This is week 139 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 966): Restocking The Creamer, If You Know What I Mean

I got dressed and put in my contact lenses as if I had somewhere to go. I didn’t, but sometimes small actions like putting in contacts or putting on a shirt that doesn’t have a barf stain on it can push you just far enough into the human category to keep you from throwing feces at people. The only time I had left the house over the previous few weeks was to go food shopping, and although I’m not prone to cabin fever, the relationship between my humanity and I was becoming visibly strained.

#1GF! continued her pasta sauce from the day before. Both of us usually cook our sauces for a minimum of twelve hours, and sometimes as long as two days. That sort of cooking brings out flavor that makes me very reluctant to use the sauce in anything but straight pasta and sauce combinations.

The baby was being fussy, and wouldn’t take her afternoon nap, so we made the trek to the food warehouse in the hope that the long ride would coax the baby into a nap. We shut off the sauce, packed the baby into the car, and began our quest for oversized foodstuffs.

We pulled into a Dunkin Donuts drive-through to create the illusion that going food shopping was an actual leisure activity. #1GF! eased up to the speaker box and leaned out the window to place her order. “Can I have a large, hot black coffee and a medium decaf with cream and two sugars please?”

The male voice started to repeat back the order in a voice that sounded as if #1GF! had seductively asked for a cock sandwich with a hot side of ball sack. “A large…hot…black…” That’s as far as he made it before he trailed off.

“Um, yes,” said #1GF! with a sideways glance at me.

The guy inside seemed to snap out of it. “Sorry. What else?”

“A medium decaf with cream and two sugars, please?”

“Um, okay. Drive up.”

#1GF! turned to me with only the outside edges of her eyebrows raised. “What was that all about?”

“I have no idea. You said ‘coffee’. Is it teenage day? The cashier better have pants on.”

“Give me a second before we drive up. I’m feeling a little flush.”

We drove up and got our coffees from a woman. The guy who took our order was probably high on ecstasy and busy restocking the creamer, if you know what I mean.

We went to the food warehouse, and picked up giant boxes of cereal and enormous bottles of shampoo, and despite the coffees, there wasn’t a bit of excitement. People were still milling around eating their lunches one free sample at a time, and clogging the aisles in a fifteen foot radius of any sample table. My inner psycho was telling me to go find a thirty pack of hammers, but I sipped my coffee and tried not to stampede the snacking mass as the they huddled carriage to carriage, chewing their cud with same, blank, bovine expressions.

We made it out of the store without incident, and on the way home, the baby finally fell asleep.

“What are you thinking about?” asked #1GF!, as women do when their inner dialogue puts them on hold.

“My mind slowly returned to the car. “Writing, actually. You know, it sounds weird, but I think about writing a lot. I find myself writing passages in my head sometimes, and then editing them.”

“Is that because of your book [A Writer's Coach by Jack Hart]?”

“No, I finished that a while ago. I might actually read it again though. It was full of pointers and ideas that I’ve been trying to incorporate.”

“Like…”

“Well, when I rewrite, I go through words and try to make them active instead of passive.”

#1GF! thought for a second. “Give me an example.”

“Uh…” I thought for a few moments. “I can’t. I can’t believe that I can’t, but I’m blanking right now. Okay. It’s like taking things that are the objects of the action and rewriting sentences so that something takes action instead. I can’t believe I can’t think of one single example.”

“Use the robot.”

“The robot…um. The robot…Dammit! Stupid robot.” I immediately thought of the adage that if you can’t explain something in your own words and provide an example, you really don’t understand it. I knew that I understood the principle, but I couldn’t come up with even the smallest sentence to illustrate the idea.

“Well, never mind,” said #1GF!, letting me off the hook.

“For some reason, that part of my brain is experiencing some sort of file lock. I’ll get back to that example later. ”

“Well, what else then?”

“I spend a lot of time rewriting sentences. Sometimes they’re rewritten seven or eight times just to find the right word to project an image into the reader’s mind, and I’m positive that no one notices.”

“No, they probably don’t.”

“But, I do. I read most of what I write after the third draft and I usually still hate it, but I’m out of time. I’d revise those posts forever if I didn’t put a time limit on getting them out the door. Sometimes I feel like I’m piecing together a puzzle. I’m picking from a box of meaningless details and trying to make them mean something. A lot of the puzzle is missing, but I try to provide enough pieces that the reader can sort of see the overall picture. Whether they do or not, I have no idea.”

“Interesting. Do you have an example of active/passive, yet?”

“Ugh. No.”

We went home and unpacked the car of all the warehouse-sized goods. They don’t give you bags at the warehouse store, so I had to run back and forth to the car with armfuls of oversized items instead of doing the single, 400 bag dead lift that is routine for trips to the regular grocery store.

I had to find spaces for the thirty boxes of soap, twenty sponges, and nine-hundred rolls of toilet paper in a house that wasn’t quite ready for them. Upper shelves were cleared, and the items were jammed into any available space, no matter how far out of reach.

Once everything was stowed, I made some sausage sandwiches with #1GF!’s sauce, some Italian hot sausages, and a slice of melted provolone. They turned out pretty good. We ate them quickly because the baby was fussing and wouldn’t go to sleep.

When the baby finally went to sleep, we sat on the couch and #1GF! edited LOR 120 for me. Actually, I had forgotten to title each day, and had to finish titling them on the spot because the titles are #1GF!’s favorite parts of the post. Once titled, she read, and I had fun watching her reaction to all of the bizarre and minor details that she had long since forgotten.

The baby woke up, and #1GF! went in to take care of her. I spent the time emptying the giant pot of homemade sauce into yogurt containers for freezing. Once the giant pot was cleaned up, I went in to shut off my PC, and ended up chatting with a high school friend who became a Navy SEAL. I found out that Navy SEALS can grow beards because they don’t have a grooming code. I had no idea. If only I knew that fifteen years ago. I shut off the PC and went in to rejoin #1GF!, and flopped myself on the couch.

“I got it!”, I practically shouted, snapping #1GF! out of a one remarkably laughless bout of TV.

“What?” #1GF! asked.

“Pull my finger.”

#1GF! shook her head. “Nooooo way.”

“Just pull it. In the name of academic discovery.”

“Not in the name of all that is holy. Not a chance.”

“Editors are no fun at all. Let’s say that you did pull my finger though. A passive way of describing the situation would be to say, ‘The finger was pulled by #1GF!.’ The active way would be to say, ‘#1GF! pulled the finger and enjoyed a delightful surprise.’ See? Active versus passive.”

“A little late, but you got your point across, sicko.”

Monday (Day 967): Morgan Freeman’s Naked Ass

#1GF! was working from home, and we did a pretty good job of keeping the household schedule from getting thrown off, even though the baby had a bad bout of gas that kept her awake and loud. I was out of my writing chair more than I was in it, but sometimes, that’s the way the childcare game goes.

#1GF! made a lasagna for dinner, which not only tasted great, but gave me time to write instead of rushing around cooking. I completed the first pass on LOR 121 by 7:30 PM.

#1GF! and I sat down to watch Feast of Love, which had a few good moments, but ended up being a slow film for girls. It did, however, have a surprising amount of nudity in it for a Morgan Freeman film. There was so much nudity that I spent a lot of the movie wincing over the idea that Morgan Freeman’s naked ass would show up and be marked on my memory. It didn’t, so I guess that’s a plus.

Tuesday (Day 968): I Can’t Feel My Toes

I woke up with a headache and downed two Excedrin and two Cokes before noon. I did baby care until noon, and once the baby was asleep, I remoted in to my parents’ PC to work on their crashing issue. #1GF! called an hour later, and the baby woke up. It wasn’t the phone call, but a coincidence. I had to end the PC repair session and get her back to sleep. Once the baby was down, I jammed as much writing in as I could to the few minutes that I thought I had left.

By the end of the day, I had LOR 121 done, and #1GF! sat with me and read it. It was fun to watch her relive weird moments of that week such as the pizza eating dog who liked to lick babies.

While she read, I unconsciously reached down and grabbed #1GF!’s toe and burst out with, “Oh shit. Something’s wrong. I can’t feel my toe.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t joking. I’m just writing this sort of thing down so that when the baby tries to put me away in a home, you all will stand up for me and attest that I have been like this for a long, long time. #1GF! didn’t stop laughing for a while.

Wednesday (Day 969): Coyote Navigated Hovercraft

The baby has started to swing her head rapidly when she’s excited, and her whole body starts to shimmy as a result. She’s finally discovered her neck muscles, I suppose. She was also starting to sit up briefly. She would start to topple over, and I would catch her ninety percent of the time. What? Don’t cluck your tongue and furrow your brow like I’m a bad parent. It’s a fact that reaction times decline as lack of sleep increases. The other ten percent of the time, I would just say “AAAHHH BOOM!” and act like her face smashing into the rug was something that she should laugh at, which she did.

The baby is generally all smiles, but if she isn’t happy, a little whining isn’t unheard of. Later in the day, I tried to put her in her exersaucer so I could get her lunch ready, and she freaked out crying like I had dunked her into hot oil. I pulled her out immediately. She stopped as soon as she was in my arms. I had no idea what the problem was, but she didn’t go back in the exersaucer for a while.

I went out to the mailbox, and found a letter from the insurance company that we just signed on with the previous week. They demanded that a “qualified contractor” install a fence on the back of our property or our home insurance coverage would be dropped. Of course, this letter came only after they got our check.

“Reaaally.” I said to the letter as my eyes narrowed. I’ve never taken kindly to being told what to do, especially when the demands are illogical and delivered as if they were coming down from the mountain. I don’t think I’ve ever had an insurance company make demands of me to take my money. What company demands a fucking fence as a prerequisite for insurance? Maybe they should tell me to reseed my lawn because a bad lawn could attract grubs, which attract birds, which attract cats, which attract coyotes, and well, Jesus H. Christ, if a child was bitten by a coyote driving a fucking uninsured hovercraft that happened to fall off of a space station, well that might mean the insurance company would have to pay out a small portion of those outrageous premiums I have to pay for living in a beach town.

I called my insurance agent, and she said that the company wouldn’t budge on their demands. The only reason that we were with the new company was that they were $300 cheaper than our old company, so paying thousands of dollars and digging fence post holes in the winter wasn’t something we were going to do to save a couple of hundred bucks. I told the insurance agent to cancel the policy and go back to our old company. She told me that she had just canceled our old policy the day before. She said that she would send me all the forms to reapply for insurance with them. I’ve worked for a giant company, and nothing gets done in a day, so I asked her to call the company and simply uncancel it. She wasn’t sure that she could, but I asked her to try.

I focused on the issue like it was the only thing I had going. I had to tell myself not to think about it so that I could get some writing done. The agent eventually got it straightened out, and I had to simply send a fax telling the old company that I didn’t want to cancel my original policy. I typed it up, sent it off, and the issue was resolved. Well, there were going to be all sorts of issues with the escrow and checks bouncing back and forth, but that wasn’t going to cost me anything but a few phone calls. I don’t say this often, but if we didn’t try to save money, we would’ve been better off.

I wrote in all my spare moments and got the first draft of LOR 122 done by 7:30. I made fettuccine alfredo for dinner while #1GF! put the baby to bed.

We watched Untraceable, which despite Roger Ebert’s high rating, was nothing more than Saw, had it been produced as a “made for Lifetime original”. It was pure and painful crap.

Thursday (Day 970): The Return Of The Goddamned Croutons

The baby didn’t sleep much, so I couldn’t get much writing in. I was ahead for the week, anyway, so I deviated from the normal writing schedule to create a 175 song one-hit-wonder playlist in honor of J.D. Salinger’s death. I’m not sure that very many people got the joke. Although The Catcher in the Rye has sold about a quarter of a million copies per year since it’s release in 1951, it was Salinger’s only full-length novel.

In the late afternoon, I tried to make kale soup and tend to the baby at the same time. The baby ended up crying, and I ended up setting off the fire alarms, in that order. I eventually got both situations under control, and #1GF! had decent dinner and a happy baby waiting when she got home.

#1GF! looked over the meal. “What about the croutons?” she asked.

I said what I say every time I make kale soup. “No croutons. I’m not making croutons.”

“Don’t get mad. Just tell me how to make them and I’ll do it.”

“There will be no croutons.”

Later, I took out a pan and started the croutons. “You know, the only thing that we fight about is croutons. It makes no sense. It’s not like they’re difficult to make. I just do not want to make them.”

“Even though you know I want them.”

“I know. It’s weird. Even though I know that you’re going to ask for them, I don’t want to make them.”

“Let me make them and there’s no fight,” #1GF! said.

“You will not make croutons.”

“Well, then the only way to solve this is for me not to want croutons.”

“Yes. Exactly. Then, we will be 100% compatible. Let’s do that.”

“Not going to happen.”

We ate dinner, and it was good. I put croutons in my soup, even though they had somehow become the bane of my existence.

The baby woke up crying for some reason, but it was only 9PM or so. It was unusual, but better than 4AM. We got the baby settled and watched Better Off Ted, which was cleverly written and funny. It’s a faster paced version of The Office that relies on “wacky” more than “dumb” to get the laughs across.

As I lay in bed, drifting through my thoughts, and waiting for sleep to throw a sack over my head like an angry kidnapper, I realized that innocence is no longer an abstract concept when you have a baby. It’s real. You see it every time you place your kid into someone else’ arms and they don’t cry. They trust you to take care of them, and if you’re not freaking, they’re not. The question that I’ll have to answer as the baby grows is do we maintain a child’s innocence for as long as we can for our own benefit or theirs?

Friday (Day 971): No Alternate Reality Today

I took care of the baby, worked on the backlogged LOR posts, and put together a post announcing the one hit wonder playlist. That was my day. When #1GF! got home, she read LOR 122 and I published it. I wanted to get more out than two posts per week, but it was what it was. The baby, unlike her parents, had no interest in sleeping. Boring day, right? You want me to make something up like I usually do? No, I didn’t think so.

Saturday (Day 972): Fashion And Standard Po-Po

We had a normal morning, although the baby was a little fussy. We started listening to the one hit wonder list, and #1GF! wanted to take it with us, but her request was impossible to fulfill until they invent a web enabled car. Say…

We were heading out to visit #1GF!’s family, and on the way out the door, #1GF! told me what I was wearing wasn’t exactly a good look for me. 99.8 percent of the time, I wear jeans or shorts with a black or blue T-shirt. The other .2% of the time I’m suited up for a funeral. I have no clothes. I’m not a shopper. I stay home with the baby.

There had never been a dress code to go to the family house, but I shook my head and huffed out a sigh. I was more bothered that it happened on the way out the door than it happened at all. If I look like crap, tell me. I’ll change. I went in to find something else to wear, and managed to track mud down the hall.

#1GF! followed me down the hall apologizing profusely, and I told her that she’d have to take me shopping or something. I didn’t care. I don’t spend a lot of effort on clothes.

I put on a bunch of different shirts, and ended up in a black T-shirt and jeans—the exact look I started with.

“Fuck it. I’m done. You’ll have to take me shopping or something.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t care. If I look like crap, I look like crap.”

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry. You don’t look like crap.”

“Well, let’s just get going. We’re wasting time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop. I’m a guy. I don’t care. Are you okay with this?” I motioned to the T-shirt.

“Perfectly fine. You look great. Let’s go.”

We headed for #1GF!’s family’s house and stopped at a Dunkin Donuts on the way. #1GF! was still apologizing when she put in our typical order at the drive-through. The woman taking our order forgot to shut off her microphone when she said, “WE DON’T HAVE ANY COFFEE MADE? ARE YOU KIDDING?” I seriously don’t know what’s going on at that Dunkin Donuts, but I was betting that the teenage creamer guy was in there somewhere.

The baby did fine through the day, even though she missed all of her naps. I somehow got sucked into working on the PC before we left and #1GF! had to haul me away because the baby was slipping into a coma. The overtired coma is like a hissing fuse that can easily lead to a scream bomb detonation. We headed out for the long ride home.

When we got home, I ate a grilled ham and cheese sandwich for dinner. I have no idea what #1GF! ate, but it was probably something similar.

#1GF! called her mother, who said she heard noises in her basement, and that she’d call back once she figured out what was going on. We didn’t get a call back, and she wasn’t answering her phone. We went back and forth on what to do, and I offered to go check on her, but #1GF! wanted to go. #1GF! headed out the door and I wished her luck.

#1GF! called the police on the way because if her mother had been attacked or had fallen down the stairs, the police would’ve gotten there quicker. #1GF! made it halfway there when her mother called to tell her about the policeman the just showed up to check on her. Everything was fine. The basement noises were nothing, and the phone was left off the hook by mistake. It was simply a perfect storm of coincidence.

While #1GF! was gone, I sat at my PC and read some RSS feeds. I was glad to hear that everything turned out okay.

What I Learned

• Some insurance companies have no problem making demands once they have your check.
• Sometimes, saving a couple of extra bucks isn’t worth the hassle.
• Innocence is no longer an abstract concept when you have an infant.
• Literary jokes ferret out the literary nerds.
• The baby can sit up…sort of.
• There are some damned freaks working the drive-through.
• Navy SEALs can grow beards.

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