This is week 126 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 875): Beard Growing, Password Cracking Machine

It was October 25th, so as has become the custom, I put down my razor and started my annual winter beard. It gives me two good months of growth before the holidays.

I watched the baby for a bit so #1GF! could go back to bed. When she got up, we cleaned up the house a little.

I loaded some remote control software and logged into one of #1GF!’s family’s PCs to get rid of a fine piece of malware called Windows Enterprise Defender. It sounds legit, it looks legit, but it’s a piece of malware.

I was happy to resolve the problem, and even happier that I didn’t have to spend an additional couple of hours on the road thanks to some remote software, but that malware was a fat pain in the ass to extract. Once the virus was cleaned up, my father called to ask my opinion on a laptop. I guessed that it was going to be PC day. I was ready to shoot down his laptop as overpriced and underpowered, but the laptop he found was a pretty good deal. He bought it on the way over to see the baby.

The baby was tired, but stayed awake while my parents were over. My father opened the laptop and went through the setup process. It was Windows 7, which looked exactly like Vista to me. I needed to install a virus scanner for him, so he shut down and we moved to a room with network jacks. Once we were back up and running, my dad forgot the administrator password and we were locked out of his brand new laptop after a record ten minutes of use.

This is week 125 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 868): All Kinds Of Pie

The baby’s cousins came over for a visit, and I did “up high, down low…too slow” with them. You know that game. They high five you, then when they try to low five you, you pull your hand away. The kids liked it just as much on the thirtieth time as the first.

When they tried to do the same to me, I threw a wrench in like I always do.

“Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jowwwaaaan.”

“What, honey.”

The little cousin held her hand up. “Up high.”

“A pie?”

“Yea. Up high?”

“Well what kind of pie are we talking about here.

“Up high.”

“Blueberry…Blackberry…lemon…rhubarb…it better not be mincemeat. I am not a fan of mincemeat pies.”

“No. Jon. Listen. Up. High.

“I forgot apple. Your grandma makes a great apple pie, doesn’t she?”

“Yes. No. Jowan. Up. High.”

“Oh, see, I thought you brought me a pie.”

“No.”

“Are you sure.”

“Up high, Jon. Here. Right up here. Up. High.”

“Fine. But, I’d rather have an apple pie than a high five. Are you sure that the pie you brought isn’t in the car? I’d better go check.”

Her shoulders slumped. “There is no pie, Jowan. Up. High. Up High. Don’t you get it? Not pie. Up high. Up here. Right here. Up high.”

“This seems like a ripoff.” I slapped her hand up high.

“Down L…”

I slapped her hand before she finished. “Too slow.”

“Up high,” she said again.

We played until I learned to play the game properly.

This is week 124 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 861): Turn Around, Bright Eyes

All I know about this day was that I made a pro/con list to help me decide whether to take the job with my old company, and we started watching Frost Nixon, but ended up too tired to finish it, even though it was only 10PM. There are no other notes from the day, so I’m going to assume that Bonnie Tyler came by singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” until I told her to get the fuck off of my lawn.

Monday (Day 862): Guiltily Pushing All In

I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that someone was in the house and lay there straining to hear the smallest noise over my paced breathing. It took me a while to piece together that the pillow next to me wasn’t #1GF!, and that #1GF! was probably the person prowling around in the kitchen. I got up to verify because there’s no sense in getting murdered over a hunch. It turned out to be #1GF!, who mouthed, “Sorry” when she saw me squinting at her.

I went back to bed and had a dream that I was in class, and a guy kept kicking my chair to intentionally annoy me. I turned around and broke his finger. He stopped kicking my chair almost immediately. I then had to go to a college function to meet a prospective employer. The businessman looking to hire me clapped me on the back and told me that I was lucky that he smoothed over the finger breaking incident with the dean. I rolled my eyes internally and smiled at him like he had done me a favor.

This is week 123 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 854): The Golden Turrets

In the morning, #1GF! was outside with the baby talking to the neighbors because that’s what it’s like around here in the summer. It’s a genuine neighborhood. #1GF!’s family was supposed to visit, but bagged on us. I have to say that I was a little disappointed.

#1GF! looked up cars because she made a deadline that we were going to get a new car before her maternity leave was over. As we sat on the couch talking over the blander points of family sedans, the second feeding of the day came up. The baby fed and fell asleep on her mother after arching her tiny back and stretching her arms so that her fists were alongside her ears.

“We have a baby,” said #1GF! with a bit of amazement.

“Yes, we do.”

#1GF! and I took that baby out for a walk in the early afternoon and the same issue came up. #1GF! turned to me. “You know, sometimes I can’t believe that we had a baby.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Sometimes I feel like we’re just watching her, and I worry that someone is going to come by to pick her up.”

“It’s all very unreal, isn’t it?”

“It is. I sometimes feel like this can’t possibly be happening.”

I hugged her. “It’s happening all right. And no one is going to pick her up. I shredded the receipt.”

This is week 122 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 847): Enjoying The Bone Alone

I got up at 6AM to take over watching the baby, so that #1GF! could catch up on some sleep. Once the ladies were both out cold, I started reading one of #1GF!’s library books because I had no books of my own left to read. I was so far outside of the target audience that I quickly drifted off and started thinking about the plot to my next novel.

#1GF! was soon up to take over the baby care once again. I put ribs in the oven at noon, put the baby down for a nap, and then went to waste some time mashing up songs with Audacity. I gave up after a few hours of getting nowhere.

The baby had been asleep for hours and the house was quiet. I cut some potatoes and set them on the stove to boil. I dried my hands on a kitchen towel and looked around for something to do. Instead of starting something productive, I found myself simply waiting for the baby to wake up. I soon realized that I was leaning against a counter and staring at the cabinets.

My mother wanted a picture of the baby, so I imported the contents of the camera. The sheer volume of pictures that #1GF! had taken seemed almost excessive, given the amount of time the baby had been outside of the womb, but I couldn’t blame her. I found seven decent shots and created a four by five inch collage with Gimp, and saved the copies onto #1GF!’s thumb drive so she could have them printed at her leisure.

I wanted to eat dinner with #1GF!, and because 6PM on was prime scream time for the baby, I timed the ribs to be ready at the blue hair special hour of 4PM. After four hours in the oven, the ribs were pulling away from the meat with zero effort. They were just begging to be eaten by any nearby carnivore. No, really. I could hear their little voices calling through the oven door. At 4PM, I took that sweet barbecue pan out of the oven and gently placed it on the stove.

The minute those ribs touched the cook top, the baby woke up and initiated a sonic bombardment that would run over two hours. The baby wasn’t even close to the kitchen. Not only does the baby seem to know that she should start screaming at dinner time, but she manged to evade my dinner timing trickery. #1GF! and I definitely enjoyed the ribs, but we each enjoyed them by ourselves against a backdrop of screaming.

This is week 121 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 840): The Avalanche

The first thing I did in the morning was to spill a full bowl of Cheerios all over the kitchen floor. The room looked as if someone had placed a tiny charge at the bottom of my bowl and set it off as I walked across the kitchen. I shook my head and surveyed the havoc for a second before #1GF! walked in. “Don’t come in here,” I said, holding up a hand. “It’s a mess.”

She surveyed the room, lifted an eyebrow and smirked, waiting for the explanation of why the floor looked like a birds eye view of the sinking of the titanic.

“I have no idea what happened,” I said. “I couldn’t repeat it if I wanted to.”

#1GF! shook her head and walked away to tend to the baby.

Once I got the kitchen cleaned up, that minor incident was enough to tilt my mood into a general malaise. I walked into the other room with #1GF!.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you?” #1GF! asked. “They’re just Cheerios. You’ve got twelve cubic feet of them in the cabinet.”

This is week 120 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 833): Catching Stupid

I took the baby out of the bedroom at 7AM and tried everything to calm her down so that #1GF! could get some rest. When I finally gave up, I put her in her swing, and she promptly fell asleep. I sat at the table reading.

Once #1GF! was up, we gave the baby a bath, got showered and walked down to the town “Endless Summer” festival that takes over the main street of town every year.

The festival drew more derelict looking people than a Walmart on a Saturday, and was just about as exciting. As unusually snobby as it sounds coming from a guy who wears a hobo’s beard and hasn’t held a traditional boss/slave job in more than a couple of years, the whole thing made me want to sell the house and move to a new town.

We left the festival soon after we arrived, and sat on a bench under a pergola near the main bath house. A woman walked by in an extremely short skirt and stripper shoes, saying “…and once I signed that contract with god, there was no turning back.” I was intrigued to know the actual terms and conditions of that contract, but I wasn’t interested enough to sit through the horror story that probably led to it’s creation.

This is week 119 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 826): Rejections And Yelling

When I woke up, I took the baby out of the room so that #1GF! could catch up on the sleep she lost overnight. The temperature outside was hovering in the 60′s and you could feel fall creeping around the creaky hallway floor.

Once #1GF! was up, I grabbed a sandwich and we sat down to watch Kitchen Nightmares. I glanced out the window and noticed that the neighbors were all out working on their houses. I felt like I should be doing something too.

I changed the baby four times before noon, which seemed like a lot to me, considering it was only my portion of the changings. The baby soon fell asleep, #1GF! jumped into the shower. I sat by the window reading a book. So much for keeping up with the Joneses.

The baby woke up before the shower was over, and I tried to keep her quiet long enough for #1GF! to dry her hair.

As if the cosmos was determined to cram something useful into my day, a neighbor came over and asked me to help move a twenty-nine inch tube TV. Do you remember how big those suckers are? The larger models that were introduced at the end of the tube TV life cycle aren’t quite a one-man job to carry, but not quite a two-man job, either. They’re perfectly balanced to pry themselves away from your meager three-fingered grip and through the floor, unless of course they force you backward, using a couple of your ribs to cushion their fall. When you have two people, it’s more of the same, just with more fingers and ribs getting in the way. Luckily, this TV didn’t have to go more than a few feet, so the job was done in under ten minutes.

This is week 118 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 819): Swearing In Old Movies

We woke up to screaming for the second day in a row. The baby got fed and changed, and then I stayed with her so that #1GF! could go back to bed. I ended up watching the original version of The Taking of Pelham 123 with Walter Matthau. It wasn’t bad. The pacing wasn’t as slow as most 70′s movies, and the swearing seemed more natural than it does in film today. Once and a while, a guy would throw out an F bomb, and it would smoothly merge into the flow of dialogue instead of appearing like something that was thrown in to keep the ratings board on its toes.

The main activities of the day were feeding and changing the baby. A neighbor brought over some baby gifts, and she got a tour of the house. We were still under the impression that it might be Labor Day weekend, which was reinforced by all the Labor Day sale ads on TV.

At 2PM, my parents came over. I made toffee chocolate bars and didn’t like them, but they seemed to go pretty fast with everyone else. My parents brought a blueberry pie, so I had a slice of that instead. There’s nothing like sitting around eating a piece of blueberry pie when the rest of the world is working. It was Sunday, so most people weren’t working, but we didn’t know that because the days in Newborn Land were so well blended together.

This is week 117 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 812): Playing Operation While Drunk

There are milestones in taking care of a newborn that everyone knows such as first steps or first words, but there are also less noted, but just as memorable mini-milestones such as the first day home from the hospital, the first diaper (as well as the first literal shit storm), and the first marathon screaming session.

Today marked several mini-milestones worth noting. Not only was it the first time that the baby managed to defy the laws of physics to throw up and fill one of her own eye sockets with barf, but it was also the first day that she threw up on my face. Yep, the little tyke threw up directly on my face. Oddly, she didn’t seem to notice either instance. Like a college student bound for disciplinary action, she threw up and moved on.

In addition to the vomit related checkmarks, we also clipped the baby’s fingernails for the first time. Big whoop, right? Clipping fingernails counts as a milestone? If you’ve cut a newborn’s nails before, you know it does. If you haven’t, a newborn’s nails are tiny and as thin as paper. If you don’t cut them, the baby shreds her face at night. Sure you can try filing them, but the nails are so thin that they flex under the pressure of the file. You have no choice but to clip them.

Newborns have minimal control over their bodies, so as a parent, you spend thirty seconds at a time trying to load a nail into a clipper before the baby moves or jerks it out of place. It’s like playing Operation (the wacky doctor game) while drunk, if the game were rigged to spurt human blood. If the baby fidgets when you finally get the courage to apply pressure, you can easily end up cutting the tip of her finger off. Yea, I’m serious. And no one wants to remove body parts from a brand new baby.

This is week 116 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 805): The Tapioca Peninsula

I watched the baby in the morning while #1GF! tried to catch up on sleep lost during the overnight feedings. I was hitting my limit on watching TV, but before I realized it, the television had eaten the morning and part of the afternoon. At 2PM, I jumped in the shower, and thanks to the 90 degree, muggy weather, I was sticky and sweaty ten minutes after I toweled off.

Our friend’s daughter dropped by to take advantage of the beach (and our free beach parking) before she left the country on a foreign exchange trip. She brought an ex-boyfriend along, which seemed a little odd, but I’ve found it’s better to keep quiet about things that seem odd in other people’s relationships.

The pair of them came in for a minute to see the baby before heading down to the beach. We had met the ex once before, and he seemed like a pretty nice kid, but he made so many references to tapioca during the conversation, that it started getting a little odd. I didn’t know if I had had barf on my shirt that looked like tapioca, if the guy just had just visited his grandparents, or if there was a new, trendy fascination with gummable puddings sweeping the minds of young people. I was perplexed.

This is week 115 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 798): The False Zen of Parenthood

The nurse brought the baby in at 2:30 AM to feed. I had dropped her off at the nursery a little over an hour before, so we were not running on a lot of sleep. I swung my legs over my cot, put my elbows on my knees and ran my hands down my face. Even though it was dark in the room and I wasn’t awake enough to know what was going on, I knew exactly where I was. I stared at the floor and tried to keep my eyes open, groggily accepting whatever the nurse needed to do. Within an hour, the baby was back in the nursery and we went back to sleep. We both slept like rocks.

At 6:30 AM, #1GF! tried to wake me by whispering my name a few times. It didn’t work, so she whispered louder. Any kid who grew up with The Amityville Horror knows that if you hear loud whispering of unknown origin, you listen to that shit or the room fills up with flies. I sat bolt upright. I was bleary and suddenly on high alert. There was nothing in the room but an apologetic #1GF! looking down at me from her craftmatic hospital bed.

This is week 114 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 791): The Stubborn Baby Vs. Professor Falken

It was the second day the baby was overdue, so #1GF! and I went out went out for a walk to help shake the baby loose. It didn’t help. In keeping with an ancient Dyer tradition, this baby wasn’t going to jump just because someone told her to.

The day was a prickled mess of waiting and pacing, broken up only by the wake of a close friend’s grandmother. One of the bereaved walked up to #1GF! and told her that she was “the cutest pregnant girl that she had ever seen in her whole life.” Not a bad compliment, especially for a wake.

Because #1GF! was two days overdue, I constantly asked her if she needed anything, and jumping up over the smallest noises. She couldn’t sneeze or shift in her chair without me hovering and asking if she was okay. I felt felt as useless as Professor Falken watching WOPR slowly cracking the launch code.

I didn’t sleep too well.

This is week 113 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 784): The Veto Factory

A bucket and a half of water-stop concrete went into the cellar this day, my friend, and nary a grain did return. That cellar, she swallowed them whole. It took me a few hours to finish sealing the remaining cracks in the basement floor, and when I got upstairs, it was only 2PM. I felt like I accomplished something and still had a good portion of the day ahead of me.

#1GF! made me an egg salad sandwich, which she secretly prepared while I was in the cellar. She took a nap, and I looked up baby names.

Once #1GF! got up, we went through the list of baby names together. I tried slipping a few previously rejected names back into the list, but #1GF! was shrewd and fast on the override button once again. I expect that #1GF! must be running out of vetoes, or the veto printing office must be running on a twenty-four hour schedule.

For post dinner entertainment, we watched Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist. #1GF! seemed to like it, but I was always getting pulled out of the story by the reactions of the characters. When a Yugo makes a u-turn at a relatively slow speed with no oncoming traffic, there is no need for a passenger to freak out unless the character is written to be very nervous. I would’ve been able to tolerate being yanked out of the story all the time if the movie kept me laughing, but it didn’t. The movie wasn’t horrible, but it could easily have been titled “Michael Cera Infinitely Acts Nervous”.

This is week 112 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 777): Ice Cream Dirge

I made blueberry pancakes for #1GF! and then went out to clean out the gutters. I wore no shirt, a tool belt, and had six pack abs. I fed a bunny who was perched on my shoulder, and #1GF! looked upon me lovingly and wondered how she could deserve such a perfect life. Or something like that. I know there were blueberry pancakes and gutter sludge, but beyond that, my notes are a bit fuzzy.

The sky was blue with only a few puffy clouds who were gracious enough to apologetically skirt the sun like people ducking around tourists taking pictures. The sea was green and clear. It was 82 degrees, and there was a breeze. It was an absolutely perfect day in terms of weather, so I packed up a couple of sandwiches, and #1GF! and I went to the beach.

The only thing that was odd about the next three hours on the sand (other than the superb weather) was that the ice cream truck switched from its mangled version of “Turkey In The Straw” that inexplicably skips a lot of the notes, to some sort of ice cream dirge. It was the most depressing song I’ve ever heard coming out of an ice cream truck.

As we walk back from beaches, I saying to #1Helga, “In United States, trucks play ice cream song. In Russia, song play YOU!” #1Helga just looks at me likes I am crazy peoples while ice cream dirge make me sick for homeland and frozen borscht truck.

This is week 111 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 770): Bad Radio and Yard Work

When I look through my wall of CDs these days, I rarely find anything that I want to listen to. I might stop at a few times and think that I’d like to hear a song from this CD or that one, but it’s rare that I want to listen to a CD the whole way through. Sometimes, I miss having a whole house audio system that shuffles through the songs in my library and plays them to any of the rooms.

That was one of the best features that I built into my first house. I have yet to build it into this one, and instead, lazily rely on the radio to shuffle songs for me. And radio is a poor shuffler with a library of old songs. Familiar songs. Songs that are like a worn out pair of shoes that you know you shouldn’t leave the house in, but put on because, even though they have no spark or zip, you’re comfortable with them.

I never bother changing the station because the dial on the radio is off just enough that the numbers are misaligned from the needle by at least a couple of points. It doesn’t matter much because I know that the other stations are just as bad as the one playing. It’s all the same ten to twenty year old songs that are safe, hummable, and boring.

Usually, just to get something unfamiliar, I’ll put on gummy teenage pop radio. I’ll listen to songs about riding disco sticks until I can’t take it anymore and favor silence.

This is week 110 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 763): Fireworks I Couldn’t See

I woke up thinking about all the minor chores that I should be taking care of, but quickly found that a bit of nice weather sapped any motivation that I had for doing them. I couldn’t simply pretend that the list didn’t exist, so I couldn’t bring myself to sit on the beach. As I sat on the stoop eating a PBJ, I felt like running errands would be a fair compromise between work and play. I’d be driving in the sunshine most of the time, yet accomplishing a couple of things on the way. By the time I finished my sandwich, I realized that it was way too nice of a day to waste running errands.

#1GF! wanted to go to the beach, so we went for a walk along the shore. The nice weather had dragged out the locals and tourists, packing the beach with people. We didn’t walk very far, and took a couple of breaks so that #1GF! could rest.

This is week 109 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 756): Clive Owen Staring At Things

I made #1GF! breakfast and then we watched home shows all morning. #1GF! wanted to clean up baby stuff, but I took the morning off. I rejoined her at noon. Some things got put away, but we basically shuffled stuff around the house to make them appear more organized.

It wasn’t quite rainy out, so we couldn’t justify sitting around the house for the rest of the day, so at 2PM, we thought about going out and shopping for more baby related stuff. What type of stuff, we didn’t know. By that point #1GF! was getting swollen, so the idea of going out died in committee.

We spent the rest of the day sitting on the couch and watching movies like it was a rainy day. We watched Paul Blart, Bunny Chow, and The International. It didn’t seem possible, but each movie ended up being worse than the one before it. They were all utter crap.

The only thing that I found slightly interesting in that five plus hour marathon was that in Paul Blart, some of the scenes for the West Orange Mall were shot in the South Shore Plaza, where a lot of people on the south shore of Massachusetts get their mall fix. During the movie, I was more interested in figuring out where they were in the mall than at the plot or the “overly zany” action. Most of the time, the figuring wasn’t worth the effort because what do you do with that knowledge once you figure it out? “Oh, yea, I know that elevator. Maybe I can ride it one day to remind me what a waste of my life Paul Blart was.” Yea.

Even though I thought he was funny in The King Of Queens, Paul Blart was one of those movies that put Kevin James in the same category with Jack Black. You can see their potential, and you want their movies to be funny, but they just don’t seem to work. At all.

Monday (Day 757): Readers Cracking Whips

Wrote LOR from 8:30 to 5:30. On a break, I opened Facebook to see who was being clever today. Within thirty seconds of poking around, I was told by a Facebooker to get back to writing. You know, having readers who know your writing patterns and bust on you to keep you on track is pretty damned funny. I shook my head and randomly laughed about it for the rest of the afternoon. On my only other break, I went out in the sun for three minutes while I ate my lunch, but none of my neighbors tried to send me back to the keyboard. It was a little disappointing.

This is week 108 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 749): Father’s Day

My parents were supposed to come over for Father’s Day breakfast, and I overslept. I planned to make Belgian waffles, but #1GF! didn’t think we’d have enough food, so she ran out to pick up muffins and sausages. I showered in about ten seconds, and didn’t have one thing prepared by the time they got to the house.

My parents brought me a gift for Father’s Day. Considering that I’m not officially a father yet, and Father’s Day gifts are only supposed to travel from child to parent, I felt bad that they only Father’s Day gift to my father was breakfast.

We didn’t end up playing a game or anything because my father didn’t feel like it. It was Father’s Day, and he was the only official father in the group, so the call was his to make. We sat and talked around the table for a few hours, and I made a couple of sandwiches later that were eaten by under protest of not being hungry.

My parents went home, and #1GF! and I cleaned up. I’m not a clean cook by any stretch of the imagination, but a waffle iron always ends up being a damned mess no matter how neat I try to be. I sent #1GF! out of the kitchen because she mentioned that she was tired, but couldn’t figure out why. I explained to her that she was making a baby, and should be laying on the couch or something. She dismissed me, but headed for the den to do as she was told anyway.

It was so windy, rainy, and dark that if felt like winter. We watched movies and TV for the rest of the day to complete the feeling. I found the TV boring, but didn’t make a move to try something else because the weather seemed like a perfect excuse to do nothing. I doubt that we’ll have moments to sit around like this once the baby shows up, so I thought that we should take advantage while we could.

Monday (Day 750): LOR 107 All Day

The first waking thought of the day was what a good life I have. The second was that it was really awful that either #1GF! or I would inevitably die one day and leave the other behind. As I lay there in bed, I found this to be a pretty odd thing to wake up thinking about.

Once I got moving, I sat down and wrote LOR 107. I took a break for lunch, and ended up thinking about how one could produce an illusion of time travel through faster than light speeds. For example, say you were watching an event on earth with a telescope. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, you should technically be able to outrun the image of the what you saw, point your incredibly powerful telescope at the earth, and wait for the event to happen again when the image from the event caught up to you. I was feeling a little smart when I found an almost an identical idea in a book that I was reading. I wasn’t happy to find out that science fiction writers (and probably a lot of other folks) had thought of this idea years ago.

This is week 107 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 742): Baby Shower

I drove #1GF! to family’s house for a surprise baby shower. I enjoy ladies and all, but then there are a ton of them in a big group, it’s a little weird. I stayed for an hour and greeted everyone, and then got out of there to let the ladies do their thing.

I somehow missed a turn and ended up taking a tour through Brockton on the way home. After a circuitous route back to where I should’ve been in the first place, I called my father, who was visiting at his cousins. He wanted me to visit, too, but I was picking up some grout sealer and going home to seal the bathroom tile while I had a little time.

I picked up some grout sealer at a home megastore, and got one coat of it on the bathroom floor before #1GF! called to be picked up. It was 3:30, and she asked where I was. When I told her I was at home, she was not happy about having to wait another 45 minutes for me to come get her.

I don’t know anything about showers, so I thought I had until 5 or so. I figured that I could get one more coat in and get on the road. I got in the car and practically flew to her family’s house to get her. When I finally got there, everyone was gone, and I had to commandeer my mother and her vehicle to have enough room to get all the presents home. It was unbelievable. As I was loading the stuff into the car, I kept thinking that if I was the one having the shower, I would probably be able to fit my gifts into my pockets, and still have room for a frog and a ball of twine.

This is week 106 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. This one is weighing in at a hefty 7,200 words.

Sunday (Day 735): Seeing From A Child’s Perspective

I made breakfast for #1GF! and we relaxed in front of some home improvement shows for an hour. I don’t know if it was inspirational, but I mowed the lawn and weed whacked soon after.

#1GF! hadn’t been to the beach all year, so we grabbed our chairs and walked down to the beach in the afternoon. It wasn’t too hot, and the tide was following a breeze out to sea, making it feel more relaxing than the surrounding crowds would indicate.

One of the neighbors showed up with her six year old a little while after we did, and sat near us without noticing that we were there. They eventually noticed us (after I waved for a while) and the mother and daughter walked over holding hands. The mother looked down at the little girl and said, “Okay, go ahead.”

The little girl looked at her mother and then at us. She was only slightly taller than #1GF! and I, even though we were sitting down in some low slung beach chairs. Her small face broke into a grin, framed by her bob haircut. She craned her neck up toward her mother and leaned in against her leg. She whispered, “No, you say it.”

The mother grinned. “Well, she just want you to know that when she’s older, she would love to babysit for the baby.”

The child beamed and nodded. Her bob haircut jiggled back and forth.

“Aw, thanks,” I said taking a pragmatic approach to the bucket of cute standing in front of us. “How old are you now?”

“Six,” said the little girl.

I’m not sure at what age girls start babysitting, so I took an educated guess. “So in… seven years then?”

This is week 105 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 728): An Uneventful Sunday

It was a lazy Sunday. I finished You Suck: A Love Story, and thought that it was neat how some of the scenes and characters overlapped from Moore’s novel, A Dirty Job. Finishing a book would be the closest that I’d get to an accomplishment for the day. I watered the plants, picked a couple of flowers for #1GF!, and generally relaxed. We we went to dinner to avoid cooking, and talked about an upcoming interview.

Monday (Day 729): LOR, Resumes, And Baby Prep

Wrote LOR until 5:30PM and then printed out a few resumes. The pages were coming off of my 400 year old printer with splotches, so I spent some time cleaning the rollers with some q-tips and glass cleaner. Fifteen minutes later, the pages were coming out splotch free. While they printed (and on various breaks throughout the day), I looked through my book of interview questions to brush up on the answers to some of the tougher questions. I figured that if I could answer some of the trickier questions, the easy ones should flow right by. I shut down the computer at 8PM.

I went to bed a couple of hours later, and fell asleep almost instantly. It was as if my mental exercises were as tiring as physical ones. As soon as I fell asleep, I was woken up by the phone ringing. I didn’t get aggravated because it was a family issue. As soon as I fell back to sleep, I was woken up by another phone call. I found myself thinking that being woken up randomly is a part of parenthood, so I had better get used to it.

Tuesday (Day 730): Highway Robbery

I got up, buffed my shoes, threw on a suit, and went to a job interview. I know, you’re thinking, “But what about the dream, J-Dawg? How am I going to quit my job and write if you’re giving up on the dream?” I’m not giving up on the dream, but there’s nothing wrong with exploring options when they’re presented.

This is week 104 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. This week marks a full two years without a boss.

Sunday (Day 721): Stained Glass Cake, Pixie Stix, & Raleigh Good Robot Friends

The first thing I did when I got out of bed was to make two kinds of Jell-o. It’s the kind of random thing that unemployed people do so that they have something to eat while they’re sitting on the couch watching Jerry Springer with their imaginary robot friend. The jello is also good to have on hand as a distraction in case anyone randomly shows up and points out that they’re sitting on the couch with a shop vac that seems to have a mullet wig and fake mustache glued to it. Nothing distracts from being caught in a strange situation like the jiggle and shimmy of Jell-o.

Seriously? You’re not buying what I’ve got on the counter because you know the real stuff is in the glass case, right? You know I don’t watch TV during the day, and that the robot isn’t allowed up on the couch, anyway. I had to start the Jell-o the first thing after I got up because it was part of a stained glass cake that I was going to make for a dinner we were going to. Once the Jell-o was in the pans and in the fridge, I set the refrigerator on “Turbo Cool” (no, that’s true), and made breakfast for #1GF!.

#1GF! had been concerned that we were running out of time to get things set up for the baby, so I was working on getting the contents of three rooms rotated to put her at ease. The office had already been moved, so the next thing that had to happen was to move the den into the former office, and all the accumulated baby items into the former den.

The process was a one man job, with the exception of an eight foot sleeper sofa that would be easier with two. I hadn’t lined up any help yet, so I decided to start prepping the couch to get it through the tight doorways without the use of Jell-o or Jell-o related lubricants.

This is week 103 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. This week clocks in at about 7400 words.

Sunday (Day 714): An Unusually Lazy Day

It was raining, so #1GF! and I sat on the couch all day watching movies and home improvement shows. If I didn’t shut the TV off at 10:30PM, we’d still be watching home improvement shows right now. The only semi-productive thing that I did all day was to reorder and restock our Netflix queue to get some movies into our house that we actually want to watch.

Monday (Day 715): A Better Robot

I wrote LOR from 8AM to 7PM, cranking out 7,600 words (a bit over thirty pages of text for those counting). I had pre-written a rough draft earlier in the week in the hopes of cutting my marathon Monday writing sessions down a bit, but it didn’t seem to do much good.

I’m starting to realize that if I don’t write the framework beforehand, I write all day. If I write the framework beforehand, I write all day and the post ends up a lot longer. There was a time when these LOR posts only took a couple of hours. If only the quality went up with the time invested, my name would be a household word by now. Then, I’d be able to afford to get myself a better robot.

Tuesday (Day 716): Uncommon As A Daisy

I looked through Cooks Country and Cooks Illustrated for recipes, which isn’t all that unusual. This time, I made a list of some of the ingredients that I would need so that that I would actually be able to cook one or two of the recipes for #1GF! instead of casting recipes aside at dinner time because I lacked one or two key ingredients.

I took my list and headed out to do the food shopping. The road to the store is a fairly main coastal road, with two lanes on either side of the yellow line. I was driving along in the left lane listening to whatever was on the radio and trying to stay off of the bumpers of the Mercedes and BMW’s that don’t seem to have any sense of objects that exist outside the driver’s skin.

As I made my way through the maze of hard-braking, blinker-hating morons, the driver of a Land Rover decided to cut into my lane. They didn’t bother to check over their shoulder to notice that the space they were trying to occupy already had a car in it. In a snap, ROCKET CAR! was forced over the yellow line and into oncoming traffic. I hit the brakes, and steered back into the lane behind the SUV, who had decided then to put their blinker as an afterthought to a hard left turn in front of oncoming traffic. It zipped off down a side street.

This is week 102 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. This week is a long one, clocking in at a little over 7600 words.

Sunday (Day 707): Fabricated Mother’s Day Memories

Even though #1GF! can have anything she wants for breakfast on a Sunday morning (Belgian waffles, omelets, fruits, muffins, or whatever), I can almost guarantee that on most Sundays I will be making a variation of one thing: a bagel, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich. This week, I was leaning towards omelets, but ended up making sandwiches with yellow peppers, mozzarella and American cheese. I think the variations in Sunday sandwiches are more for my entertainment than by #1GF!’s request.

#1GF! and I played a quick round of Pandemic before going out to sit on the stoop. It was windy and cool with clear skies, and felt like we had skipped summer and had stepped into fall six months early. The air had the feeling of stiff school sneakers and the restraint of an impending detention.

#1GF! timed me doing the cube because there were no neighbors around to witness one of my nerdy quirks. I completed it in 1:36, which as far as I can tell, is a record for me. I lightly spiked it on the floor as I went inside.

This is week 101 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 700): What Is Happening To Me

I woke up and turned to #1GF!. “I just had a dream that the weather was going to be 64 degrees with a thirty percent chance of rain.”

“That’s weird,” said #1GF! while wiping the sleep out of her eyes.

“What it is, is the most boring dream ever created. I mean, if you talk about the weather, you’re short on conversational topics. What is going on in your head when you dream about a weather forecast? A mild and nondescript one at that.”

#1GF! just smiled and rubbed her belly like she has a tendency to do these days.

We got up, and I made breakfast for #1GF!. I plugged in the portable radio, and swished through the dials looking for something to listen to while I cooked. I ended up settling on a station known for its bone drying selection of soft classic rock.

The music hovered between the rock of my parents’ generation and music that was released when I was way too young to notice anything that wasn’t played as a string of single notes by a colorful toy. The station leaned into the sleepy reaches of Carole King and The Rolling Stones and refused to get up.

It was unoffensive and unnoticeable, like a grandfather concentrating on the newspaper at the kitchen table. The music sort of hung in the air and quickly faded from memory. While dropping an egg into a pan, the sizzle snapped me out of the blanket of sound that I was wrapped in, and I wondered what was happening to me that I thought that soft hits were suddenly preferable to an actual heart rate.

This is week 100 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. You’d think that week 100 would be celebratory and awesome, but it somehow ended up just like all the other weeks.

Sunday (Day 693): The Marathon Mulcher & The Water Girl

For the first time in a long time, it felt like a lazy summer Sunday morning. I ate my breakfast and sat on the couch reading a book while #1GF! cleaned out her closet and put away her winter clothes. There is nothing that a man can do when a woman decides to clean out her closet, so I continued reading and tried to stay out of the way.

Before noon, #1GF!’s friend brought by some baby equipment for us. Although I’m grateful for the free stuff, I have no idea where all of these contraptions are going to fit in our house. As #1GF!’s friend drove away, #1GF! and I sat on the stoop enjoying the warm summer air that showed up a couple of months early.

I hopped off the steps and picked up more glass from the lawn while #1GF! sat enjoying the sun. I cannot fathom how so much glass got left on the lawn when there was a full dumpster in the yard. Were the workers breaking windows on the ground around the house and throwing away the frames? I shook my head and crouched in the bushes to pick up another handful that had worked its way up through the soil.

I piled the glass on the stoop, and #1GF! threw it away. I looked out at our lumpy, patchy, and generally misshapen lawn, and wondered if our kid would be able to have bare feet in the yard before she lost the urge to. I thought about doing landscaping, but the temperature was slowly pushing upward toward 85 degrees. It seemed too nice of a day to waste on yard work, but the more I looked, the more I thought that something needed to be done.

This is week 99 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 686): Lying Under The Porch

I woke up thinking about all the things that needed to be done around the house. It’s not the best way to wake up on a Sunday morning, but it does set a tone for the day.

I made breakfast for #1GF!, as has become the tradition around here. We had nothing really planned, so we watched a home improvement show afterward. That show turned out to be nothing more than a pep rally for household chores. After the show, I cleaned out the tub drain and then raked the yard, neither of which turned out to be as exciting or fun as they sound.

I raked up all the dead grass and leaves from the yard until 2PM and then picked up glass that was sparkling through the grass nearly everywhere. I still can’t understand how much glass can be left in the yard considering the amount that we’ve already picked up. It’s unreal.

While I worked in the yard, #1GF! dusted and swept the house because she can’t sit idle while other people are working. I told her that making a baby is work, but she didn’t believe me. I tried to put it into terms that she could understand. I told her that if I had to shoot a baby out of my naughty parts, I would’ve quit my job on the second month and spent the remaining seven months in the fetal position on the mere premise of the horror that would ensue. She thought that I was cute, but still didn’t believe me.

This is week 98 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. This week is clocking in at a little over 26 pages.

Sunday (Day 679): Easter Dinner And The Lack Of Free Space

#1GF! got up almost immediately, but I, lay in bed. I was tired but couldn’t seem to sleep. By the time I realized that there was no valid reason for me to be in bed, #1GF! was already preparing lasagna for Easter dinner.

#1GF! left to pick up her mother and I stayed and cleaned up. The biggest things I did while she was gone were to shower and make a cracker plate for the small Easter dinner we had planned.

My parents and #1GF!’s mother arrived at almost the same time, and while we were all sitting around the table, and the neighbor next door came out of her house and waved. I had my back turned, but the laughter got me to turn around and find out what was going on. Everyone at the table was waving out the window.

Because I’ve always lived where houses are built in very close proximity to each other, there has always been an unwritten rule that people pretend not to see each other if there’s a pane of glass between them. I suppose it’s a way to give people the illusion of space where there isn’t any to spare. That idea got thrown out the window for a brief moment, and everyone thought it was funny as hell.

We had a non-traditional Easter dinner of lasagna, salad, and sausages at the early hour of 1PM. For dessert, we had a key lime cheesecake, apple pie, and cookies. There would’ve been more food, but I did a fairly decent job reminding #1GF! of the small number of people that would actually be sitting around the table.

Once the bellies were full and the dishes clean, my parents headed out, and #1GF! and I drove her mother home. When we returned, we watched The TV Set, which would’ve been a lot worse if it wasn’t for the all star cast. We followed that up with a couple of episodes of Mad Men because someone said that I looked a little like the main character. I don’t see a close resemblance, but then, we all like to think we’re beautiful and unique snowflakes.

This is week 97 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 672): I’m Not An Actor, I Just Play One On TV

I dug out some shirts for characters in a short film that I was putting together, before spending twenty minutes whipping up a magazine cover that would be used in the film. As I got dressed, I walked around the house trying to learn my lines. A friend of mine would be stopping by at around 1PM to commit the idea to film, and I wanted to be as prepared as I could.

At around 1PM, #1GF! and I sat on the stoop enjoying the sunshine. The air was warm and the flowers were pushing up, making it seem like a perfect day to not be filming inside.

We sat there for a bit, and I would occasionally lean over the edge of the brick stairs to pick up some large pieces of glass that were still hiding in the bushes. As I scanned across the lawn, I could see more glass sparkling as if it were winking at me to come get it. I didn’t have shoes on, so I started taking off my bright, white socks.

“What are you doing?” asked #1GF!.

“I’m going to pick up the glass and I don’t want to get my socks dirty.”

“But you’re ok with getting your feet dirty?”

“Well, yea, they’ll be inside the socks, so when I go back in, I won’t be dirtying up the house.”

It seemed like solid logic to me. I crouched on the lawn and picked up a small shopping bag full of glass.

Our friend from Burning Snowman called from the road and said that he was bringing a camera, a leather jacket, and sack of wigs. I laughed, until he showed up at 1:30PM with the camera and an actual sack of wigs in tow. #1GF! retired to make sauce, and I tried to explain the look that I had envisioned for the film.

In the following three hours, I realized that I am not an actor. You can make all the faces you want in the mirror, but when the camera’s rolling, there’s a distinct lack of feedback to tell if you’re making the right face at the right moment.