes, showered off the cold, and grabbed a bowl of cereal. As I sat at the counter, my loving #1GF! came into the room to thank me for keeping our house from flooding.

“What’s up, George Michael?” she asked.

“Huh?” I said through chomps of Cheerios.

“Go look in the mirror. You gotta have a faith a faith a faith.”

I was so focused on getting a bowl of cereal after my shower that I had forgotten to comb my hair, which was admittedly getting sort of long. And maybe it was just a tiny bit feathery. Thus, instead of being a hydrodynamic hero, I was George Michael. How fickle the public is. I ran a comb through my hair and returned to watch the baby while #1GF! showered.

The baby soon turned on me too, and I put her in her magic swing to calm her down. She fell asleep, and I grabbed some fall decorations from the attic, as ordered. I promised not to get involved with any decorating because I hate decorations. The less I was told about, the less I’d notice. I just delivered the boxes to the lady of the house and got the hell out of the way.

I sat down at the PC and sent out six more agent queries for my novel. I was up to twenty-seven queries outstanding.

A few weeks before, I brought #1GF!’s mother some coconut macaroons because she mentioned that she liked them. When she tried one, she claimed that they weren’t “Italian macaroons”, which were the only kind of macaroons that she liked. After a failed search for an “Italian macaroon” recipe, I assumed that she meant almond macaroons.

I made up a batch of almond macaroons and pine nut cookies as a surprise for #1GF!’s mother, and we went to her house for a visit. I brought out the cookies as if I bought her a new car, and her eyes lit up.

#1GF!’s mother took one bite, and claimed that they were not “Italian macaroons”. I know of almond, and I know of coconut. I do not know Italian. The best I could get was that an Italian macaroon sounded like it was either a coconut macaroon wrapped in an almond macaroon, or a completely fictional cookie invented to keep a steady flow of cookies flowing to #1GF!’s mother.

We debated on what an “Italian macaroon” was until #1GF!’s mother suggested that we go to a local bakery who supposedly made really good “Italian macaroons”. We were planning the trip until we were warned that we would have to ask to taste one first, because they were usually stale. We decided to pass on the trip to a bakery that sells stale, and possibly fictional cookies.

Her mom put the cookie down and asked me, “So, how do you like being a dad?”

I answered the only way I could. “I love it.”

“Good.”

“The screaming at all hours has to go, but that’s the price you pay, I guess.”

She nodded in agreement. Colic has run in #1GF!’s family for generations.

I did a few minor chores because I was the only one who could easily reach high places, and then kept the baby calm while #1GF! helped her mother with other stuff. I eventually had to run out to a Walmart to pick up a couple of things for #1GF!’s mom.

When I got to the store, everyone looked soaked to the skin even though it wasn’t raining. And most of them were in cotton sweatpants. Can someone please explain what the fuck is up with Walmart customers and cotton sweatpants? I wondered if I could write a story about a pick up artist who picks up women at Walmart. He would probably hang out near the prescription counter. I’m not sure if he’d wear sweatpants because it might be too big of an obstacle even for a Walmart pickup artist.

On the way home, #1GF! and I picked up a pizza. We ate it with the baby sitting in the swing. The baby was quiet, but I couldn’t enjoy the pizza because I couldn’t shake the feeling that the baby was ready to pop. I also wasn’t enjoying it as much because we were eating pizza at the dining room table like civilized adults instead of on a couch in front of a movie. And the lights were low so as not to irritate the baby. It was like eating in a bomb shelter with an actual bomb.

The baby started her nightly freakout at about 8PM by power-puking all over #1GF! and the couch. Throwing up only quieted the baby momentarily, and she was back to screaming soon after. There was puke everywhere. All #1GF! could say was “Hon?” like there was something I could do to stop the column of baby vomit from going everywhere. All I could think was, “Well, at least this freakout started a little later than usual.”

My sister called at a time when I had to take the baby from #1GF!, but I proved that I could talk and care for a baby at the same time.

“What is that?” my sister asked.

“The baby.”

“That is loud.”

“Yea. She does this every night now.”

“Ugh.”

“It only lasts a couple of hours.”

“Ew.”

“Yep. I’m going to have to call you back some other time.”

“No problem.”

I wasn’t having any luck calming the baby down, so #1GF! took her from me because she couldn’t stand the noise anymore. That was about 10PM. We were starting to think that the baby might have colic.

What I Learned

• Agent queries take up a lot of time and feel like shots in the dark.
• Spending time writing queries feels like siding with marketing at the expense of production.
• I made coconut biscotti.
• A swing is an invaluable tool for calming a colicky baby.
• Supermarkets keep basil in with the tomatoes and not in with the other herbs.
• Oxyclean isn’t as good as Billy Mays made it out to be.
• Pesto should only be made with fresh basil.
• Some people still think of us as “the kids”.
• I get attached to crappy pens.
• I’m stuck with a “post or die” mentality.
• There is no such thing as an “Italian macaroon”.
• One bad hair day, and you’re George Michael.

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