This is week 122 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 847): Enjoying The Bone Alone

I got up at 6AM to take over watching the baby, so that #1GF! could catch up on some sleep. Once the ladies were both out cold, I started reading one of #1GF!’s library books because I had no books of my own left to read. I was so far outside of the target audience that I quickly drifted off and started thinking about the plot to my next novel.

#1GF! was soon up to take over the baby care once again. I put ribs in the oven at noon, put the baby down for a nap, and then went to waste some time mashing up songs with Audacity. I gave up after a few hours of getting nowhere.

The baby had been asleep for hours and the house was quiet. I cut some potatoes and set them on the stove to boil. I dried my hands on a kitchen towel and looked around for something to do. Instead of starting something productive, I found myself simply waiting for the baby to wake up. I soon realized that I was leaning against a counter and staring at the cabinets.

My mother wanted a picture of the baby, so I imported the contents of the camera. The sheer volume of pictures that #1GF! had taken seemed almost excessive, given the amount of time the baby had been outside of the womb, but I couldn’t blame her. I found seven decent shots and created a four by five inch collage with Gimp, and saved the copies onto #1GF!’s thumb drive so she could have them printed at her leisure.

I wanted to eat dinner with #1GF!, and because 6PM on was prime scream time for the baby, I timed the ribs to be ready at the blue hair special hour of 4PM. After four hours in the oven, the ribs were pulling away from the meat with zero effort. They were just begging to be eaten by any nearby carnivore. No, really. I could hear their little voices calling through the oven door. At 4PM, I took that sweet barbecue pan out of the oven and gently placed it on the stove.

The minute those ribs touched the cook top, the baby woke up and initiated a sonic bombardment that would run over two hours. The baby wasn’t even close to the kitchen. Not only does the baby seem to know that she should start screaming at dinner time, but she manged to evade my dinner timing trickery. #1GF! and I definitely enjoyed the ribs, but we each enjoyed them by ourselves against a backdrop of screaming.

All the screaming turned out to be some pretty bad gas. #1GF! handled most of it, but the non-stop scream fests weren’t bothering me as much as they had even a week before. Sure, I still wanted to get the poor baby settled as quickly as possible, but I wasn’t feeling the same panic or jangled nerves. My nerves were finally starting to recognize screaming as being the standard sonic state.

Once the baby was asleep, #1GF! and I watched an episode of Dexter and went to bed soon after.

Monday (Day 848): Modern Class Warfare

I took the baby out of the room for a couple of hours so that #1GF! could catch up on the sleep she lost overnight.

#1GF! soon got up and finished her library book, while I searched the library’s website for something new to read. My reading speed has definitely increased in the last few weeks, and I think #1GF!’s has, too.

The baby started fussing, and #1GF! took her out of the den. “I’m putting the baby in the swing because we’re bad parents,” she called out from down the hall.

I shrugged. If handing the child off to a machine kept her from screaming, then that’s what was going to happen. I was at the point where all the well-intentioned parenting rules were disposable if the baby was both safe and quiet. I walked out to the living room to witness the machine transfer.

As soon as the baby was in the swing, she power-puked the entire contents of her stomach all over herself, her clothes, and her surroundings. Pukes happen. But this particular puke illustrated the core personality difference between #1GF! and me.

Even though she was coated in puke, the baby looked relaxed, verging on serene. She has no problem expressing when she’s unhappy, and I wasn’t seeing any signs. My logic circuits surveyed the situation and evaluated that puke soaks into swings faster than it soaks into babies. I got a cloth and started cleaning the swing, and marked the baby for future cleanup.

#1GF!, on the other hand, has beefier empathy circuits than I do, and they are designed to override logic circuits in situations where immediate action is needed. Thus, when the power puke routines run, she can’t help but commence her comfort subroutines. #1GF! immediately picked up the baby and took her to get her out of her puked on clothes as if the baby was even aware that she had clothes with puke on them.

Within thirty seconds, I heard, “Oh, GEEZ!”

“What?” I called, pausing over a paper towel that was impossibly full of baby puke.

“She did it again. It’s all over everything.”

I went in and looked at the baby. #1GF! was correct. There was puke all over the place. The baby was smiling. My logic circuits sent me back to finish cleaning her swing.

As I was throwing the wadded up paper towels away, I noticed a constellation of dried baby boogers on my shoulder that sort of resembled the Milky Way. It had been there long enough that the danger of it going anywhere or getting on anything else was close to zero, so I went back to cleaning the swing. I’m not saying that I was a neat freak before I had a kid, but the discovery of a mass of someone else’s boogers on my shoulder once elicited a reaction bigger than a shrug.

We cleaned up everything and got out of the house by 2PM so that #1GF! could get some baby pictures developed. We dropped by the library and I ran in to pick up a couple of books for each of us. Then, we dropped by the kitchen place so that #1GF! could sign some papers for them. We dropped by a craft store, and #1GF! ran in to get some frames while I sat in the car with the baby. I ended up in the back seat making “goo goo” noises, but the baby stayed quiet.

We went to Dunkin’s, and I got a large black coffee. #1GF! tried to spice things up by ordering a watermelon coolata. I could tell that it was a “live and learn” experience for her from the first sip. Their coffee is barely drinkable, so I don’t know what made us think that they could have mastered a frozen fruit drink.

We drove over to the drugstore to get the baby pictures developed, and in the parking lot was a guy chomping a cigar in his Porsche SUV. He was parked across two spaces to keep other people from parking next to him. I know that #1GF! was heading to another spot, but changed her mind once she saw the crooked Porsche.

“Fuckin’ asshole,” she said louder than expected, considering the windows were down. Certain things can turn a mild-mannered #1GF! into a class warrior. #1GF! pulled the right along side, leaning forward and inching her way into the space that the guy in the Porsche was trying to deter people from taking. #1GF! could barely get out of her car once she was in the spot. “Ass. Hole,” she said to punctuate her parking job. She was at a level that was just below pointing at the guy after saying each word. #1GF! might be small, but she’s a spitfire sometimes.

#1GF! went in to pick up the pictures, leaving me and the cigar chomper sitting next to each other. I shook my head and thought that I’ve never been in a fistfight with someone smoking a cigar before, and it might be a little more difficult to win while holding a baby.

The baby started freaking out a little, so I took her socks off. For some reason, that calmed her down. The baby found her thumb, and stayed entertained, so once #1GF! got back, we took the scenic route home past sprawling, multimillion dollar estates on cliffs overlooking the ocean. By the time we got home, the baby was all smiles. She hadn’t slept much, so I wondered if we’d pay for those smiles later.

(Whether we did or not, is unclear. I was probably too busy calming down a screaming baby to make note of it.)

Tuesday (Day 849): Teenage Security Guards

I was up at 5:30AM and #1GF! already had the baby under control, so I went back to bed for an hour. I got up and read a little before taking the baby back. #1GF! and I showered and dressed, giving the baby two clean targets to throw up on. And she did try.

The first time, she tried to get me and projectile vomited all over her swing. The second time, #1GF!’s ninja-like reflexes had been dulled by a lack of sleep, allowing the baby to run a solid line of baby vomit right down one of her legs from ass to ankle. To punctuate her performance (or perhaps to make up for not donating any barf to Daddy), the baby then shit all over the place. And I mean all over the place. Her bed and her clothes were covered.

After a fair amount of cleanup, we ate a quick lunch, packed the baby into the car, and went to the food warehouse. We lingered there for a while, looking at all the giant items that we couldn’t possibly use in our lifetimes. I calculated that I had made my money back on the membership cost from the savings from giant boxes of Cheerios alone.

The baby started whining toward the end of our stroll, so we picked up the pace and got out of there before her screams startled all the hungry warehouse moochers who were eating their lunches one free sample at a time. We went out to the car and #1GF! changed the baby before putting her in her car seat and packing her in with all the oversized boxes.

We knew that we were pushing our luck, but we went to a department store so that #1GF! could make a quick return. She ran in, and I stayed in the car with the baby. Within five minutes, the baby started freaking out again, so I took her out of her car seat and walked her around the garage.

#1GF! had been speeding around the store chanting “No whammies…no whammies” under her breath, but when she came out of the store and she saw me holding the baby, she knew that we had pushed our luck too far. I moved the car to a less populated spot in the garage, and #1GF! fed the baby in the car. I imagined some teenage security guard zooming in the parking lot cams to see if he could see some boob.

I burped the baby, and then we packed her back in and drove to Montilio’s bakery. We picked up a Hawaiian eye and dropped it off at my parents’ house as a surprise for when they got home. It’s the best pastry ever and a good surprise to find in your fridge. The baby was asleep, so we had a quiet ride home.

When we got home, I cleaned up the house a little, and put an empty, extra large, plastic, bear shaped, animal cracker container next to the cellar door so that I would remember to throw into the recycling bin in the basement at a future, but unspecified time. I then made dinner and promptly forgot to take the container downstairs.

Right on schedule, the baby snapped. #1GF! managed to get her calmed down, and put her to bed. The house was dead quiet once again.

#1GF! and I closed ourselves into the den and started an episode of Dexter to finish off the night. Within three minutes of pushing play, the baby freaked out again. I swear that the baby can hear the push of a play button through walls. After a little bit of soothing, she soon fell back to sleep.

I walked back down to the den in the dark, and one of my perfectly timed steps punted the forgotten plastic bear container down the hall like a lap dog trying to lick the baby (see last week). It tonk tonk tonked against the hardwood floors and bounced off of the baseboard. I froze, ending up in a semi-crouched stance with my spread fingers four inches off of the side of my head. My eyes were scrunched, so I couldn’t see the look of death that I knew that #1GF! was shooting me. We stood for a minute waiting for the screaming to start, but nothing happened. The baby stayed asleep. I promptly took the container to the basement before it could happen again.

Wednesday (Day 850): Tearing Down A Man

I took the baby out of the bedroom at 6AM. She got fussy soon after, and was exiled to the swing. I didn’t want her making noise while #1GF! slept, and the swing was the easiest way to stop her. I tried to enjoy my latest library book, but it took a wrong turn somewhere and turned into a romance.

With the rhythmic ticking of the swing and my eyes numbly oscillating over words that I didn’t care about, I drifted into a light sleep. I woke up feeling guilty, and then thought, “Fuck it. What do I have to do? Everyone else is asleep.” I was finally getting bored with filling every spare moment with reading and let sleep overtake me a couple of paragraphs at a time.

#1GF! got up and jumped in the shower while I kept an eye on the baby. Once I was showered, #1GF! went out to get her hair cut. I fed the baby twice and kept her relatively entertained, although she did cry a fair amount just to keep me on my toes.

During one of her pleasant phases, I found myself taking pictures of her and laughing. I’m not one to capture much of anything on film, but the baby was having a great time, and so was I. Unfortunately, every time I looked at the camera’s screen, it seemed like the pictures weren’t capturing what I was seeing. It was like listening to your own voice and knowing that it didn’t sound right. The magic seen through a dad’s eyes was somehow being lost in the translation from analog to digital.

The baby soon went to sleep, and while putting my library books near the door as a reminder to return them, a note fell out of one the books. It was written on the back of a receipt that someone had abandoned as their bookmark. A woman’s handwriting described a really bad plot involving a fictional location called “Blingtown”. The excited description and number of exclamation points indicated that the writer thought she was on to a great idea. Even though I’m unpublished, I suddenly felt like there were other people who were closer to the beginning of the bell curve of writing talent than I was.

And that was the last contact I had with books for the rest of the day. Even if I had something to read, there was no time. I was too busy minding the baby. I even made dinner at noon and put it in the fridge because I managed to find a few extra minutes. I wondered what a full-time domestic partner could ever hope to accomplish beyond raising children and getting dinner on the table on time.

#1GF! eventually returned with her new hair did, and the minute that I took dinner out of the fridge, the baby flipped. It was uncanny. She would flip at dinner, irrespective of time of day, or if I was cooking or not. All it had to be was time to eat. #1GF! calmed the baby down, and I took a break from the baby duties to check my e-mail.

I got another agent rejection, and realized that I either needed to start my next book, query another twenty agents, or rewrite my query letter. Obviously something wasn’t working. Before I could decide on which of those things to act on, I had to shut down the computer so that the baby could go to sleep. I was starting to figure out that there isn’t enough time for writing and baby care in my day. As hard as it would be, the writing was going to have to give.

I always said that kids are the perfect excuse not to do anything useful with your life. Before I had a child, it was a joke. After the baby, I had a better understanding of my own quote.

With a newborn, it’s all about the baby. And a large portion of the time you once had to spend on yourself is gone. When you manage to find a spare hour, you do have the perfect excuse to sit and watch TV or stare at a wall to unwind. Spending your free time on building yourself into something more, can take more time and discipline than you can muster.

It’s a lot like boot camp: sleep deprivation, cleaning up messes that you didn’t make, and never being addressed by anything but yelling. And just when you think it’s time to relax, there’s more yelling. A baby tears down a man to build up a dad in his place.

The day was long gone, and I had no idea where it went, nor the energy to investigate its disappearance. I wanted to stay up late just to feel like I did something, but knew that I was too tired. I decided to get a small checkmark for myself by replacing a light bulb in the bathroom fan.

I stood on a step stool for a while, and eventually had to get the ladder because I couldn’t figure out how to get the fan enclosure open. I didn’t want the glass to fall on the floor and shatter, and I didn’t want to pull too hard and break some unseen, but necessary plastic clip, but I couldn’t figure the damned thing out.

I danced around the job, gently prying here and there. It was frustrating as hell, mostly because all I was trying to do was change a fucking light bulb. By the end, I was on a ladder, peeking into the fan trying to find some sort of hidden release latch.

I finally figured it out once I was frustrated enough. A good tug and the whole enclosure lowered in place on two giant clips that looked like coat hangers. Good design failed me because I didn’t think it could be that simple. I changed the bulb, and gave up for the day. I had the perfect excuse.

Thursday (Day 851): Offer / Counteroffer

I woke up dreaming about being attacked by a wolf, and having illegal immigrants sleeping in my basement. Other than the fact that it was the first day since the spring that I had to wear jeans, the dream was the most notable part of the morning. The afternoon was a bit different.

The H.R. rep called back and offered me more money to take the job with my old company. It wasn’t enough money, and they still weren’t budging on the promotion. Even though I had a feeling that the company wouldn’t come through in the end, I was reintroduced to the sense of disappointment that the company regularly instilled in me back when I dedicated a large portion of my time and energy to it.

I hung up with the rep and discussed the job with #1GF!. “We can’t take a cut in our household income for me to take this job.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Although, we’re doing okay. We wouldn’t go under.”

“No, we wouldn’t.”

“I haven’t had a solid success in a while though. The job might give me some sense of accomplishment that has been missing from my life over the last couple of years.”

“You have tons of successes,” said #1GF!.

“Not recent ones.”

“You’re the beard man. You’ve been in newspapers, and every other day someone else is linking to you on the web. Fifty thousand people…wait, is that right?”

“Yea, about that.”

“…come to check out your site every month. Fifty Thousand. And that’s not even your highest. That’s huge! What was your highest? A quarter of a million visitors in a month?”

“Yea. It’s all old, though. What have I done lately?”

“You wrote a book.”

“An unsold manuscript,” I corrected.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s a book. And they’re all accomplishments.”

I shook my head. “I guess so.”

“It’s good that you’re always looking forward, but you’re too hard on yourself.”

I thought that it was a nice thing to hear, but I didn’t agree.

#1GF! talked a little more and I called back the H.R. rep and made a counteroffer for more money and a better title. The rep said that she would have to look into it and call me back.

My parents came over at 2PM and fawned over the baby. That was fun. They left a couple of hours later, and the baby went to sleep.

#1GF! and I ate a quick dinner and the baby freaked out right on schedule. Our nerves must’ve toughened up a bit, because we were dealing with the screaming a lot better. By the time the baby was back to sleep, it was 9PM. #1GF! and I were tired, but not as tired as expected.

Friday (Day 852): Grade School Cafeteria Circa 1979

I got up and watched the baby so #1GF! could sleep. The baby ended up sleeping, so I read a book to pass the time.

#1GF! got up, showered, and took over the baby watching at 11AM. I went out to mow the lawn. Once I came back in, #1GF! suggested that I might want to clean out the gutters before the impending rain hit. I had thought about the gutters earlier, and forgotten.

My socks were already off, so I slumped my shoulders, put my socks back on, grabbed a ladder and went back outside to clean the gutters. About halfway through the project, I met one of the biggest spiders that I have seen in a yard. His body was as big as my thumb from the knuckle to the tip, and he had spun a web that stretched two full feet off of the gutters. The web was strong enough to catch full-sized dried tree leaves and leave them spinning in the wind like soundless wind chimes.

By the time I realized that he was there, he was a mere foot from my face. I was close enough that I could see the hairs on the big bastard’s back, and I assumed that my nose was within jumping distance. To make things more interesting, half of his web was clinging to my arms and shirt.

It was a tense standoff. My squinty four eyes staring down at him, wondering where he could’ve come from. His beady eight eyes staring back, wondering how my nose would taste after being numbed and wrapped in a cocoon. I moved slowly, and then lunged.

When I squashed him under my thumb, he made one heck of a mess, which I wiped on the roof shingles. Well, what did you think was going to happen? It’s a was just a fucking spider for chrissakes. Get a grip.

A hour later, the gutters flowing and free of muck. I hosed the stink off my ladder and gloves and left them in the sun to dry. There’s nothing like the stink of gutter water. I’ll put a vial of it toe to toe with any fetid pool you might know of. I went in the house and showered just to make sure none of the gutter water made it on to me.

We packed the baby into the car, and headed out to visit #1GF!’s mom. We dropped in to a department store on the way. #1GF! ran in, and I sat in the car mulling over book ideas. The baby started crying, so I changed her. That seemed to calm her down. I finished changing her just as the dude next to us got in his car. I had a hive-fiveable moment where I felt like I beat the clock, but the baby didn’t know how to high five, so I was left hanging.

When we got to #1GF!’s mother’s house, #1GF!’s aunt showed up, and the ladies argued about the correct way to tickle the baby. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that, as far as I knew, the baby wasn’t ticklish. I just let them argue over and apply their various tickling techniques. Watching other people fawn over the baby like #1GF! and I do was a lot of fun.

The baby didn’t sleep all day, and as a result, she started her pre-flipout checks at around 5:30PM. We headed for home before she was ready to launch. Thankfully, the ride calmed her down.

“Want to get pizza?” asked #1GF!.

I looked at #1GF! sideways. She didn’t look like she had lost her mind. “It’s after 6PM. We’re in the prime baby flip out hours. Just because the timer on a bomb ticks down to zero and doesn’t explode, that doesn’t mean that you start playing soccer with it. Plus, you know the pizza ‘ll just be cold by the time we get eat it.”

“No way,” said #1GF!. “Just don’t slam the door when you go in to get it and we’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t buying what #1GF! was selling at all, but I went along with it. We went to the pizza place, I didn’t slam the car door, and the baby stayed calm…until she got in the house. She then freaked out for a couple of hours to allow the cheese on the pizza to fully congeal. She finally fell asleep at 9PM.

I tried to reheat the cold, rubbery pizza, and succeeded only in creating a giant, rock-hard cracker that had the molten mouth-destroying power of something that was served up in a grade school lunchroom circa 1979. I winced as the molten mess mercilessly fused itself to the roof of my mouth. Life is a learning experience, and that day’s lesson was: pizza doesn’t reheat well. You’d think it would be “don’t get pizza during prime scream hours”, but I already knew that.

I waited for the pizza to cool back to rubbery, and ate it over the sink after the baby was asleep. I then swore off pizza until the baby gets older. It was a waste of eighteen bucks, but that wasn’t the real loss. The real loss was the dashed expectation that we might actually eat warm slice of pizza like normal people do. The money was just the kick while we were down.

For an hour before bed, #1GF! and I watched bad sitcoms on the DVR. There wasn’t a single laugh in the hour.

Saturday (Day 853): The Elusive Ice Cream

I got up, grabbed a bowl of cereal, and read Don Lee’s Rack & Ruin until I finished it around midafternoon. I finally gave up on Gods Behaving Badly, which despite having an interesting concept (Greek gods hiding out in a house in modern London), it turned into a romance novel about halfway through. There was no warning of said romance on the book jacket. I had been pushing through it like a Honda Civic down a Maine logging road in December, and the journey was looking more and more bleak. I pulled my bookmark out to make sure that the abandonment stuck.

I went to the library to drop the books off and pick up some new ones. I was following my book list haphazardly around the library, and hoped that the young girl or the old man that I kept ending up too close to didn’t think that I was trying to get their attention.

I picked up a few CDs and a couple of books, and left the library by 5PM. I headed to grocery store to pick up a couple of things, and had to go to a second store to pick up some ice cream because my local supermarket has stopped carrying both ice cream flavors that make ice cream worth eating.

Even though both of my favorite ice cream flavors are made by a Massachusetts company and are Boston-themed, they are strangely difficult to find. Which ones, you ask? The first is Big Dig, which consists of vanilla ice cream loaded with brownie pieces, caramel, and chocolate chunks. It’s only moderately difficult to find, and in tough times, a quart of it can generally be found stashed in the back of my freezer.

The other is Dice-Kream, which is vanilla ice cream stuffed with chocolate covered peanuts, hot fudge, and chocolate covered caramel cups. Dice-Kream was originally introduced as “Reverse The Curse”, and was renamed “Curse Reversed” once the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004. It was renamed to Dice-Kream in 2007 because the ‘Sox won the series again, making references to the Curse of the Bambino passe. I know all this not as a baseball fan, but as someone who has been checking for this ice cream every time he has been to the grocery store over the last few years. I hadn’t seen this flavor locally in over six months.

I had gone to two stores looking for ice cream, but didn’t have any idea what we’d be having for dinner. There’s nothing like a parent with a solid set of priorities. I walked in the door empty handed, put on a Phoebe Snow CD, and made mac and cheese from a box for dinner. I soon realized that I didn’t like Phoebe Snow.

#1GF! and the baby were having a great time together while I was gone, but it all changed at 6PM, when the baby started her nightly freakout. We did everything we could think of to calm her down and failed miserably. After more than three solid hours of screaming, she finally went to sleep. #1GF! and I sat on the couch staring at reality shows in a state of half-consciousness that probably made us the show’s ideal viewers.

What I Learned

• Eventually, your nerves start to reset to accept that screaming is the natural auditory state.
• All well-intentioned parenting rules are disposable if breaking them keeps a colicky baby both safe and quiet.
• Boogers on the shoulder are suddenly acceptable, as long as they’re dry and won’t get on anything else.
• #1GF! does not like watermellon coolatas. She would not drink one in a car, she would not drink one near or far.
• Crooked parkers make #1GF! crazy.
• There are worse writers than me out there.
• The baby is immune to changes in our dinnertime, and whether we cook or not. If we try to eat, it simply pisses her off.
• A baby tears down a man to build up a dad in his place.
• It’s difficult to find the time or discipline to write when you have a newborn in the house.
• It’s all about the baby.
• I can now replace a fucking light bulb in the bathroom fan.
• I don’t think that I’m hard enough on myself, and #1GF! thinks just the opposite.
• Even big spiders squish.
• Pizza can not be resuscitated once it has gone rubbery.
• I don’t like Phoebe Snow’s music.

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