This is week 138 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 959): That Butt, That Butt, That Big Ol’ Boston Butt

The baby was up at 3:30 AM to feed. Waking up in the middle of the night can throw a person off, but when it starts happening every night, your brain starts to dry out like an overcooked egg yolk.

I got out and did the food shopping, and had to stop at two grocery stores because finding a Boston butt (a boneless pork shoulder) isn’t that easy. I eventually had to ask a butcher to get one out of the back of the shop.

I was home by 1 PM, and started dinner immediately because the pork shoulder needed to cook for six hours. I served it with a mushroom/thyme/rosemary sauce, string beans, and garlic mashed potatoes. Although it needed half the rosemary and thyme as the recipe listed, a six-hour pork roast will melt in your mouth even if you rolled it in dirt and stepped on it twice.

My parents dropped by before dinner on their way out to visit some friends. They only stayed for a short bit before heading on their way.

It was only 7 PM by the time we ate, but it felt like midnight. Once the meal was done and cleaned up, #1GF! and I played a little head to head flash basketball. I eventually fell asleep leaning on my hand while waiting for my turn.

Monday (Day 960): Guidos, Ransoms, and Homemade Oreos

The baby got up again at 4 AM, so we tried to rearrange her nap times to break the cycle. There are only so many sleepless nights that a person can take before everything starts fogging over.

We watched Thanks For Smoking in increments while the baby took her naps, and it turned out to be an unexpectedly decent movie.

It snowed all day, making it nice to be in the house and unshowered past the time when a shower is typically mandatory. In an attempt to replace “lazy” with “fat” in my list of personal characteristics, I decided to make giant, homemade Oreos (recipe here). I’m not much of a chocolate person, so I thought that they were merely interesting, but #1GF! really seemed to like them.

I looked out the window while taste testing one of the cookies. The neighbors were ignoring the weather and going places. I turned to #1GF!. “Why does 1 PM seem early to them, but to us, it feels like late afternoon?”

“Baby,” she said.

“They all have kids.”

“Yea, but they’ve been doing this for years. We’re still n00bs.”

“Did you just say ‘n00bs’?”

“I did.”

“I’m swelling with pride over here.”

“That’s right isn’t it? N00bs?”

“Stop, stop, stop. Shhhh. Don’t ruin the magic, my little pre-geek. Let’s go watch Star Wars.”

“Not a chance, goink.”

“We’ll watch the original. None of that Greedo firing first bullshit.”

“Uh, no.”

I turned back out to look out the window before the last traces of magic could evaporate.

“Wait, who’s Guido?”

And they were gone.

The snow eventually turned to rain, and the wind was so strong that it blew the barrel over with two bags of trash weighing it down. It was not pleasant weather, but at least I didn’t have to go out and shovel.

I had eaten more than my share of buffalo wings, but I had never made them, so for the first time ever, I made buffalo wings for dinner. While we sat in front of the television with sticky fingers and sweaty eye sockets, #1GF! said that she felt like we should be watching football. I agreed, but the feeling wasn’t strong enough to get either of us to seek out a game.

I turned on G4 to watch Ninja Warrior, and the cable box told me that I was no longer authorized for it. I have been watching that channel for years and haven’t changed plans, so I called Comcast. I wanted them to correct the mistake so that I could get back to watching people doing face-plants for my amusement.

After a bit of checking, the rep told me that I was definitely not authorized to receive G4.

“How’s that possible?” I asked. “I’ve had it for years.”

“It must be in a different package now,” said the rep. I could practically hear him shrug.

“So, I’ve been paying the same price for the same channels for years, and even though you haven’t cut my bill, you can take them away? That’s not right.”

“Well have you thought about bundling?” offered the rep.

“No…”

The rep tacked on his keys. “Let’s see…yes, here it is. If you bundle, you can have G4, and it’s only another thirty dollars a month—”

“Hold on. You take away something that I had, and then want me to pay $30 more to get it back? That’s not right at all.”

“It’s only an additional $30.”

“I can go to FIOS and get the same channels for less than what I’m paying now. Can you just flip G4 back on?”

“Without an upgrade, no.”

“There’s nothing you can do for me?”

“Not without bundling.”

“Which is $30 more per month.”

“Yes.”

“Great. Thanks.” I hung up. “Fuckin’ Comcast. We’re going to FIOS.” #1GF! raised an eyebrow. “I know, I know. I’ve said it before. Now, I’m serious. You can’t go taking away a man’s G4 and then sell it back to him. That’s cabicular ransom.”

#1GF! sighed. “So, do it.”

“I will.”

“Now. Go to the FIOS site and sign up.”

“I will.”

“Go ahead.”

“Right after I go get some water.”

“Uh huh.”

“You watch. I will switch.”

“Right.”

I got my water and thought about trying to watch a baby and the install technician at the same time. I had second thoughts. I tried to remember that Comcast wasn’t trying to offend me personally and that it was only television. Although G4 is one of the few channels I like, I could get most of their content online if I wanted, but I don’t. I grabbed a glass of water and got over it. I’d switch when I had the time, but not that second.

Tuesday (Day 961): Letting The Baby Down

We woke up at 4 AM to the baby whining. I offered to go in to get her in my sleep, but #1GF! stopped me. “Just wait a second,” she said. We waited. As I regained consciousness, I realized that while the baby’s cries were constant, they weren’t getting louder or indicating pain. “I’m going to get her,” said #1GF!.

“Hold on, hold on.” We’ll wait five minutes. If she’s still whining, you can go in.”

“I don’t like this,” said #1GF!. The baby continued whining.

“Neither do I, but if she cried because she wanted to eat cookies for dinner, you’d have to let her cry. This is the same. She fed plenty last night and she’s not in pain. This is just us teaching her that being up at 4 AM is not the right thing to do. If we go get her, she’ll keep doing it.”

In the light of the baby monitor, I could see a tear rolling down #1GF!’s cheek. “I know,” she said. “I just feel like we’re letting her down.”

I understood what she meant. Listening to the baby cry out in the dark was hard. I’d even go so far as to say it sucked—not because the baby was loud, but because her cries went unanswered in the dark. It made me feel like I was denying my child to suit my own comfort, even though there wasn’t an ounce of comfort in laying there and listening to her cry. I knew that she needed to learn to sooth herself enough to get back to sleep, but I still felt like a bad parent for leaving her to cry in the dark. We were saying no to the baby for the first time.

She eventually soothed herself and fell back to sleep before we did. I felt proud of the baby as if she had accomplished something.

Once we were up and dressed, I ran out and gave away half the fake Oreos to one of the neighbors, who was coming back from taking her kids to the bus stop. Because of the cream filling, the cookies only keep for a few days, so I figured that her kids could dispose of them in a timely manner.

#1GF! heard me talking and came to the door. We all stood talking for a few minutes, and the neighbor saw our excersaucer inside the door. She mentioned that one of her friends referred to it as the “Neglect-o-matic”. I could understand where she was coming from, but if you can’t confine your kid for a couple of minutes at a time, you’ll never be able to do simple things like prep bottles or go to the bathroom.

We said goodbye to the neighbor, and #1GF! headed out to work. I had a typical day of taking care of the baby and writing Life of Riley whenever she fell asleep. The only difference was that, for some reason, the baby was a heck of a lot harder to entertain, a lot easier to scare, and really fussy. It might’ve had something to do with her interrupted sleep every night.

When #1GF! got home from work, she took over the baby care. We ate leftovers for dinner, and I spent the rest of the night working on LOR 119.

Wednesday (Day 962): Make That A Sanka

It was a fairly typical day. The baby stayed on schedule, giving me about three broken hours to get some writing in.

I regularly do light research of things that I write, so I spend a portion of my time googling and roaming online reference materials. During one of these fact-finding errands, I ended up on a page dedicated to someone’s dead eighteen month old. I have no idea how. I went to look up a word, and ended up somewhere else entirely. I didn’t get much past adding up the birth and death dates before closing the page out. It was not something that someone with a five month old really needed to see.

I got the baby out of bed, and was exceedingly grateful to see her.

I made dinner, and had the baby ready for bed by the time #1GF! got home. We got the baby to sleep, and edited LOR 119 together. I sat eating ice cream and burst out with “What? what?” every time #1GF! made any noise that remotely resembled a laugh. The post was approved and published soon after.

We watched Modern Family, and I completely cracked up at the line “Look at these guys. They look like they came out of the 1880s. You see Hugo over there? After lunch he ordered a Sanka.”

If you’re cracking up at Sanka jokes, you’re old. If you even know what Sanka is, you’re probably halfway there.

Thursday (Day 963): Prodigy or Compuserve

I spent the day doing typical baby stuff. The baby slept less, and was needy bordering on fussy. I tried to take a video of her, but somehow cut her head out of every shot. I wish I could say that wasn’t typical of my picture-taking abilities. I had to delete the footage even though it may or may not have contained an infant named super baby who kept excitedly flying by the camera.

In the afternoon, Comcast dropped my phone and internet for a couple of hours because they’re slowly chipping away at my services a little at a time. A channel here, a couple hours of phone there, and they’re making a little more profit. I don’t think I’ve had such poor reliability with an internet connection since dialing into Prodigy meant hitting a busy signal during peak hours.

Friday (Day 964): Q&A Testers Needed

The baby was fine in the morning, but she only slept about an hour and a half all day. My parents came over and I started making cookies because I had nothing to offer them. Unfortunately, they left before the cranberry coconut cookies were done. The visit threw off the baby’s schedule, and she was too excited to go to sleep.

#1GF! called me on the way home to check in, and I told her that I didn’t have any idea what we were having for dinner. She told me not to worry about it, which made me think that she had something planned. What she really meant was, “Don’t worry about it. I can fend for myself. I’ll eat paste or lint. I don’t really care.”

I finished up the cookies after #1GF! got home, and then made eggs for dinner. While cooking eggs required using the stove, eggs are a goddamned cheat of a dinner for someone who has worked all day. Then again, they’re better than the dust bunnies that #1GF! was intending on hunting down.

After dinner, I released a new version of Better Blogroll to fix a bug that I introduced in a recent bug fix. Yea, you read that correctly. Then, I had to re-release it because when I added the repair code in, I forgot to delete the bad code out. Awesome. Looks like I need a Q&A testing department here at Dyers.org headquarters. All interested applicants should have experience with PHP, MySQL, and pitying fools.

Once the code was added to the WordPress plugin repository, I sat at my desk reading RSS feeds for longer than I should’ve. I should’ve been writing, but it was late and I couldn’t corral enough words to form a decent sentence.

Saturday (Day 965): Where Are The Butterflies?

The baby was up at 5 AM, and we let her whine for about twenty minutes before going to get her. 5 AM on a Saturday is no time to be up unless you’re going to the airport on an all expenses paid trip to Tahiti…which we weren’t.

I made a dutch baby for breakfast because the recipe seemed easy enough. It didn’t turn out too bad, but I can’t say that I was impressed. I’ll stick with my non-puffy normal pancakes and leave these weird puffy pastries to the Dutch.

I spent the morning tending to the baby while #1GF! started cooking her pasta sauce.

I got in the shower around noon, and I felt like a zombie. I never remember being this tired when I was working for the man. I may get an extra hour for lunch than the typical American worker, but a regular job isn’t from 6 AM to 8 PM, and it’s not seven days a week.

It’s not like I don’t enjoy the time with the baby, or that she requires inordinate amounts of brain power to take care of, but there’s no real break. Even assembly line workers have to step away for a bit. I couldn’t remember the last time I left the house because I only leave to do the food shopping. The only indications of the last time that I had been out were that I could see the back of the freezer and the fridge was looking sparse. My only human contact that I couldn’t lift with one hand was trying to be clever with the tiny faces on Facebook. And that’s more like human-filtered interaction.

I was writing for five hours a day trying to catch up the blog, when I really should’ve been writing another book. There wasn’t enough time in the day for both, and I gave some serious consideration to dropping the Life of Riley. I would go into the proverbial desert for a few months and emerge with another book. I imagined that not much would change after a few rounds of writing, except that I’d have a desk cluttered with manuscripts.

#1GF! took her mother to a wake, and I sat at the PC playing a game while the baby slept. It felt good to just screw off, even if it was for ten minutes. Then, I made a few notes about the day, and started writing again. I’m either writing, taking care of the house, or taking care of the baby. There’s rarely any time to screw off, but when there is, and I do, it ends up feeling like a waste of time. I need twenty-six hour days and a coffee I.V. to really get everything done.

I read Writer’s Digest while I fed the baby, and it made me think about how much effort goes into these words. Each post is allotted about eight hours of writing and editing time, and I wondered how many people were really reading them. I know that there are a number of useful posts in my archives, but these Life of Riley posts are so fucking long, that I couldn’t imagine sitting down to read them if I hadn’t lived through them already. Sure, there are strings of words that I would wear around my neck if I could, but I would think that it would be as entertaining as a roadside gold panning attraction for people who aren’t me.

And sometimes spending all that time on a noncommercial venture makes me feel more than a little stupid. There are only a limited number of words that can be forged in a day, and if you’re not putting them into something with commercial potential (i.e. a book), you’re engaging in a hobby. Even though I loved working on LOR, a weekly post felt like it was getting to be too much.

Later in the day, #1GF!’s mom visited for a short while before #1GF! took her home. I took care of the baby, and sat down to write once #1GF! returned.

Once the baby was fed and put to bed, #1GF! came in to check on me. She grabbed my mustache with both hands and pulled it away from my upper lip with frustratedly wide eyes and a rapid head shake. “Ugh. How can you see through this thing?” she asked.

“I usually don’t,” I replied. “The eyes are up here. Look. Up here.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “They’re the blue dots under the caterpillars.”

“That thing makes me nuts. When is it coming—”

“Don’t,” I warned with a finger pointed aloft like a bad actor in a classical play. And she didn’t. I shrugged and went to my office to finish off LOR 120. I finished up at 9:45 and went out to forage for dinner.

What I Learned

• A delicious Boston butt isn’t as easy to find in Massachusetts as you’d think.
• I can make Oreos.
• I can make buffalo wings.
• Comcast will ransom channels and interrupt service on their whim.
• Letting the baby cry is difficult.
• An exersaucer is known by some as the Neglect-o-matic.
• Old people think Sanka jokes are funny. Heh heh. Sanka.
• I can make cranberry coconut cookies.
• I need to check my code better.
• Dutch babies are neat once, but not as good as pancakes.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

Posted in Life of Riley