This is week 156 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 1085): Buck & Nancy’s Nuclear Superhero Bike

I made #1GF! a hearty bacon and egg breakfast, and I somehow managed to drop—and break—a full, brand-new box of eggs onto the floor. I should’ve taken the inadvertent sacrifice of a dozen chickens as an omen for how the rest of the day was going to turn out.

We made it out of the house by noon, which seems to be the earliest we can get out of the house without firing up a time machine these days. I still had a list from the day before that I hadn’t managed to make a dent in, so I was granted control of the schedule to make me feel like I was getting something done.

My first stop on the tour? The warehouse food store: Because you never know when a foodpocalypse may strike and limit your access to important foodstuffs like ravioli or Cheerios. We got in the car and I prepared the trunk for an invasion of gargantuan bags and boxes.

On the way to the warehouse food store, I searched the glove box for a tire pressure gauge, and came out with some important letters that were supposed to be mailed two months ago. I blurted, “What the fuck?” before I could stop myself. #1GF!’s hand immediately covered her mouth, muffling her torrent of apologies. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. “You know,” I said, “this might not even be your fault. I could’ve stuck them in there and forgotten about them.”

#1GF! only glanced over at me.

“You know that it could easily have been me.”

“You don’t believe that,” #1GF! said while shaking her head.

“It’s totally possible,” I offered. “And we have no proof. All we have to do is accept the particular version of the past that creates the least conflict, and this problem never existed.” And if that smoothed things over, that’s the way I wanted it to go. I silently berated myself for the rest of the ride.

We filled our food warehouse carriage with enough oversized boxes to get us through the 2012 zombie apocalypse, and got out of there before I could buy any more thirty packs of things we didn’t need. We packed foodstuffs into the trunk to head to the home megastore right down the street. I was finally on the road to getting some things done.

“Hey do you want a water or an apple?” I asked #1GF!, while feeling momentarily clever for packing a cooler for all the thirty pound bags of frozen food.

“You brought apples?” said #1GF! as if apples were a rare commodity that were made from diamonds wrapped in mink.

“I sure did,” I said with a smug smirk. I opened the cooler and pulled out an apple and a water for #1GF!. I stuffed a bag of frozen pasta into the cooler, and realized that there was no way that the tiny goddamned cooler was going to stow the five army-sized bags of frozen food that I bought. That was just bad planning. Maybe if I took the baby’s bottles out, I could fit another one…hold on. I lifted the bag of pasta. Water. Apple. Ice. Water. Apple. Ice. No matter how many times I cataloged the cooler, a baby bottle never ended up on the final list. I had not only forgotten the baby’s bottle, but sabotaged going to the home megastore up the street because the baby was approaching feeding time and we had no food for her. Once again, I silently berated myself for the entire forty minute ride home.

This is week 155 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 1078): Bacon Conquers All

#1GF! took the baby out for a walk, and for the second day in a row, I had an hour to eat my cereal and read a book. It was really good. When #1GF! got home, I made her breakfast.

#1GF! went out to see her mother from midday until late afternoon. I was stuck at home with the baby. Stuck is probably not the right word. I like the baby. But on the weekends, there’s a greedy part of me that wants to spend all the time I can hanging out with #1GF! or getting things done around the house. No matter what I wanted to do, I kept my mouth shut because it’s difficult to argue with someone when they’re doing the right thing.

By the time #1GF! got home, the day was shot, so I handed the baby care over to #1GF! and went out to the local home megastore to pick up an outlet that had stopped working. I came home and replaced the outlet in fifteen minutes. Somehow, it felt as if I accomplished something.

In an attempt to polish some of the tarnish off of the day, I decided to pursue my quest for the ultimate mac and cheese. Bacon-stuffed, homemade mac and cheese will temporarily put aside most problems that don’t involve blood loss. This time, the recipe included nutmeg and Gruyère cheese. It was as close to ultimate as I have made so far, although it needed something. What that mystery ingredient was still hovered outside of the realm of my abilities.

At night, I finished Creepers by David Morrell. The writing wasn’t descriptive enough to make me feel like I was in the middle of the action, but I really appreciated the way the book was intricately plotted out. I didn’t think that I could write a story like that, but it made me want to add more twists into any future books that I may find the time to write.

Monday (Day 1079): Like Lubed Bacon Wrapped In Butter

I headed for the dentist’s to have my only filling refilled, and wasn’t too psyched about it. It’s not that I’m afraid of dentists. I’ve had a root canal with no Novocaine, and come very close to falling asleep in the contoured comfort of dentist’s chairs fairly regularly. I wasn’t psyched because, in my mouth, cavities are little maintenance failures. I’ve had one in my life, and this was to repair a filling from the first. It was on the lighter side of failure, but it was still a failure.

This is week 154 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 1071): #1GF!’s First Mother’s Day (Sort Of)

At 1 AM, I talked to #1GF!, who was still at the hospital with her mother. She encouraged me to go to bed because she wasn’t coming home anytime soon. Someone was going to have to be alert enough to take care of the baby in the morning. I set up the monitor and crawled onto #1GF!’s side of the bed because it’s the only place that the monitor could easily be plugged in. It was odd being on the wrong side of the bed. I wish I could say that it was comforting to be on #1GF!’s side of the bed while she was gone, but my oddly robotic underbelly isn’t quite built for sentimentally sniffing pillows. All I could think was that it would be more difficult to lunge at anyone who appeared in the bedroom doorway without an invitation.

I drifted off to sleep, and at 2:30 AM, signal interference from my phone caused the monitor to start buzzing wildly. I couldn’t risk shutting off the phone, so I turned down the monitor and fell back to sleep.

#1GF! came home an hour and a half later, and fumbled around in the dark only to find The Wolfman sleeping on her side of the bed. The Wolfman isn’t used to people wandering around the bedroom when he’s curled up, and it woke him up. For those counting, #1GF! was running on zero hours of sleep, and I was running on two broken hours.

The baby woke up at oh, 5 AM, which was the absolute balls. The best encore for three hours of broken sleep is to be dragged into consciousness by sounds of a hysterical infant. I got up to get the baby, and left #1GF! to catch up on whatever sleep she could.

#1GF! only slept for another hour. She got up and went back to the hospital to see her mother, and I stayed home and took care of the baby. It was just another day of baby care, which involved me chasing the baby around the house and telling her “no” whenever she tried to climb on/eat anything unsafe. In her attempt to scale every object in the house within her reach, she whacked her head with alarming regularity.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted and irritated about doing solo baby care on a Sunday. I wasn’t irritated at #1GF!, of course. I completely understood that #1GF! wasn’t out partying while I sat at home, so I did my best to bury the irritation and let it decay on its own.

This is week 153 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 1064): He Was Probably A Loner As A Kid

I stood over the stove groggily tending a pan of sizzling Sunday bacon, while #1GF! tended to the baby. I was setting a hot plate of loose eggs and crisp bacon on the table, just as #1GF! put the baby down for her first nap.

#1GF! quietly closed the door to the baby’s room and sat down at the kitchen table while I finished washing the pan. She flipped open her lady tabloid and drifted off, contentedly eating eggs and reading. She managed to spend a solid five minutes enjoying her Sunday morning before I dragged her into a conversation about books. I mentioned that I had a couple of book ideas going at the same time, and was trying to figure out which would get written first. I explained the plot of the first book before my monologue veered into the wildly exciting areas of grammar, plot lines, and characterization.

#1GF! stopped me. “You know, when you tell me about this stuff, it sounds like homework.”

“What?”

“Outlines, plotting, grammar,” she held up her hands and shook her head, “it’s like you’re back in school. I don’t know how you do it.”

I looked at her with wide eyes. “Because I love that stuff.”

She looked at me like I was incomprehensible, but strangely cute—the way a kid looks at a picture of Sea Monkeys long before realizing that all they really have is a cup of shrimp with a really good marketing team.

“Well, what is the second book about?” asked #1GF!.

“Remember the story I was working on about [Ninjas! Gun fights! Exploding barrels of awesome!]?”

“Yea.”

“Well, I’m still trying to figure out the character’s motivation for doing something so wrong.”

“He was probably a loner as a kid.”

I rubbed my forehead. “No, I mean, to take on that kind of risk, it would have to be a very personal vendetta of some sort.”

“He’s probably just sick of his boss.”

I stopped. “…And he’d risk jail time over that?”

“Well, sure. He sounds like a good guy.”

“Hold on. Think about it. Would you risk jail time?”

“No, but I wasn’t a loner as a kid.”

I rolled my head back. “He wasn’t a loner as a kid.”

“How do you know. Have you written out his history?”

“No.”

“Right, and you can’t because he doesn’t have a history. Know why?”

I rolled my eyes.

This is week 152 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 1057): July 45th

I made #1GF! breakfast because that’s the sort of exciting thing that happens around here on Sundays. The morning went normally, and when the baby went in for a nap, #1GF! sat with me on the couch and edited LOR 148 and 149. We had a few grammar discussions, the only one I can remember revolved around the phrase “even if there were a way…” and whether it indicated a subjunctive mood or not. This is the type of raw excitement that I bring to the table, ladies. Don’t push. I’m already spoken for.

The baby had finally grown out of her infant tub, so #1GF! gave her a bath in the sink. I left the room so that I didn’t appear to be hovering. Once the baby was clean and dressed, we decided to kick up the grammar correcting, baby bathing party frenzy to the next level, so we spent part of the afternoon driving around looking for foreclosed houses. Were we in the market for a house? No. Was there a reason for us to be wasting gas driving around town looking at houses that we never intended to buy? No. Fortunately, the ride ended up being nostalgic. It reminded us of when we used to spend our weekends combing the real estate sections and following signs to open houses. We were both glad to have those days behind us.

We hoped that the ride might ease the baby into her next nap, but it didn’t. She was riding the Sunday party train with us, and didn’t want to close her eyes and miss a second of the heart-pounding excitement.

We went home, fed the baby, and got her down for a nap. #1GF! and I sat at the kitchen table, #1GF! reading a celebrity magazine and me with my writer’s magazine. The air was as charged as if we were the last people standing in a bar fight. I’m just fucking with you. If either of us put our heads down on the table and fell asleep, there was only about a fifty percent chance that the other person would’ve shrugged before doing the same.

This is week 151 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 1050): No Surgery, No Taxidermy, No Pick Up Lines

I got up and made breakfast for #1GF! because that’s what I’m required to do according to section III, Paragraph 8 of our “you stay home with the baby and I’ll go to work contract.” I’ve never seen said contract, but I’m sure #1GF! wouldn’t make something like that up just for some eggs.

#!GF! was going to dust and sweep the house, but I took over the dusting so that we could get the cleaning done in half the time. Once the house was relatively clean, I sat down at the PC to type out some notes on the last couple of days’ events. I hadn’t even brushed my teeth, but sometimes you have to forgo hygiene and get the words out before they evaporate.

I went out to check on the baby, and she was moving from laying on her stomach to sitting fairly easily, which amazed me because she only discovered the skill the day before. Watching her discover new things, even when they’re as small as sitting up, is pretty cool.

We packed the baby into the car and went to the mall, because that’s what we seem to do around here when we need to get out of the house. We were walking along with the baby, and a twelve-year-old girl rushed past us, being followed by an exasperated man. The kid kept whining, “Stop following me. I’ll find them,” before advancing to “Stop following me! I hope you die in a hole.” The kid was really loud, and it was obvious that the man following was her father. It was not cool. I felt like someone needed to stop being nice and get some fucking control over his kid.

As they power-walked ahead of us, I wondered where the kid would’ve picked up the phrase “I hope you die in a hole.” The imagery is not one of even dumping a body somewhere desolate, but of intentionally leaving someone to die. The image that came to mind was a bloodied up, worn out guy in a suit dying in freshly dug dirt.

As the ranting continued, my mind snapped back to the mall, and I wondered how a twelve-year-old gets the sack to use a line like that on a parent. It must’ve been one messy divorce to give a kid that sort of power.

I have no notes on it, but I’m sure we picked up some baby related or marginally necessary items before getting back in the car and heading home. On the way, we drove by a shop called “Just Hair Cuts.” I wondered why the word “haircut” wasn’t used, because I’m constantly writing and editing even when it looks like I’m blankly staring out the window.

I turned to #1GF!. “I just saw a store called ‘Just Hair Cuts.’”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, what would posses someone to name their shop that?”

#1GF! waited because she knew an answer was probably already on its way.

“I mean, did the owners get tired of people walking in off the street looking to get a quick surgery or have some leeches attached to their necks? Did you accidentally drive into the 1800s or something?”

#1GF! smiled.

This is week 150 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 1043): Leather Vests & Stripping Poles

I went to the attic at 8 AM to finally patch the potential source of our leak the week before. I opened a tube of roofing tar, stuck it into my caulking gun, and hooked the gun on one of my back belt loops where it wouldn’t get in the way. I carefully climbed out the window onto the roof, and the first thing I heard was the canister tumbling off the roof and smacking the concrete below.

I stood there for a second holding onto the eave and looking down at the ground. I had forgotten to squeeze the trigger on the caulking gun a couple of times to lock the tube of tar in place. I couldn’t see the tube, so I assumed that it had exploded, leaving roofing tar all over the front walk. I also assumed that #1GF! was watching out the window would already be substituting the canister for my skull in her mind. I slumped my shoulders and climbed back into the attic.

I went downstairs, slipped out the back door, and picked up the canister. Luckily, not only was the tube in tact, but #1GF! was in another part of the house so she didn’t see (or require an explanation for) the fumble. I crept back up to the attic. I squeezed the trigger a few times on the reloaded canister to lock it in place, hooked it on my belt, and climbed back out onto the roof.

I don’t like working under eaves that draw me into awkward positions on roofs that are pitched toward a broken back, but that’s what I had to do. In what seemed like a very long five minutes, I sealed the loose shingle. I didn’t want to deal with the issue again, so I’m pretty confident that if a hurricane tears the roof off, there will still be one shingle left.

This is week 149 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 1036): Did You Say Breaded Bacon?

It was Easter, so #1GF! left to go pick up her mother to bring her over for brunch. She took the baby with her because the baby wasn’t sleeping and we thought the car ride might calm her down. I made the bed, picked up around the house, cleaned the counters, and started the breaded bacon and the french toast. I took a guess at the amount of coffee I needed to make a full pot and got that started too.

#1GF! returned at around 11 AM, and my parents showed up soon after. We had tropical fruit salad, baked french toast, breaded bacon, two quiches, and apple cake. Everyone ate more than they should’ve and sat around staring at the baby through our food induced comas. I hadn’t made coffee in a while, but I used to make it on the strong side when I did. I served up coffee to those who wanted it, and it was so strong that the first sip made #1GF!’s mother look instantly angry. She wasn’t actually angry, but I happened to catch the expression as it crossed her face. I made a mental note to tone down the coffee a little next time.

I threw all the dishes in the sink, and suddenly all the ladies decided that they were going out for a walk. I only figured that out because the stroller was out and they were all heading for the door. It was in the ’70s out and sunny, so it was a perfect day to walk off a meal. I wasn’t going on a walk, so my father and I walked around the property pointing at stuff that needed to be fixed, as men are prone to do.

When the ladies returned, it was already the middle of the afternoon. I served up homemade mini cheesecakes, and they went over well.

My parents got on their way, and #1GF! left to take her mother home. I stayed behind with the baby, who hadn’t napped all day. I fed her and then the two of us sat out on the front steps watching the cars go by. We talked to a neighbor, and went in when it started getting cold.

This is week 148 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 1029): Rug Stalker

I woke up in the middle of the night dreaming that zombies were climbing up from the bottom of the bed, under my sheets. I remember saying, “this is stupid” and trying to hold the blankets down so they couldn’t get out. It was probably the lamest nightmare ever. After that, I spent the rest of the night dreaming that I was watching the baby. Between all the zombie combat and baby care, I had a hard time getting up when the sun was finally up.

I got up and groggily made breakfast for #1GF!. I smelled beef while I was cooking, but there was no beef on the menu. That’s when I realized that I had completely forgotten to put on deodorant the day before. I grimaced and shook my head. The slide to senility is a slippery one, and I believe that forgetting basic hygiene is step one.

#1GF! and I got dressed (including deodorant) and went out to a large local furniture store in the afternoon. It wasn’t like we needed anything more than a way out of the house. We picked up some coffee on the way to make it feel like we were actually doing something fun.

We wandered into the store’s warehouse sized discount area, and I started flipping through a rack of hanging rugs. When I came to something ridiculous, I’d turn to #1GF! and say something like, “What about this? Tiger stripes and leopard spots in one rug? For a mere nineteen hundred bucks, this Liger pelt could be the centerpiece of our home.” #1GF! would shake her head, and the baby expressionlessly chewed one of her toys.

When I was about halfway through the rack, a woman walked up and started looking at rugs about three rugs away from where I was flipping. There were two other racks that the woman could’ve browsed on, but she needed to look where I was looking. If you’ve ever looked at rugs on these racks, you know that you need five or so feet of room to flip each panel so you can the rug.

The woman quickly got even closer, before passing me and then slowing down. I gave #GF! a WTF? look by opening my eyes wide and shaking my head slightly. #1GF! curled her lip and shrugged.

I didn’t need a rug that badly. “I’m done,” I mouthed to #1GF! a couple of rugs later. She nodded and we walked a few feet away. The woman suddenly appeared less interested in the rack.

I shook my head. “I had to get out of there before that woman hugged me.”

“Or worse.”

“I’m not a hugger.”

This is week 147 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 1022): Eating Candy Out Of The Gutter

#1GF! got up to get the baby at normal time, and I somehow fell back to sleep. When I finally got up, it was already 8:30 AM. I was bleary and exhausted. I shuffled into the kitchen, and #1GF! had already taken the baby out and brought back coffee and a bagel sandwich for me. I had no idea that they left, although I didn’t even remember giving myself the opportunity to fall back to sleep in the first place.

We got dressed and went to the St. Patrick’s Day parade. There was a time many years ago that I could get out of standing in the street for a couple of hours watching people walk by, but those times were long gone. I’m mired in the tradition of annual parade watching, which I can only assume will expand as the baby gets older.

We were out the door a little later than we wanted, so we got an okay parking spot instead of a prime one. We walked down to the parade route, and greeted the rest of #1GF!’s family at their usual spot.

The parade started up with a long line of firetrucks blaring their sirens. The baby wasn’t bothered by it in the least. She sat and watched the whole parade without issue. At a lull, a little girl walked over and tried to touch the baby, but #1GF! warded her off without even moving. The little girl did not seem happy about it, but I was impressed with #1GF!’s evolving motherly demeanor.

Because they throw candy off of the floats, most of the spectators end up standing ten feet off the curb, forcing the parade to squeeze through riding the yellow line. I’m always amazed how far some people will go to chase down a five cent piece of candy that has been thrown by someone they don’t know, and bounced off of a dirty street a few times. You’d think that they were throwing money.

Just like every other year, there were tense moments when a kid ran out in front of a truck to save a piece of candy from its path. The kids always seem to make it out just in time, and I wonder what the hell their parents are doing besides chawing on free candy.

The kids came away with multiple freezer ziplock bags of candy, and I snagged a couple of bullseyes from them because what kid wants to eat a bullseye? They’re the lepers of candy whose popularity peaked long ago with circus peanuts, Mary Janes, and Herbert Hoover.

This is week 146 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 1015): Water To Whine

We had gone to daylight-saving time the night before, so I woke up late. I threw on my clothes and ran down to the basement. Our troubled window well was full and dumping water onto the floor. The robot was rolling back and forth through the giant puddle, and seemed to be entranced by the wake he was creating.

“What the hell, robot? Why didn’t you tell me?”

The robot beeped a few times, and I heard the EEEEEEEskhhhhhh of his modem connecting. The phone rang upstairs.

“Stopstopstop. I needed that call when the flooding started.”

The robot flashed ZZZZs on the screen.

“I don’t care if I’m sleeping. Remove any time restrictions on your dialing subroutines.”

The robot beeped a few times and the phone rang upstairs again.

“Not NOW. Gah. Sometimes, I swear. Just, back up. Backup backup backup.”

The robot rolled out of the water, and I surveyed the damage. It looked as if the water had been coming in for so long that the tide had risen, flooded, and subsided by the time I got there. The robot was shifting back and forth at the edge of the puddle and watching the ripples.

“Robot. So help me, if you don’t get out of the way, I’m going to hang your circuit boards out on the fence and let the crows peck at them.”

The robot backed up and I went out in the rain and bailed out the window well. I came in soaked.

“What can I do?” asked #1GF!.

“Nothing. I’ll take care of it,” I said.

“I want to help.”

“I know, but someone has to keep an ear out for the baby…”

#1GF! reluctantly went back upstairs. The robot and I vacuumed up what was left of the water, but the walls were still seeping. They weren’t dumping enough water that patching was a necessity, but it was enough water to be annoying.

This is week 145 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 1008): Meteorological Interpretations

It was fifty degrees out, so #1GF! and I went out to stare our yard, which was in need of both a landscaper and a lumberjack. We tried to come up with a plan for what to do with it, but failed. Instead, #1GF! tricked me into going for a walk. After all the rain recently, everyone else had the same idea.

We walked along in single file because of all the people crowding the narrow sidewalk, and I noticed that mild temperatures in the late winter bring out very different interpretations of the same weather. Some people jogged by in tank tops and shorts, while others seemed to be braving the weather with their hands jammed into the pockets and the hoods of their winter jackets pulled hurricane tight around their faces.

Despite their differences, everyone was crowding the beach as if the world was just beginning to awaken from a long, rainy nap. For me, the weather was forcing me into muddy, mental rut filled with all the things that needed to be done around the house. I silently sloshed through that rut for the whole walk.

We went home and stood in the street talking with the neighbors for a bit while a steady stream of kids swirled around our legs.

We went in and I made mac and cheese with half the onion, twice the bacon, and Cabot extra sharp cheddar. I hadn’t perfected the recipe, but it was still pretty good.

Monday (Day 1009): Holy Kashyyyk!

#1GF! worked from home, and I had a normal morning of baby care: feeding, changing, burping, and nothing interesting going on. It was fifty-two degrees and sunny out, and I felt like I should be out in the yard tearing down the fence, but you can’t start any project that takes more than fifteen minutes when you’re taking care of a baby. And even if you find fifteen minutes, you definitely can’t take on any project that will coat you in mud and rust.

Although I managed to clean the stove and counters during her first nap, the baby’s naps were so short that I got very little writing in. The baby wasn’t screaming or crying all day. She was actually fine. She just didn’t feel like sleeping.

I read her a few books in the extra time she was awake, and found that a lot of children’s books are complete fucking crap. Really. There is nothing redeeming about a lot of them, and I can’t understand how they got published.

This is week 144 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 1001): Pork Chops & Apple Sauce

We had a long night with the baby. She was up crying every fifteen minutes until about 2 AM, and then was bright and perky at 6 AM. We didn’t quite match her level of perkiness.

We went to Lowe’s and didn’t buy anything, did a ton of laundry, and watched Nurse Jackie when the baby fell asleep. It felt like we were constantly in motion all day.

I baked some pork chops in the oven at a very low temperature, and then seared them in a pan without setting off the fire alarms. I finally understand why people have professional stoves and massive vent hoods. The pork chops came out moist, which is unusual. I always dry them out.

We watched Big Love and the show shifted focus so that plural marriage seemed even weirder than ever. It was hard to watch.

Monday (Day 1002): Writing And Baby Care

The baby was up in the middle of the night, which was slowly becoming the norm.

Once I got up to start my day, I took out the recycling in the rain. It wasn’t raining hard, but it was coming from a different direction than usual, and the bulkhead was leaking. I spent some time trying to figure out where the leak was coming from, and couldn’t pin it down. I made a mental note to see if the brick above the bulkhead needed repointing, or if the bulkhead was installed incorrectly by the original “contractor”.

I put the baby to sleep, and headed for my PC. #1GF! was working from home. “She’s down,” I said.

“So’s the internet,” said #1GF!.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“It’s only raining. And it’s not even raining that hard.”

“I know.”

I got on my cell phone to call Comcast, and found out that the rain was causing another outage. It’s a good thing that I have a backup phone, but I was starting to think that I needed backup fucking internet.

This is week 143 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 994): Fishing Clerks Out Of Dumpsters

#1GF! reminded me that her friend was supposed to be coming over for a visit, and I had completely forgotten. We had been up at 2:30 AM with the baby, and I was barely ready for simple math, never mind company. I scrubbed down the stove, polished the table, sealed the granite, cleaned the bathroom, and even fished a gelatinous crud creature out of the tub drain.

I showered at top speed, and waited for company that never showed up. It was an effective way to get the house cleaned, but #1GF! could’ve just asked. I slipped back into a slow-moving coma, as the idea of company faded from memory.

The baby wasn’t eating much and was running a sleep deficit, but she wasn’t concerned about either as much as her parents were.

In the afternoon, we went out looking for a cheap rug, as we had done the day before. This time, we took a slide down the quality ladder and dropped into Building 19. Now, Building 19 might offer deep discounts, but it’s one place that makes dollar stores look clean. The floors are always grungy linoleum, and everything looks like it was dragged off a burning Chinese box truck on the side of the road. Even though it’s a crap melee that sits just above flea market on the shopping chain, there are some good bargains if you can bring yourself to touch anything. Carpeting is one area that you can do pretty well at.

I’ve bought a couple of Building 19 rugs in the past, and one had an oil smell that I could never get rid of, and the other is sitting under my dining room table. Both cost me about $20 each, so even when you lose on the roll, you don’t lose big.

As we walked in, they had a “Master of Disguises” coin machine for kids. For a quarter, a kid could get his first fu manchu mustache and a set of bushy eyebrows. Master of disguise indeed.

We walked to the rug section, where the rugs were laid out in piles by size, forming a giant grid of pathways between them. We put the baby seat on top of a pile of rugs, and I flipped through a nearby pile while #1GF! and the baby looked on. We saw some rugs that would’ve been popular in the Huckstable household in 1987, some that had the potential to be as popular as that kid in the back of your third period English class who always had a finger up his nose, and a few that were good-looking, but hundreds more than we wanted to spend on something that the baby was sure to throw up all over within the week.

This is week 142 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 987):The Grandma Gene

We were dressed unusually early, so #1GF! brought some chocolate covered Oreos to the neighbors and took the baby over to show her off. I stayed in the kitchen and made chocolate covered pineapple until I got bored.

I put the pineapple in the fridge and went into the den to work on my parents’ eternally crashing PC. I plugged the machine in, and couldn’t get any video. Awesome. I had to fix the video issue before I could tackle the crashing.

Because it’s nearly impossible to troubleshoot a PC without video, I hunted through my desk drawers for a spare video card. I couldn’t find one, so my options were to take apart my PC or go out and buy a new one.

Call it professional paranoia, but I quarantine machines that I fix. They don’t go on my network if one of my home machines is on, and I absolutely don’t like swapping parts between my primary machine and one with an unknown issue. You never know if the machine is going to infect or short something, leaving you with a random issue that takes months to figure out.

I wasn’t going to buy a new card because I didn’t have the time. I popped my video card into my parents machine, and I was still without video. I rebooted the PC a couple of times, and it looked like it was flashing an error code on its front the way a car does when something goes wrong. I googled the error sequence, and was right. The machine was trying to tell me that there was something wrong with the memory. I don’t say this often, but that was pretty clever.

I looked up hardware prices and was astonished that two gigs of memory cost a mere forty bucks, and a hundo would land a one gig video card. It made me want to upgrade my machine to make text processing and Perl scripts run even faster…because text is so memory and video intensive.

Before I bought anything, I reseated the memory sticks to see if it made a difference. Sometimes you can get through a repair cheaply by simply reseating components. I rebooted the machine, and the video came back. I was finally at the point where I could start working on the crashing issue. Unfortunately, I was out of time, so once I had it booting, I shut the machine down and we went to visit #1GF!’s mother.

We dropped into the grocery store on the way, and I sat in the car because the baby was sleeping. Sitting in a car outside of stores like a ninety year old man was getting to be a bad habit.

We made it to #1GF!’s mother’s house without issue, and I sat down at the counter while the ladies played with the baby.

“What’s the matter with you?” #1GF!’s mother asked me, as I spent a fair amount of effort to keep from slipping into a coma.

“What?” I asked.

“Your eyes are all glassy.”

“Oh,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “I’m probably just tired.”

“Well, you look awful.”

“Thanks?”

This is week 141 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 980): The Number One Pats Fan

The baby was finally six months old, and we intended to celebrate by doing nothing all day long. Well, I did. I hoisted myself out of bed, and deposited myself on the living room couch with a thud. I was so tired that I didn’t even offer to help with the baby.

#1GF! had already been up for a while, and cheerily kissed me good morning after feeding the baby and putting her down for her morning nap. “You have forty-five minutes to yourself,” she said with a smile. Make the most of it.

I was staring blankly out the window at the ocean. I grinned and rubbed my hands down my face. “I already am.”

#1GF! giggled.

“I cram so much in during the week…”

“That it feels good to stop?”

I nodded from almost the shoulders. “Yes.”

I eventually emerged from my coma, and joined #1GF! in taking care of the baby. We set up a ball popping toy that the baby ended up having absolutely no interest in. It wasn’t engineered all that well, and shot plastic balls all over the living room. I spent more time chasing balls than your mother when the fleet is in town. Wha? Heeyyy.

When the baby fell asleep, we would fill the time by sitting on the couch and watching Weeds and taped shows. I should say recorded shows. I don’t know if anyone actually tapes things anymore, do they?

The day went smoothly, and I made buffalo wings and fries for dinner. The super bowl was on but we didn’t watch it because I couldn’t find my Pats shirt, Pats hat, Pats officially licensed throw pillow, Pats football, Pats sweatpants, my lucky Pats tube socks that say “Pats” on the side, Pats fanny pack, Pats eight foot lawn decoration, or my Drew Bledsoe life-sized cutout. I must’ve lent them all out to another die-hard Pats fan.

It’s not like I was without. I had my Pats lanyard, Pats travel mug, Pats official pro-grip calculator, Pats mailbox, Pats key chain, Pats grill cover, Pats snow globe, Pats complete set of 2002-2005 bobble heads lined up in order of awesomeness, Pats bifold wallet, and Pats Big Daddy easy chair, but I knew that having only half of my official gear wasn’t going to be enough to help the Pats win. I opted to play it safe and not watch the game, because if I watch the game with only half my gear or eat anything in even numbers, the Pats always lose.

What? The Pats weren’t even in the Super Bowl this year? That’s just great. Now, you’re probably questioning whether I watch all the local sports matches at all. I can see my jock readership numbers dropping as I speak.

This is week 140 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 973): Monkey Crack Juice

We started the day off listening to my one hit wonder playlist, and I ended up annoyed that the player has no way to shuffle the tracks. I looked up ways to access the Grooveshark API, but couldn’t find one. The best idea that I could come up with was to hack a Grooveshark WordPress plugin so that when it returns an array of songs, it shuffles the array within the widget. It was a simple hack, but I couldn’t think of a way to raise the priority of the idea so that it warranted working on. Man, I miss the old Finetune widgets.

In the afternoon, we headed out to a department store so that #1GF! could pick up some baby clothes. I got a coffee on the way. Two coffees in two days. I was like a friggin’ professional office-type person. I considered buying a watch and working “synergy” into my afternoon strategy meetings with the baby.

When we got home, I received and e-mail from a guy who told me to make a beard and name it after him. It wasn’t a question, and the guy had no description of the style, nor a reason that he should have a beard named after him. He just said that he had grown a beard for two months and issued the order. I politely denied his request without relying on the phrase “get fucked”. I mean, it’s not like I have the authority to name beards. That’s a job reserved for the Grand Marshal of The High & Secret Order of Beardos. I don’t get paid enough to push that kind of paperwork through.

#1GF! and I ended the day watching Big Love because…oh who gives a flying shit? Fuck this day. How can you sit there and read this? Really. Oh, wait. Did your helper monkey drizzle some heavy-duty monkey crack juice on your keyboard and you can’t get to another page? Because that’s the only explanation I can come up for you reading this right now. I’m with you though. I wouldn’t want to touch a monkey crack juice saturated keyboard either. Forget it. Set the fucking laptop on fire. Wait until you’re out of the hospital though, okay? Oxygen is flammable and I don’t want you to blowing up the goddamned hospital. Got it? Right. Get well soon.

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.

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.

This is week 137 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 952): See You Next Tuesday, Adverbially

We hung around playing with the baby all morning and then went to #1GF!’s friend’s house for a small party. Her friend has a big, boisterous family that is full of really funny, really loud people. Most of the time there are so many funny stories and conversations going on at the same time, that it’s hard to focus on just one. They’re always a good time, but without fail, at least one person will locate and cross any lines that you may have to get you to laugh.

I got roped into a game of Taboo, and ended up so far in the lead that it was a head-shaking shame. I tried to throw the game by pretending that I didn’t know the answers, but I ended up blanking out for real. We still ended up winning, but most of the fun was in the other players yelling and berating each other when they couldn’t get an answer.

After the game, I stepped out to the kitchen and had a piece of a diet cake. It tasted like regular cake, but eating a diet cake just seemed wrong to me. If you’re going to eat cake, eat cake. The baby was great, despite not sleeping all day, and fell asleep on me while I stood in the kitchen. Not even the ongoing yelling an taunting from the current game going on at the table could wake her.

They moved on to another game where one person had to guess an object that the rest of the players decided upon. The players would give vague, single word clues to describe the object, and the less clues the guesser needed, the more points he or she got. I only observed so that the baby could sleep.

Now, during the game, one woman looked for support because she was reprimanded for a clue she used to describe her sister in a previous game. When asked what the word was, she looked down at the table and softly shrugged out, “cunty”.

This is week 136 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 945): Christmas Is Over

I went out to shovel at 1PM because all of my shoveling from the day before had been negated by the constant wind. It was zero degrees with the windchill.

We took down the Christmas decorations, and I made one of my favorite dinners: pasta with leeks, apple-smoked bacon, and Italian parsley in an egg sauce.

Monday (Day 946): Imagination Vs. Reality In Baby Care

What I Imagined A Day Of Baby Care Would Be:

6 AM: Get up with baby feed her. The baby smiles and thinks all my jokes are funny.
7 AM: Baby goes to bed and I start writing.
11 AM: Baby wakes up cooing gently for food, as tiny cartoon birds fly in patterns above her crib to entertain her. She has a wonderful time while I prepare her food.
12 PM: Baby goes in for a nap and I split my time between writing the great American novel and fending off agents who want me to sign on with them.
4 PM: Baby wakes up to feed again. We have a good time playing after she eats. She simply loves Perl, and even though her code is not as efficient as it could be, she has a good handle on regular expressions.
6 PM: Mom gets home, takes the baby, and after a few button pushes on the Food-A-Rac-A-Cycle, dinner appears on the table as if by magic.
7 PM: I put on a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, and retire to the office to write for an hour.
8 PM: I emerge to let the evening untangle while I sit on the couch and let #1GF! feed me bonbons.
10 PM: I drift off to sleep with a sense of satisfaction for raising a child and writing the great American novel.

What A Typical Day Really Is:

3 :XX AM: Something happens that the baby doesn’t like, and she spends some time venting about it in her language, which we can’t really understand.
5 AM: Baby goes back to sleep.
7 AM: Huh? Wha? I’m up, I’m up.
7:15 AM: The baby gets up and eats. I grab some cereal, take out the garbage, and re-shovel a path to the car that the wind has obliterated once again. I come back in and take the baby so that #1GF! can get ready for work.
8:45 AM: I get the baby to sleep, and get the tub and towels ready because it’s bath day.
9 AM: I shower, respond to e-mail, and start editing LOR 116. I’m twenty weeks behind on posts, and estimate that I won’t be writing another book for at least that long unless I let LOR die.
10:15 AM: The baby wakes up, and I bathe her, change her, and keep her occupied until her bottle is warm.
10:45 AM: I feed the baby and walk around burping her. #1GF! calls and reminds me it’s our anniversary. I thought that it was six days away. The odds of me going shopping are fast approaching zero, so I give her gift by wishing her a happy anniversary. It will happen to you one day. Oh, you’ll see.
11:45 AM: The baby gets a bowl of solid food and I walk around burping her. She throws up on my shirt. She doesn’t seem to mind. Oddly, I don’t seem to care, either.

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.

This is week 134 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 931): Horizontal Snow

There was a blizzard going on, and the winds were some of the loudest we’d heard since moving into the house. Everything was rattling, which was pretty impressive considering that these little piggies live in a house of brick. The wind kept us up a good portion of the night.

When we got up, the trash barrel (that was weighted down with garbage) was ten feet from where I left it the night before. We couldn’t see out of most of the windows because they were covered with snow. Where we could peek out, we could see that the snow was going by the window horizontally.

I went out and shoveled through a three-foot drift to free the cars, and then moved them into odd angles to act as wind breaks. I didn’t know if the idea would save me any future shoveling, but the neighbors were sure to think that we both came home wasted.

I came in, showered for warmth, and took care of the baby. Even though it was a Sunday, #1GF! worked from home.

The day ambled by. We made chicken soup for dinner, and it wasn’t the greatest, possibly due to a lack of salt.

Later in the evening, I finally turned down the opportunity to be interviewed about my beards for a magazine because the reporter had a million questions and I couldn’t find the time to answer half of them with something witty. Maybe turning down free publicity was dumb, but the baby takes priority these days.

This is week 133 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 924): Nothing Is Real

#1GF! gave me a break from baby care after my outburst in the car the day before. It was like having free down time, and I wasted it by inserting inappropriate bleeps into an Ella Fitzgerald Christmas song to make it sound a lot dirtier than it was. Then, I got slightly productive and spent some time writing one of the backlogged Life of Riley posts. When I emerged from the office at noon, the baby was clean and dressed, and I wasn’t.

In the afternoon, I did some photo editing to create the baby’s first Christmas card, and then made a seven picture baby montage as a stocking stuffer for the baby’s grandma. In thirty years, when my daughter looks back on the cute hat she was wearing in her first Christmas photo, she’ll never know that the moment we shared with everyone never really existed because she didn’t actually like wearing that hat. Ah, the modern world. Soon, nothing will be real.

When I returned to the family, I finally set up the high chair, and then ruined a roast by adding enough garlic to put an end to half the cast of Twilight.

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 is week 131 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 910): My Crackhead Wreath

We returned the crappy mini Christmas trees to the home megastore, and then went to the mall to get the baby’s first picture taken with Santa. #1GF! dressed the baby up in a red velvet dress with white fur lining, and twelve bucks later, we had the baby’s first Christmas picture.

Although the dress was heating the baby up, she didn’t complain. She just sat and stared straight ahead at the camera like a tiny member of the Claus family. No one could get a smile out of her, but at least she didn’t cry. You can see the result on the Vetoed Dyer Family Christmas Card.

I went to take the baby back from Santa, and he tried to ignore me. When I started taking the baby out of his arms, he said that he wouldn’t mind holding her more. I took her back semi-forcefully while #1GF! collected the card.

The baby was hot, so instead of putting her back in her car seat, I carried her through the mall in my arms. A lot of people smiled at the baby as we passed, and even though I hadn’t done much in making her what she was, I couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of pride.

We picked up some aspirin and a bunch of red bows at Walmart, and then went to a craft store and picked up thirteen fake wreaths for under $50. The wreaths and bows were for #1GF! to decorate our windows, and the aspirin was for me because the baby screamed in Walmart until we were forced to change her in the middle of one of the aisles when no one was around.

When we got home, #1GF! put the bows on the wreaths and fluffed them up. My job was to stick them on the windows. I didn’t fluff them or put bows on them because I am no good at that sort of thing. I did one wreath, and while the other twelve were saying “Merry Christmas” to passersby, mine was yelling “Street Pussy!” and trying to sell itself for crack.

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.

This is week 129 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 896): Happy Trails, ROCKET CAR!

“So what do you want to do today?” #1GF! asked me.

“Get dressed?” I replied. Sometimes, it’s best to start small.

We did get dressed, and then drove to a large Honda dealer to have ROCKET CAR! appraised. I had already locked in a price that was below dealer cost through e-mail. The car we were going to see wasn’t a manual, wasn’t the color #1GF! wanted, and it had 88 miles on it (which is about 80 more than I like on a new car), but you have to make a few concessions when you’re below dealer cost.

Interestingly, the dealer didn’t bother with the dog and pony show that goes along with appraising my car. They took a look at the outside, peeked at the engine, and looked up what they could wholesale it for. It took a lot less time than usual, but in the end, they undervalued it, anyway.

We left Honda and went to a local Subaru dealer to see if they could do any better on the trade. We saw our salesman, and he brought out the manager to appraise ROCKET CAR!. Oddly, the manager didn’t find it necessary to say hello. The salesman tried to introduce us to him, and he begrudgingly shook my had without taking his eyes off of the car. He didn’t bother with #1GF!. Within a few minutes, the manager walked away without saying anything.

“Well, I guess he got what he needed,” the salesman said in a surprised tone.

We certainly didn’t. The manager went into the building, leaving us standing in the parking lot. When we followed, the manager gave the salesman the lowest bid on my car that I had gotten from any dealer. The manager left such a bad taste in my mouth that I didn’t bother haggling. You don’t expect to be treated like royalty when buying a family sedan, but you don’t expect to be treated like garbage, either.

Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe he wasn’t. In either case, if that was how the sales manager treated people who wanted to make a purchase, we couldn’t imagine how he treated customers who needed service after the deal was done. And with J.D. Power’s Subaru ratings, I had the feeling that there could be a lot of service. I had to tell the salesman that I was sorry but I had better deals on the table with other dealers. We left.

I wanted to get #1GF! a new car before her first day back to work, but there were only hours left and it didn’t look like it was going to happen. I felt bad, but you can’t get desperate when you’re buying a car, even if the woman you’re buying it for deserves it.

When we got home, I gave it one last try. I called the Honda salesman back and I got connected to a woman who couldn’t speak English. I dialed again and got the same woman. Thinking that the salesman’s card was a misprint, I called the dealer directly, and they connected me to the same woman again.

I called the dealership’s internet manager and left a message that for $500 less than he was offering, I would come back and purchase the car that night. Remember, I was already below dealer cost on the car, and running out of time, and yet I still found it necessary to continue pounding on the deal a little more. All he could say was “No.”

Within fifteen minutes, three different people from the dealership called me back to try to make the deal happen. After the experience with Subaru, it was nice to be dealing with people who really wanted to sell us a car.

This is week 128 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 889): Raking For The Boss lady

#1GF! and I were out the door at 7:30AM to go rake the family cottage. Wait, let me rephrase. We went to #1GF!’s brother’s house together, and #1GF!’s brother and I were tagged for raking duty. The women folk were tagged for child care. #1GF! stayed for a bit so that the baby could visit her cousins.

Before I went to go rake, one of the baby’s cousins wanted a kiss goodbye, so I bent down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Her head shrunk back and she looked at me with a furrowed brow. “You’re face is scratchy,” she said as she rubbed her cheek. She then turned to #1GF! and said, “Make him shave.” In this family, they’re no longer building ladies, they’re building boss ladies.

I don’t know how it got down to just #1GF!’s brother and I raking a family cottage that neither one of us uses. Oh, wait. Yes, I do. One year, #1GF!’s brother volunteered to rake the cottage and dragged #1GF! along. Then, the sister in law got roped in to the event. The sister in law eventually figured out that raking sucks and had a baby to get out of it, leaving #1GF! and her brother to rake.

Luckily, #1GF! met this nice guy who loved her and didn’t mind helping her out. A few years later, #1GF! said, “Wait a minute. Why am I still raking?” and had a baby to get out of it. The brother and I don’t have ovaries, so we had no way out of the raking unless we were in the hospital waiting for a baby to be delivered, which required precise timing that was way beyond either of us. So, the two of us were stuck raking the family cottage on our own.

This is week 127 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 882): Octogenarian Love Making

We woke up to the baby crying so often that we no longer bothered setting the alarm clock. This day was no different.

#1GF! got the baby under control, and I shuffled off to the kitchen for a bleary bowl of cereal. The first mouthful of sour told me that the milk had turned. I poured the whole bowl into the sink. An earful of crying followed by a mouthful of sour milk wasn’t the greatest way to start a day.

I looked through the cabinets and found some ancient packets of instant oatmeal, so I tore those bitches open and dumped them into a bowl. I threw the bowl into the microwave for a couple of minutes, and when it came out, it smelled like sweet, steamy sewage. I turned on the tap and got the same sewage smell. For some of the highest water rates in the state, smelly water is more common in my town than I ever remembered in the city. The oatmeal followed the cereal down the drain.

I was cranking the key and pumping the gas pedal, but my day was refusing to turn over. All I needed was a punch in the face and a glimpse of two eighty year olds making sweet, tongue-waggling love on my lawn to ensure that the rest of my senses got off to the same bad start. I left the kitchen and avoided looking out any windows on my way back to the den.