This is week 135 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 938): Pwned By Lunch

I wasn’t admitting it, but the running around and lack of sleep were quite literally making me sick. I spent the morning answering #1GF! asking “Are you all right?” by waving her and trying to convince the both of us that I just had a runny nose. I was working on the power of positive thinking.

In the afternoon, we went to a friend’s house for a 1PM turkey lunch. It wasn’t like “Oh, let’s make some leftover holiday turkey into sandwiches.” This was a full turkey cooked specifically for sandwiches. If that wasn’t impressive enough, each of the more than five different cookies that were put out for dessert looked better than anything I had ever made. It was the first time I ever felt pwned by lunch.

I kept my hands out of the cookie tin so as not to spread any more germs than necessary, and made a mental note never to invite these people over to eat unless I could afford a caterer and learn to extend my literary lies into the real world. Sometimes, there’s nothing to do but concede that there are levels that you will not reach.

We went home at 5PM, and I fell asleep on the couch. I spent the rest of the day in and out of consciousness, and had a miserable night’s sleep. I woke up with mechanical regularity during the night, and at 3AM, I was positive that I was going to throw up. which isn’t an expected feeling for people who have been out of college for a number of years. I lay on the cold bathroom floor until the feeling subsided, and returned to bed to reclaim what few dreams I could corral.

Monday (Day 939): Dyers 2, Bananas 0

I transferred myself from the bed to the couch at around 6AM, and I slept until 10AM. My sister came over at noon, and we all stared at the baby. I never understood how people could stare at a baby for extended periods of time, until I had one.

The baby, like her dad, is a good eater. If you watch her eating solid food, you’d think it was her favorite part of the day. Since I was old enough to eat solid food, I would devour anything my parents put in front of me, and I have never been what people would call a picky eater. If something is food based, and my temperament is hunger based, then said item will be ingested without ceremony or complaint–as long as that food was not a banana.

And that aversion has followed me through my whole life. I’ve eaten wet dog food that smelled better and was more palatable than “nature’s perfect snack”. When I was a young man, my fun-loving coworkers would covertly throw banana peels in the trash can under my desk because the smell made me nauseous. I’ve gotten over the nausea, but bananas remain one food that I don’t eat.

We gave the baby some banana puree in her food, and it was the only time that I’ve seen the baby try to retract her head through the back of the chair after taking a bite of something. She squinted her eyes and shook it off from the shoulders up. We tried another bite and got the same reaction. We switched to something else, and the baby went back to happily growling for more. The baby, like her father, does not like bananas. I was pretty happy about that. I felt like the baby and I had a common enemy.

I made homemade mac and cheese for dinner, and even though I was using a Mexican cheese blend, the meal came out surprisingly bland. I made a note to get a sharper cheese.

My sister headed home after dinner, and #1GF! and I watched Management, which was a bit quirky for a Jennifer Aniston based romantic comedy, but I’ve seen worse. The baby slept through the whole thing.

Tuesday (Day 940): Toss Logic And Follow The Script

It was sixteen degrees out with a wind chill of minus six, and the cold morning air was slipping its fingers under the covers wherever it found an inadvertent gap. Leaving that bed was about as inviting as hugging a corpse. My cold was moving to my chest, so I took my slight illness as license to stay in bed until an amazingly late 8AM.

Once I was up, I remoted into my parents’ PC to do some routine maintenance. The baby spent her time throwing up on things. She had gone through three onsies and a pair of pants before the grand finale of leaning over and barfing into her own sleeve. I couldn’t decide if it would be more fun to deal with a sleeve full of barf, or a PC full of problems. It was too close to call.

When I was midway through the removal of a series of completely worthless toolbars, a phone call came in from Dell. I handed the phone over to #1GF! because she had given someone a desktop as a gift this year.

“Is this #1GF!?” asked the rep.

“Speaking.”

“This is Dell calling about your new PC.”

“Oh, that PC was a gift for someone else,” #1GF! said.

“How would you say that it’s running?”

“It was a Christmas gift for someone else, and we haven’t had time to visit, so it’s still in the box at their house.”

“Oh. Okay. [pause] Well, did you have any problems setting it up?”

#1GF! shook her head and looked at the ceiling. She decided that ignoring logic and adhering to Dell’s script would get her off the phone faster. “No,” she replied.

“Great. Call us if you have any problems at (800) WWW-DELL.”

“Right. I’ll be sure to.” She hung up the phone.

If the Dell #1GF! bought was getting ready to launch a nuclear attack on the Russians and there was a sticker on the top of the PC that read, “In case of nuclear misfire, call (800) WWW-DELL for launch cancel codes,” Dell would still probably be fourteenth or fifteenth on the list of people we’d call to in order to save the world.

After the baby got up from her afternoon nap, we all piled into the car to run a few errands. It was so cold that the baby’s eyes watered when we took her out to the car. #1GF! returned some stuff at a department store before we went to a big box electronics store to pick up DSLite for my sister. My parents have been Nintendo portable freaks since the original Game Boy, and #1GF! and I were effectively throwing my sister into their cult.

We were home by 6PM, and I threw some ribs into the oven because they were so close to the expiration that the only options were oven or trash. They only cooked for a scant two and a half hours, but they were still finger licking, fall-off-the-bone delicious.

Wednesday (Day 941): The Booger Needs A Walk

I got up and got dressed early, so I decided to make a chocolate cake. Oh, I hear you. Really? You got up early, and baking was the first thing that you thought of to fill that extra time there, Brick Macho? You didn’t get cozy with some chamomile tea and a nice romance novel? What about a good cry? Did you have a good cry? If you don’t man up, I’m going to have to get a testosterone meter that is similar to those blood sugar testers that Wilford Brimley is always hawking…

Okay, enough. You want to comment, you do it below, but you’re not getting any more space in the body of this narrative. I tried to make a chocolate cake with chocolate butter frosting, but I mixed two recipes because it’s a geek’s nature to tinker.

I still wasn’t feeling well, and sneezed into my elbow like the CDC has been recommending these days to stop the spread of germs. It was just another piece of proof that you can’t win when you do the right thing because I ended up with a thumbnail sized giganto booger perched on my sleeve like a new pet. I looked at it with disgust while it tried to get me to take it for a walk. “That’s grosser than anything that baby has spewed out over the last few months,” I said to a nearby #1GF! who was taking care of an eternally fussy baby.

#1GF! was not having an easy time masking her disgust. “Oh, I agree,” she added quietly so as not to provoke my new playmate.

To avoid any future impulses to act on CDC recommendations, I changed into a boogerless, short-sleeved T-shirt before taking out the trash. Even though it was the middle of winter and I was in short sleeves, I wasn’t cold. When I came back in, #1GF! was standing at the counter going through the mail.

“It’s actually pleasant out,” I said. “The air is moist, and the wind is light. It was almost enjoyable out there.

“It’s 28 degrees.”

I was surprised. It felt like spring. “I guess when 28 degrees feels warm, it’s a cold winter.”

#1GF! nodded like she does when she’s half listening to me. “Uh huh. Um, quick question there Mr. Spock,” she said as she held up a Netflix envelope. “How did Star Track get to the top of our Netflix queue?”

“Trek. Star Trek. I don’t know,” I said, while trying to look like I was concentrating on washing my hands.

“Well, I didn’t put it there. Have you been playing with the queue again? Do you need to be banned from the queue again?” The last time I had been banned was 2005.

“I put it at number ten or something. Maybe our top movies are all long waits.”

#1GF! stared at me.

“What? It’s supposed to be good. Highly rated.”

#1GF! stared wider and wiggled the envelope a little for emphasis.

“It’s not Shatner. And. His. strangelypaceddialogue. It’s a young Kirk and Spock.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said #1GF! with a dismissive shake of her head.

“It’s highly rated,” I replied.

“If I fall asleep, you don’t have to wake me.”

“Highly. Rated.”

“Nanoo Nanoo.”

I sighed and dried my hands on a kitchen towel.

We were supposed to be at my parents’ house at 1PM, but got there a couple of hours late because the baby took an extra nap. They were all operating at a leisurely, post-holiday pace, and didn’t seem to mind.

My parents have had Nintendo hand-helds since the original Game Boy came out. For years, they used them for one thing: playing head to head Tetris. Through the various upgrades over the years, they played it over cable, then infrared, and now by wi-fi.

We gave my sister a DSLite so that she could join their hand-held gaming clan. And she joined with gusto. She was more excited about it than I could’ve imagined.

We hung out and ate Chinese food as a family, which happens less and less frequently as you get older. After the meal, my mom pointed to her fortune cookie. “What’s that over this letter?” she asked.

“That’s a shwa,” said my sister, drawing the word out with an extravagant flourish.

My mother turned to me. “Did you know that?”

“Of course,” I said with a superfluous amount of arrogance. “I know all about shwas, umlauts, commas…I know all about that writing stuff. I am a writer.”

“Ha! You’re a bum!” said my mom.

I nodded. “I am. It’s true. But, I’m a house husband and a babysitter. And a damned good one.”

“It’s true. You are,” said #1GF!. And everyone nodded in agreement.

Now, my mother didn’t mean anything by calling me a bum. I say that I’m the luckiest hobo of all time, but it brought an interesting perception to mind. A woman who stays home with her kids is a selfless hero who is admirably giving up her career to do her motherly duty and raise a family. A dude who does the same thing is a bum, and you wonder what deep-seated defect is keeping him from working. You know you do…no matter how liberated you think you are.

The conversation turned, and my sister mentioned that she was thinking about taking a sewing class together with her boyfriend. I was just about to make fun, and realized that it’s hard to poke fun at a guy who wants to sew when your favorite Christmas gifts this year were some baking pans and a cake tray.

After dinner, we had the cake I made, and it was sort of a chocolate brick. Everyone was nice about it, and pretended to like it. Next time I’ll know that you can’t just mix recipes without paying close attention to liquid/dry ratios.

I spent a little time working on my parents’ PC before we left because something was still causing it to crash. I suspect that it has something to do with those shitty internet games that people are so addicted to these days, but I couldn’t pinpoint an error. We headed home, and I promised to remote into their machine and take a look at it another day.

Thursday (Day 942): Nanoo Years Eve

There was snow in the forecast, so I got up early and did the food shopping to avoid dealing with those other nuts who go food shopping before a light snowfall as if the world was going to end. I was home putting the groceries away by 11AM, and #1GF! headed out to her mother’s house to help take down the Christmas decorations. It started snowing while she was gone.

I fed the baby and wrote a post declaring the end of the MaBeGroMo basic period. #1GF! was back home, safe and sound, by mid afternoon. She took over the baby care, and I started writing again. Before I knew it, it was already 6PM. #1GF! put the baby to bed, and we ate dinner ate 9PM. #1GF! had steak that I bought especially for her at the store, and I had frozen fish fillets because I just didn’t feel like cooking.

After dinner, we sat and watched the Star Trek prequel, which was action packed enough for non-fans, but contained plenty of nods to the old series for fans.

“What’s that?” asked #1GF! when a large spaceship came on the screen.

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s supposed to be an old version of the Borg,” I said.

“What’s a bork?”

“Borg. Sorry. Nevermind. Doesn’t matter.”

#1GF! rolled her eyes. “Nanoo.”

At another point, I burst out laughing when a new character appeared.

“What?” asked #1GF!.

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“No, what?”

I hit the pause button. “Well, that guy has to be Bones. He’s speaking with the exact same inflection that DeForest Kelley used in the original series.”

“Who’s Bones?”

Various sections of my eyebrows made simultaneous runs in different directions. “Bones? Chief Medical officer? Dammit, Jim! McCoy?”

#1GF! rolled her eyes.

“Never mind. Don’t say it.”

“Nanoo.”

“Don’t…”

“Nanoo.”

And later…

“Where the hell is Scotty?” I asked the screen.

“I don’t know. On Ork with Orson? Scotty calling Orson. Come in Orson.”

“Highly…”

“I can’t believe this is our New Year’s Eve movie.”

“Rated.” I paused the movie. “Look, I was thinking of you. I knew you’d fall asleep, and I didn’t want you to miss a second of the pure, heart warming gold that Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts spin and weave into the very fabric of our hearts.”

“Riiight.”

I fell asleep after the movie and woke up at 12:04. I caught a glimpse of the animatronic robot that they replaced Dick Clark with a few years back. He wasn’t as freakish as he had been in past years, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to stare at for too long.

#1GF! started checking her email, and I went into the other room to shut down my PC. We ended up chatting through Facebook from different rooms before going to bed. I put my first lie through Facebook chat. I told #1GF! I wasn’t wearing any pants, when in fact, I had Adidas sweatpants on. I could hear her laughing in the other room, which was not a nice thing to do when someone tells you that they don’t have pants on, even if it’s the intended reaction.

Friday (Day 943): New Year’s Day

The baby didn’t sleep much all day. When she finally did go to sleep, I wanted her to be awake.

To start the year off on the right foot, I avoided showering and planted my ass on the couch for as many hours as possible. I tried to watch Dr. Who because it is a basic requirement in geek culture, but found it to be boring and hokey. I watched the Winter Classic, where they had a Bruins game on the field at Fenway Park. That was neat, but not as exciting as I thought it would be.

I made kale soup for dinner, but it didn’t come out as good as it usually does. #1GF! got me to make croutons for her even though I said that I wasn’t going to. For some reason, even though they are incredibly simple to make, and I’ll do anything for #1GF!, making croutons for her is the bane of my existence.

After dinner, we watched (500) Days of Summer, which I wanted to have renamed to the Dogshit Craps of Caca. #1GF! didn’t agree, but I’m sure that the studio could’ve made a killing. I know that I would’ve gone to the theater to see a major movie with a name like that. How could I not? It’s a good thing that they didn’t because their boring title matched their movie and saved me twenty bucks.

Saturday (Day 944): What I Can And Can’t Believe, Mr Bale

It was another snowy New England day, and the biggest thing that I did was to go out and shovel the driveway.

We watched Terminator Salvation, which sucked as badly as expected. Yea, I can accept a robot race set on destroying the human race, but I can’t accept Christian Bale acting like he was Batman the Terminator killer. And don’t ask me to believe that a heart transplant on the battlefield is possible without any sort of genetic matching or um, you know, sterilization. I’m petitioning to have this movie renamed to Turdinator Shitsation

At 8PM, I sat down to read some RSS feeds, and shut down my feed reader after a couple of hours without making a dent in the content. Although there was some interesting and entertaining information stuffed in the cracks of my feed reader, I found that hundreds of feeds are no longer pertinent to my life. No matter how cool I think certain GIMP tutorials are, or how clever some of the WordPress hacks are, or how funny some of the posts are, I’m twenty weeks behind on the blog, and a couple of books behind on my writing goals. That’s not even mentioning that I have a baby to take care of. Time is unbelievably limited, and reading more blogs not only spends time that I don’t have, but it resurrects the urge to post daily, which I don’t have the time for either. I wish there were more hours in the day, but wishes and a ten spot will buy me new socks.

What I Learned

• Sometimes, when the employees are brain-dead, a script is useful. Other times, it isn’t.
• Mexican cheese doesn’t provide the kick in a mac and cheese that you’d expect.
• The baby and I have a common enemy: Musa paradisiaca.
• Sometimes it’s easier to put logic aside and follow the script.
• Sneezing into your sleeve is recommended by the CDC, and thoroughly gross.
• 28 degrees can feel like T-shirt weather during a New England winter.
• I am the only member of my family to reject Nintendo.
• Stay at home moms are heroes, stay at home dads are bums.
• Don’t laugh at people who sew if your favorite Christmas gift was a baking pan.
• There is not a lot of time left for RSS Feeds after the baby care is done.

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Posted in Life of Riley