This is week 129 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 896): Happy Trails, ROCKET CAR!

“So what do you want to do today?” #1GF! asked me.

“Get dressed?” I replied. Sometimes, it’s best to start small.

We did get dressed, and then drove to a large Honda dealer to have ROCKET CAR! appraised. I had already locked in a price that was below dealer cost through e-mail. The car we were going to see wasn’t a manual, wasn’t the color #1GF! wanted, and it had 88 miles on it (which is about 80 more than I like on a new car), but you have to make a few concessions when you’re below dealer cost.

Interestingly, the dealer didn’t bother with the dog and pony show that goes along with appraising my car. They took a look at the outside, peeked at the engine, and looked up what they could wholesale it for. It took a lot less time than usual, but in the end, they undervalued it, anyway.

We left Honda and went to a local Subaru dealer to see if they could do any better on the trade. We saw our salesman, and he brought out the manager to appraise ROCKET CAR!. Oddly, the manager didn’t find it necessary to say hello. The salesman tried to introduce us to him, and he begrudgingly shook my had without taking his eyes off of the car. He didn’t bother with #1GF!. Within a few minutes, the manager walked away without saying anything.

“Well, I guess he got what he needed,” the salesman said in a surprised tone.

We certainly didn’t. The manager went into the building, leaving us standing in the parking lot. When we followed, the manager gave the salesman the lowest bid on my car that I had gotten from any dealer. The manager left such a bad taste in my mouth that I didn’t bother haggling. You don’t expect to be treated like royalty when buying a family sedan, but you don’t expect to be treated like garbage, either.

Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe he wasn’t. In either case, if that was how the sales manager treated people who wanted to make a purchase, we couldn’t imagine how he treated customers who needed service after the deal was done. And with J.D. Power’s Subaru ratings, I had the feeling that there could be a lot of service. I had to tell the salesman that I was sorry but I had better deals on the table with other dealers. We left.

I wanted to get #1GF! a new car before her first day back to work, but there were only hours left and it didn’t look like it was going to happen. I felt bad, but you can’t get desperate when you’re buying a car, even if the woman you’re buying it for deserves it.

When we got home, I gave it one last try. I called the Honda salesman back and I got connected to a woman who couldn’t speak English. I dialed again and got the same woman. Thinking that the salesman’s card was a misprint, I called the dealer directly, and they connected me to the same woman again.

I called the dealership’s internet manager and left a message that for $500 less than he was offering, I would come back and purchase the car that night. Remember, I was already below dealer cost on the car, and running out of time, and yet I still found it necessary to continue pounding on the deal a little more. All he could say was “No.”

Within fifteen minutes, three different people from the dealership called me back to try to make the deal happen. After the experience with Subaru, it was nice to be dealing with people who really wanted to sell us a car.

The dealer not only agreed to the deal, but said that we could pick up the car and take it home that night. It was a last second basket at the buzzer. We packed the baby back into ROCKET CAR! for one last ride, and drove back to the dealer in the dark to trade ROCKET CAR! in for a nice family sedan.

We signed all the papers, and the salesman jokingly asked if I was going to go hug ROCKET CAR! before we left. I absolutely was. Once the deal was done, #1GF! and I took the baby out to the parking lot, where a lonely, plateless ROCKET CAR! sat waiting for us. I could almost hear her asking when we were going home. She had no idea. I hugged her goodbye and took a few family pictures with her.

We drove off the lot with a brand new family sedan and #1GF! was beyond pleased. I was riding shotgun in a family sedan and I was fine with it. ROCKET CAR! belonged under the ass of someone who would enjoy it. I was a family man.

Monday (Day 897): Mr. Mom, Day One

The baby slept from 8PM until 4AM. Sure, waking up at 4AM isn’t the greatest, but having the baby sleep for eight hours straight was pretty awesome. #1GF! never went back to bed after the 4AM feed, and I got up at 6AM.

#1GF! put on her business clothes and noticed that they were too big. Way too big, actually. She had noticeably lost weight thanks to the baby. That didn’t make up for the fact that she had to go back to work, but it was a nice surprise.

#1GF! walked out the door for her first day back to work. She plodded across the lawn despite the sharpness of her business clothes. She turned around and welled up. “This sucks,” she said.

I stood in the doorway holding the baby. “I know. Thanks for not refusing to go.”

#1GF! turned and walked the final few steps and got into her new car. “Ooh, I slide right in,” she said with a smile as she slid across the leather seats and closed the door.

Can you make it okay for a woman to leave her baby behind? No, but buying her a nice family sedan with leather seats and satellite radio will temporarily take some of the sting out of it.

As soon as #1GF! was out of sight, the baby barfed all over me in an attempt to show me who was boss. I cleaned her up, fed her, and put her to bed.

I made coffee for the first time in a long time and then checked my e-mail. I ended up corresponding with the great great great great grandniece of Joseph Palmer. That was sort of cool. Thanks, Internet.

Once I had delayed as long as I could, I sat at the computer trying to decipher fourteen weeks of notes. I scribble small and tight, and some scribblings had already been orphaned of their meaning.

The baby kept crying in her sleep, and every time I’d get up to go check on her she would stop just as I got to her door. After a while, I stopped getting up, expecting her to stop. Then, she would keep crying and I’d get up and go to check on her. She’d stop just as I got to the door. I was living a bad sitcom and getting only a couple of sentences deciphered between trips to her room. It wasn’t my most productive day.

In an attempt to speed things along, I tried once again to use a speech to text application to transcribe my notes. If I was writing creatively off of the top of my head, the app would be great, but it was actually slowing me down because I would have to look at the notes to say them, and then spend time checking and correcting what the application thought I said. It was taking twice as long as typing, so I had to go back to staring at my notebook and typing. Between the baby and the deciphering, I only managed to get a partway through one week during the whole day.

Once the baby was tired of games and decided to get up for real, I found barf on the floor. It must’ve been surreptitiously served up by the barf ninja when I wasn’t looking. I cleaned it up, and not only stepped in more barf, but walked around with a wet barfy sock for longer than you’d think before figuring out what was going on. I had no idea where I stepped in it, and had to retrace a barfy set of footprints until the I lost the trail.

In addition to the loss of a pair of socks, I lost two shirts, and got formula and barf on two couches. I should’ve changed the baby’s shirt after the third time she threw up on herself, but I waited until the fifth because no one was coming over, and I’m a bad father.

I walked by a mirror and realized that I looked like shit. I never quite look all that great anyway, but my reflection reminded me of Jack Butler during Mr. Mom, but with bigger bags under my eyes. I put out my hand. “Give me the woobie, Ken.”

I fed the baby twice, four hours apart, and other than crying in her sleep and following her typical barf ninja routine, things seemed to be going relatively smoothly…until 3PM, when she completely flipped out. I changed her, fed her, burped her, fed her again, and changed her again, and she was still going. I tried to get dinner ready, but the baby wasn’t going to let it happen. She was only relaxed for five minutes at a time.

My parents called, and I couldn’t hear half of what they were saying because the baby was screaming. I used all my powers of concentration and was still only picking up every fourth word. When the baby arched back and power headbutted the phone as if it were vying for her intercontinental baby wrestling belt, I decided that it was time to hang up.

When #1GF! called to check in, I had to encourage her to go to the dealer after work to get the inspection sticker for the new car. I had to smile while I talked to sound as if the extra time away from the house would be no big deal. I had to ask her repeat herself a few times because the baby was screaming in my other ear. I called #1GF! back during one of the five minute lull periods when the baby wasn’t screaming to convince her that she shouldn’t worry.

I tried to start dinner again, but ended up leaving half prepared ingredients all over the counter. I was getting so wound up that I got aggravated at the baby for a brief moment before remembering that she’s just a baby and doesn’t know any better. I then got aggravated at #1GF! for not having a jet powered car or the ability to travel through time to get home even though I encouraged her to get an inspection sticker. I quickly laughed at myself for being such a goddamned wuss.

By the end of the day, waiting for #1GF! was sort of like one of those times where you have to pee really badly. The closer you get to the bathroom, the worse the discomfort. By the time #1GF! pulled into the driveway, I was pacing around and looking out windows. I just wanted to hand the baby off to #1GF! and get dinner ready.

#1GF! came in and took the baby. I started dinner. “So, how was your day?” I asked, trying to be positive and supportive.

“It sucked.”

“Good, good. So, how does the baby’s head look?” I asked without looking up from the vegetables I was cutting.

“What happened?” #1GF! said with a little panic.

“If it looks fine, then nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“It was nothing.”

“Spill it,” said #1GF! as she went over every inch of the baby’s head.

“She may have done a flying headbutt into the cordless phone while I was trying to talk to my parents. She didn’t cry, but she hit pretty hard. I think she was just trying to make me look bad on my first day of Mr. Momming.”

#1GF! took the baby off to bed. I had dinner ready and we were eating by 8:15PM. #1GF! shut off the Christmas music that I had been playing all day and we spent the rest of the night sitting on the couch and staring at the idiot box until our brains cried for mercy.

Tuesday (Day 898): Peeing Honey

I got up somewhere around 6AM, got #1GF! off to work, and put the baby to sleep. I sat down at the PC and continued transferring the past three months of Life Of Riley notes into posts. I fed the baby at 1PM, and she only stayed up long enough to ruin one shirt. I went back to writing and wondered if I should be back writing my next novel instead of wasting time writing what was amounting to an extremely long standing hobby.

I fed the baby again at 4PM. The baby was sick, so I had to suck boogers out of her nose with this little plunger. The baby didn’t like it one bit and struggled and fidgeted to keep me from getting that plunger anywhere near her nostrils. Why can I pop a moving target at three hundred yards in a video game and not be able to stick a plunger up a moving baby’s nose to suck out boogers? It’s as if all those years of video game hand eye training mean nothing.

By the end of the day, my nose was running and my throat was getting sore. I put the baby in her crib at 4PM, even though she was fidgety enough that I was sure that she wasn’t ready for bed. “I’m going to pee, honey (a comma makes a big difference in the preceding sentence),” I said. “and then I’ll be back to get you.”

When I went back in to her room, she had already fallen asleep. I was visibly disappointed that she wasn’t still awake. I slumped my shoulders and let her get some sleep.

When #1GF! got home, we got a phone call that we had been exposed to H1N1 at a party over the weekend. Awesome. I ended up going to bed at 9:30PM.

Wednesday (Day 899): Don’t Get Glitter On The Baby

I woke up at midnight choking on snot. A couple of times during the night, the baby did the same. I woke up again at 4:55AM because the baby sounded like she couldn’t breathe. We spent an hour trying to suck the snot out of her nose while she cried.

I went back to bed at 6AM, and #1GF! jumped into the shower. I stayed under the covers to keep warm, and eventually drifted off into a dream where I got lost in a dark section of the supermarket and someone was following me. I left the store, forgetting my groceries, and drove through a nighttime car show, but couldn’t stop because I sold my Evo for a family sedan.

As the morning light shined through the windows, #1GF! found a big smear across the hardwood floor. She had located the source of the puke that I tracked through the house two days before. I grabbed something to clean it up with.

The pattern for the day was hear the baby cry, wash my hands, and check on the baby who was already asleep. I got sicker as the day went on, and my nose would not stop running. By the time #1GF! called to check in, I was spending a good amount of effort simply keeping my nose from dripping on the baby. I know that it’s gross, but I couldn’t put the baby down because every time I did, she’d cry.

I didn’t think I’d have to take care of a baby while I was sick this early in the baby’s life. I went through a couple of boxes of Kleenex in a matter of hours. I finally got tired of tilting my head back and running to grab Kleenex, so dug through the medicine cabinet and found some DayQuil.

I took the recommended dose, and within a half hour, I started getting nauseous. I haven’t been sick in a while, so I figured it was either a side effect of the medicine that I had forgotten about, or related to the fact that I was drinking grape juice and plowing through water thirty-two ounces at a time.

At the end of the day, Tinkerbell knocked on my door, bearing more DayQuil. I complimented her on her sparkly wings, and let her fly around the house with the baby. When I went to take the new medicine, I realized that the DayQuil that I had taken earlier expired two years ago. I went to tell Tinkerbell to not get any glitter on the baby, but #1GF! was home and must’ve sent her on her way.

I woke up every two hours during the night because either the baby or I couldn’t breathe. Thanks to the lack of oxygen, I made it through the whole day thinking it was Tuesday.

Thursday (Day 900): Three Quarters, A Ball Of Lint, And My Guilt

#1GF! went off to work, and the baby freaked out in her sleep. I fed her and she was still asleep. She wasn’t feeling well, and still couldn’t breathe. I had to do something to help.

I tried the nose sucker, but it wasn’t coming out with anything. I eyed the saline bottle. We hadn’t used saline yet, but the doctor said that it was perfectly fine to use. I put the baby on her changing table, and squirted a couple of drops of saline into each of her nostrils.

I’ve seen every possible version and duration of this child’s crying so far, and let me tell you, this time the baby completely lost her shit. I felt really bad for her. I didn’t want her to feel abandoned while sick, considering she had never been sick before. I wanted her to feel like everything was going to be okay. I picked her up and walked her around the house for a while, and finally calmed her down by rubbing her back while I leaned against a wall in the hallway.

When the baby finally drifted off to sleep, I got under a blanket on the couch and watched season 3 of The IT Crowd. The baby slept most of the day, and I stayed on the couch with my guilt for not transcribing notes stuffed under one of the cushions. As the day went on, I only got sicker.

The baby perked up when #1GF! got home, but I felt half as good as when I woke up. I made a quick pesto for dinner and flopped back down on the couch. I stayed up to watch 30 Rock, but should’ve gone to bed at 8PM.

Friday (Day 901): Giraffe Pants & Chicken Soup Socks

I woke up to an orange glow that had started on the horizon and eventually masked the neighborhood with the tint of a ’70s Polaroid. Dawn broke and rain fell.

#1GF! headed off to work, and I got the baby to sleep for an hour so that I could check the inside and outside of the house for signs that the storm was making its way in. Once I dried off, the baby got up for an hour, ate, and went to sleep for an hour. While she slept, I tried to get some writing done.

The rain cleared up, and I thought about taking the baby out for a walk because it was suddenly and unusually nice weather for New England in the Fall. As if to cast her vote against, the baby woke up crying.

I put her on the floor with some toys, which didn’t work. I gave her some baby gas-x. That didn’t work. I gave her a teething ring and she wanted nothing to do with it. Then, I stood in the mirror asking “Who is that baby?” which she usually laughs at. She responded by screaming, pulling off my glasses, and barfing down my shirt. Who’s that baby? Barf ninja, that’s who. The baby was just short of pulling my shirt over my head, and she was still counting out her life in weeks. I saw trouble in my immediate future.

I walked down the hall with barf on my shirt and a toy giraffe in my pocket. There was a time that if you asked, “Is that a giraffe in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”, there was a good chance that I might just be happy to see you. At this stage of the game, it’s all giraffe.

I finally got the baby to sleep and started dinner. I was making a pot of chicken soup. After #1GF! got home, I somehow spilled chicken soup on the floor and stepped in it. I left the kitchen and ran into #1GF! in the bedroom. I thought she needed an explanation of why I was there and not working on dinner. “I have chicken soup socks,” I said while grabbing a fresh pair of socks from the drawer.

#1GF! looked at me quizzically. “What? Wait, what do you mean?”

“Chicken soup. I spilled it on my socks, so I need to get new ones.”

She looked relieved. “Oh good. I thought you had special chicken soup socks that you wore only when eating chicken soup.”

I laughed. “Are you kidding?”

She shook her head no.

“We’ve been together eight years, and the thought that I wear special socks to eat chicken soup seemed like a possibility to you?”

“You are an odd creature of habit.”

I touched the balled up socks to my knees three times, touched them to the doorknob once, and knocked on the woodwork twice. “Ridiculous,” I said.

#1GF! smiled.

“I may need to do some real soul searching about my personality quirks,” I said before returning to the kitchen to finish the chicken soup.

Saturday (Day 902): Rakesistance is Futile

I raked the yard and cleaned out the gutters for the second week in a row, and I could see the possibility of a third round of raking looming before the first snow. Raking is such an exercise in futility.

The baby was really good and talkative all day, so #1GF! and I took her out to the mall so that we could get some Christmas shopping done. #1GF! crossed a few people off of her list, but as usual, I didn’t buy a thing. I’m not a shopper. I’m a researcher. And I hadn’t researched anything yet.

When we got home, I sent out emails to all the car dealers telling them that I had purchased a vehicle and that they could take me off of their e-mail lists. I then sent a nicely worded email to the Subaru salesman, explaining that although he made an excellent impression on us, his manager completely blew the sale. I did it as nicely as I could.

What I Learned

• Below dealer cost isn’t unreasonable. Way below dealer cost isn’t unreasonable.
• Babies make moms drop pounds.
• Buying a woman a new car can take a little bit of the sting out of going back to work.
• Transcribing my tiny, scratchy notes sucks.
• The baby does not like the nose plunger, and she absolutely hates having saline squirted up her nose.
• Sometimes, a comma can make a big difference.
• Expired DayQuil is not okay.

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Posted in Life of Riley