This is week 127 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 882): Octogenarian Love Making

We woke up to the baby crying so often that we no longer bothered setting the alarm clock. This day was no different.

#1GF! got the baby under control, and I shuffled off to the kitchen for a bleary bowl of cereal. The first mouthful of sour told me that the milk had turned. I poured the whole bowl into the sink. An earful of crying followed by a mouthful of sour milk wasn’t the greatest way to start a day.

I looked through the cabinets and found some ancient packets of instant oatmeal, so I tore those bitches open and dumped them into a bowl. I threw the bowl into the microwave for a couple of minutes, and when it came out, it smelled like sweet, steamy sewage. I turned on the tap and got the same sewage smell. For some of the highest water rates in the state, smelly water is more common in my town than I ever remembered in the city. The oatmeal followed the cereal down the drain.

I was cranking the key and pumping the gas pedal, but my day was refusing to turn over. All I needed was a punch in the face and a glimpse of two eighty year olds making sweet, tongue-waggling love on my lawn to ensure that the rest of my senses got off to the same bad start. I left the kitchen and avoided looking out any windows on my way back to the den.

The baby was fed and burped, so I sent #1GF! to bed and put the baby to sleep. I had to wake #1GF! up at 8AM to feed the baby. The poor woman hadn’t been asleep for more than an hour. As the heavy curtains of sleep parted, #1GF! slowly realized who I was. “Oh good,” she said as she flopped back on the pillow. “Because they were ripping me off.”

“Who were?” I said with a smirk.

“CVS or Walgreens. They were making me so mad.”

That’s about all I got out of her. She fed the baby and I straightened up the house. I related the story of my failed breakfast attempts, and #1GF! went out to get some milk. I didn’t care about breakfast enough to leave the house, but #1GF! has overbuilt sympathy circuits. If she thinks that you even remotely want something, she’ll put in more effort than necessary to get it for you.

We gave the baby a bath and then I sat by the window and fed her. It was only 10AM, but my internal clock was reading somewhere around midafternoon. A neighbor walked through our leaf covered yard to talk to the baby through the window. I love small towns. I took a break from the feeding to talk a little.

I finished feeding the baby just as my engineer friend showed up with his wife, the lawyer, to see the baby, hitherto wheretofor subgum mumbo jumbo in perpetuum. The minute that they walked through the door, the baby had a fit. They stood there sort of horrified that they had somehow caused the meltdown, but I assured them that the baby was just tired from a warm bath and a full belly.

The baby quickly burned out and fell asleep. Our friends brought gifts of books and clothes, which was really nice of them. More importantly, it was really nice to see the both of them. Busy schedules have kept us from meeting up as often as I’d like.

The baby woke up before they left and smiled a little as if to assure them that they weren’t the problem. The neighborhood kids were running around outside, and the day seemed to be rolling along more smoothly than the start would have indicated.

Our friends headed out, and we went to one of #1GF!’s co-worker’s houses in the afternoon. She has a big, beautiful house set on a big chunk of land. It’s big enough that our house could be used as its garage.

I didn’t really know the husband all that well, so I asked about the house addition that was in progress. I’ve gutted and redesigned two houses so far, and I like to visualize other people’s construction ideas. I got a tour of the addition and an explanation of an exterior wood burning furnace that acts as a heat exchange with their main heating system. It was an ingenious system if you have the land and wood to use it. I had never seen anything like it before and was impressed with the idea and the install.

On the way home, we picked up a broken PC from another friend that had taken a solid smacking from a virus. The baby had been good all day, but was in no mood for a quick stopover. She was crying before we left the driveway. I fed her a half bottle with my arm over the seat, but it didn’t help. She kept crying and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. It was a loud, twenty minute straight cry. She was still going when we pulled into our driveway.

As soon as the truck was in park, I climbed into the back seat and said, “It’s okay, honey.” The baby looked up at me through red, teary eyes and smiled wide. It was a smile of relief. She was teary and smiling at the same time like a sun shower. Never have I experienced something so small that felt so fucking heartbreaking. It was as if all she wanted was to know that she wasn’t alone in the dark. I felt like I had slapped her. I took her out of the car and carried her into the house. I really felt like a heel.

A twelve week old baby cries a lot, and sometimes you can’t do anything about it. You learn to live with the tears. Looking into my daughter’s teary eyes and seeing her smile reminded me that a twelve week old doesn’t cry out of want. They cry out of need. At twelve weeks, want doesn’t exist yet.

We got the baby settled into bed and sat down to watch Dexter. It was only 9PM, but we were exhausted. I had to pick the baby up a couple of times during the show, and every time, she snuggled into my chest.

“Parenthood is different, isn’t it?” asked #1GF! as we stared at the TV.

“It is, but I love it. I get it now. I finally know what all the fuss is about.”

#1GF! smiled like we were in on a secret together.

Monday (Day 883): Deep Fried Awesome Wrapped In Bacon

I got up to take over the baby care, and #1GF! decided not to go back to bed. I thought that she should, but she’s an adult and knows what’s best for her.

I took the baby in to change her, and she somehow pooped all over her clothes. I have no idea how she did it, but of course she did it on my watch. I stripped her down and we gave her a bath and put her into some fresh clothes. The warm water sent her back to sleep for a few hours.

I looked up cars for a while, trying to find something remotely interesting in category of family sedans that #1GF! was interested in. They were all as exiting as dry toast, if toast had a massive advertising budget.

The baby woke up briefly to eat before going back to sleep. I stopped looking up cars, and #1GF! and I spent the rest of the day competing in Bejeweled. We used to compete against each other in various flash games years ago, mostly over winter vacations. The quiet alternation between reading on the couch and competing made it feel like a vacation day.

The baby had a screaming fit from 6 to 8PM, and then finally drifted off to sleep. #1GF! and I started watching Singles. I hadn’t seen the movie since college, and #1GF! had never seen it at all. Once I figured out that Superbad was on, Singles got sidelined. The sheer volume of awesome packed into Superbad made it very difficult to go to bed.

Evan: [examining the fake ID] Hawaii. All right, that’s good. That’s hard to trace, I guess. Wait… you changed your name to… McLovin?
Fogell: Yeah.
Evan: McLovin? What kind of a stupid name is that, Fogell? What, are you trying to be an Irish R&B singer?
Fogell: Naw, they let you pick any name you want when you get down there.
Seth: And you landed on McLovin…
Fogell: Yeah. It was between that or Muhammed.
Seth: Why the fuck would it be between that or Muhammed? Why don’t you just pick a common name like a normal person?
Fogell: Muhammed is the most commonly used name on Earth. Read a fucking book for once.
Evan: Fogell, have you actually ever met anyone named Muhammed?
Fogell: Have you actually ever met anyone named McLovin?
Seth: No, that’s why you picked a dumb fucking name!
Fogell: Fuck you.

It’s pure awesome on a stick, deep fried, and wrapped in bacon.

Tuesday (Day 884): A Speed Freak In A Diaper

I got up with #1GF! for all the feedings overnight. In the morning, #1GF! kept trying to send me to bed, but I argued that I didn’t have anything pressing at work the next day. The boss would understand if I was a little slow. Har. Har.

We were dressed before 9AM, and I went out and vacuumed the inside of ROCKET CAR!. I went to a car wash, and then cleaned the wheels in the parking lot because the “wheel bright” isn’t really.

When I got home, #1GF! and her friend took the baby out shopping. I had a lot of time to kill, so I decided that I’d try to buy a car for #1GF! before she got home. It was an ambitious plan. I got in my newly cleaned ROCKET CAR! and went to a Honda dealer to see if they had any leftover ’09s in stock.

I walked into the dealership, and I wasn’t immediately slimed like in a normal car dealership. In fact, no one paid any attention to me at all. There was a salesman leaning with his belly against the driver’s door of one of the showroom cars, and he looked like he was debating between going to get lunch, and locking himself in one of the bathroom stalls with a .45. There was also a really dark, bald man wearing aviator sunglasses sitting at a desk in the middle of the floor eating a sandwich. If the guy swapped his blazer for a set of cammies, I would’ve thought him to be a revolutionary general of a small, internationally unrecognized state. Talking to people who wear sunglasses inside never works out, so I walked over to the semi-suicidal salesman leaning on the car.

The salesman didn’t seem interested in talking to me, but he wearily turned around because it was probably in the dealership handbook that he had to. I asked him through the fog of his body odor whether he had any 2009s on the lot. He not only told me that they didn’t have any, but that there weren’t any anywhere. In the world. I looked at his pinky ring and Bill Cosby sweater and didn’t think that he was lying. He just didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. I thanked him and backed out of the showroom, fully convinced that the next employee I encountered would end up being a speed freak in a diaper. And nothing messes up a Tuesday morning worse than a speed freak in a diaper.

I was going to visit another dealership in Boston, but I didn’t want to waste time if the salesman was right and there really weren’t any ’09s out there. I went home and searched dealer inventories on the web. I found a few ’09′s out there, but there was no way that I had enough time to have the car bought by the time #1GF! got home. There wasn’t going to be a surprise for her that day, so I tried to find a checkmark elsewhere.

I started working on the PC that I picked up for repair the day before, figuring that I could earn a checkmark in a couple of hours time. That didn’t happen. The machine was missing the start menu, and every task had to be run out of task manager. It was definitely infected with something that did not play nice with others.

After banging my head against the wall for far too long, I eventually decided to take the hard drive out and add it as a slave in another PC so that I could work on it more easily. The infected PC was older, and made on the cusp of the screwless revolution. It had its own ideas about what easy was. Some design engineer tried to make the inside easy and compartmentalized, but ended up making it a convoluted, finger splitting mess of sharp metal and hidden connectors.

After a number of choice words, ranging from straight shots of the big four right down to convoluted combinations of swears that were making less and less sense, I eventually got the drive out and into another PC. I tracked down and replaced some of the missing system files, and got it to the point that it would at least boot with a start menu.

I had to take the front face off of the infected PC just to get the hard drive reinstalled because of the idiotic way the wires were routed in the case. I nipped a couple of fingers on unseen edges and progressed into even more interesting triple-score curse combinations.

I eventually got the drive back into the case, got a virus scanner running, and cleaned out a ton of viruses. After a few hours of scanning, the machine went into a reboot loop because some files were again missing. Which files, was the question. If I could’ve checked the scan logs, I could easily have found out, but when a PC is in a reboot loop, you’re not checking anything. I took the drive out again, and used the second PC to replace the missing system files. I then reinstalled the drive again into the convoluted beast of a machine.

And the machine wouldn’t boot at all. I had been working on the machine for hours, and it was steadily getting worse. I eventually had to resort to a factory restore, and work forward from there, rebuilding the PC application by application. By 10PM, I had the machine running. I still needed to finish installing some of the applications, but I was falling into microsleeps more and more often, so I gave up for the night and went to bed.

Wednesday (Day 885): A Car Salesman In A Bear Trap

I got up at all the feedings with #1GF! again. The baby was spitting up all over everything in the morning. There were no less than four barfs in an hour, at a cost of two shirts for #1GF!, two outfits for the baby, and a couple of burp cloths. I was spared so that I could warn others.

The baby was so contaminated with barf that we put her in the bath for the third day in a row (typically, babies who can’t crawl don’t need baths more than every other day). After the bath, she quickly fell asleep. #1GF! and I sat down with a couple of bowls of cereal and watched Kitchen Nightmares.

In the afternoon, we went to a large car dealership in Boston to look at a car that I had negotiated a really good price for through e-mail. According to the dealer’s website, they had nine ’09 vehicles available. The woman that I had been emailing wasn’t available, so we got passed on to another woman, who introduced us to another salesman.

The salesman brought out a model that was a step up from what we were looking for on the premise that it was a tight dealership and they couldn’t get the model we wanted out of the lot without moving cars. It seemed reasonable, so #1GF! took the test drive, while I waited in the dealership with the baby.

She returned soon enough and the salesman and I went outside to look over ROCKET CAR!. He said that another Evolution had come in the week before and went out really fast. It’s not a common car and it was in good shape. It should sell fast. I was glad that the dealer wasn’t playing games.

I went back in, and we went over to the salesman’s desk to work out the deal. On the way, an oaf of a salesman kept trying to touch the baby’s hand. He succeeded once and the baby latched on. “This one came with a kung fu grip!” he called to his chortling cohorts. Har har har. You don’t touch someone else’s baby with your greasy, ass-wiping, cheeseburger hands, you fucking idiot. They have no immune systems. The moron wandered off, probably to lick some doorknobs. #1GF! put sanitizer on the baby’s hands and kept her from eating them.

We sat down at the desk, and the salesman went to get the trade offer from the manager on my “fast selling” Evolution. I stood up and walked around while he was gone, carefully stepping over the traps that he was waiting to spring on me. He came back and quickly offered 10k for the car.

I could feel the heat already starting to rise in the vicinity of #1GF!. I laughed. “The car books for eighteen,” I said.

“Let’s check Kelly Blue Book then,” he said with a fleeting, but smug smile. He brought up the site on the screen. In big, black numbers, it listed the trade as $18,000 for an average condition Evolution. His smug smile vanished when he realized that he just set a trap and walked into it. He went back to the manager to start the “I’ll ask the manager game”.

He came back and pushed a piece of paper across the desk. The 10k was crossed out, and a 14k was written in it’s place. He stared at it like two digits and a letter were a full blackboard physics equation that he needed to understand for an upcoming quiz.

I shook my head. “Fourteen? Listen. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m ready to buy a car today, right now, but I’ll sell the car myself or go somewhere else before I give you a clean Evolution for four thousand under book value.”

His one foot was stuck in a trap, so he was fumbling around. He tried to play the sympathy card as if I gave a flying shit how tough the car business is. “Well, your car is unique. It will be very hard to sell.”

“Earlier, you said that you were one of the top salesman in the dealership, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“You sell a lot of cars in a month.”

“I do.”

“You told me that you got one in last week and it flew off the lot. So, a guy like you should have no problem selling my car.” A second trap snapped on his other foot.

“Well, sports cars don’t sell well in the winter,” he said not realizing that he was leaning on a third rusty trap just waiting to snap shut.

“Maybe, but all wheel drive cars sell great in the winter.” It’s always funny to watch salesmen stepping into traps that they set for you. I don’t think they’re used to it, so they squirm a little more.

I’m a pain in the balls for car dealers. I know it, and I don’t care. I don’t care if they make any profit on a car they sell me, and I do my homework before I show up. If they try to bullshit me or if I don’t like the salesman, I walk out. I have deals prearranged, and I don’t sit waiting for the manager. If the salesman leaves the desk, so do I. I walk around the showroom near the door, and it usually cuts the management consultation to a minimum. I’m never impolite, but I never negotiate from the position that I need the car more than they need the sale. I almost always walk out, but with a smile because it’s all a game to me.

We hit a point where we were just staring at each other, so I stood up. “Thanks. It was nice to meet you, [whatever your name is]. We’ll try Boch. They’re pretty big and can usually make deals happen.” And I left the door open as I always do with “If anything changes, give me a call.” They always do.

#1GF! was so fucking irritated with the guy that she was still arguing him. The baby started to cry. And that’s when the salesman let it slip that he didn’t even have the car that we wanted available. To get the car we were looking for, they’d have to get it from another dealer and put a couple of hundred miles on it. He had wasted two hours of our time, and we decided that it was time to go.

On the way home, #1GF! and I dissected the negotiation. We knew that we were moving in the right direction, but it felt like we accomplished something and yet failed at the same time. “You know,” I said to #1GF! “I don’t mind a good negotiation, but car dealers make me feel like life is hard. Unnecessarily hard.” #1GF! agreed.

#1GF! made dinner and I cleaned up. I worked on rebuilding our friends’ PC, and finished around 8PM. The machine really was a mess. I needed to do hundreds of updates and service packs, followed by defragging and general cleanup. When it was done, I had a couple of peanut butter cups out of the undistributed Halloween stash as a sort of reward.

Thursday (Day 886): Experimenting On The Baby

I slept through the midnight feeding because I was dreaming that vampires were trying to eat me, but I managed to get up at the 4AM feeding, despite #1GF!’s protests. She was right that I was wasting valuable sleep time, but I was there for support.

When we finally got up for good, the baby refused to sleep. She stayed awake all day.

I spent the day researching cars while waiting for the baby to eat, sleep, or poop. We were supposed to go out to look at cars, but #1GF! suddenly decided that she wanted a 2010 instead of an ’09 so that she could get a manual transmission. Because 2010s came at a much higher premium than closeout ’09s, I searched for another car with more features and a lower price to get her into a 2010. I found a few alternatives that were in the same price as the ’09 we were looking at. I didn’t mark this as an accomplishment. The biggest checkmark I got all day was to scoop a snarled, moldy mass of hair out of a bathroom drain.

It probably wasn’t the best idea to experiment with a baby who was already sleep-deprived, but we gave the baby her first dose of formula to see if she could handle it. She ended up with painful gas that had her screaming for a few hours. #1GF! took her at 7PM, and had her asleep by 8PM. I was asleep on the couch by 8:30PM.

Friday (Day 887): So, You Hate Foreigners You Say?

I woke up at 4:40AM because the baby was shaking around in her bed. I lay there awake in the dark until 6AM, when she finally woke up. I didn’t want to be awake, but I couldn’t stop thinking about cars. Research and battle plans for negotiation filled my head.

Once we were up, I restarted the car research. I quickly realized that there are very few activities that are more soul slaying than comparing specs on family sedans. Maybe comparing insurance policies or reading EULAs would be close, but I couldn’t be sure.

After far too much research, I ended up with a list of which dealers had what family sedans on their lots. #1GF! really wanted a manual transmission, so I tried to find sedans in our range that we could get in manual. I got a good price on a Jetta, so we went to the dealer to check it out.

We walked in, and the internet guy I had been dealing with through e-mail immediately handed us off to a woman who used to be a Realtor around town. #1GF! went out for a ride in a Jetta SE, and I sat with the baby in the dealership. It was pointless for me to drive any sedan that we were buying. None of them had the power, handling, or the Ricaro seats that hugged you like your mama would if she approved of you driving a ROCKET CAR! around town.

#1GF! liked the way the car drove, and I liked some of the features, but we took the saleswoman’s card and left because we weren’t sure that the car was right for us. From there, we went to a Honda dealer north of the city. I asked for the woman who I had been working on prices with online. She came out and passed us off to a car salesman. I think car dealers must have phone people, internet people, and salespeople.

We made small talk with the salesman to lull him, and #1GF! asked what his busiest day was. He thought for a second. “Sunday,” he said. We nodded like it was interesting. “But, I don’t like Sundays. Especially if the Pats are playing.” We nodded a little more as if we gave a shit, just to force him to keep the conversation afloat. He shook his head with a scowl. “Honestly, I don’t like selling cars to people who aren’t at home watching football on Sunday.” #1GF! smirked and tried not to look at me. “I don’t like selling to people like that.” He leaned in and frowned. “They’re mostly foreigners,” he said without bothering to mask a fair amount of disgust.

I thought about mentioning the foreigners that aren’t too far back in either my or #1GF!’s family trees, but thought that negotiations are often uphill for people who incorrectly assume that they’re in a safe place. I tried not to roll my eyes, and had a clearer vision of who we were dealing with.

They brought around a sedan, and I sat in the passenger seat for a few seconds just to make sure that my head didn’t touch the roof. The inside was a lot bigger than the Jetta, but the cloth seats were ugly. They had some sort of squiggles in them that reminded me of the confetti on an 1980s birthday party invitation. #1GF! went out for a test drive, and I waited in the dealership with the baby.

I stood at a table in the middle of the sales floor, and people kept coming over to me and sharing parenting stories. I have no idea why. Maybe it was a slow day for car sales.

The baby quickly got fussy, so I fed her a bottle. I was the only customer in the showroom, so I tried to keep a low profile, but the baby growled the whole time she was eating, and I couldn’t stop laughing. Every time I thought she was done, I would pull the bottle away and she would growl louder.

When she was finished eating, she started sucking her thumb because she was ready to go to sleep. The salesman who hates foreigners let me know that she was sucking her thumb because she was still hungry. He knew this, he told me, because he had several kids. I smiled and nodded with raised eyebrows like he was a parenting god handing down tablets of wisdom from the mountain just so he’d fuck off. I didn’t mention that she sucks her thumb because her other option is screaming.

#1GF! came back from the test drive and took the baby out to ROCKET CAR! for a diaper change. The baby had somehow gotten around her diaper and pooped all over her pants. We were a long way from home and just starting negotiations, and we were without a spare outfit. We were still new to the parenting game, and were still building a checklist of what we needed when we took the baby out. Spare outfit was added to the list.

#1GF! came back in, and the dealers started the dog and pony show of appraising my car. They walked around it and frowned. They snapped pictures and shook their heads. I stood watching them from inside. It was the same deal as the last place. The salesman started explaining the value of my car to me, a guy who has a degree in Finance with a minor in Economics. “It’s going to be hard to sell because it’s a rare car. It’s a dealer’s nightmare.”

I contemplated explaining the effect of scarcity on price using a simple Marshall curve, but figured that it would be more fun to see if the guy could tangle himself up any further with “up is down”, “left is right” , or some other law that only exists on the showroom floor of car dealerships.

“Do you know the book on the car?” he asked.

“It’s eighteen,” I replied.

“From where?”

“Kelly Blue Book.”

He made a face and shook his head. “They’re not accurate.”

“I looked at Edmunds and NADA, too. They were about the same. Autotrader was a little higher.”

He paused. “Did you check Galves?”

I looked at him for a second and sighed. I check three pricing guides that line up, and he names a fourth to cut my credibility. If I named four, he’d have a fifth. “No,” I said.

“See, that’s the one you have to check.”

“Of course it is,” I thought.

He must’ve sensed an undercurrent of irritation. “Not that I know what your car’s worth. That’s out of my hands. That’s our appraiser.”

“Playing good cop, bad cop,” I thought. “Not impressed.”

He just kept talking. “You know, we sell a ton of cars. And we never advertise. We’re a good dealership.”

I’m more than willing to listen to bullshit from car salesmen, but sometimes I get tired of being treated like I’m more of a mark than a customer. I sang his radio jingle back to him. I scoffed. “I hear your ads on all the time.”

“Well, okay. Yea, you do.” He regrouped. “But do you ever hear us advertise prices? No. Never.”

New dealership truth: Advertising isn’t advertising unless it mentions price. Got it. Google ads are not ads. They’re now simply called googles.

We had already been at the dealer a couple of hours, and they were making us wait for some guy to figure out the appraisal. My irritation was starting to flow a little closer to the surface, and everyone was getting the hint.

They finally came back with $17,500 on ROCKET CAR!. I was happy with that. They were ready to set up the deal and brought out a paper with my trade and full MSRP on an ’09 on it. I laughed at them and they looked genuinely confused.

I was looking at invoice or below and told them the price I already had from another dealer. The salesman acted as if I had just asked to fuck his grandmother and sell the sex tape on eBay. He called the sales manager out, and he told me that the only way that they could sell me a car near invoice would be to give me less on my trade. #1GF! and I walked, and as usual, I told them to call us if anything changed.

The baby had to sit in stained pants all through the negotiation. They were wiped off as best as we could, but shit on your pants, is shit on your pants. We drove home tired. The baby cried a good portion of the way.

When we got home, I whipped up a quick dinner. The baby wouldn’t sleep, so we sat her in her swing to keep her calm enough that we could wolf down our food. #1GF! eventually got her to go to sleep and went to bed soon after.

I knew that the baby would be up in an hour to eat, and an hour didn’t seem like it was worth the trouble of going to bed. I watched mindless TV and wondered where the day went. I settled in bed at 11PM, and lay awake, reviewing car deals in the dark. Once I put the cars aside, my brain moved on to the leaves that needed to be raked and other chores that needed to be taken care of. I eventually drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

Saturday (Day 888): A Shake Weight For Christmas

The baby started kicking like mad at 5AM, and #1GF! tried to haul her out of the room so that I could sleep. I tried to take over so that #1GF! could sleep, but she wasn’t going for it. #1GF! told me that I was pissing her off.

Now, I know that it was something that would be considered minor in most relationships, but it was magnified because things like that never happen in ours. You don’t notice a hole punched in the wall in an abandoned building, but you notice even a small scratch on a new car.

We’ve never talked like that to one another, but the lack of sleep, and increase in effort donated to cars and the baby were taking its toll on the both of us. We were nipping at each other more than we had ever been.

We put the baby back to bed and listened to her kick for an hour. I got my way and took her out of the room, and within fifteen minutes, she started screaming. So much for my plan.

#1GF! came out to feed her. The baby went to sleep for a half hour, and #1GF! and I sat on the couch watching a show off of the DVR. The baby woke up for two hours. #1GF! went to shower and I tried to get the baby to go back to sleep.

It was still a couple of months before Christmas, but the radio stations were already going full-time on the Christmas songs…and so did I. Full time Christmas all day long, baby. I don’t know when I started being pro-Christmas, but I think it was around the time I started ignoring the meaning and stress of the holidays to focus on the fun. I know it’s sick. I know.

I sat on the couch and a commercial for the shake weight came on TV (google it, if you feel the need). I was amazed. Completely amazed. I already had someone’s present picked out and I was two months ahead of schedule.

Once we were dressed, we spent the day looking up and talking about cars. I got five dealers on the hook for a price on a new Jetta. They all competed for the sale via email. Getting bids by e-mail is the only way to go these days. It’s a huge time saver.

The baby spent the day sleeping and throwing up on things. She was growling again and I kept laughing at her. She’s a lot of fun.

#1GF! went out and got us subs for lunch, and we watched an episode of The Shield together. We got a call that we would be raking the family cottage the following day, and weren’t too psyched about it.

Both of the ladies were asleep by 6PM. One was in the den, limiting my television access, and the other was blocking access to the PC. I stood at the DVR playing a web game thinking that #1GF! would wake up soon. Two hours later, I gave up and left the room. There wasn’t much that I could do without waking them up. I sighed and sat on the couch waiting for something to happen, and eventually started pouring the day into my notebook. Without the ladies, the house is really quiet, so the writing went fast. I picked up my book and started reading.

Within an hour, I couldn’t read another word, so I woke #1GF! up to send her to bed. I intended to watch a little television to wind down. #1GF! put in a call to her mother, and I spent the next hour listening to her doing blind tech support over the phone.

“Do you see where it says ‘password’? Password? Do you see a password box? A password box? For a password?”

Flying blind on tech support is usually painful, and this slow torture went on for an hour. I couldn’t concentrate on the TV and should’ve left the room and kept reading. #1GF! is one of the most extraordinarily conscientious people I’ve ever known, but during that hour, I felt like I could’ve been a lamp.

What I Learned

• You can have an exteranal wood furnace that piggy backs off of your heating system.
• Twelve week olds have needs, not wants.
• I know more than any male needs to know about family sedans.
• Manual transmissions are getting harder and harder to find.
• Getting bids on cars before you go out is essential.
• The internet salespeople you deal with online will not be helping you if you go to the dealership.
• People have no idea that you’re not supposed to touch someone else’s baby.
• Formula gives the baby some painful gas.
• Accords are bigger than Jettas.
• Take a spare outfit when you take the baby somewhere.
• Appraising a car at a car dealership is nothing but show.
• You can check three sources for car book values, and the dealer will come up with a fourth.
• I still like negotiating for cars.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

Posted in Life of Riley