This is week 120 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 833): Catching Stupid

I took the baby out of the bedroom at 7AM and tried everything to calm her down so that #1GF! could get some rest. When I finally gave up, I put her in her swing, and she promptly fell asleep. I sat at the table reading.

Once #1GF! was up, we gave the baby a bath, got showered and walked down to the town “Endless Summer” festival that takes over the main street of town every year.

The festival drew more derelict looking people than a Walmart on a Saturday, and was just about as exciting. As unusually snobby as it sounds coming from a guy who wears a hobo’s beard and hasn’t held a traditional boss/slave job in more than a couple of years, the whole thing made me want to sell the house and move to a new town.

We left the festival soon after we arrived, and sat on a bench under a pergola near the main bath house. A woman walked by in an extremely short skirt and stripper shoes, saying “…and once I signed that contract with god, there was no turning back.” I was intrigued to know the actual terms and conditions of that contract, but I wasn’t interested enough to sit through the horror story that probably led to it’s creation.

Another guy stood nearby, talking on a cell phone. It was like he had a broken volume knob or thought that he was so fucking interesting that the world needed to hear his every word. I could tell by his flip-flops and cow-like expression that we probably didn’t. He started talking, and I knew for sure. “I’m waiting for you at the bathrooms…I don’t know. The ones with the mens’ and womens’ rooms.”

Really? You’re at the bathrooms with the mens’ and womens’ rooms? Is it in the Northeast U.S.? Which beach are you at? Is it the one with all the sand and water? The water with the fish in it? Is it near those paved streets with all the houses on them?

I tried not to look at the guy because he just made me angry. I felt bad for the person who was trying to locate this absolute genius…unless it was a hit man. Hit men should know better than to call someone that they’re trying to bury. The guy continued on.

“Well, I don’t see you either…” I hoped that the idiot hit man was looking through a scope at another bathhouse. Sort of. No, I was. I wasn’t in the mood for ducking, and didn’t want some idiots blood all over the new carriage.

We decided to get away from everyone before we caught an incurable case of stupid. On the way home, we passed by a guy wearing a Jethro Tull T-shirt.

“Did you see that?” I asked #1GF! who was staring down at the baby.

“What?” asked #1GF!.

“That guy was wearing a Jethro Tull T-shirt.”

“Yea, that was a little weird.”

“I know. I mean, when was the last time you saw a Jethro Tull T-shirt?”

#1GF! thought for a second. “Geez. I don’t know.”

“Exactly. You probably saw one around nineteen seventy never. I feel like I just discovered the coelacanth.”

“The what now?”

“Coelacanth?”

“Oh, the coelacanth. See, it sounded like you said ‘flomble dingle’…”

“It was a fish that scientists thought had been extinct for 65 million years until one turned up in the 1930′s.”

“…or sailor camp. I thought you were getting sun stroke or something. Now, that I know that you were talking about the coelacanth…”

I shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ‘Tull T in the wild. Certainly not in the second half of my life, anyway. It’s 2009, right?”

“Yep.”

“You have as much of a chance of seeing an Edgar Winter Group T-shirt.”

“Edgar Winter Group?” #1GF! started laughing. “Seriously. Where do these references come from?”

“Edgar Winter. You know. ‘Frankenstein’? Dahna nuhnuh Nanuhnuh NAH! Dahnana nuhnuh! bwEEEEEoow…”

#1GF! just shook her head. People sitting on the wall leaned back so that they wouldn’t catch stupid from the guy walking along singing an Edgar Winter Group instrumental.

We got home at 3PM, and the baby freaked out. I made dinner while #1GF! tried to calm her down. #1GF! took the baby outside because, for some reason, fresh air can sometimes stop a crying fit cold. I have no idea why, but I’ve seen it work. Within a minute, #1GF! ran back inside. “EEEEEEAAAAAA GIANT RAT! GIANT RAT!”

I smirked and had to see the giant rat that had her so freaked out. I looked out the door, and a possum was ambling along the front wall of our house. I shook my head. “It’s just a possum.”

“It had a tail! A long skinny tail!” She did a shiver dance in place.

“They have long skinny tails.”

She stuck out her tongue and rolled her head. “Bleegh. Gross.”

#1GF! wasn’t going back outside, so once the baby started to cry again, we put her into her swing. She magically calmed down. #1GF! and I sat at the table playing Rack-o while the baby slept.

Monday (Day 834): The Tinfoil Shark

I woke up to the sound of a garbage truck, which had me out of bed, out the door, and dragging the trash barrel across the yard in under thirty seconds. It wasn’t even our garbage truck.

I came back in and took over watching the baby so that #1GF! could get some sleep. I was bleary and my hair was everywhere. I’ve finally fallen into the role of the bleary parent.

Once #1GF! got up, I decided to tackle a project that had been driving me crazy since we moved in. I’d close a door, and it would pop open. I’d growl at it. I’d close it again, and it would wait for a few seconds before popping open with a metallic fuckyou. I’d growl again.

This would happen so often that I just stopped closing doors. And that worked for a while. When you’re a klutz with a colicky baby, leaving doors open isn’t exactly an option. I shimmed hinges and moved latches so that all of the doors in the house actually closed. I finished the project at 6PM and felt that odd pride that makes you want to brush imaginary dust off your hands and nod at the end.

Staring at all the closed doors was about as good as it was going to get for me that day. Just after I started dinner, I got a call from my credit card company saying that someone had made a physical copy of my credit card and was racking up charges at some Ohio department stores. I had to confirm that I still had my card and then go through the charges just to make sure that I hadn’t made an emergency shopping trip to the Midwest.

You know, if you’re going to pretend that you’re me, shop somewhere fucking cool at least. Not that I shop in cool places. I don’t. But, if you’re counterfeiting credit cards and risking potential jail time for tube socks and a Snuggy, you’re one lame fucking criminal.

To make things worse, while I was sitting at my PC going over the lamest list of fraudulent charges I’d ever heard with the credit card company, I checked my e-mail and found two agent rejections. Unless you count any agent response as a good thing, the day really wasn’t getting any better.

I made dinner, ate it, and then in the process of cleaning up, made a tinfoil shark to entertain #1GF!. I put it on my shoulder and said it was to protect me from further agent rejection. It promptly fell off. I stared at the shark laying on his side on my kitchen floor.

“Are you abandoning me too, Rejection Shark?”

I picked up the shark and squished his nose into a point. I pointed him at my face and said in a small, tin foil shark voice, “Shut up, bitch. I’m a swordfish now.”

#1GF! started laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“Shut up, bitch?” asked #1GF!.

“That’s what you found funny?”

“Well, it’s a funny thing for a tinfoil shark to say.”

“I’m a swordfish,” said the shark.

#1GF! shook her head, as has become the custom around here. I looked to the baby, who was no help…although, she was sleeping, so she wasn’t hindering, either.

As I was winding down for the night, I found a door that I missed on my hinge relocation project. I sighed and debated on whether I should break out the tools or let the last non-closing door in the house drive me insane.

“90%” said #1GF!.

I growled. I’m infamous for leaving house projects at 90% complete. I reluctantly took out the tools and set to work on the last door, even though it went against my time-tested rule of never starting projects within an hour of when the hardware stores close.

By 10PM, the job was 100%, and all doors in the house would close and latch.

Tuesday (Day 835): The Rewards Of Parenthood

I got up and watched the baby for a couple of hours while #1GF! slept. I ate breakfast, and sent #1GF! in to shower. The baby was in a playful mood, so I didn’t get much reading in. She also seemed like she had grown into a giganto baby over the previous week or so. Although, giganto is a relative term.

I started cleaning the bathroom in the midmorning, and was showered and dressed by early afternoon. We left the house not too long after. It was in the 70′s with clear, blue skies and a light breeze. I wished we had a better reason to be out, but was happy to at least be out running errands on such a beautiful day.

We picked up a gift certificate for the real estate agent who sold us the house because she was coming to visit the next day. #1GF! ran in to get the gift certificate, and I sat in the car with the baby. I couldn’t help but focus on the fact that agents weren’t interested in my book.

The baby was awake, but quiet, so we all went grocery shopping together. It was a big risk, given her propensity for random screaming, but one of us was going to have to take her shopping eventually. We thought that it might as well be while we were both there to handle any sonic situations that might arise. And none did. The baby almost seemed to be having fun as we rode up and down the aisles…if a five week old can have fun.

We went home, and I cleaned the windows in the front of the house so that the real estate agent wouldn’t think that our real names were Lurlene and Jethro VonDirtenbagen. I wiped months of dirt off of the outside of the windows as the neighborhood wrung out what they could from a summer that was quickly drying up.

Some families walked down the street equipped as if they were going to the beach, while other families played with their kids out front. Some of the neighborhood kids rode by on their bikes with plastic water bottles jammed in their spokes to make motorcycle noise. It was a new twist to an old idea, and it sounded a lot better than the cardboard we used thirty years ago.

I threw another dark brown, wadded up paper towel in the trash and imagined that I’d be out there one day. But, at that time, I had six more windows to clean.

Once the windows were done, I cleaned the counters and the appliances. To celebrate, I stood over the sink and ate a couple of my rejected, “non-Italian macaroons”. They tasted just fine to me.

When the chores were done, I managed to finish the last few pages of Wild Fire by Nelson Demille. It was about a secret and unstoppable government plan to destroy major Middle Eastern cities if a major terrorist attack happened on American soil. It was an interesting concept, I suppose.

I went looking for rejections in my e-mail and came back empty handed. That should’ve been a good sign, but it felt more like I was just waiting for the rejections than hoping for acceptances.

The baby had been awake all day, and at 5:30PM, she had a fit. By 8:30PM, she was still screaming strong, with no solution in site.

Some days are completely wasted on maintenance. You clean, knowing that things are just going to get dirty again. Hours pass, you wear out, and everything looks pretty much the same as it did before you started. When you hit the end of the day, all you can think is, “What the fuck was that?”

And then the baby starts screaming, so you’re not going unwind with a book or some TV, and you’re certainly not going to bed early. You dim all the lights in the house to try to calm the baby down, and the perpetual dusk makes you even more tired than you already are. You couldn’t hear any music over the baby if you wanted to, and you know that the computer is nothing more than a dual purpose time vacuum and rejection machine.

You pace the halls trying to sooth your screaming child, and all you can do with your time off from her is make notes in your notebook about how loud she’s screaming. And how you cleaned windows. And how the day slipped past you without even a courteous nod in your direction.

You aren’t going to get much sleep, so you can’t look forward to that. You just sit and wait for the next feeding or diaper change to come along.

Suddenly, you realize that the baby won’t even remember this day. Or week. Or month. Or year. Hell, she won’t remember the next three years. And yet you tend to her like she’ll remember every tear, locked away in some recess of her brain forever.

That’s parenthood.

You might try to find some small reward for yourself for stuffing a chunk of your personality into a trunk to be dusted off and opened like a personal time capsule in twenty or so years, but it will be in vain. You’ll think things like, “If I do the windows, I’ll sit down and reward myself with a cup of coffee later.”

You could try to set up a reward system for yourself. Sure, why not? Maybe you push that cup of coffee off after the windows, and save it for when the baby stops screaming, just to feel like there is a part of you that still exists beyond the diaper changing machine you’ve become. And the baby will eventually stop crying long enough for you to collect your reward.

In early parenthood, the chores are constant, you can’t possibly plan, and there is no end in sight for the arbitrary nature of the tasks you face. And for most of those tasks, there will be few rewards beyond the baby smiling and laughing once and a while. But, sometimes, even though you love that kid to death, sometimes, you just want a hard chair, a black cup of coffee, and three feet of space to call your own.

And when you find those spare minutes to actually sit down for that reward, it will be too late at night, and you’ll be too tired. You’ll end up staring at the oil slicks atop the cold murkiness of the cup and know that coffee isn’t a reward that can undo the knotted nerves that come from three hours of screaming. You’ll dump that reward right down the sink and take the fans up to the attic, because summer is over and you still have things to do.

Wednesday (Day 836): Sex In Public

I showered, and then made a batch of chocolate biscotti. I was planning to make almond biscotti, but was corrected by #1GF! that my intention was to make chocolate. I was not aware of said intention, but went along with it lest I be attacked by a chocolate freak who was looking to score a fix from her favorite pusher man.

The real estate agent who sold us the house came over to visit. We showed her the renovations and she seemed impressed with them. She stayed until the midafternoon. We drank tea and ate lemon cupcakes with lemon filling. It was all very civilized. My parents showed up a little later, and the visit followed the same pattern: tea, sweets, and idle chatter.

After everyone was on their way, I threw a frozen lasagna in the oven that a friend had made for us. I put the baby in her swing, and she fell right to sleep. #1GF! and I ate dinner and sat on the couch watching TV for hours without a single scream. It was almost like being on a date. It’s amazing how much you can appreciate something as simple silence when you’ve been conditioned to screaming being the normal state of things.

I turned to #1GF!. “I feel like I’m having sex in public or something.”

#1GF! raised her eyebrows and gave me a sideways glance. “Um, bescuse me?”

“Okay, Maybe that’s not a great analogy, but I’m having a great time doing something really simple, and I’m paranoid that something is just around the corner waiting to ruin it.”

“Ah. Well, that is a bad analogy, but I understand completely.”

The baby slept in her swing until almost 10PM.

Thursday (Day 837): Defending Against A Pack Of Baby Ninjas

The baby wouldn’t sleep, so I got up with her and watched a movie with a four star rating, that I would’ve given maybe one. I dropped the baby back to #1GF! at 9AM and sat watching more crappy TV. “Why am I doing this,” I said to an empty room as I flipped through the channels. Baby or not, there was no reason for subjecting myself to more shows that were only good enough for Thursday morning cable.

I shut off the TV and jumped in the shower. I took the baby back while #1GF! did the same. The baby was surprisingly quiet. I thought that maybe she had developed a longer fuse, but I was still expecting some sort of trick. I had a quick lunch and sped through a few household chores, but she was still fine. I decided that we should push our luck.

#1GF! and I dropped in to the library to pick up a few books, and then to the local home megastore to pick up some mortar and mums. We took turns going in, and it worked out well. The baby’s fuse still hadn’t entered the barrel, and she was suspiciously quiet. Sort of like a landmine.

We got detoured on our way home by three detail cops working a construction site. One half of the road was blocked with a dump truck, and on the other side there was a head-on face-off involving fifteen cars and a school bus. Did I mention that there were three uniformed officers “working” this detail? Three?

While we were stuck in the road, pinned in by cars and boxed by trucks, the baby’s fuse finally burned down. She started freaking out right there in the middle of the police-caused traffic jam. It was great, great fun.

We got home at 4PM and spent a couple of hours getting the baby to quiet down. She responded by sleeping for less than thirty minutes before starting up again.

When I found a spare minute, I would stare out the window merely cataloging the things that I needed to take care of. I lacked the motivation to start any of the projects because there was a sonic scream bomb with a faulty timer waiting for me in the other room. Newborns eat motivation for breakfast, and then make you clean their diaper.

I made a pot of coffee at around 6PM, and was about to start a little writing when the baby started screaming again. That bout lasted for only an hour. Are you keeping score? Scream in car, scream two hours, take half hour off, scream for a few more hours.

By 7PM, I had changed her, shushed her until my lips were falling off, and worn a path into the hall from walking back and forth. She was still screaming when I turned her over to her mother. I felt like an enormous failure. It took hours to calm her down. When she finally fell asleep, #1GF! and I were toast. We went directly to bed.

I lay in bed listening to her coo and grunt in her sleep, and I finally drifted off. At one point, she screamed at the top of her lungs in her sleep, waking us up. It wasn’t so much waking us up, as scaring the shit out of us. It sounded like an insane teenage girl had broken into the room and screamed briefly before vanishing. Once our hearts stopped pounding, we drifted back off…until a few hours later when she woke us with a wave of grunting that sounded like she was using some form of baby kung fu to defend herself against a pack of angry baby ninjas.

Friday (Day 838): Acorn Bombs and Sonic Grenades

There are a lot of days that I think I’m wasting my time with writing. That I’m dreaming. That the extent of being published will be this blog on this quiet corner of the internet. Thoughts like that can drain the color from some of my days. This was not one of them.

The sun was pouring through the windows and warming the hardwoods. The gentle tic tock of the baby swing propelled a sleeping baby back and forth while some innocuous, soft, classic rock filled the room with comfortable white noise. While you were at your desk checking e-mail or preparing for a meeting, I sat at the kitchen table, showered and dressed, sipping a black cup of coffee and reading a book. These are the forgotten moments that feel like they mean something. They’re the rare moments that make not having a job seem like a good decision.

After my coffee, I went out and mortared the hole where the electrical comes into the house because the original contractor didn’t think that a large hole from the outside of the house into the basement was something that should be sealed up. It didn’t take me long at all.

#1GF! had to go to a doctor’s appointment, so we all went along. The baby was sleeping, so I stayed in the car with her. I wrote in my notebook and everything was fine for about forty minutes. We parked under a patch of trees to shade the car from the heat, completely unaware that the trees were dropping acorns like bombs. One slammed off of the roof and woke the baby up. Then, all hell broke loose.

I changed the baby in the back seat, bounced her, and shushed her until the sides of my mouth were sore. Nothing was working, so I tried to change her again. I even tried the pacifier, which got lost somewhere in the car. This went on for twenty minutes, while a woman sitting in a nearby car looked on and frowned.

When a baby is hungry and there is no food, you’re auditorily fucked. I took the baby out of the car and tried to calm her down with that fresh air trick that she suddenly wasn’t falling for. While walking her around, the trees started dropping acorns again. I actually leaned over the baby to shield her once I heard some acorns dropping. I don’t know what was in these acorns, or how high they were falling from, but man, they were slamming into the roof of the car hard.

After twenty minutes, a smiling #1GF! walked out into the parking lot to find me walking around the truck with a screaming baby. I had been trying to avoid going in to find her, but if she hadn’t shown up within five minutes of when she did, the scream bomb was going into the doctor’s office. She came out just in time. #1GF! fed the baby in the car, and I realized how relieved I was not to hear the baby screaming. I wanted to take a quick, celebratory nap.

When we got home, I sent out three more agent queries before we gave the baby a bath. After the bath, we fed her with a bottle, and she freaked out at 7PM, right on schedule. Between 9PM and 10PM, she calmed down, and I went in to continue querying agents. I got seven more done. I was tired enough that I queried one agency twice. So, maybe I only did six. Then again, if the agency sees the double query as big enough offense, I only did five. I went to bed at midnight, but felt like I should be getting more done.

Saturday (Day 839): I Change The Poopies

I got up at 7:30, and #1GF! was already on the couch with the baby. I felt late and disoriented. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The unshaven face, the straight expressionless mouth, and the bewildered eyes staring back at me reminded me of the way my grandfather looked early in the morning when I stayed over his apartment as a kid. Although nostalgic to the point of smelling the Ivory soap and almost being able to hear the tinny AM radio on top of the refrigerator, this was not a good sign.

I took the baby and changed the baby twice in a half hour. Changing the baby never feels like a win, but it feels like a ripoff when it’s in rapid succession. On the second change, I was thinking, “but I just did this.” I put the baby in the swing, made the bed, and #1GF! started making pasta sauce.

#1GF!’s family called and said that they’d be by in an hour. I picked up around the house, and ran out to the store to pick up some bread or pastry so that they’d have something to eat. The bakery only had cookies and muffins, and the local supermarket had crap on toast. I went to a small specialty supermarket and found what I needed. I was also supposed to pick up white chocolate chips and $5 scratch tickets, but no one carried them. It’s a problem of living in a small town.

#1GF!’s family had already arrived by the time I got back. They brought vegetables from their garden, including a pumpkin for the baby.

I dropped the pastry on the counter and took the baby because she needed changing. I wanted #1GF! to be able to hang out with her family. The kids thought it was hysterical that I could be capable of changing a baby’s diaper and wanted to see me do it. They kept running in and out of the room giving a play by play of the action.

“He’s changing it! He’s changing it!” [run back in] “There’s poopies!” [run out screaming and laughing before running back in] “Jon is changing the poopies!” And so on. I’ve never seen kids having so much fun over a diaper change.

#1GF!’s family left after a quick lunch, and we got the baby to sleep without a problem. #1GF! plopped herself onto my lap and put her arms around my neck. “I love you,” she said.

“It’s a good life we have isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“We have the house and the baby. It’s not exactly how we planned, but it’s still pretty great. We’re pretty lucky.”

“I waited a long time for you.”

“I’m glad you did.”

I went out to mow the lawn and edge the walk. #1GF! gave one of the neighbors a tour of the house while I was gone. I took a quick shower, and it was already 4PM. I took over watching the baby, and #1GF! went out to plant some mums and sweep up the porch. The sun was out, and it was warm, but you could feel the underlying chill in the air that put it’s cold, bony finger against its lips and shushed you every time the wind blew.

I made a pasta salad for dinner and the baby stayed asleep while we ate it. She actually slept from 8PM on, so we watched Milk, which didn’t end up being a great way to spend a little free time. If the movie hadn’t been a true story, I probably would’ve given up on it halfway through. Even so, I shrugged at the end like I had just watched something on the History Channel.

What I Learned

• Festivals draw out the idiots, derelicts, and looneys. I know. I go to them.
• There are people who still wear Jethro Tull T-shrits.
• #1GF! does not like possums.
• A swing can halt colic.
• Some criminals are lame.
• Rejection Sharks aren’t very effective.
• The baby isn’t going to remember any of this.
• Sometimes, babies scream in their sleep.
• Being stuck with a baby looking for a nonexistent food supply sucks.
• Diaper changes in rapid succession feel like a ripoff.
• $5 scratch tickets and white chocolate chips are impossible to find in our town.

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