This is week 130 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 903): Not A Boy, Not A Wookie

I started the day off by cleaning the bathroom. Not because I wanted to, but because I had a couple of hours of babylessness to fill.

To unwind after that couple of hours of joy, I spent a fair amount of time transferring and expanding on an old Finetune Friday Christmas playlist to Last.fm only to find out that they wanted me to pay them just to play it. You know what? Fuck that shit. I’m not paying to stream music. I wanted to flush the PC down my freshly scrubbed toilet, but then Last.fm would still be out there laughing at me with its hand out, and my innocent, but elderly PC would be all wet and minty blue.

I growled and trudged into the baby’s room. #1GF! dressed the baby in one of her better outfits, and I watched as she threw up all over it. #1GF! put the baby in overalls and a blue shirt. “How’s that?” #1GF! asked as if I cared if the baby wore anything but white onsies all day.

“Awwww. I have the cutest son ever.”

#1GF! opened her mouth wide with offense, and marched the baby into the bathroom. I followed and caught her trying to put a barrette in the baby’s hair. I had to stop her. “We are not doing the whole ‘barrette in the hair’ or girly headband thing. Who cares if people think she’s a boy or a girl? She’s a baby.”

“She does not look like a boy.”

“Okay.”

“Say it. She doesn’t.”

“Fine, she doesn’t look like a boy.”

“Alright then.”

The barrette fell out of the baby’s ultra fine hair and clicked on the tile floor.

I reached out for the baby to put her in her car seat. “Come here, boy.”

We went to the Christmas Place to see if we could pick up some decorations. Yes. There’s a store here called the Christmas place. It’s next to a store called The Pool Place. No, I don’t know if the owners are practical or creatively stunted.

#1GF! bought two little fake trees for the front of the house. We found out at the register that the Christmas place is a lot more expensive than regular department stores.

“Want to go to the mall?” asked #1GF!, knowing that there was a large possibility that I did not.

I shrugged. “I don’t care. We’re out. If you want to get some shopping done, that’s fine. I’m just here to hang around with you two. What we do doesn’t really matter.” I entertained myself on the ride by setting XM presets on the radio that #1GF! would probably never listen to.

We went to the mall and did some Christmas shopping. The baby growled as we walked along. She wasn’t crying or even upset. She was just growling and having a good time with it. She was still growling when I put her back in the car.

“What’s up, Chewbacca?” I said, as an unusually gurgling growl came out of the baby. #1GF! thought it was a lot funnier than it was, and referred to the baby as Chewbacca from that point on.

Even though I said that my daughter looked like a boy earlier in the day, after a while, I started getting offended by the idea of the baby being called a Wookie. “Can you stop referring to my daughter as Chewbacca please?” I asked #1GF!. “You haven’t even seen Star Wars.”

“Do you hear your daddy, Chewbacca?” #1GF! said as she looked in the rearview mirror at the baby.

I shook my head. “I’m going to dig out my Star Wars tapes, and I’m going to make you sit down and watch every one of them.”

#1GF! gave me an eye roll.

“I am…once I figure out what pile of boxes the VCR is keeping off of the floor.”

#1GF! pulled into a home store to look for some cheap wreaths to hang on the windows. She came out with baskets. What is up with women and baskets? I just don’t understand. I’ve never purchased a basket in my life. Know why? Unless you’ve invented a time machine to go back and take some hottie in a poodle skirt on a picnic, baskets are useless. Try throwing a hammer into a basket. Know what you get? A woman who is pissed at you for ruining a basket.

Give me a plastic bucket or a milk crate for holding stuff any day. They’re a tenth of the price, and you never have to worry about all your stuff ending up all over the ground, unless someone dumps them out a window because you ruined one too many baskets.

We went home, and our friend came by to pick up his PC from hell that I fixed a few days before. It was a quick visit because the baby was already asleep. When you have a baby, you cease to be the main attraction. Usually, you’re too tired to notice.

I tried to make an easy spinach cream sauce for pasta that I found in The Silver Spoon. It may have been the recipe, or it may have been the cook, but it was not what I would call great. I didn’t have a large food processor, so I burned out a blender trying to make it. When I say burned out, I mean the blender started smoking, and I had to throw it away.

Monday (Day 904): Baby, It’s Gross Outside

The baby was up on the hour, and I couldn’t figure out what she needed most of the time. I was trying to write for the short periods that she slept, but reminded myself that the baby is my main job.

The barf ninja was on the loose, and she cost me two shirts and a pair of jeans, and cost herself two pairs of pants and a onesie. To bump things up a notch, she puked on me like my face was the backboard and my bellybutton was all net. Correct me if I’m wrong, but having a baby barf on your face has to be a level up in the parenting game. Whether it was or wasn’t, I had to call #1GF! to tell her about it. It definitely lightened her day.

I was on full time auditory regimen of Christmas music, and heard a remake of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” by Dolly Parton and Rod Stewart. It tainted the fun of the most common version by Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer with the thought of Rod Stewart trying to buy a senior discount ticket on Dolly Parton’s retirement age roller coaster ride. I wished that I had turned my head and allowed the barf ninja to fill at least one of my ear canals with vomit earlier in the day. I stood there frowning like a rich girl riding the bus. The only worse duet I could think of would be if Mickey Rourke were singing to Joan Rivers.

#1GF! got home just after I finally got the baby to sleep. She wanted to pick her up. “You pick up that baby,” I joked, “and the responsibility for waking the barf ninja is yours.” She moved toward the baby. “I mean it.” I threw up my hands as she neared the crib. “I’m out. It’s on you.” She looked at me, not sure if I was kidding. “I’m kidding. Go ahead.”

I left the room to let her have some time with the baby. I didn’t want to hover over her or make suggestions about some of the minor tips I had picked up, because I knew that would just make her feel worse about being away from the baby all day.

I went to my PC and continued transcribing LOR. I rejoined #1GF! at 7:30PM when the baby was back in bed. We watched Jeopardy! together, and I could only answer one question. I couldn’t even pose decent guesses to half of the questions. “What is this?” I asked. “Jeopardy, genius edition? If I can’t get at least a couple of answers, I feel dumb.”

“Huh?” asked #1GF!. “You not dumb. Jane still like.”

Tuesday (Day 905): The Wrinkled Cerberus

The baby was in bed before #1GF! left for work. “Do you have a shopping list?” she asked.

“It’s not done yet,” I told her. I made sure that the list wasn’t done because I didn’t want #1GF! to have to fight grocery store crowds after work.

Once #1GF! was gone, I sat at the PC and transcribed a couple of days of LOR. When the baby woke up, I decided that we were going to the supermarket-by ourselves-with no adult supervision. The potential for chaos was high, but if I succeeded, I knew that #1GF! would be impressed.

When we got to the store, I walked up to the door, and an old lady bent down to the baby. “Why aren’t you wrapped up?” she asked the baby. “Doesn’t your daddy know it’s cold out?”

If she got too hot in the car seat, the baby’s typical response was to freak out, so she might’ve been on the lighter side of bundled, but she was dressed appropriately. She had a fucking fleece jacket and a blanket on for chrissakes. I was on a mission, and this lady was a fat, wrinkly Cerberus packed into control top panty hose.

I wanted to lean in to the baby and say, “Is the mean old lady scaring you with her passive aggressive tendencies, or is she too dumb to know that a three month old doesn’t understand English yet? …What’s that baby? The bitch should shut her face because she hasn’t raised a baby since she found Moses on the bank of the Nile? …Oh, honey. That’s no way to speak to crazy ladies who feel the need to offer unsolicited, passive aggressive advice. We just nod and smile at crazy people like that.”

What I did was just nod and smirk with my eyebrows up as I walked past.

I whipped through the store, leaving at least one “awwww” in my wake. The baby was really, really well-behaved. I could tell that she wanted to go to sleep, but all those colored packages lining the shelves wouldn’t let her. She didn’t make a peep, and fell asleep on the ride home.

While I unpacked the groceries, my parents called to tell me that they were coming over. I put the baby to bed and ran around picking up the house.

The baby woke up and ate just after my parents arrived. She only threw up a little, and it was on me. My parents had a great time with her in the couple of hours that they stayed.

I put the baby to bed and made myself a cup of tea. I went back to transcribing until #1GF! walked in the door. Then, I made her dinner because I’m her bitch.

Wednesday (Day 906): Shit, I Forgot The Pie

I gave the baby a bath, got her fed, and put her to bed. I went back to my PC to cram in some writing, but the internet went down. I’m sure it wasn’t the whole internet, just my particular node. The phone went down with the internet, so I had to use my cell phone to call the cable company.

Sure, I have a billion minutes on my phone that I never use, but the principle of having to call a company on a cell phone to tell them that the phone and internet aren’t working is ridiculous. I can’t remember the phone being out when I was a kid unless there was a tree down on the lines. My phone was going down for no better reason than it was eleven fucking thirty. And it was happening every other week. We call this progress.

I called the cable company and they told me that my line was fine despite my lack of dial tone. The best that they could do to help me was to offer to send a technician out on Friday. Two days is considered reasonable for a dead phone line. We call this customer service.

I asked the woman on the phone if she was sure that there wasn’t an outage in the area because I had already experienced a couple of mini-outages during the week. She assured me that there wasn’t. When I asked if she was positive, she sighed as if she were a theoretical physicist and I had asked her to mathematically explain the existence of black holes.

I hung up and unplugged the cable modem and pulled the battery. When I plugged it back in, the cable came back on. Thanks for the basic troubleshooting, cable company. I went upstairs and looked up the FIOS. I heard from the announcer during one of my television programs that it was going to be the next big thing.

I had to stop the research because the baby woke up and wanted me to hit another milestone: I changed a diaper that made my eyes water. I’m not using a figure of speech. I changed a diaper that literally, like cutting onions, made my eyes involuntarily water. I could barely see the tape to secure the new diaper in place. There must be a merit badge for that sort of thing.

#1GF! came home and I started baking in preparation of Thanksgiving. I was going to make a pumpkin pie and three layer chocolate mousse cake with dark chocolate on the bottom, medium in the middle, and white on top.

All night long, #1GF! was discouraging me from making two deserts. I kept saying that I needed to hurry up to start the pie, and it got to be a joke as more and more time passed. About halfway through the chocolate cake, we both knew that I wasn’t going to have the time to make two desserts. What I didn’t realize was that, for the chocolate mousse cake, each layer had to be made sequentially. It took the time of making three pies, and I didn’t finish it until 10PM. There was no time for me to make a pumpkin pie.

I felt bad that I wasn’t bringing two deserts, considering all the work that goes into a Thanksgiving dinner. I also wasn’t sure what the mousse cake would taste like, and wanted a backup dessert just in case it sucked out loud.

#1GF! went out and brought back takeout for dinner, which was eaten while we waited for the final layer of the cake to cool. At 11PM, I turned to #1GF!. “Shit,” I said.

“What?” asked #1GF! in a near panic.

“I forgot the pumpkin pie.”

Thursday (Day 907): It’s Thanksgiving, Sucka

#1GF! tried to gently wake me up by whispering close to my sleeping face. Unfortunately, she did this from a standing position next to the bed, jolting me awake.

“Sorry, sorry. I didn’t want you to think that I was still in bed,” she said.

I rubbed my eyes and let my heart rate slow. “Next time, get real close and say, ‘Hey sucka!’ It’ll be way more fun.”

“Who says ‘sucka’ anymore?”

I thought about it. Sucka had gone the way of sit on it. “Fine. Say something scary. Maybe, ‘Hey, jerk.’ or something.”

#1GF! stared at me.

“I don’t know. Something.”

Before we left, I tried to shave chocolate for the top of the three layer cake. It was a failure that left chocolate dust everywhere. I wrapped up the cake, and #1GF! packed burp cloths, various toys, and spare outfits for the baby and us. Epic amounts of crap went into that car in an effort to defend against the barf ninja when and if she struck.

We got on the road, and I threw in a couple of old MP3 discs into our new car radio. I know reading MP3 discs is a really old technology, but I’ve never had the technology built into a car before.

We picked up #1GF!’s mother, and went to my parents’ house to hook them onto the convoy heading for a home cooked turkey dinner at #1GF!’s family’s house.

On the way, #1GF!’s mother kept playing with the baby when the baby was supposed to be napping. She denied said playing, but the recent invention of rear view mirrors uncovered said ruse. You can’t trust grandmothers to make kids do things that aren’t fun. Once #1GF!’s mother got busted, the rest of the trip went without incident.

We got to #1GF!’s family’s house a little early, so while we were waiting for dinner to be ready, the kids took me to the basement to play Rock Band. All these years that the game had been out, and I had never played. Ever since I quit my job, it’s been ironically rare for me to find the time to play video games.

The kids and I rotated between vocals, guitar, and drums, and had a pretty good time rocking out. It was so damned good that everyone else had to come down and witness the sheer and devastating power of our band. Other than using the guitar skills that I dusted off from the Guitar Hero series, I had a lot of fun sucking at Rock Band.

When it was my turn to pick a song (an honor given to the person forced to take on vocals), I ran across a song by a band that was started by a guy that I hung around with regularly during my teens and early twenties. I stood up, pointed at the screen, and told a surprised nine year old and eleven year old how they didn’t understand how cool it was.

My parents knew the guy too, and I told them whose band it was. “That’s Bob’s band,” I said pointing at the television with a drumstick. “The Konks is his band.” They were as impressed as I was. You think someone’s band is just something that they do after work, and then you find out they’re on fucking Rock Band.

We ate a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, and my three layer mousse cake, although difficult to prepare, proved to be too rich for just about everyone. Chocolate pudding poured into a pre-made pie crust got a better reception. If you spend a lot of time making something that no one wants, all you did was waste a lot of time and a few ingredients.

The baby was excited all day, and my mother kept trying to tickle her feet while I was trying to calm her down for the ride home. Grandmothers are all the same. They have no respect for rules at all.

Friday (Day 908): Running Out Of Stories

I threatened to take the baby out to the Black Friday sales to get all the, you know, deals on utter shit that they put out for Black Friday. I wasn’t really going. I just thought it was funny to listen to #1GF! confusedly protest.

Once #1GF! was off to work, I started piecing together the beard pictures from beard shaving 2009. After seven years, it was clear that I was running out of stupid stories to tell.

#1GF! came home and we had leftovers for dinner before running out to the local home megastore to pick up some cheap Christmas trees that we saw in the black Friday circular. They were half the price of the trees #1GF! bought at the Christmas Place.

When we got them home, we found out why. Although they looked like the mini trees that the store normally sells, it seemed as if the store brought in these trees to sell at a discount on Black Friday. I wasn’t expecting anything great, but those trees were complete and utter junk. We couldn’t do anything with them, so we put them back in their boxes and put them by our door to be returned.

I took the baby to put her to bed, and it wasn’t going smoothly. I had to wave off #1GF! because she was following me around the house. She was only trying to help, but it made me feel like I was doing the wrong thing. The baby eventually went to sleep, even though I probably was.

Saturday (Day 909): A Rare And Pissy Mood

I woke up in a rare and pissy mood. Other than Thanksgiving, I hadn’t left the house in a week, and I didn’t feel like I had a moment to myself. Baby care isn’t rocket science, but it isn’t a simple nine to five or even an eight to six. Baby care is pretty much a twenty hour job that doesn’t let up. I needed to get out of the house and I didn’t care where we went. #1GF! quietly complied.

We ended up going to an outlet mall to get some Christmas shopping done. Despite being up early as if it were a work day, we didn’t get out the door until 1:30PM because that’s how long it took us to get our shit together. Babies radically slow you down. Radically.

We walked the whole mall and didn’t buy anything. In one of the stores, a lady reached out and touched the baby. I wasn’t a good defense man. Should I have dove in front of her or given her a ration of shit? I don’t know. Maybe. Even seemingly nice, normal people shouldn’t be touching other people’s babies.

By the end of the mall, the baby was revving up for a scream fest, so #1GF! fed the baby in the car before we got on the road. We were way in the back of the parking lot, but a lot of irate people gave up waiting for her parking spot.

When we got home, it felt like we should go out to eat, but the baby was in prime scream time. I started making a quick kale soup, not realizing that it had to simmer for an hour after it was prepared. We eventually ate dinner and watched an episode of Rescue Me to unwind. Although it was interesting in the first season or so, I think my interest in the show has waned beyond salvation.

#1GF! shut off the TV after the episode and said that she couldn’t watch another show if she tried. I sat on the couch for a minute. I guess that meant that I couldn’t either. I know it was an oversight more than a command, but the result was the same. I was going to bed.

What I Learned

• A blender is not a large food processor.
• You don’t have to pay to create a playlist on Last.fm. You only have to pay if you want to play it.
• The Christmas Place is convenient, but overpriced.
• Dolly Parton and Rod Stewart make a painfully uncomfortable duet.
• I can take the baby grocery shopping.
• Some diapers have the power to make your eyes water.
• Just because you spend a lot of time on a dessert, doesn’t mean people are going to eat it.
• Grandmothers cannot be trusted to follow rules.
• A old friend of mine has a song on Rock Band, which is a game that’s a lot of fun to suck at.
• Rescue Me lost its magic.
• Be careful what you buy on Black Friday. Sometimes a low price isn’t a deal, but cheap crap shipped into the store to make you think you’re getting a good deal.

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Posted in Life of Riley