This is week 132 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 917): Carpet Bombing With Decorations

I made some pancakes for breakfast and they didn’t come out all that well. Then again, even bad pancakes aren’t all that bad. I was dressed by noon, and #1GF! was already taking some Christmas pictures of the baby because the mall picture from the day before didn’t come out as well as we had expected.

#1GF! set up two decorated mini Christmas trees, and then put the baby in her Christmas dress, sat her on a chair with a polar bear, and snapped off as many shots as she could before the baby stopped cooperating. The baby was happily confused by the process, but the shots came out better than the picture with the mall Santa.

I assembled our pipe cleaner Christmas tree and #1GF! did the lights and decorations. I worked some more cradle cap medication into the baby’s scalp while #1GF! rummaged through boxes of ornaments. “So, what do you want on the tree this year,” she asked without looking up from one of her boxes.

“I don’t care,” I said, because I really didn’t care.

“You have to care a little,” said #1GF! after finally looking up from the box she was rummaging through.

“Listen, as long as I don’t have to hang an ornament, you can put pink unicorns and Santas made of tampons all over the thing if you want to.”

“That’s the spirit,” said #1GF! while shaking her head and digging deeper into a box.

“Look, we already have a crackhead wreath outside because of me, let’s not pair it with a crackhead tree. You know I’m not a decorator.”

#1GF! had a hard time arguing with solid logic, so she picked and placed ornaments until the tree was sufficiently festive.

I started homemade mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner, and realized that I had accidentally bought mozzarella instead of cheddar. There was no time to run out to the store, so I had no choice but to roll with it. Even a bland homemade mac promised to be better than the boxed variety.

While dinner was cooking, I pulled my recently returned manuscript out of its manila envelope and started to read it for the first time in a couple of months. I only made it through the first paragraph before stuffing it back into its envelope. I wanted to edit almost every line. It was not a happy time.

#1GF!, on the other hand, was having a grand time decorating the house. She stopped for a moment and held up a hand-made Santa head. “Where can I hang this?” she asked. The thing looked like it teleported out of a craft fair in the ’70s.

“I have just the place.” I opened the trash drawer.

“I am not throwing this away,” said #1GF! with genuine offense. “Someone made this for me.”

“Are they dead?”

“No.”

“Then…” I eyeballed the trash.

“This was made especially for me.”

“Yea, we had one of those in the ’70s too. Everyone did. Those Santas were a huge hit back then…like bell bottoms and macrame owls.” I raised my eyebrows and subtly nodded to the trash again.

“It’s not getting thrown out.”

“Just try it in there for a few seconds to see if it fits. It will look really festive in there…until trash day, at least.”

“No.”

I closed the trash drawer and shrugged.

“There’s no room in here for all of this stuff,” said #1GF! as she swept the living room with her eyes. To the untrained ear, #1GF! was making a simple observation regarding her environment.

She was right. There wasn’t. She could’ve covered every horizontal surface with a Santa, snowman, or reindeer, and even if she hung decorations on those decorations, she’d still have a crate of stuff left over. When you’ve been in a relationship for a number a years, you start to learn how to decipher which questions are statements and which statements are really questions. “Do you want to take out the trash?” or “Is that what you’re wearing” never amounted to as much of a question as #1GF!’s statement. What #1GF! was asking was, “I know you don’t want every surface covered in tiny craft fair Santas, and I respect that, but would you rather concede a few surfaces now, or force me to carpet bomb them with decorations under the cover of darkness?”

“Do what you like,” I said. “Just make sure that you leave a three foot space for me to eat my cereal, and make sure that the caganer ends up someplace he won’t be disturbed.”

#1GF! perked up. “You’re sure?”

“Yea. Put those craft fair wooden babies with real hair all over the place if you want.”

“Come on.”

“Seriously. Decorate the crap out of everything. Have fun with it. Just don’t make me help.”

#1GF! didn’t go as crazy as I expected, but there was at least one Christmas thing on every flat surface, including the soil of plants and tops of the doorknobs.

Monday (Day 918): Post Apocalyptic Grocery Shopping

I tried to put the baby back to bed after her morning meal, but she decided that she would rather throw up all over herself and her crib. She got her bath an hour earlier than normal. Once she was nice and clean, she smiled at me and threw up down my shirt. There was no end to the cleaning.

We had the first frost of the year, and #1GF! wouldn’t take the baby so that I could go out and scrape her car. She scraped and I put the baby to bed and cleaned up her tub.

When the baby got up, I fed her and took her out food shopping. She was really good, and fell asleep halfway through. She was probably bored because an unexpectedly large number of the basic foodstuffs that typically captivate her were replaced with empty shelves. The volume of basic items that were unavailable moved beyond inconvenient and into confusing. I scavenged what I could like a better dressed apocalyptic shopper and headed home.

I put away the groceries, and fed the baby again. I hadn’t really gotten anything done, and it was already 2PM. Christ.

I tried to put the baby in for a post feeding nap because she kept falling asleep on my shoulder, but as soon as I’d put her to bed, she’d freak out. I was following all basic and advanced troubleshooting flow charts, checking diapers, burping, rocking, and shushing, but the baby was up and down, over and over. I had no idea what I was doing wrong. She finally got to bed three hours later, and I sat down at my PC and yawned. I was in no mood for writing, but I roughed out the last few remaining days of backlogged LOR posts.

I made sausages for dinner and didn’t have peppers or onions to go with it because the supermarket wasn’t stocking them. #1GF! was visibly disappointed, but sometimes, dinner on the table means you get what you get.

Tuesday (Day 919): Batman, Herpes, And Advanced Foot Eating

We got the baby bathed and took her to her four month doctor’s appointment. She was only in the fortieth percentile for height and weight, which meant that someone measured wrong when they put her height in the ninetieth percentile at her two month appointment. She had her vaccinations and barely cried. One of the vaccinations was a drink, and the nurse dumped it into her mouth, leaving half of it all over her.

The baby took it all in stride and concentrated on trying to eat her foot. The doctor seemed concerned. “Has she been doing that long?” asked the doctor.
“What? The foot. Maybe a couple of weeks,” I said.

The doctor made some notes.

“Why?” #1GF! asked with a little concern.

“Well, it’s just that it’s more of a sixth month habit.”

See that? My kid thinks that her feet are food a full two months ahead of schedule. This is not genetic disposition talking: we now have conclusive proof that my kid is a genius. In two months, she’ll be reprogramming the robot and circumventing the firewall.

The doctor told us that the baby needed to start on solid food, so after the appointment, we went to the store to pick some up. #1GF! ran in to pick up some baby rice and strained fruit, and I sat in the car with the baby. I sat there in the passenger seat, and felt like those old ladies look when they’re sitting in the passenger seat waiting for someone. All I needed was a kerchief and a handbag to clutch to my chest. I had a pink striped diaper bag, which was close, but clutching it without the kerchief seemed pointless and silly.

We got home, and #1GF! worked from home for the rest of the day. I put the baby to bed, and I started writing LOR Week 114. I sat across the desk from #1GF!, one of us working for fortune, the other for fame, like a high pressure and low pressure front silently awaiting the rumble of thunder. I burped really loudly, and was surprised by #1GF!’s laughter-not because she’s extremely proper, but because I had forgotten she was there. “Sorry,” I said. “Not used to other people here when I’m writing.”

“I’m invading your space,” she said.

I was already back to work.

We had leftover homemade mac and cheese for dinner. I ate over the sink, which has been a bad habit of mine since I was a teenager. “You know what we don’t have?” asked #1GF!.

“Herpes?” I asked, while trying to keep the molten, bacon-infused cheese from scorching the roof of my mouth.

“No.”

“Hold on, now. Which one of us doesn’t have herpes? Because as far as I knew we were both herpes free.”

“No one has herpes. You know who you sound like?”

Me, in a gruff voice: “Batman.”

#1GF! dismissed me, and moved on. “Well, sure. Sometimes.”

I maintained the Batman voice. “I’m Batman.”

“No. You sound like that guy with the big hair and the glasses from that show.”

Surprisingly, I knew exactly who #1GF! was referring to. “Moss? Awesome.” I started into a horrible Moss impersonation and never circled back to find out what we didn’t have.

I went back to writing, and #1GF! asked if she could read LOR 114 early. “It’s not done,” I said.

“Who cares? Let me read it.”

“When it’s done, you can read it.”

#1GF! sulked off to watch TV. I wanted her to read it, but letting her read a draft would ruin the full effect of the post once it was done.

I rejoined #1GF! in the den later and she looked at me when I walked into the room. “Who loves you?” she asked.

In a gruff voice, I answered, “Batman.”

All she could do was shake her head.

Wednesday (Day 920): The Unreachable Wetness Of A Porn Star

The baby slept a good portion of the day, but when she was awake, she fully embraced her alter ego as the barf ninja. The barf ninja managed not only to secretly barf on me, but somehow barfed on an otherwise unreachable part of my ass that would require some sort of mirror to see. I only knew that I had been barfed on because I got this strange sensation of wetness where there shouldn’t be wetness, unless you’re a geriatric patient or a porn star. It wouldn’t be her last trick of the day. I put her back to bed, changed my jeans, and went back to editing LOR Week 114.

On the baby’s next feed, I tried to get her to take some formula. Unfortunately, she hated formula enough that she’d make a face and spit it out if there was even a hint of it in her bottle. In this feeding, I managed to get her to drink two ounces of the stuff before she knew what was going on. When she slowed down and realized what was going on, she pulled herself off the bottle and gave me a big, grimacing, “what the fuck?” face. I laughed and felt pretty smug for someone who just tricked a seventeen week old.

Once the baby was back to bed, I sat at my desk to write, and found that I was in the middle of another internet outage. It was the third outage in a week. I vowed to look into FIOS again if the internet ever came back up. If the services were the same price, I’d gladly give up a few channels for a small amount of reliability.

On the baby’s next feeding, the barf ninja emerged once again and paid me back for fooling her with formula. She insta-barfed all over me while we were sitting down. The couch and I were both covered. The baby looked satisfied, if not a little bit smug.

To welcome #1GF! home, the baby broke into a hysterical crying fit, and I cooked dinner while #1GF! put her to bed. The baby was still crying when dinner was ready, so I shut off the pans and left everything on the stove to congeal. I went back to editing LOR 114 while I waited.

We eventually ate at 9PM, and #1GF! sat on the couch anxiously waiting to read LOR 114 because it recounted the birth of the baby. The post was a mere seventeen weeks late, and nearly 8,000 words (that’s 32 pages) long. #1GF! found several errors, which I corrected as we went along, but thoroughly enjoyed the post. It was one of those times where recounting our life together in copious detail was well worth the time and effort. It was also nice to be able to relive the day with my biggest fan.

The baby slept in her room once again, and #1GF! and I went to bed in our room by ourselves. We were talking and laughing in the faint blue glow of the baby monitor. “What is this, sleepover camp?” I asked. “One little blue light in the room, and we’re giggling like kids.” Most days I feel lucky, but that day, I felt extraordinarily so.

Thursday (Day 921): Starting On Solid Food

I thought it was Wednesday, and the baby was all off schedule, too. She kept throwing up all morning, and had a fit just after #1GF! left for work. I finally got her to sleep, and started picking up the house. I did a little laundry, made the bed, and still felt like I was behind schedule. I also felt domesticated–really domesticated.

I sat down at the PC and wrote for a half hour before the baby woke up. I gave her a bath, and slipped in some formula when I fed her. She threw a fit and then wouldn’t even take regular milk. That was fun. When I finally calmed her down, she took the regular milk, but refused to go to sleep afterward. And of course, as usual, she started throwing up all over everything.

The baby spent her normal sleep time trying to do a raspberry. She didn’t quite have it, so I did one for her. She started laughing, which was still such a new thing for her that I called #1GF! so that she could hear it.

I gave the baby a double bottle at her 3PM feeding and she ate five and a half ounces before giving up. I actually thought, “Yea. In your face, baby. Who’s full, now?” I have no idea why. I thought that the extra full belly would put her to sleep for a few hours. On the contrary, the extra food created extra gas, which kept her awake and extra fussy. Nice job, dad.

#1GF! went out shopping after work, and the baby was still up, so I decided to try giving her some solid food. I mixed up a small amount of single grain rice and some stinky puree that I couldn’t identify as fruit or vegetable. I tore a plastic baby spoon out of the package and gave the baby her first shot of solid food.

She didn’t know what to do with it at first, and it drooled down her chin. I figured out that if I put the spoon near her top lip, more food stayed in her mouth. After a dozen spoonfuls, she was not only eating it like a champ, but was growling when I held the spoon in front of her too long. I felt bad that #1GF! wasn’t there, but I was out of milk, the baby wouldn’t eat formula, and she was close enough to the hunger zone that she could flip out at any time.

The baby got a case of the hiccups, but after I wiped her down and changed her into her pajamas, she fell into a heavy sleep. I cleaned up the house a little and tried to figure out dinner. There were enough leftovers in the fridge to tide us over, so I started writing a little more. #1GF! came home later and was sorry that she missed the solid food, but I told her that in reality, it was more of a test run than a meal.

I almost ordered FIOS, and when I got to the last click, I realized that the final price wasn’t really worth the hassle of ordering it. It was the same price as I was already paying, and I’d have to give an unknown installer access to the house for an undetermined amount of time. I closed out the window. #1GF! looked at me like I had finally lost my mind. “Fuck it. Who cares?” I said. “It’s less hassle not to get it.”

#1GF! had to leave the room, I believe, to avoid strangling me.

Friday (Day 922): Working The Rusty Valve

The baby got two rounds of solid food, which the doctor said were supposed to be delivered an hour after a milk feeding. The number of feedings was up to nearly one per hour, and the solid food required a lot more cleanup than a bottle. Writing was off the schedule, and I was having trouble getting normal chores done.

I moved the baby into the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher, and that took twice as long to do because the baby was fussy. I did a load of baby laundry that sat in the washer all day because I forgot to put it in the dryer. I got a high chair down from the attic with the intention of setting it up, but it was still sitting in the hall by the end of the day.

I did have an hour or two off at random points. I tried to write, but the rust on the valve was thick and the words only dripped out of me. I eventually got distracted by making Christmas songs sound dirty by inserting inappropriate bleeps. I have no idea why.

The baby was awake from 2PM on, and crying on and off because of a bad case of gas. I fed her for a final time at 6PM, and she fell asleep an hour later. I had three kinds of puke on my shirt, and I wasn’t even considering changing it. I was tired. And a little frustrated. And I didn’t know how it was Friday or how the day had gotten by me. I sat down at the PC and threw back a half a cup of cold tea. It was the best that I was going to get.

#1GF! showed up a little later from her assault on the mall, bearing pizza. We ate and watched a couple of shows while the baby slept.

I put out a quick post after dinner, and then tried to research Christmas gifts. Because my family had asked for things like “socks” and “hope”, I didn’t get too far. Those are difficult things to get with a couple of clicks.

I stayed up until 1AM with the GIMP, combining all the best elements of our home Christmas photo shoot with the baby because I thought #1GF! would really like to use it on a Christmas card.

Saturday (Day 923): Tender Breasts

In the morning, #1GF! and I gave the baby a bath, and I was psyched to be able to get her tub put away, the beds made, and things picked up. Let me repeat that: I was psyched to get a bed made. What the fuck? I had free hands for twenty minutes, and I rushed around cleaning and doing laundry. Yea, I looked behind the dryer for my testicles, but they were stuck back there under some dust bunnies and I didn’t have the time to get them out and rinse them off.

“You have no idea how relieved I am to just run around cleaning up,” I said to #1GF! as I rushed by. “It’s sad. I talk to the baby in a high voice all day and I’ve started thinking that picking up the house is somehow satisfying. My testosterone levels must be through the floor. I need to punch something or do something manly before this becomes a chronic condition.”

#1GF! rolled her eyes at me.

“I mean it,” I replied without putting my hands on my hips or pouting like a little girl.

#1GF! rolled her eyes more emphatically and moved on. “I think we need bamboo curtains on the windows.”

“There were some curtains in that Better Homes magazine…”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. It was an old one. They were white with a brown stripe and might look good…” I trailed off and bowed my head. “Seriously. You’re living with a woman. You’re gay now.”

“Oh, stop.” She went to hug me.

“Don’t. My breasts are a little tender.”

At least she laughed.

In the afternoon, we went out in the twenty-five degree weather to get some Christmas shopping done. We made it through two stores in two hours before the baby was too hungry and tired to continue. We headed home with the baby crying at full volume in the back seat. I held the baby’s hand and talked to her soothingly, but I was getting a little frustrated. I couldn’t get anything done. The house was a mess, I had no Christmas shopping done, and I was running out of time.

I told #1GF! about it. “Don’t think that I don’t like taking care of the baby, but this is what I deal with all day. There’s no time to get anything done. I’m sure that there’s some time, but when I finally get her to sleep, I just want to write or have a little down time. Now, I know you’re getting most of the shopping done, but the one time that I want to try to get something done, I can’t because I need to take care of the baby.”

#1GF! sat silently listening as I went on. “I didn’t have time for half the things I wanted to get done this week. The house is a mess, her high chair is still in the box because I didn’t have time to take it out, and there’s a bottle of baby shampoo on the counter that I keep trying to put away, but keep having to do something else. That bottle of shampoo drove me crazy every time I saw it yesterday. I know. It sounds crazy. It’s a small bottle. It takes five seconds to put away. It needed to be wiped off and put away, but every time I saw it, I had my hands full. Then I’d feed the baby or do something else and forget about it. And then I’d see it later and it would remind me that I wasn’t getting anything done.” #1GF! was silent. The baby was still screaming. I sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault or the baby’s fault. I need to figure out how to do it all. I feel like I need to prioritize better or something. I’ll get over it.”

“Do you need a break?” #1GF! asked.

“No. Well…maybe, but I’ll get over it.”

“You want to go out without us?”

“No. I only get a couple of days with you a week. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll get over it.”

We went home and #1GF! fed the baby. I leaned on the counter and drank some cold coffee before going into my office and remixing a Jackson 5 track just to calm down from all the screaming. Then, I did some Christmas shopping online. I got 75% of my presents bought it a half hour. I was actually relieved to have something done so quickly. I don’t know why I thought I needed to go to stores. I think what I needed was to get the fuck out of the house.

We watched 30 Rock, which had a pair of horrible Boston accents in it, and then I tried to put together a Christmas card, but #1GF! vetoed it.

What I Learned

• Playing with your feet is a six month habit.
• Sitting in the car makes me feel like an old lady sometimes.
• Putting your baby in a different room for the first time is a little weird.
• Putting the spoon near the baby’s top lip keeps solid food from drooling down her chin.
• Moving to solid food doubles the number of feedings and halves your already limited free time.
• If you spend all of your time taking care of a baby, you’re eventually going to be dying to get out of the house. And you’ll feel guilty about that feeling.

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