Hey, Baby…

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

Sidecar – You Fucked It Up (The Nerd Rage Rap)

via Blastr

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

Then along comes Video Mate. You break out your Beta max camera, make an audition tape that you think will make Chuck Woolery proud, and wait for the propositions to start rolling in. You have no idea that millions of people will see just how suave you are…a mere thirty years too late.

Video Mate: ’80s Video Dating At It’s Worst

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

#1GF! snapped out of her morning routine for a second. “Wait. What are you singing?”

I shrugged and repeated. “Ear way in hay ee thay uney may.”

#1GF! shook her head. “What is it? Did you make it up?”

It wasn’t an invalid question. It’s not entirely uncommon for me to make up songs. “No, I’m singing ‘We’re in the Money’.”

“Oh my god.”

“It’s Pig Latin.”

“Oh. my. god. She knows a handful of words and you’re already branching out into Pig Latin? Is that a good idea?”

I shook my head. “It’s from this movie from 1933 called Gold Diggers. Ginger Rogers sings it.”

“So…you’re singing it in Pig Latin.”

“She did too.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Oh, yes she did.”

“In 1933.” #1GF! dipped her chin. “Riiight.”

“Really. It’s an old-school, big-production dance number until the camera gets right up in her face and she starts singing in Pig Latin. I’m telling you. It’s really weird.”

#1GF! shook her head. “How do you find these things?”

I mistakenly thought it was an actual question. “Well, during a writing break yesterday, I was looking for a little history on Esquivel, and Wikipedia called him the ‘The Busby Berkley of Cocktail Music.’ So, I was like, ‘Who the hell is Busby Bixby,’ and—”

#1GF! patted my chest. “Okay. I have to go.”

“You’ll see. I’m going to find the video for you.”

She kissed me as if she were patting my head. “Love you, gotta run.”

“It’s real,” I muttered as she walked down the hall.

“We’re In The Money” Sung By Ginger Rogers In Pig Latin

So, to prove to #1GF! that I wasn’t making anything up, here’s “We’re In The Money” sung by Ginger Rogers in Gold Diggers of 1933 in pig latin. To skip the Busby Bixby dance number and get right to the weirdness, skip forward to 1:35. Remember, kids: Don’t do drugs.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

Wunder Boner Commercial

If one Wunder Boner is never enough, then today is your lucky day because it looks as if the Wunder Boner patent (US Patent No. 6,095,913) is up for sale. For the right price, you could be producing Wunder Boners worldwide.

I’ll start working on the “Wunder Boner Wizard” T-shirt design while you check your savings account balance.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

You have been warned.

Barbara Moore – Nymphomaniac

(via PCL LinkDump)

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

The story was written in 45 minutes, edited over a few days, and submitted to Writer’s Digest with a strange (but misplaced) sense of confidence. The story failed to make the top five, but I figured I’d post it here before I lose the original text file.

Comments, edits, and miraculously combined swear words are welcome.

The Ladybug

“I never would have purchased this house if I’d known that you were going to do this again, Nicole. Not in a million years.”

“Keep your voice down. Emily’s sleeping.”

I lifted my head off of my pillow, straining to hear my parents’ muffled voices on the other side of the wall.

“Why don’t you explain to me how you rack up forty-five grand—”

“Forty-two.”

My father practically yelled, “Are you kidding me?” Well, that’s not exactly right. He put a swear in there, but I’m not saying where. I had never heard my father swear before—not even when someone accidentally burned down our shed last summer. I wiggled out of the tangled covers and leaned my head against the cool bedroom wall. I tried not to breathe.

“Forty-two, forty-five, Nicole. It could be half that and we’d still be sunk.”

I looked over at my piggy bank. I knew I had ninety-three dollars and eighty-two cents in there that I had been saving for an iPod. I would’ve given them the whole thing if they’d just stop fighting.

My dad started again. “I’m eating brown-bag, store-brand baloney lunches and unwinding in front of a twenty-seven inch tube TV when I get home. You know who watches tube TVs and eats generic baloney these days, Nicole? Yea. No one. Even inmates have flat screens now. And you…you somehow blew through forty-five grand—”

“Forty-two.”

“Well, look who’s suddenly interested in tracking expenses. Oh, please excuse me. You blew a mere forty-two grand, and I can’t begin to figure out where. I mean, where did the money go this time, Nicole? I’m dying to know.”

“You want to know where? You want to know?” I heard their closet door slide open, and the crinkling of overfilled plastic bags thumping on the carpet. “Take them all, Mr. Tightwad. Take my credit card. I don’t care. I stashed a few things away because I was sick of you climbing all over me about every single dime I spend.”

“A few things? You call this a few things?”

“I’m sorry, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I’m sorry. I was going to pay it off before you found out.”

My father laughed. “When? When aliens in diamond-studded space ships landed in the backyard and made you their queen? Seriously, what planet are you living on? There had to be some point where you knew—without a doubt—that you were too deep in the hole to climb out—”

“Maybe, but—”

“and you just kept right on digging.”

“I—”

“And for the second time in five years I’m living with a financial terrorist.”

“And I’m living with a miserable jerk.”

“Maybe not for long.” My dad growled and stomped into the hall. “I’m not your father, Nicole. It’s not my job to follow you around cleaning up your messes. We have a daughter already.”

As I waited for the soft, muttered apologies that usually fill the loose pauses after their fights, the front door slammed shut. The house was suddenly math quiz quiet. I was scared.

When my friend Allie’s mom and dad got divorced, she had to live part of the week at home and part at her dad’s. She said that her dad lives in this tiny apartment that smells like sad, old sneakers, and there are no kids there at all. I didn’t want to spend half my week breathing loneliness and foot stink, but what could I do? I was only eleven.

I hugged my knees until I could hardly breathe. When I let go, I quietly took my stuffed ladybug from the nightstand. I know it sounds babyish, but when I really don’t know what to do, I sometimes ask my ladybug. I know it’s not alive or anything, but an answer always pops into my head somehow.

I stared into her black bead eyes and asked, “What should I do, Ladybug.” When the answer came, I felt myself well up. I shook my head and asked again. I could hear my mom start to cry in the other room. The answer repeated.

“Please, no,” I whispered to the ladybug before asking once more. For a third time I heard the same rhyme: “Ladybug, ladybug fly away. Your house is on fire and your children are burnt.”

I wiped my eyes and crawled back under the covers. The ladybug was always right. I’d rather have no home than a broken one. That’s why tomorrow I’m setting it on fire.

749 words, submitted 7/7/10

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

“We’ll put on ‘Zeppelin and eat cheddar cheese.”

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

Black Metal Babysitter

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

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.

#1GF! went inside to feed the baby, while I ferried all of the unbagged oversized items from the car. My list was still longer than I wanted it to be, so once the baby was fed, I wanted to go back out. And that’s what we did.

The plan was to hit the library and a garden center before landing at a man’s Sunday place of worship: the home megastore. I wanted to drop off a library book and pick up another, but had passed the library before I remembered to say anything. That was bad planning mistake number two for the day.

As we wound through the old money houses on one of the winding, tree-lined street of a neighboring town, we passed a guy sitting in his Mercedes waiting to merge into traffic. My first thought was “asshole.” I have no idea why. I saw a stubby cigar clenched in the side of his mouth like a stiff brown turd, and my mechanical brain placed a “status confirmed” mark next to the image and filed it away. Oddly enough, most of the people I know who drive Mercedes are actually pretty nice.

We pulled into the gravel parking lot of the flower stand and wandered around for about fifteen minutes before the baby decided that she had enough. She started making this sound that she’s been making since she was really small. It was actually one of the first sounds she made, and it’s a bit of a growl. I finally pieced together that sound was the baby’s way of telling us that she was aggravated. For months, we had been happily parroting it back to her whenever she did it.

We left the stand with nothing more than an aggravated baby and a little less gas in the tank. We were in spitting range of the home megastore, but we certainly weren’t going to make it there. We headed home, stopping to finally mail the overdue letters on the way. I asked #1GF! to pull into the library for a book exchange, but the big, empty parking lot told me that it wasn’t going to happen.

There is very limited time for me to get things done, and I was having worse luck than I had the day before. My list was still as long as it was at the start of the day, despite all the gas and time we wasted.

When we got home, #1GF! mentioned that the truck tire looked low, so I went out to check on it while she entertained the baby. It did look low. I scoured both cars for one of the ten tire pressure gauges that I’ve accumulated over the years, and I couldn’t find one of them. As I scoured the cars a second time, #1GF! found a gauge in the junk drawer. What it was doing there, I have no idea.

The pressure barely registered on the gauge. “I’m going to go get the tire filled,” I called in to #1GF!.

“Go right up the street,” she replied.

“I don’t know if they have air. I’m going up to the rotary.”

#1GF! tilted her head and squinted. “I think they do. And it’s way closer.”

“But, I don’t know if they have air,” I repeated, “which could make the trip even longer.”

“Well, you won’t have to go far to find out.”

I was done discussing where to get air. I headed for the place that #1GF! suggested even though my gut told me otherwise. On the way, I saw an air machine at a convenience store, so I pulled in, jockeyed up to the pump, and got out, only to find the coin slots had been taped over with electrical tape. The machine was out-of-order. “Fuck this,” I thought before jumping back in the truck and heading in the opposite direction to a gas station that I knew had air.

I pulled into the gas station, and a couple was already at the pump. I’m not sure of their real names, so I’ll just refer to them as Buck and Nancy Dumas. Buck was filling one of the tires of a bike attached to the trunk of his compact car. I automatically docked him ten man points for not having a fucking bike pump at home. He filled the tire, and slowly and carefully screwed the cap on as if he had a fucking nuclear bike and was filling the tires at the local four-quarter plutonium dispenser.

He turned to Nancy and said something. My windows were up, but I imagine it was something like “Do you know a lot about cars?”

“Sure I do,” replied Nancy, “I’m a car nut. I love cars. Sometimes I put Mrs. Bigglesworth [her cat] in a cape and a matching hat and take pictures of her sitting in her custom-made kitty corvette.”

Buck nodded, but was busy using the air hose to spray his hand. He said something again. It was probably something like “Hey, this thigamabobby is shooting airs at my handses. Maybe we should shoot up the car tires with it too.”

Nancy put her left hand on her hip and said something like, “Let me check. I’m the car expert.” She then put her right hand on the top of the rear passenger car tire and leaned on it a couple of times to test to see if it was full enough. No, I’m not fucking kidding. It was then that I realized that not only was Nancy a car expert, but she was a superhero who could exert enough force with her bare hand to flex a steel belted radial and had the superhero sensitivity to know if the tires were at or below the recommended pressure. She then nodded, turned to Buck and said something like, “Nope. It’s fine. It feels pretty full.”

Buck then shrugged and unscrewed the cap on the bike tire again—the same tire he just filled two minutes ago. He then filled it again, possibly because Nancy’s new information on the car tire pushed the information about his already full bike tire right out of his tiny little head.

After ten minutes of waiting for them to run through these shenanigans, they finally got in their car and headed out.

I pulled into the spot next to the pump, fed it four quarters, filled the tire in about a minute, and checked it with a pressure gauge because I’m not a fucking tire whisperer who can tell if a tire has 26 or 35 pounds in it just by touching it. Even after filling up the gas tank, I was out of that station in a tenth of the time of the Dumases. Hell, I could’ve gotten a fruit pie and a cup of gas station coffee, and choked them both down in the time that they took. I shook my head and pulled out of there, thankful that I don’t have to deal with many superhero nuclear cyclists on a daily basis.

I thought about going to the home megastore on my own, so I dug my cell phone out of my pocket so that #1GF! wouldn’t think that I had gotten stranded somewhere. The battery indicator was a thin, red paper cut. If I did head for the megastore and the tire wasn’t holding air, I’d be hiking to find a pay phone. I rubbed my face, dropped the phone into the cup holder, and gave up. The day had already proven that I was a little short on luck, and I wasn’t about to have a flat and no phone. Payphones are few and far between these days.

When I got back to the house, I wasn’t a happy little tree. The whole day was so inefficient, and my list of stuff that I needed to get done was just as long as it was on Friday.

“Sorry about today,” said #1GF!.

I waved it off. “I needed to get things done, but there’s no time. I need to accept that things will get done when they get done and not let it get to me. None of it is a big deal.” I rubbed my chin. “You know what is a big deal? You and that baby in there.”

#1GF! smiled. “Well, I’m sorry about not mailing those letters.”

“We don’t know it was you. It could’ve been me. It doesn’t matter anyway. They’re mailed.”

“You want to take my car and try to get something done?”

“ROCKET CAR!’s memory is still too fresh.” (I still haven’t gotten behind the wheel of the family sedan.)

“Yea, I thought it might be too soon,” smirked #1GF!, “it’s only been six months.”

We ate leftovers and went to bed early. The house still smelled like bacon from breakfast. Sweet, sweet bacon.

Monday (Day 1086): The Waning Power of Question Commands

I got up at 4:45 AM with no help from the baby. COME ON, BODY. Jesus H. K. Riced. There is no reason to be up before 5 AM. I had my cereal and sat on the couch reading the same lines of a book over and over because I kept getting dragged down into the murk between this world and The Sandman’s domain.

Needless to say I was tired all morning. The baby is insanely mobile, which didn’t add to the sense of calm. She keeps trying to climb up on things that aren’t stable enough for her to climb up on, which means that my day consists of chasing her around the house and telling her “No” over and over and over.

I thought I read that the baby was supposed to be able to feed herself by her age, but the baby wasn’t even trying. She could feed herself finger food, but not anything that required a spoon. Even though I knew that letting the baby feed herself would lead to a huge mess, I decided to give it a shot at her first solid feeding of the day. Every time I tried to give the baby her spoon, and she would pull her hand away, open her mouth, and give me a look as if to tell me that I was doing it wrong.

I gave the baby bits of my sandwich while she ate her regular lunch. I’ve been doing that for a few days to get her to eat regular table food. She doesn’t eat much, but she seems fine with it.

When #1GF! got back from her lunch visiting her mother, she brought a coffee for me. In the time she was gone, I had been poked in the eye hard enough that I was relegated to slow, confused blinks for a few seconds; head butted hard enough that I heard my nose crack; raked across the face with a book; and, to top it all off, baby kicked full-force in the ding ding. It was almost a professional wrestling day of baby care. My ass was dragging, but I was thankful the baby couldn’t lift a folding chair yet.

I made a shepherd’s pie for dinner. I thought it only took a half hour, but from prep to finish, it took an hour and forty minutes. #1GF! and I ate at 9 PM after the baby had gone to bed, and went to bed not too long after.

I lay in bed reading, and #1GF! rolled over. “Do you think you should go to sleep now?”

“I will,” I said without looking away from my book.

“Well, I just don’t want you to be tired tomorrow.”

I grinned at her. “Really. I should shut off the light right now to avoid being tired? That’s the best you could do?”

“That’s all I got.”

“Your commands posed as questions used to work so much better on me. I think you may need to change up your tactics because I’m on to you, missy.”

Tuesday (Day 1087): Babies Vs Timetables

It was a normal day of baby care except that it was 80 something degrees out. I kept all the windows closed to keep out the heat, and it worked pretty well. My mother came down for a visit, and I wrote a little after she left. That pretty much brings us to dinner time.

I gave #1GF! a call because I didn’t know what time she was getting home. I got voice mail. I couldn’t start dinner or feed an increasingly fussy baby until I heard from her, so I just stood at the counter for a few minutes stuck in limbo. #1GF! called and told me that she was on her way. I started prepping everyone’s dinners.

I planned to go run out to a home megastore when #1GF! got home, but when #1GF! arrived, she asked that I put dinner on hold so that we could go out for a walk. I don’t know what Jedi mind trick she used on me, but I didn’t remember wanting to run out to the store until I was walking.

I started dinner when we got home at 8 PM, and told #1GF! she had forty-five minutes to put the baby to sleep. The baby, however, wasn’t interested in time tables. We ate a cold dinner at 9:30 PM, and the baby woke up crying in the middle of it. #1GF! went in to soothe her, and I couldn’t clean up the dishes because I typically slam things without realizing it.

I typed some notes out for the day and cleaned up the dishes at 9:45 PM, when the baby had finally fallen asleep. I finished my notes by 10 PM, and finished editing the last few days of LOR 155 an hour later.

Wednesday (Day 1088): They’re Crank Calling Me

It was in the 80′s again, and the house was getting sticky. I was getting sticky. The baby was getting sticky, even though she wasn’t complaining about it.

I wasted both of the baby’s naps staring blankly at my screen. I intended to work on my latest book, but the more time I dedicate to reading about how to write, the more I lock up when I approach the keys. Instead of sitting down and writing, as I have been doing on a daily basis for years now, I analyze every keystroke before my fingers can make them. I think I’m doing it all wrong, and my fingers sit idle while I talk to the screen with broken answers to questions no one is actually asking.

At 1 PM, I gave up and made dinner, partially because I had the time, but mostly to make some progress in some small corner of my life.

Once the baby was up, the house phone rang. No one calls the house phone but telemarketers, but I was in the area, so I checked the number and picked up the phone. It was a call from an unknown extension at #1GF!’s work. I said hello, and all I heard on the other end was rustling. There was no gunfire, so I assumed that #1GF! wasn’t under a desk surreptitiously trying to call for help while Hans Gruber and the gang held her hostage. I shook my head and hung up.

“Who is crank calling Daddy?” I asked the baby.

She just pointed at my nose.

“Yes, I’m Daddy.”

She smiled at me for being correct.

Just as I made it through the doorway, the phone rang again. I turned back and picked up the phone again. This time I just waited. Again, I heard nothing but rustling and muffled voices. “Hello?” I asked. “HELLO?”

Nothing.

I hung up again. “What the fu…” The baby smiled at me. “…dge?” I started dialing #1GF! to have her help me find out which one of her coworkers was looking for a swift kick in the ding ding. I pressed six digits on the keypad before the phone rang in my hand. Again. “Oh, cut the shit.” I picked up the phone. “HELLO.” I barked in my “who wants a punch in the fucking face” voice.

“Jon.”

“Yea.”

It’s [one of #1GF!'s employees]. Sorry. I’ve been pocket dialing you. I forgot my phone clip and the damn thing keeps dialing.

“I was just calling #1GF! to find out who kept cranking me.”

“Yea, that was me.”

“I was about to set my fax to autodial your number. EEEEEEE AAAAAAWW KSSSSHHHHH.”

I soon hung up to return to baby care, and he returned to pocket dialing someone who wasn’t me. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s possible, anyway.

I put the baby to bed for her afternoon nap and poured myself a cold cup of coffee. I made a couple of notes on the day, and returned to the great mire that would hopefully one day boil down into another novel. I started to lock up with over-analysis again until I shut my brain off and just started writing. I picked scenes at random and wrote whatever came to mind. I had to start somewhere.

It was still hot and muggy out, so when the baby woke up, we spent as much time as we could playing on the cool hardwood floor.

Once #1GF! got home, I ran out the door to go to the local home megastore. I picked up some mulch, fertilizer and roof repair goop in what was record time for being a male with a beard in a home store. I thought about picking up a fruit tree, but I somehow thought better of it.

On the way home, I dropped into the library to pick up another book. I ended up getting a social engineering book by Kevin Mitnick. It was from 2002, but I thought it might spark some ideas, even if they were slightly outdated. I was home in no time.

A storm rolled in as the sun went down, and the air instantly chilled. It was great. I sat by a window and started the Mitnick book as the cool rain air swept past me into the spongy, sodden air of the house.

#1GF! put the baby to bed. She didn’t go to sleep until 9:30 PM, making the night a waste. We ate the dinner that I made six hours ahead of schedule at 10 PM. Waiting for the baby to go to bed was starting to get ridiculous.

Thursday (Day 1089): Jon Is Not Fashion Aware

I folded the laundry, took out the garbage, made coffee, got #1GF! off to work, and got the baby to bed. I sat at my desk to continue randomly dumping my brain onto the page. I alternated between baby care and brain dumps all day long.

When #1GF! got home, I handed off the baby and went into the yard to get some things done. I dug up and moved a couple of dwarf daisies to a new spot, and put some regular sized daisies in their place. I then edged and mulched the entire property with nine bags of mulch. My intention was to buy ten bags, but #1GF! was convinced that I wouldn’t need that much. Just to placate her, I had bought nine. I was about a bag short by the end, but it was in a spot that no one could see anyway.

The neighbor sat on the porch with #1GF! and the baby while I dug and mulched nearby. “Now do you pick out the baby’s clothes every day?” the neighbor asked.

#1GF! shook her head and chuckled.

“God no,” I said. “All her clothes are laid out for me in the morning.”

“Well, I was going to say that she was really well matched yesterday and today.”

“Jon is not fashion aware,” added #1GF!.

“Yea, you can tell when I dress her because she looks like she dressed herself. If there aren’t monkey to monkey or giraffe to giraffe tags, I’m lost.”

The girls had a chuckle over that. It’s true, though. I have no fashion sense. But, then #1GF! doesn’t know Perl. It’s one of the reasons we do well together: we fill in where the other leaves off.

Once my landscaping was done, I took a shower to get all the black off my hands. I swear that they throw black dye into the mulch to make it blacker. I had to scrub to get it off, and there were still black, jagged lines engraved into some of the deep, dry ruts of my fingers.

When I got out of the shower, I found #1GF! on my PC staring at Facebook.

“O—M—G,” I said in mock shock. “Are you on my Facebooks?”

#1GF! took me seriously. “I’m on my account. I logged you out. I’m sorry. My PC was off. I’m sorry.”

“Well, like most things in my life, I keep very private things on my Facebooks that you shouldn’t know about. A man’s Facebooks should be sacred. What if you read enough of my Facebooks that you discover the real me instead of this charming, handsome, wildly funny individual that you’ve been living with? And what if you don’t like him? Then what?” I stood there wide-eyed, convinced that I added an s to Facebook enough times that she knew I was only playing.

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll be off in a minute.”

“Take your time.”

The baby went to bed early and we ate leftovers for dinner. It was really weird to have the baby in bed before 8 PM, and we wasted that extra time watching crappy sitcoms.

Friday (Day 1090): Crackers And Apples

The baby was up at 2 AM crying. #1GF! went to get her, and I went back to sleep. As punishment for being lazy, I woke up a little while later, afraid of something inexplicable like the color yellow. I got irritated at my brain for waking me up with something so stupid.

It was normal baby care all morning, and once the baby had her lunch, I drove her to see #1GF! at work on my way to visit my parents. It was a surprise visit, and #1GF! was thrilled. I didn’t go inside because I’d rather not set foot in that place again unless I’m being paid to do so. #1GF! and I stood outside in the shade in front of the building for a few minutes while the young professionals walked cluelessly back and forth to their cars, not realizing that their six month intended employment would quickly and inexplicably slide into a decade before they knew what happened.

#1GF! got a quick dose of baby to break up her Friday, and the baby and I were soon at my parents’ house for a visit. I put the baby in her pack-and-play on their deck, and my mother sat with her. I watched the baby out the window and she was perfectly happy without me. It was neat to see, but a little disheartening at the same time.

My father and I wandered around the yard talking about plants. He has quite a little farm going for a city dweller. I counted no fewer than a dozen tomato plants, various herbs, and so many flowers that he was pulling up irises because they were prolific enough to be a nuisance.

I got at least five hostas to take with me, and the baby and I were back home by 4 PM. The baby was exhausted because I intentionally made her miss an earlier nap to cut the amount of sleep she was getting during the day. I was hoping that it might get her to bed earlier in the evening. I doubted the validity of my plan, but I had to try something.

I put the baby down for her afternoon nap, and she slept for an hour. She probably would’ve slept longer had a landscaping guy not been weed whacking fence, siding, and everything else that wasn’t grass. The baby woke up screaming, and I couldn’t blame her.

When #1GF! got home, she told me that a couple of our friends were going to stop by on their way out to dinner at a nearby restaurant. And like a little bitch, I shit all over her. I have no idea why. I think it was because I only had a little notice for company and the house was a wreck. I wanted to be off duty so that I could get some things done around the house, but with people coming over there wasn’t going to be time for anything but a manic bout of cleaning. Are those excuses for being a dick? Nope, not at all.

I felt like I was under the gun, which wasn’t where I wanted to be at the end of the day, but I cleaned up everything the best I could with plenty of time to spare. I didn’t have enough time to run out to the store or get anything else done around the house, but everything was clean in plenty of time. The pressure eased off a little, and I apologized to #1GF! for being a big fat dick, considering she was making the evening more interesting.

We didn’t have any snacks to serve because of the short notice, and #1GF! wouldn’t let me run out to the store because she thought our friends would show up while I was gone. She rummaged through the closet looking for something to put out.

“There’s nothing in there,” I told her. I haven’t done the food shopping this week.

“I’ll just put out crackers.”

“You can’t just put out crackers.”

“Fine, then what do we have for cheese?”

“Parmesan and Gruyere. You can’t put either of them out. They’re not really cracker and cheese cheeses.”

#1GF! grabbed an apple and a knife.

“What are you doing, I asked?”

“I’ll just put out crackers and apples.”

I wondered if some sort of cosmic rays had hit us during the night causing #1GF! and I to somehow switch bodies. “You can’t put out crackers and apples. I know they’re our friends, but they’re going to think we’re either insane or broke. Think about it: who eats crackers and apples?”

“Some people do.”

My face scrunched up and my head cocked. I was almost positive about my cosmic ray theory. “What? No, they don’t. People might have crackers, cheese, and apples, but without the cheese, it’s too weird. Why not just serve up relish and hot dog buns? Or salsa and some spoons.

#1GF! stared at me.

“Plus, they have homemade meatball subs warming on the counter when we show up over there. Homemade. Meatball. Subs.”

#1GF! put down the knife and threw up her hands. “Well what am I supposed to do?”

“Let me run out to the store to pick up something. It’ll take me ten minutes.” I thought for a second and waved a finger at her. “Or, I could pick up some meatball subs and cut them up.”

#1GF! laughed. “They’re going to be here any second.”

“I’ll be quick. The subs will be funny.”

“No. Stay.”

“Fine, then go to the other extreme and stick out a small bowl of broken Pringles. They’ll think that’s funny, too. It will make the ol’ blog prophetic (original Pringles reference here).”

#1GF! stuck out a bowl of Cheez-Its. There wasn’t much humor in it, but it was something.

Our friends stayed for a little while and played with the baby. I returned the grinder I borrowed, making sure to give it a good cleaning up so that it almost looked new.

The baby stayed up until they left at about 9 PM. She was exhausted, but really well behaved—no fussing at all. I made Ramen noodles for dinner because it was late, there was no food in the house, and there wasn’t going to be any cooking.

Saturday (Day 1091): A Five Hundred Dollar Day

I got out of bed exhausted and watched a half hour of Black Hawk Down while I ate my cereal. It was a nice little break from watching the baby. I thanked #1GF! for it and made some coffee for her. It doesn’t take much to recover from baby care. Sometimes, an hour every once and a while where you can be completely off-duty and reassured that the baby is in good hands is enough.

I went in to take a shower, and got side tracked by standing in front of the mirror and combing my beard into all kinds of crazy directions in an attempt to figure out how I was going to shave it this year. I walked out to the kitchen and asked #1GF!, “Would you rather that I had a full beard or a mustache for the cookouts this weekend?”

“No,” replied #1GF! as she shook her head.

“That’s not on the table.”

“None.”

“It’s beard or mustache.”

She actually looked a little horrified. “You can’t have a mustache.”

“Mustaches are funny.”

“You are not wearing a mustache.”

“Beard then?”

“Neither.”

It’s one or the other. Just pick.”

“Clean shaven.”

“That’s not on the table.”

“No.”

“Beard or mustache?”

“No. I have to go change the baby.”

“Okay, I’ll just leave it the way it is until you can decide.”

“None.”

It went on like this until #1GF! left to visit her mother.

Once #1GF! and the baby were out the door, I showered, brewed a batch of iced tea, and made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. I stuck the dough in the fridge to test the idea that refrigerating dough makes for a better tasting chocolate chip cookies. Once the dough was stowed, I made a batch of chocolate sugar cookies. As if two batches of cookies and some iced tea weren’t enough, I made homemade vanilla ice cream.

Once everything was cleaned up, I went out to run errands. I went to Old Navy to pick up some shorts and T-shirts because several years had passed, and I was really starting to run the risk of having people give me money if I ever sat on a curb for more than a couple of minutes.

I went into the store and looked around for a simple pair of shorts, and I felt like someone had turned the clock back twenty years. And not in a good way. Everything was plaid. I haven’t worn plaid anything since Skidz were in style in the late 80′s, and I wasn’t getting on that fucking merry-go-round again. Once a lifetime is enough for me.

By my second circuit around the men’s section, finding a fucking tan pair of shorts had become a bigger hassle than I was interested in tackling. I turned toward the wonderful choiceless freedom of the door, when a little voice told me that I was either buying clothes, or trying them on and buying them, but I was buying something. I was not going home empty-handed to have #1GF! roll her eyes at me.

I finally asked a clerk, and he pointed me to the two pairs of tan shorts that they had. I thanked him and grabbed a couple of pairs. I tried them on in about fifteen seconds. On. Fit? Yep. Good. Out. I went to the wall of T-shirts, where everything was $5. I grabbed a bunch of them, figuring that at $5, even if they ended up sucking, I could wear them while mowing the lawn and then clean the lawnmower with them at that price.

When I got to the checkout, the lady tallied up all of my items and asked me if I wanted to open a credit card to save ten percent. Despite my refusal, she smiled and told me that I had saved seventeen dollars. I thought that she had given me some sort of special mountain beard / help the homeless discount.

“I did?” I asked. “Wow. Thanks. How did I do that?”

The clerk looked at me as if I might be insane. “The five dollar T-shirts?”

“Oh, okay. Thanks.” I didn’t really save anything. I walked out. Now, as far as I remember, buying something at a marked price is not a saving anything. It’s almost as if Old Navy has discovered the B.S. concept of MSRP, and is applying it to clothing.

Because we live at the beach, #1GF! has been asking me to get a grill for a long time. For a lot of men, a woman encouraging them to buy a grill is a five-minute conversation that ends with a speedy trail of dust and a high credit card bill. For me, it was a year-long relatively regular reminder.

I like cars, I look like a bearded Neanderthal for half the year, and I can be found in work boots at least once a week, but despite my testicles, there are still two areas that I just don’t care about: one of them is watching sports, and the other is grills. I admit that it’s probably some form of chromosomal defect, but I don’t see a grill as a giant, flame-shooting, chromed-out secondary set of balls. To me, a grill is just a secondary oven that you have to be bitten by mosquitoes to use.

I knew #1GF! wanted a grill, so I secretly picked one out online during the week. I left the clothing store and went to pick it up at the nearby home megastore to surprise #1GF!.

Naturally, the store didn’t have the grill I wanted, so I had to spend $50 more on a grill that seemed a bit nicer. I used my manly beard power to lug the four-foot box onto a flat cart and wheeled it over to the next aisle to stare at hose caddies because #1GF! was looking for one of those too. I picked out one that was more expensive than the one I would’ve been fine with, but figured that #1GF! would like it. I put that on top of the cart and wheeled the whole thing outside so that I could grab a couple of resin chairs. Oddly, no alarms went off, and no one gave me a second glance. I probably could’ve kept going, were I a less honest man.

I wasn’t sure if #1GF! would like the chairs, so I only picked up a couple of them. I threw them on top of the cart and wheeled it back inside. There was no research, and no time wasted agonizing over money or quality. I was having about a five-hundred dollar day and making decisions mainly by stacking items on my cart and uttering the phrase, “Fuck it. Done.” It was like I was possessed by someone who had more money than time.

I was going to get some tomato plants, but after thinking about pots, soil, and everything that would go with them, I wasn’t ready to make it a six-hundred dollar day. I walked away from the plants, paid for everything, and awkwardly loaded everything into the truck. I probably should’ve picked up a grill cover, but, like I said, I was not only possessed, but way, way over the line in terms of purchases.

When I got home, I left everything in the truck except for the propane tank. Once #1GF! got home, I walked out to the driveway to greet her, being very evasive when asked about what I bought. I focused mostly on having bought clothes, which made #1GF!’s voice sound as if I were a puppy who finally learned a new trick.

When I mentioned the trip to home store, I tried to make it seem like I only bought a bag of mulch, a cheap sprinkler, and some other nondescript stuff. I took out the hose reel, and #1GF! was psyched (rawr?). I showed her the chairs, and she was more psyched. I opened the back of the truck to reveal the grill, and her eyes got so wide that it could’ve been her birthday. She was just that pleased.

I backed the truck up over the lawn and loaded everything out. I moved the grill across the yard end over end, and put it in the basement for future assembly. I set up the chairs and the hose reel and called #1GF! outside. She immediately sat in one of the chairs, and I handed her a mason jar of iced tea. #1GF! seemed like she was having a great day because she kept saying that I was so cute. She never says that sort of thing when I’m bearded.

The baby wouldn’t sleep for her late afternoon nap, so I gave up trying after a half hour. #1GF! took her out of bed, and I went into the office to write down the events of the last couple of days.

To end the night, #1GF! went out and got a pizza for dinner. Call me a simple man, but that’s what I call a righteous payback.

What I Learned

• I now know the noise that the baby makes when she’s irritated.
• The Cumberland Farms Air machine does not work.
• The baby has no interest in feeding herself with a spoon.
• A shepherd’s pie takes an hour and forty minutes to prep and cook.
• The baby can function under another adult’s supervision for at least a short time.
• Plaid seems to be in again.
• If you can see a fashion trend come around again, then you’re probably old.
• Old Navy believes in calling selling items under a phantom MSRP “savings.”

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

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.

While I rolled along the curved coastal roads, I approached a spot where the two lanes merge for a few hundred feet before going back to two lanes. There was ample space in front and back of me, and everyone was positioned and ready for a smooth merge. Suddenly, the Mercedes behind me stomps on the gas to rush past me and squeeze himself between my hood and the bumper of the car in front of me. I didn’t have to lock up my brakes or anything, but I had to use them unnecessarily. All I could think was, “Nice way to fuck up a merge, asshole.”

Even though I know a couple of Mercedes drivers who are nice people, why is it that I always assume that the actions of Mercedes drivers are the result of being an asshole? The base model Mercedes isn’t much more expensive than ROCKET CAR! was, so it wasn’t because of jealousy. Maybe it’s the instant status symbol of it. Maybe it was that driving a Mercedes is a vehicular version of wearing a tie even though you don’t have to. It’s a logo on your shirt, a number after your name. In my mind, that little tri-pointed ornament somehow peppers a base of justified deserve with words like exclusion and pedigree, and does it in an over-stylized Thurston Howell voice. I have no idea why, but nine times out of ten, no matter what you do in your Mercedes, I’ll think, “What an asshole.” And maybe that’s the point.

When I got home, I entertained the baby a little. At some point during the last few days, the baby learned what “I’m gonna getcha” means. I have no idea how she figured it out, but when I say it, she takes off squealing and crawling down the hall.

I put the baby down for a nap, grabbed a quick sandwich, and sat down to write. It was 70 degrees and sunny out, and it was an understatement to say that I didn’t feel like writing. I’d rather have been reading or staring at a wall, but I managed to get a little editing done despite myself.

When the baby woke up, I took her for an hour-long walk. It was either that or sit around the house keeping her from climbing on things. The walk ended up being 3.3 miles, and the baby seemed bored the entire time. I can’t really blame her. Walks are so fucking boring it hurts. She’s not even walking yet, and she was looking at me as if to say, “Dad, this is SO lame.”

When I got home, #1GF! left to help her mother out. I fed the baby and put her to bed. I wrote for a while, got her up, fed her again, and waited for #1GF! to get home. #1GF! gave the baby her last meal of the day, and I made dinner because there weren’t enough leftovers to keep me from cooking. Actually, there probably were, but one of the peppers was within a day or two of going bad, and I wanted to use it before it did. Holy shit. What has happened to me? Next week, maybe I’ll work in a nice discussion on aprons. Gah.

I ate a lot of chocolate chip cookies that I didn’t even like because even a bad homemade chocolate chip cookie is still pretty good. Instead of doing something useful, I looked up the science of chocolate chip cookies and found that one of the secrets that was in the original Toll House recipe, but omitted from the back of every bag of chips is this line: “At Toll House, we chill this dough overnight.” Some bakers claim to store the dough in the fridge for 36 hours before baking. It was a trick that I’d have to try to keep chocolate chip cookies from flattening out into the greasy wafers that an unhacked Toll House recipe brings into the world.

I cooked dinner, cleaned up, and then cleaned the sink so that #1GF! could give the baby a bath. By the time I sat down at the PC, it was already 8 PM. What the flying hell? Some days just slip through my fingers like lubed bacon wrapped in butter.

Tuesday (Day 1080): Wait For The Beep

We took the baby to her nine month doctor’s appointment. It went normally except the doctor invited me to a baby play group for stay at home dads. I was really grateful for the offer, but it somehow made me feel like a huge loser. I suddenly felt as if being a stay at home dad is a consolation prize for men who can’t do anything else. If I started going to play groups, I wasn’t a writer and a stay at home dad. I was one of those housewives who writes rhyming poetry on the backs of baby catalogs and sends it off to magazines in hopes of being published one day.

I think it’s great that there are play groups like that out there, but I found it difficult to imagine myself getting into one. Play groups for stay at home dads seem pretty rare, so I was happy for the offer, but I didn’t know if I was manufactured as play date ready. It was something that I’d have to think about…after I finish this one last poem.

It was really the first appointment that the baby was independently mobile for, so she had to be contained and entertained more than any appointment in the past. That led to a little fussiness, but the doctor seemed to think that she had a great disposition. The baby turned out to be very normal in every other category, which was a bit of a slap because I see her as a beautiful genius super baby. It was a bit of a wake-up call that I didn’t need. I wanted to return to the fortress of solitude where my skewed opinions met with no resistance.

#1GF! went to work, and I took the baby home and fed her. After I put the baby in for a nap, I sat at the counter reading a book and eating my sandwich because blogging seemed like a stupid thing to do. So did writing. I sat reading because reading is nearly impossible for me to fail at. After ten minutes, I went in to blog because even if I’m failing, I can’t stop. I’m somehow driven to shape and modify my literary failure instead of just accepting it and enjoying the day. The office had the feel of a sprung trap.

#1GF! went to visit her mother after work, so I spent the rest of the day entertaining the baby. #1GF! got home just in time to put the baby to bed. I wasn’t burned out or frustrated, but I was happy to not be chasing a baby for the first time in eleven hours. Eleven hours. It seemed like a long time to watch a baby, but I imagine that other people watch more babies for longer than that on a regular basis.

I sat at the counter and ate leftovers while reading a book. I should’ve written while eating, but I still didn’t quite care about writing. At 8:45 PM, #1GF! came out to get a plate of leftovers, and I went in to finish off the first pass at LOR 154. I was three days behind on finishing it.

Before we went to bed, I asked #1GF! if she saw the Crazy Calls commercial I posted on Facebook.

“No,” #1GF! replied, “you know how I feel about videos.”

“I was writing about that phone call last week when you sang ‘Nobody’s Home,’ and I had to look up the commercial that it came from. Wait for the beep. You gotta leave your name you gotta leave your number.”

#1GF! laughed. “Why don’t you post that sort of thing on your blog?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not making any money by posting things to Facebook.”

She was absolutely right. I had no idea when I gave up my blog as being a log of all the funny crap I find and turned it into Jon’s baby care and imaginary robot emporium. Fucking social media. It’s like we’re all working to make someone else’s site popular instead of our own.

Wednesday (Day 1081): Subconscious Baby Care Invasion

I woke up in the middle of the night and tried to grab the baby just before she crawled off the edge of the bed and plummeted to the hardwood floor below. I would’ve been able to save her, but she was fast asleep in her crib. What I grabbed #1GF!’s leg, which startled her out of a sound sleep.

The baby woke up at 5 AM, and randomly cried until 6 AM while #1GF! comforted her. I tried to go to back to sleep, and managed to get fifteen minutes out of the deal until the alarm freaked out with a loud buzzing noise that indicated that alarm clocks only have a shelf life of twenty-five or so years. I dove for the nightstand and fumbled through switches and buttons to keep the baby from waking up. I was mildly successful.

It had been raining all night, so I sighed and trudged down the basement stairs to check for water. It was dry. I checked the attic, and there was a puddle on the plastic I laid down as a precaution after I thought I fixed the roof last time. The spot was somehow still leaking. That added to the tired feeling which was coloring my morning an unwelcome shade of grey.

I ate a bowl of cereal and read a few pages of fiction in the dim light that filtered in through the clouds. I was stuck in that indecisive lighting where it’s too bright to turn on a light, but too dark to read by natural light. The baby still wasn’t awake after I fished the last few Cheerios out of the bowl, so I switched books and read a few pages of a book on writing while I had the chance.

When the baby finally woke up, I took care of her until it was time to take a shower. The baby wasn’t interested in me at all. She just wanted her mother, who was busy getting ready for work.

#1GF! got ready and headed out the door.

“Are you going for a haircut after work?” I asked.

“Yes.” She turned to the baby. “It’s okay, honey. Mommy is going to start pulling her weight around here someday.”

“Pulling your weight?” I asked. “You bring home a check. That’s all the weight you need to pull. I’m the one who’s light around here.”

#1GF! frowned and rolled her eyes as if I weren’t right. “Do you remember waking up last night?” she asked.

“And grabbing you? Yea. Sorry about that. I thought the baby was about to crawl over the edge of the bed headfirst and I was trying to stop her.”

She looked at me with unexpected but genuine sympathy. “You poor thing.”

“It’s either baby care or writing about baby care, so it’s about time that it started invading my dreams.”

“Well, what do you want to do?”

“Pay no attention to me. I’m perfectly fine. I’m doing exactly what I want, minus being published and having an incredibly awesome Mr. T beard-mohawk combo.”

#1GF! just shook her head. Sometimes, I think she thinks that I’m kidding. I pity the fool who thinks I’m kidding when I refer to Mr. T. Ungh.

Once #1GF! was off to work and the baby was quietly sleeping in her crib, I sat down and punched out a few notes about the last couple of days. I did it without much feeling or thought because I was getting to the point where I needed the LOR series to end. There was less and less writing to be proud of in its lines, and it was taking up too much time for too little feedback. If I spent the time I wanted to on it, it would be one well crafted, annually published paragraph instead of reams and reams of shit that I crank out week after week. And that paragraph would be nothing worth reading without the surrounding mundane context. The series was a giant catch 22.

I spent the day oscillating between baby care and editing. I wasn’t sure when #1GF! was getting home, so I didn’t start dinner until she did.

“Sorry about all this,” said #1GF! as she whisked in the door and gave the baby a bath.

I was fine with it. It wasn’t ideal to do eleven hour baby care days, but I was sure that people do more. Chasing an infant can be tiring, but it wasn’t like I was working in a coal mine. I shrugged. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s all temporary.”

I made broccoli alfredo for dinner at around 8:30 PM and read a book on writing while I cooked to get the most out of what was left of the day. Dinner was at 9, and afterward, I talked to #1GF! about ending the Life of Riley series. She shook her head at me like she was aggravated. “People like to read it. What about them?”

“What about them? I don’t even know if they’re reading. It’s not like there’s a lot of feedback anymore.”

“But people like it.”

“I’m spending at least half my week writing for people who I don’t know and never hear from. I have no idea if they like it. Even if they are reading along and even if they do enjoy it, how can I justify donating that much time to people I don’t even know for no conceivable gain?”

“Well, maybe they could help you. I always thought one of them would eventually.”

“It’s been three years. Week 156 is next week. That’s a very non-random time to end it. It started as a way to cut the amount of writing, and it’s taken on a life of its own. It’s out of control and I can’t get anything else done. I should be spending that time working on something marketable. Doesn’t that make sense?”

“What about going back to when they were only a thousand words?”

“The only time the series was that short was in the first six months, and that was only because I wasn’t writing in complete sentences.”

“I can’t talk to you when you get like this. You’re not going to listen to me, so end it if you want to.”

“I think I need to.”

#1GF! was getting even more aggravated with me. “But you’ve worked so long to build it up. Giving up on it doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s cutting my losses and moving on. It’s like the daily blogging angle. At some point you realize that it’s not going to work and you have to make corrections or move on. I don’t think that there are corrections that can be made.”

#1GF! didn’t want to talk about it anymore. And neither did I.

Thursday (Day 1082): The Shopping Cart Cozy

After the baby’s afternoon nap, I took her out food shopping for the first time in quite a while. I used to put her car seat in the shopping cart and shop quickly, but she had become so mobile and alert in recent months, that I figured that sort of thing would’ve created a very frustrated and very loud baby. I took this soft cushy shopping cart cover that #1GF! bought with the intention of sitting the baby in the baby seat of the shopping cart for the first time. The soft cover was supposed to keep her cozy and stop her from putting her mouth all over a shopping cart that a million people have touched and no one had ever cleaned.

I took the baby out of the car and grabbed a nearby shopping cart. With one hand, I wrapped the cover over and around the baby seat, and with the other, I put the baby in it. It sounds like it was easy, but there was a fair amount of struggling and a few sheepish grins from other shoppers walking by. Within a few minutes, I had the baby strapped in to this cozy shopping cart cover and we were on our way into the store.

The cover was black with white stripes, but the lack of pink or flowers didn’t make it any more masculine looking. Then again, baby stuff can’t be made to look masculine. Some companies try, but it never really works. You’re better off with pink everything and shrugging like you didn’t buy it than to walk around with some half masculine thing that gives the impression that you actually tried to make it look macho.

The baby wasn’t used to sitting in the carriage, so every move I made rocked her around like a passenger in the car of a teenager driving stick for the first time. Other than that, food shopping went really well. The baby was enthralled with all the different foods, and stared at the bagger while we were in the checkout line. The bagger talked to her, and the baby looked at me with wide eyes as if to ask if she was okay. I shrugged and told her to say hello. She turned back to the bagger and leaned out of the carriage to hold onto the stainless steel checkout counter and smiled. Everyone melted. That’s my kid.

#1GF! arrived home at her normal time, and I asked her if she wanted a little leftover mac and cheese. She didn’t. I cooked up mine, and then, upon seeing it, she said that she did. I don’t understand why women sometimes actually have to see food before wanting it. I don’t understand that at all.

It was really nice out, so #1GF! and I went for a walk after dinner. We talked about the lawn and whether it was better to overseed and fertilize, or simply weed kill and fertilize. #1GF! didn’t share the same opinion that I did and the discussion sort of dropped as we turned a corner and watched the sun drop like a big red ball behind Boston. The red light of the sunset reflected off of windows of the local houses as if an entire neighborhood were being gutted by individual fires.

When it was time for the baby to go to bed, she cried for a full hour, possibly after eating too much mac and cheese off of #1GF!’s plate. She went to bed at around 10 PM, which killed off the evening, as a screaming baby tends to do.

Friday (Day 1083): The Coffee Rebellion

The baby was up at various points during the night crying. I’d like to think that it was because she wanted more of that delicious mac and cheese, but I’m betting that it had to do with an overload of dairy in a fledgling digestive system. What should’ve been a solid night of sleep on a full belly of some miggidy miggidy mac and cheese, ended up as a bad night of sleep for everyone.

Once I was out of bed for the final time, I made coffee in an attempt to stem the waves of contagious yawns that threatened to put us all down. I don’t know what I did wrong, but I ended up with a full-on coffee maker rebellion. The maker was steaming and spitting like an angry old man. Coffee was overflowing out of the top and spilling all over the counter, and the pot was full of grounds. When I took the pot out to dump it down the sink, the coffee maker somehow overrode its shutoff button and let loose a stream of coffee all over the counter. The whole coffee maker went into the sink, and #1GF! went off to work without a coffee booster pack.

I put the baby to bed and then cleaned up the evaporating coffee lakes that had randomly spread across the counter. I went into the office to write, but got distracted because my hands smelled like coffee. Or something did. I washed my hands, and sat down at the computer, and smelled coffee again. I couldn’t get away from the smell, and had no idea where it was coming from.

When I finally stopped looking for the source of the mysterious coffee smell, I got mired in the details of a story I was working on. I didn’t have a good grasp on the characters, and was having a lot of trouble getting anything written. Every line seemed to lead to a question rather than a clarification. To me, writing a book is like dumping a puzzle on the floor. At first it’s confusing and overwhelming, but as pieces fall into place it gets easier and more fun. This story was so new that I was still dumping pieces out of the box.

…And the rest of the day is a mystery. #1GF! came home from work. I probably made dinner. And? And I have no idea. It’s another day lost to history unrecorded.

Saturday (Day 1084): Are You Crazy? You Don’t Feed A Baby Chili!

I put the baby in for her morning nap, and dusted and swept the house. I finally moved a box of PC related crap into a closet. The box had been sitting on our bedroom floor since we moved in. I could’ve cleaned the box out (because, really, when am I going to ever need twenty PC power cables, a cantenna, or a bunch of BNC connectors? Okay, maybe the cantenna could still get some use one day.), but I didn’t. To match my semi-organization, #1GF! finally moved her winter clothes to the attic.

The baby soon woke up, and #1GF! took her out for a walk. I cleaned the bathroom while listening to the Pixies. I haven’t listened to them in a while, so I had forgotten how experimental their music was for its time. I went through Surfer Rosa and Doolittle before the bathroom was clean. I played “Where Is My Mind” twice because it’s easier than letting the song slip by unappreciated.

I put the baby to bed a second time in the afternoon and she didn’t go to sleep easily. Once the crying was replaced with a pristine calm of sunny day in the low 70′s, I sat in front of the PC looking up beards. My intention was to figure out what styles I had left so I could finally shave. I sat there for an hour digging deeper and deeper into beard literature until #1GF! came in to warn me that the day was slipping away. I gave her a confused mumble as if I had just woken up, and finally jumped into the shower in the early afternoon.

We went out to visit #1GF!’s mother and took the baby along. The baby can somehow find a clock in the room when asked “Where’s the clock,” even though I don’t remember teaching her that. It’s a little odd what babies pick up.

After the visit, we picked up a couple of cabinet locks because the baby is very mobile and getting to the point where she’s trying to eat the cabinet knobs. I didn’t think it would be long before she was opening the cabinets to explore, and I didn’t want to take the chance that she got into something in the three seconds that I’m not staring at her.

While #1GF! and I perused the plethora of baby proofing options on the rack in front of us, we stood next to a heavy woman eating a cookie. She told us how cute, but small, the baby was.

“How old is she?” the woman asked.

“About ten months.”

“And what does she weigh?”

“About eighteen pounds.”

“I have twins at home, and they are seven months and twenty-five pounds.”

“Wow,” #1GF! and I both said in unison.

She showed us a cookie. “See this cookie? I eat the cookie, then the babies eat the cookie,” she said very matter-of-factly. “It’s because I’m Haitian. We eat everything. Lots and lots of rice.” I didn’t think that it was a great idea to be feeding a six month old cookies, but then the woman had no detectable Haitian accent, so I assumed that she might be as Haitian as I was Italian. Or crazy. A surprising number of crazy people seek me out for random conversation.

We bought our locks and went home to feed the baby. The day was essentially over and we had barely anything done. To squeeze just a little more out of the day, I went up to the roof to locate the source of a leak that I thought I had already patched. I didn’t have much luck because the roof seemed fine.

I made buffalo wings for dinner while #1GF! put the baby to bed. While I coated those delectably crispy wings in hot sauce, #1GF! asked what movie I wanted to watch during dinner. The movies had been shipped about a month ago, so I had no idea what they even were. For saying that I didn’t care, I got Did You Hear About The Morgans?. It didn’t take long to figure out that it should’ve been titled Carrie Bradshaw’s Other Movie.

Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant witness a murder and are put into witness protection in Wyoming. Parker spends her screen time pouting and pining for the fashion and bagels of New York while Hugh Grant, as usual, spends his time stuttering and backpedaling. I left to wash my hands about thirty minutes in and never went back. The best thing about the movie was Sam Elliott’s mustache, and there’s only so much of that you can take before you think, “Life is just too short to spend on bullshit like this.”

What I Learned

• Gruyère cheese belongs in homemade mac and cheese.
• David Morell writes a good thriller.
• The baby knows what “I’m gonna getcha” means.
• Toll house cookie dough was originally supposed to be refregerated overnight before baking.
• Baby care has invaded my subconscious.
• I’m not very adept at roof repair.
• The shopping cart cozy was a success.
• There are a lot more variations of facial hair out there than I have on my beard page.
• The baby can point to a clock when asked.
• The baby can identify her hair and belly now, too.
• Some people feed their six month olds cookies and rice. It takes all kinds, I suppose.
• Sam Elliott’s mustache, although awesome, cannot carry a movie.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

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.

I’ve gotten used to #1GF! picking up some of the care on the weekends to keep me sane and allow me to get some projects done around the house. In the last nine months, I hadn’t been away from the baby for longer than a couple of hours, and that was usually the result of a wake, food shopping, or some sort of fun-filled dentist appointment. It’s not the same type of break as being completely free from baby care, but #1GF! never tries to get me to go into work for her, so I don’t ask her to do my job for me. Solo baby care can be exhausting, and after a full week of work, I wanted #1GF! to have a break, too. Fair is fair.

I ran out of stuff to do with the baby long before the day was over, which took its toll on my free time. Instead of spending the baby’s naps writing or doing something productive, but I sat on the couch eating rice cakes and watching television because I had given up on accomplishing anything.

To make matters worse, it was #1GF!’s first official Mother’s Day. My plan had been to make breakfast for her and make her day as relaxing as possible, but she wasn’t hungry in the morning, and was gone all day. I could’ve cooked her favorite dinner, but I had no idea when she was getting home. At least she would get a Mother’s Day gift no matter what time she got in the door, right? That would’ve cheered her up. Um, sure. Because all our purchases are essentially out of household funds, we haven’t exchanged gifts in years.

I had absolutely nothing that could brighten #1GF!’s day, and I was burned out with baby care. How do you complain that you think you’re losing your mind to a woman who is not only running on less sleep than you, but who spent her first Mother’s Day at the hospital? Exactly. You don’t. You suck it up, heat up some leftovers for her, and apologize that she had a crappy Mother’s day.

#1GF! called on her way and asked me to hold off on feeding the baby until she got home. All she wanted to do to help salvage her day was to get home and feed the baby. I heated up some leftovers and kept the baby entertained until her mother got home. And then I sat with them at the table and tried to stay positive.

We went to bed at 9 PM because I kept falling asleep while sitting up on my elbow. I was asleep within minutes of my head hitting my pillow.

Monday (Day 1072): The Secret Handshake Of The Parental Cabal

I went out to an early morning dentist’s appointment, and despite the late spring date, it was cold and windy enough out to warrant a fleece. How do you hit mid May and have temperatures that bottom in the thirties and max out in the fifties? Don’t say global warming because I don’t want to fucking hear it.

I sat in the waiting room and scanned their bulletin board of children’s photos. I immediately started chuckling. The only other person in the waiting room was a young guy who asked me if I was laughing at a child’s drawing on the board. “No,” I said while pointing to one of the pictures. “That’s my daughter up there. And I didn’t send the picture in.”

The guy stood up to take a look at the baby. “She’s beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

“How old is she? Six months?”

“She was in that picture. She’s mobile now.”

The guy shook his head. “It’s exhausting.”

I nodded. “It really is.”

“But it’s awesome though?”

“It really is.”

We talked a little about how the level of exhaustion that kids bring with them doesn’t seem possible, considering their size. He was soon called in to his appointment and I was alone in the waiting room. I thought that it was funny how every parent of an infant will fully admit how exhausted they are, but will always temper their statement by explaining how awesome parenthood is. It’s like they want to let people know how hard parenting is, but don’t want them to get the idea that they’d try to shove their kid back up the birth canal if they had the energy.

I was soon called into the office and took a seat in the contoured comfort of the dentist’s chair. While I got my teeth cleaned, I stared at a painting on the wall of three Adirondack chairs. The perspective on the shadows seemed wrong, but the lack of art training in my college business curriculum wouldn’t let me put my finger on why. Instead of relaxing in that big, comfy dentist’s chair, I spent most of the time staring at those shadows. Right before the appointment ended, I realized that the shadows were painted as if the sun were a light bulb parked ten feet in front of the chairs. It didn’t seem right to me, but then, I’ve never painted anything worthy of hanging in a dentist’s office.

I did take a painting class when I was a kid, but the only painting that came out of it proved that I was infinitely better suited to computer game piracy than painting. I was supposed to have painted a serene lake scene in the fall, but I got annoyed and pained a golf course instead. Painting foliage seemed like more of a pain in the ass than a white stick with a triangle attached to it, so that’s what I went with. The teacher could barely contain how unhappy she was with me, but that only made it even funnier.

After my cleaning, I had to make another appointment to have a tooth filled. Awesome. I am not down with the Cavity Creeps. I made it over thirty years without one, and the only one I got was minor and had to be filled a few years back. I had to schedule an appointment to have that filling drilled out and replaced because there was a spot next to the filling that was approaching decay. Damn you, Cavity Creeps. Damn you to hell.

After the dentist, I spent twenty minutes at the library picking out books that I probably wouldn’t have time to read, and made it home by 11:30 AM. #1GF! didn’t give me shit about getting back a little later than expected, but accounting for the twenty minute library detour felt like I had gone to a bar and came in stinking of stale beer and stale cigarettes.

In the larger scheme of things, I needed twenty minutes to do something for myself. Not an appointment or an errand, but something simple like getting books that I might never have time for. I knew #1GF! was waiting, but I needed that little bit of time. I was getting to the point where I needed to throw inanimate objects or run down the beach until my heart pounded in the back of my skull, and if twenty extra minutes in the quiet of the library swept that feeling away, I was okay with it—even though I knew I was holding up #1GF!.

#1GF! left for the hospital fifteen minutes after I got home. I put the baby to bed and sat down to write the Life of Riley, which was becoming a massive chore. I wondered if anyone would really notice if I dropped it, so I took a rare excursion into my site stats. I was surprised to find that I was still getting a couple of thousand visits through the LOR series every month. I was happy, yet disappointed at the same time.

The baby was awake within forty-five minutes, which gave me just enough time to write down the events of the morning. I took the baby into the kitchen and sat her on the kitchen floor while I got her bottle ready. I gave her a small bit of orange, and she made a face when she ate it. Then she wanted more, and then made the same disgusted face when she ate the second piece. I couldn’t decide whether she liked oranges or not until later when she threw up down my shirt and onto the floor. She doesn’t throw up much these days, so I guessed that her stomach wasn’t quite ready for oranges.

The rest of the day was straight baby care for a happy kid who wasn’t much trouble at all. #1GF! got home later, and I went in to write for a bit. I completed the first editing pass on LOR 153 by 9 PM, ate leftovers, and then read a book in bed until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

Tuesday (Day 1073): The Brown JFM Homo Milk Gal

I woke up at 6 AM to a phone call that #1GF!’s mother was going back to the hospital. #1GF! was out the door before she even knew where she was going.

I did regular baby care until the baby’s first nap, when I was able to hop in the shower. By the time I was dressed, the baby was already awake. My father called looking for some batteries for a cordless drill.

“Why don’t you use a regular drill?” I asked.

“I gave it away to the veterans because I never use it.”

I shook my head. “How’d that work out for you? I’ll see you in an hour.” That was 9:30 AM.

I fielded a couple of calls from friends looking to find out how #1GF!’s mother was. I was only slightly less clueless than they were. #1GF! wouldn’t call so as not to wake the baby, and I would only get her voice mail at the hospital.

At noon, I put the baby to bed, and didn’t know whether I should start writing or wait by the door for my dad to show up. The last thing I wanted was the baby to wake up to a knock at the door. I called to see where my father was, and he was just getting on the road. I went to my desk and wrote for ten minutes just to get a little writing in.

I went to the kitchen to wait by the window to prevent my parents from knocking or ringing the bell. That lasted exactly two minutes because waiting and I don’t get along too well. I dusted the whole house by the time they showed up. They borrowed a drill and headed out.

The baby woke up in the middle of me sweeping the house, so she crawled after the mop as I went from room to room. It made it pretty easy to watch her.

Once the house was free of unexpectedly prevalent piles of discarded hair, I fed the baby, entertained her for a while, and put her in for a nap. I looked at Facebook, but got sick of the peripherally useful chatter very quickly. Within three minutes, I was relentlessly writing. I didn’t stop until the baby forced me to.

#1GF! got home in time to feed the baby, and I had dinner ready and waiting. We ate together at the table while #1GF! fed the baby. Once #1GF! was fed and settled in, I went out to do the food shopping. I walked into the supermarket at 8:04 PM, even after reading the sign posted on the door that said the store closed at 8. I’ve walked into the supermarket at 10 PM, so I figured they were pretty loose about their hours.

I snaked up and down the aisles, quickly and efficiently filling up the cart with stuff we needed. On the way to the register, I stopped at the health and beauty section. I nodded my head back from side to side before begrudgingly heading in.

A few years ago I said that I was going to buy Just For Men beard dye and do a post on whether it really worked or not. I was getting very close to the end of the bearding season, so if I was going to go through with it, I was at the perfect time. I could feel my ears reddening as I stood in front of the wall of hair dye, all the faces of slightly bearded men smirking at me from the front of their boxes.

There’s nothing macho about hair dye, even if it is made for a beard and has “men” in the title. As I looked from box to box, I was happy that the colors weren’t named “Sienna Smoke” or “Tuscan Saddle”, but I still felt like a vain old woman as I tried to figure out what color my hair was. Was it black? Dark Brown? Darkest Brown? Jet Black? Real Black? What the hell was the difference between real and jet? I didn’t know, but I found that I didn’t even want to touch the boxes to find out.

Unfortunately, my ability to lift objects using only my mind had vanished long ago, so I looked side to side and reached up for a box like it was a bright pink and labeled “Lady Vagina Eyelash Wonderbra Make Up For Ladies.” I grabbed a box that seemed like it was near my beard color and intensely scanned the box for directions. I couldn’t figure out why I was so embarrassed about it, but I tossed it into the cart and headed for the self checkout to keep any checkers from telling me how wonderfully youthful I was going to look after using my “Lady Vagina Eyelash Wonderbra Make Up For Ladies” in a box.

By the time I got home, it was already 9:30 PM. I had taken a knee on the kitchen floor and was busy separating the bags into fridge, freezer, and cabinet items to make sure that everything went away as efficiently as possible.

#1GF! looked at the receipt. “Oh my god, how is this possible?”

I knew she was looking at the cost. “I know. I can’t get out of the supermarket for less than a hundo. I got a lot of meat, which usually ten to twenty a pop. And I dumped a bunch of baby foods in the cart. Add those up.”

#1GF! counted them up. “They add up to $16.”

I shrugged. “Well then I don’t know.”

“Okay now hold on. What’s this HD HOMO MILK GAL on the list? You shouldn’t buy people, Jon. It’s 2010. Human trafficking is wrong.” She looked at the list again. “And what’s JFM DRKST BROWN?” She dropped her hand to the counter and squinted at me. “I’m not sure that I want to know what JFM stands for, but I think you need to tell me exactly where you went shopping.”

I looked through the bags and held up the milk. “Here’s our gal of homo milk.” I dug around a little more. “And here is JFM.” I held up the box of Just For Men beard color. I could feel my ears going red again.

#1GF! stopped cold and her eyes widened. “Oh, my god, you’re keeping it.”

“No, I—”

“You are.” She shook her head slowly. “I knew this was going to happen.”

I continued separating the groceries and tried not to look at #1GF! until my ears cooled. “I told you about this years ago. I said that one day I was going to buy a box of beard color and blog about whether it worked or not.”

“No, you did not.”

“Oh, yes I did. I’ve been saying it for years. Now that I’m close to the end, I wanted to test it out before I shave it off.”

#1GF! looked on incredulously.

“Look, I was wicked embarrassed buying it. It was like I was perusing a rack of high heels or something. I stood there in the hair dye aisle with my bright red ears. I’d rather buy tampons…”

“Oh, geez.”

“…because at least the people at the checkout know they’re not for me.”

“So, when’s it coming—”

“A day later than when you asked me last time.”

“You are such a punk.”

There wasn’t much left of the evening once the groceries were put away, so #1GF! watched TV and I read a book until it was time for bed.

Wednesday (Day 1074): Paging Nurse #1GF! To The OR Stat

Other than the baby eating a lot less than usual, it was a typical day of baby care. At one point, I found myself laying on the dining room floor as the baby played with her toys a foot or so away. I wasn’t doing anything, and the baby was content. I thought to myself, “Now this is living.” Of course I couldn’t get a book or read the sales circulars because the baby would want to eat them, but I could lay there on the hardwood floor and enjoy the quiet.

#1GF! was still dealing with her mother at the hospital. It was the same hospital that we had the baby in, so I was surprised to hear how bad the care was. She had to wait hours for simple requests, the nurses were rude, and #1GF! actually had to help a patient to the bathroom because after several calls, a nurse wouldn’t come to help her. What the fuck is that all about?

I slathered a rack of ribs in barbecue sauce and threw them in the oven to cook for the next four hours. They were a different type of rib than I normally buy, and even though they came out moist, the meat was a little tougher than I expected. #1GF! liked them better, which I found surprising.

Thursday (Day 1075): Paging Doctor Idiot

#1GF! called me in near hysterics because the stupid fucking doctor at the hospital told her that they weren’t going to do anything more for her mother than treat the pain because she figured that her issue was a result of a spreading cancer. “Treat the pain” is doctorese for “medicate until dead.” The doctor had no tests proving her theory and she wasn’t a cancer specialist, but she thought it would be a good idea to give #1GF! that sort of information about her mother off the cuff and over the phone.

Advanced degrees or not, some people are complete fucking idiots. I calmed #1GF! down and told her to wait to hear from her mother’s real doctors before getting too worked up. She called in to work and went to the hospital again. I hung up the phone and shook my head.

The baby woke up early from her afternoon nap, and I had time to kill before her next feeding, so I took her on an hour long trek along the beach and the bay. The beach roses sweetened the air on the beach side, and I could hear the rush of waves and the sounds of laughter on the other side of the dunes that were slowly taking over the seaside road. I crossed town and walked along the bay, which was deserted and smelled like an unrinsed sport fishing boat.

There weren’t many people out, but I said hello to a man gardening in his yard who asked if I wanted to help, a couple of old people walking their dogs, and a guy in really dirty jeans wearing a dream catcher around his neck. The dream catcher guy had the mellow, easy going nature of a hippie, and addressed me as “man,” while seeming to attentively absorb what amounted to innocuous small talk. After I passed, he spent a couple of minutes trying to start a twenty year old car that was more rough brown rust than dull grey paint.

I turned a corner and saw some kids playing keep-away. One kid broke off from the game as I approached, and the remaining tormentor accidentally threw the item into a tree, ending the game. The squeaky victim shook his head at the tree and said, “Epic fail.” He proved that the Internet permeates real life as much as real life permeates it in return.

I headed down a side street, and walked by three people trying to corral a playful pitbull into their house. The dog was running all over the street, and at one point, I instinctively positioned myself between the charging dog and the carriage and he veered and ran by. The dog wasn’t paying nearly the attention to me that I was paying him. The people finally got the dog inside and we walked on.

I walked beside the carriage instead of behind it most of the time, using my shadow to keep the sun off the baby. It must’ve looked weird to see a guy walking down the street pulling a carriage by its roof, but it also allowed me to talk to the baby instead of just pushing her along. If there was a way to make walking even less exciting than it already is, it would be to be pushing a carriage.

We got home, and I fed the baby and put her to bed. I heated up a cup of coffee in the microwave and sat down to write. Once again, instead of writing, I wasted time by writing down the songs playing on a local radio station because I thought I recognized way too many old songs. After throwing a couple of hours of their songs into a spreadsheet, I found out that 60% of their playlist was pre-2000. It was an odd finding for a station that claims to have “the best in new music,” but then, it’s the radio, and what can you really expect?

#1GF! called to tell me that her mother’s issue had nothing to do with cancer. It was good news, but it made me want to go to a certain hospital and spin a doctor through a good round of crazy. Don’t tell someone that the end is near unless you’ve done a bunch of tests multiple times, and verified the owner of the scythe that you found in the broom closet.

Once #1GF! got home, she took the baby out for a walk. I stayed behind and scrubbed down a jog stroller with upholstery cleaner. It was getting dark by the time I was finished, and I don’t think the thing was that much cleaner than when I started, but it smelled like a new-to-you used car.

After dinner, I sat at my desk reading RSS feeds until long after #1GF! went to bed. I don’t get to do that very often anymore, and it was unexpectedly relaxing.

Friday (Day 1076): The Great Just For Men Experiment

It was a very typical day of baby care. I took the baby for a thirty minute walk and tried to describe things to her as we passed them. When we got home, the baby crawled around the floor while I prepped her bottle. When she stopped, she looked as if she were chewing on something. I sat down in front of her and she stopped and stared at me.

“What have you got?” I asked her, as if she could tell me even if she wanted to.

She just sat there staring. And then looked down and started chewing again.

“Oh, you definitely have something.” I stuck my finger in her mouth and fished around while she squirmed. I wasn’t used to fishing around in the baby’s mouth, and I wasn’t sure that there was even anything in there. I didn’t feel anything, so I sat back to observe again. She paused for a second, and then started chewing again. I swept my finger into her cheek and pulled out a maple seed. You know—A helicopter, a Pinocchio nose. It was so brown and shriveled that it had to have been sitting in the yard since last year before being tracked into the back hall and picked up by a baby who thought it looked delicious. I shook my head at her and threw the seed away. She headed over to chew the tires of the carriage before I picked her up.

After the baby went in for a nap, I tried to write an outline for my book, and instead, started mining my blog for ideas. It took me a couple of hours and I had so many tabs open that it took a full ten seconds for the browser to scroll through them all. I only touched a small portion of the posts, but it made me realize just how many posts that I’ve stashed away in this blog over the last eight years.

After #1GF! got home and took over the baby, I started the great Just For Men experiment. I put on an old T shirt like the instructions said, put on some gloves, and mixed a couple of lines of dye in a plastic tray that they give you. The dye is only supposed to remain on the hair for five minutes, so I was scrambling to mix more when the amount that the directions suggested covered only half of one cheek. The guy on the front of the box didn’t have much more than a starter beard, so I should have known. For beards of this size, you need to use a whole tube of the stuff.

I rushed to brush all the dye in with supplied comb, and because i was fast approaching the five minute mark, I hurriedly read the directions on how to rinse it out. It said that a shower should be taken even if a small amount of dye was used. Shit. I hopped around the bathroom stripping off my clothes and warming up the shower while one side of my face noticeably started to burn. It wasn’t a great sign.

When I got out of the shower, the color of my beard was so flat and brown that it looked like I had bought a joke beard and hooked it on my ears. Once it dried, I noticed that it didn’t cover all of the grey. That could’ve been user error, but I was combing that shit in pretty heavily.

Because of my lack of skill, I managed to get tiny dots of dye all over the counter, the tub, the walls, and my face. I have no idea how I did it. As I was scrubbing dye off of everything, #1GF! came in and took a look my beard. She said that she didn’t think it looked bad. Sadly, that was probably the biggest compliment that she has ever given my beard. She’s more of a beard tolerator than a beard fan.

Saturday (Day 1077): Wait For The Beep…Arrrrr

#1GF! took the baby out for a walk in the morning, so I sat at the counter, had a bowl of cereal, and read a book. I was really happy to have an unexpected hour to myself. I jumped in the shower, and by the time I was out, my ladies were back. It sounds awful, but having an hour where I could actually terminate the baby care process instead of merely pushing it into the background was actually refreshing. It was almost like a reboot.

I wanted to inflate the tires on the jog stroller that I cleaned the day before, so searched the attic and the basement for a bike pump. I eventually found one in the basement at the bottom of my bag of bike gear. Oh, bike stuff. How neglected ye have been.

I pumped up the tires on the stroller and went back to the basement to put the pump away. Just before dropping the pump into the bag for another three years, I decided to pump up my bike tires just to see if they would hold air. After three years, they did. I jumped on and rode it between the support poles in the basement like a kid in a Cape Cod vacation rental on a rainy day. Then, I opened the bulkhead, and rode past a window where #1GF! was feeding the baby. She laughed and opened the front door as I dumped my bike on the walk and ran up the front steps like a seven year old.

I ran in the house and down to the basement to grab my bike shoes out of the bag. I intended to take the bike for a couple of block spin to see if it still worked, but rode it twenty feet and stood talking to a neighbor for a half hour. #1GF! eventually came out, and I did a bunny hop to prove that I still could before putting the bike back in the basement where I found it.

#1GF! went to visit her mother, so I stayed home with the baby. I caught the baby playing with a ficus seed that had fallen off of one of the trees, so I took it away from her, cleaned the surrounding area, and picked every last seed off of the tree. Not five minutes later, the baby was sitting on the floor chewing something. She wiggled and resisted as I pried a ficus seed out of her mouth. She managed to eat half of it, so I spent the next few minutes tensely Googling things like “ficus tree baby poison” and “baby ate ficus seeds.” They turned out to be harmless.

The baby took her midday nap, and because it was the weekend, I didn’t feel the pressure to write. For the second time in one day, I sat at the kitchen counter reading a book. It was awesome.

Once the baby woke up, I went to my parents’ house to visit for a couple of hours. I had no idea when #1GF! was getting home, so I figured that visiting would be a better use of time than sitting on the living room floor reading another book to the baby while she focused all of her attention on playing with the radio.

When #1GF! called, the baby and I were still at my parents. She started her side of the conversation by imitating the old Crazy Calls Commercial. “Nobody’s hooome. Nobody’s hooome…”

“You’re home already? I thought you’d call me when you were on your way.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at my parents’.”

“No rush, but what time will you be home?”

“Get my ass home? Really?”

“What?

“Well, just because you work doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that.”

“What are you doing?”

“Well, have a snack then. It’s not like you can’t take out a pan and cook once and a while.”

“Argh! Are your parents listening?”

“Well sure, but that—I—Please calm down. Fine, I’ll just clean the bathroom again. It’s no—”

“You’re an ass.”

“Fine. I’ll be home soon. Just stop yelling at me.”

“Love you. Bye. Don’t rush.”

I hung up and turned to my parents. “I have to get going. The lady of the house is getting hungry.”

I loaded the baby into the car and headed home. #1GF! fed the baby dinner while I made cookies. I was sure that I finally had the perfect ratios of ingredients to produce the perfect cakey chocolate chip cookie, but ended up with a bunch of flat pieces of Tollhouse-like crap. I wasn’t happy. To make matters worse, I knocked my cookie making bowl onto the floor, breaking it into a thousand sharp ceramic shards. And to make things even worse, at least two dozen cookies worth of dough was still in that bowl.

I picked up as many tiny shards as I could find, but #1GF! ended up vacuuming the floor just to be safe. I cleaned up the dishes that weren’t broken yet, and we took the baby out for a walk before it got dark.

“So,” said #1GF! after we had walked a little way in silence, “I really thought that I’d get home and you’d have shaved that thing off.” She was referring to the mass of mountain mane that was still clinging fast to my face and jaw.

“I only have a few styles left and they all seem to be mutually exclusive. Every time I think about it, I get bogged down and give up.”

#1GF! suddenly got animated at the prospect that she might be able to help get my beard off of my face and into the bathroom trash bucket. “Well, talk it out. I’ll advise. Or talk it out and I’ll be quiet. Or talk it out. I’m quiet. Or not. Whatever you need.” She pointed at me like I was going on camera. “Go.”

I looked at her and feared that she might’ve been losing her mind. “Um, okay. Well, there’s the Old Dutch.”

#1GF! just stared.

“It’s an Amish-style beard. No mustache. It would look better if I had a little more length, but it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“That would look good. What’s next?”

“Well, then I’m down to mutton chops, a Norris Skipper, or a Chin Strap.”

She thought for a second. “So you only get two if you start there?”

“Yep. Seems like a ripoff after all this time. Plus, this ‘stache is so long. I hate to get rid of it.”

“You should go for the ones that gives you the most styles. Wasn’t there one with braids?”

“Sure, The Sparrow. But that leaves the only possible secondary beard as a Norris Skipper, and I’m not sure if that would even work. Some of the styles require length, and I’m not sure how many more years I’m going to be able to grow out a homeless beard like this.”

“Get the harder ones out of the way then.”

“The Dali is going to be impossible. Look at this stache.” I pulled the end of my stache up an inch. I’m short about three inches for that one. That ‘stache needs to be pointed up to my eyes. My eyes!”

#1GF! rolled her eyes. “Well, I know you wanted to get this done, but I don’t think it looks bad.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Your beard.”

I was surprised. “What?”

“Well, I know you didn’t want to walk around with a dyed beard, but it doesn’t look bad.”

“Does it look better?”

“Well, you know that I don’t like you in a beard, but yes, it does.”

“What if I wore an eye patch?”

#1GF! rolled her eyes.

“And pirate gear. And became the town mascot. Waving at traffic at the town border.”

#1GF! shook her head, waiting for me to stop. “Done?”

“Almost. I’d be waving at the cars with with my hook. Arrrr Maytee.” A plane slowly passed overhead. “Okay. Done.”

“The whole shaving process sounds like a little too much effort.”

“I know. Who knew it would end up being this complicated?”

When we got home, #1GF! put the baby to bed, and I sat at the PC trying to recall the day’s events.

What I Learned

• There’s this secret and automatic conversation starter that parents have even if they’re total strangers. It sort of reminds me of the cameraderie of smokers outside a non-smoking building.
• Sometimes, all it takes is twenty minutes away from baby care to restore equalibrium.
• The Life Of Riley series generates more page views than I expected, but it still only gets a tenth of the traffic of the beard pages.
• The baby is not ready for oranges.
• The guys on boxes of Just For Men barely have beards.
• Just because a hospital has an excellent maternity ward, that doesn’t mean the rest of the hospital is as good.
• The Internet permeates real life as much as real life permeates it in return.
• 60% of WFNX’s playlist seems to be from before 2000.
• I can successfully fish inedible objects out of the baby’s mouth.
• Just For Men doesn’t exactly cover all the grey, and it makes a beard look flat enough that it could be fake.
• You need a whole tube of JFM for a big beard.
• You will end up with JFM all over the counter and walls if you don’t take it easy.
• #1GF! thought that my dyded beard looked better than the grey one.
• I don’t know the secrets to a perfect chocolate chip cookie.
• Ficus seeds and Maple seeds are not deadly.
• My bike tires still inflate after three years. And I can still do a bunny hop.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article


]]> http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/05/17/life-of-riley-week-154/feed/ 2 http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/05/17/life-of-riley-week-154/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dyers/~3/5VbxNGgfw-A/ http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/05/10/life-of-riley-week-153/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 02:55:04 +0000 Jon http://www.dyers.org/blog/?p=2086 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.

“Because he was a loner.”

“Listen to me. He wasn’t a loner. He isn’t a loner. He won’t be a loner. All I need to figure out is if he’s inherently good like Robin Hood, or pure evil like Hans Gruber.”

“Hans Gruber?”

I put on my worst German accent. “Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?” I raised my eyebrows waiting for recognition.

#1GF! shrugged.

“Die Hard?”

#1GF! nodded with recognition. “He’s not a Hans Gruber,” she said very matter-of-factly about a story that wasn’t even started.

“Well, I have to figure out if he’s motivated by greed or good. Or maybe all the good he does is just a diversion for all the bad stuff he’s hiding.”

“But, then he’d have to get caught in the end.”

I shrugged.

#1GF!’s eyes widened. “He can’t get caught. Wait, does he get caught? Does HE? He doesn’t, right?”

And this is why I think I can write. I have the best audience in the world sitting across from me at the table every day.

#1GF! gave the baby a bath, and fed her while I went to take a shower. When I got out, I cleaned up the kitchen, and #1GF! left the room. The baby was still in her high chair, so I gave her some yogurt snacks to entertain her. They’re like little purple globs that melt in her mouth to teach her to feed herself.

Now, my baby likes to shove every bit of food in front of her into her mouth at the same time, so I always limit the number of snacks I put in front of her. This time, I put out four purple, dime-sized snacks and let her go nuts. What damage could she do with four meltable bits of yogurt?

After the second cough, I went over to check on her. She looked fine, but all of the snacks were gone. A quick check of her chair told me that all the snacks were in her mouth. From the ol’ CPR and first aid courses, you know if someone’s coughing, they’re on their way to working out the problem on their own. I saw three snacks appear on her tongue when she opened her mouth. I thought about sweeping them out with my finger, but they looked pretty dissolved, so I stood in front of her tensely waiting. Two seconds later, the baby coughed again, her entire lunch shot out of her mouth like a fountain.

My strategy is that if the baby isn’t in danger, I try to resist the inherent impulse to catch her every fall and correct all her mistakes before they happen. This time, I felt like I misjudged the danger. I not only felt awful, but I felt like a bad parent.

#1GF! grabbed the baby and went to clean her up.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my head weighed down with more than a little shame.

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

“I saw the snacks, and I thought about sweeping them, and then I thought she’d resolve it herself. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“I feel like a rotten parent.”

“This is going to happen.”

#1GF! took the baby to change her outfit, and I cleaned puke off of the high chair and the baby’s clothes while reviewing the scene in my head like a lost football game.

After everything was cleaned up, #1GF! finally jumped in the shower. As penance, I spent forty minutes trying to get the baby to sleep. Those long stretches of trying to get her to sleep are the most frustrating part of baby care. As you shush a baby who doesn’t want to sleep and walk your fiftieth revolution around her small room, an aching line forms at elbow height across your back as a physical reminder that you are failing. It’s frustrating enough to make you take a five or ten minute break to stare at the floor afterward.

Once the baby was asleep, #1GF! and I sat and edited LOR 150. I was really tired of reading what I write, but watching #1GF!’s reaction ended up being fun, as it usually does.

Later in the afternoon, we took the baby out for a walk. Temperatures were in the 80s, and the beach was jammed with strutters, intent on giving the world a sneak preview of their soon to be released summer bodies. We made our way through the crowded sidewalk, trying not to laugh at the seriousness with which they took their pedestrian choreography.

We strolled along behind the carriage, watching people smile at the baby as we passed. One and two-year olds would point and say, “Baby!” which I always think is funny, considering their own status. One teenager passed and actually said “What a beautiful baby,” which was unusual to hear from such a young woman. A guy sitting on the seawall smoking turned to the person he was sitting with and said, “Did you see that kid’s eyes?” It was all cool to hear. Then, to make sure that we had a well-rounded beach experience, one teenage girl with straight blond hair, a blank expression, and a curl in her lip said, “Is that a baby?”

“That girl just asked her friend if I was pushing a baby,” I said to #1GF! as I rolled my eyes behind the blackout sunglasses that I’ve been wearing a version of since the days of NWA.

“No, she did not.”

“Yes, she did.”

“What an idiot.”

“Now, now. It’s fairly common for guys with homeless looking beards and blackout sunglasses to push around their dollies around in full-sized carriages because it’s the easiest way to smuggle guns and dwarf hookers up and down the beach when there are a lot of people around. Maybe she was an undercover cop.”

“Yea. Or an idiot.”

“Well, she definitely looked the part.”

We went home, and I was possessed by a stink that had overpowered my deodorant, attached itself to my shirt, and was threatening everything within a three-foot radius. I went to change my shirt. When I returned, I found #1GF! sitting on the stoop talking to a neighbor. I sat down and joined in. It was still 86 degrees and humid, but it was comfortable in the shade.

In the late afternoon, we went out to pick up some formula. The baby fell asleep on the ride, so #1GF! went into the store and I sat in the car. “Do you need anything?” asked #1GF! quietly.

“Look at my beard and memorize the color,” I whispered. “Then get some Just For Men so I can dye my beard and blog about whether it works or not.”

#1GF! studied my face. “It looks red to me.”

“Awesome. Never mind.”

#1GF! went into the store, and I sat in the car writing notes. They didn’t have formula, so she bought hair care products. I looked through the bag, and there was no sign of an age-defying beard dye.

The baby was still asleep when we got to the next store, so I stayed in the car again. We parked so that the sun was coming into the front seat because it was better that I broil than the baby. I continued writing in my notebook and surfing the dial until #1GF! returned.

I was hoping to pick up a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style while we were out, but I didn’t need it right then and I could probably get it cheaper online anyway. We went home, and I realized that I had been as useful as a dashboard figurine on that ride. Actually, I was probably less useful because I don’t have any secret voodoo powers. Sure, it was nice to get out of the house, but I didn’t even leave the car during the entire trip.

We went home and #1GF! gave the baby another bath to get all the sweat and sunscreen off her before she went to bed.

I went through Writer’s Digest‘s most recent 101 websites for writers. After sifting through the list, I realized that many writing sites are very similar to sites about blogging. They all offer tips that you think might be useful one day, so you bookmark them and file them away. By the time you reach the point where you think they’ll be useful, you realize that most, if not all, of your collected tips are pedestrian and relatively basic. I managed to find five feeds to add to my feed reader, but the odds of me ever actually reading any of them, however, are pretty low.

I shut the PC down, and #1GF! and I ate sandwiches for dinner because we weren’t hungry enough to cook. Then, we watched a couple of DVR’d shows because we weren’t awake enough to think. We went to bed soon after.

I lay in bed, and all the writing sites got me thinking about pro-blogging. I wondered if I could simply claim to be a pro blogger and gather a following by offering general blogging tips for people who are more clueless than I am. As more people subscribe, my claims of being a pro-blogger become legitimized. I then write an e-book on pro-blogging and offer personalized training at an exorbitant rate. Then, I write the book that blows the lid off of the pyramidal scam at the heart of the pro-blogging scene…or I just keep my mouth shut and buy that J-Diggity rope chain with a big dollar sign on it. Either or.

Monday (Day 1065): The Drunken Jumping Wonder Giant

I went out to get a haircut and do the food shopping. I came home and took care of a baby who didn’t feel like napping. I tried to put her to bed for an hour, and then #1GF! tried. Both of us failed. She didn’t take one nap all day. Before I knew it, it was 4:30 PM and the day was gone. And with no naps to break things up, it was a long and incredibly tiring.

When I went to make dinner, I found out that the onion that I had was rotted. I ran out to the store to pick up another one. It was a simple mission. All I had to do was buy an onion. So, how the hell did I end up whacking my head on the big plastic case hanging above the checkout? It’s not like I’m Sticky McGee the drunken jumping wonder giant or anything. I’m not that tall. The clerk apologized as if the checkout were hinged and occasionally swung into unsuspecting customers.

I felt my head when I got home, and had whacked it harder than I thought because there was already a scab. I started dinner, and #1GF! took the baby outside to watch the neighborhood kids play.

#1GF! put the baby to bed, and we spent the remainder of the night watching bad TV off of the DVR while we ate our soup.

Tuesday (Day 1066): Thigh Baby & The Tiny Bionic Arm

I woke up in the middle of the night, sat bolt upright, and grabbed #1GF!’s leg.

“What? What?” said a panicked #1GF!.

Just enough consciousness seeped in that I knew that everything was okay. “Sorry. Sorry. I was dreaming that the baby was on the bed, and she was making a run for the edge. I was grabbing her before she plummeted to a neck injury.”

#1GF! was not relieved to hear the news about our fictional thigh baby. We went back to sleep until the alarm commanded that we start the day.

“How are you doing?” asked #1GF!.

“Actually, I’m a little stressed.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid that I’m going to have the same kind of day as yesterday, and I’m going to spend a lot of time trying to put her to sleep when it’s not in her plan. She was not good yesterday.”

“She was fine. We were just trying to force her to do something that she didn’t want to do.”

“You’re right. I guess if I assume that she’ll be up all day, and she sleeps, well that’s a bonus for me.”

#1GF! gave me a look that seemed to say, “You’ll figure it out.” I wasn’t so sure.

#1GF! got off to work, and I put the baby to bed. I got an hour and a half of writing in while she slept.

When the baby got up, I gave her a bath, fed her a couple of times, and kept her from climbing on things that I knew would topple over underneath her teetering little frame. I put out some pans and plastic containers to distract her while I cleaned up lunch, and then spent thirty minutes trying to get her to go to bed. She wouldn’t fall asleep. I gave up and put her in her crib hoping that she’d fall asleep on her own. I went to the kitchen and ate a sandwich at the kitchen counter. When I checked on her five minutes later, she was standing in the crib and smiling at me.

I picked her up and rocked her back and forth to get her to fall sleep. She latched onto her thumb, but wouldn’t nod off. After twenty minutes, I had given up on the possibility of her going to sleep and was about to take her out of the room. The baby whined and flopped on my shoulder like she was exhausted and about to drop off. I walked in circles for another twenty minutes before really giving up. I spent over an hour trying to get her to go to bed, and it was incredibly frustrating.

I took the baby outside to sit on the stoop with me for a for a few minutes, which helped me to relax a little. We then went in and I entertained her for a couple of hours until she was ready to eat. Books or magazines are a huge distraction for the baby when I feed her, so I usually can’t do anything more than stare out the window while she eats. During this feed, I read a book on writing because I knew that she would fall asleep midway through. Sure enough, she did, and I put her to bed. It was already 3 PM. I poured a cup of coffee and went in to write down the day’s happenings so far.

And I have no idea what went down from then on. I probably got interrupted by a mutant Tyrannosaurus with ninja training and a bionic arm that escaped from the basement of the local sewage treatment plant. I have to adhere to a gag order by federal law enforcement about the ensuing battle, but a tiny bionic arm was probably the dumbest (and probably ridiculously expensive) addition that I have ever seen added to a battle-ready Tyrannosaurus.

Wednesday (Day 1067): Unhooking The Meter

#1GF! went off to work, and I got the baby to sleep. I sat at my desk to start going through the Life of Riley, which I couldn’t stand writing anymore. I checked my stats to see if it’s even worth the time, and even though it was still pulling in thousands of page views, readership was flat to a slight decline. It didn’t seem like it would ever do better than it already had, no matter how much time I dedicated to it.

The posts were already eating up half of my week, and by the time I’m finished with them for the day, every drop of writing has been wrung out of me. It was Wednesday, I was still working on the prior week’s post, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. I’m fucking tired. I’m fucking tired of having a beard, I’m fucking tired of writing down every boring fucking thing I do. Sometimes, I just want to lay on the floor and let the world pass unmetered.

Even if I could bring myself to lay on the floor instead of writing, the world would still be measured. I would still end up writing myself through moments in my head, and there is no escaping, “I have forty-five minutes until the baby gets up. I have thirty minutes until…was that the baby? Did I prep the bottles?”

Once you have a baby, you’re almost constantly on. And when you’re not, you feel guilty, so you put yourself on call. Don’t get me wrong. I love that kid, I love being home, and I love taking care of her. I even love writing this blog. Somewhere in the no job / baby care cycle you hit a point where you start asking yourself, “Is it Wendesday?” Soon after, you hit the point where you realize that it doesn’t fucking matter if it’s Wednesday or not. The only thing that matters is whether it’s bath day or not. Or garbage day.

I have the best job ever. I do. Despite my self-created goals and schedules, I’m actually free to do what I want all day. I could take the baby down to the beach and watch the waves all day if I wanted. I could keep the baby from eating sand for a couple of hours a day, and wake up in a couple of years with a good tan, a happy baby, and an uneasy feeling that I should’ve done something more with what little spare time I have.

I slumped in my chair. When I sat in a cube for eight hours a day, I wanted something more meaningful to do with my time. And now that’s what I have. I write and take care of a baby. I really couldn’t ask for more. Yet, after nine months, I rarely have enough time, and when I do have the time, I don’t have the energy to face the fact that I haven’t moved my writing past the edges of this blog over the last few years.

That’s it. I’m done. Thanks for putting up with the rant in the present tense. I can already hear the baby stirring.

I fed the baby a couple of times, and for the third day in a row, she refused her midday nap. I wasn’t fighting with her. She was staying up if she wanted to stay up. I put her on the floor of the kitchen with some pans and made myself a sandwich. I had the same look that 50s housewives have in movies when they’re standing at the counter and blankly watching their kids through a situational or medicinal haze.

After I ate, I debated whether I should run errands, but gave up on the idea because I didn’t think it was a good idea to haul fertilizer with the baby in the car. I rummaged through the mail, and got an estimate back from the landscaper for grading the lawn. I counted one too many zeroes for my budget. I shook my head and looked down at the baby. She was standing in front of the cabinets. She had never pulled herself up on a flat surface like that before. We shared a smile at her accomplishment, but I was the only one who realized that I was in trouble.

I entertained the baby for a while and then took her out for a walk. I’m not one for walks, but I thought that we needed to get out of the house. It was hotter than I expected, and the skies were completely clear. We walked along the roads adjacent to the beach where the smell of beach grass and hot sand drifted on the air. I couldn’t possibly describe the smell beyond that it smelled like summer.

I walked along with the pink stroller, and was happy to have a beard. At least people could get a chuckle out the biker looking dude pushing a pink stroller instead of pitying the poor, clean-shaven bastard.

By the time we got home, the baby still had an hour before she ate, so I sat with her on the steps. She soon got bored, and we went back inside so that I could chase her around and practice saying no.

I fed her half of her normal meal and she started crying about everything because she was overtired. She would try to go one way, stop, then grab a book, then sit down, then stand up. I couldn’t help her. I picked her up, put her on my shoulder, and waited for her to fall asleep. She did about fifteen minutes later. It was already 3 PM.

I went in to write down the days events and gave some serious thought to my idea of giving up the Life of Riley. On one hand, I enjoy writing it most of the time, and it still manages to bring in a few thousand page views a month; on the other, it was becoming the anchor that drags down half my week and keeps me from spending time writing something that could actually see the inside of a publishing house.

In the middle of weighing out the pros and cons, the baby woke up not whining, but screaming. I ran into her room because I had no idea what was wrong, but it sounded serious. She ended up being fine. It was just a new trick she picked up to get me into her room faster.

Once she was up, we played for a while. By “played” I mean I kept her from climbing on things. I made dinner and put it in the fridge, and then the baby and I sat on the front stoop until #1GF! came home.

I went inside to figure out what I needed to get done with what was left of the evening. I was debating between going to the store or mowing the lawn. Neither really got my juices flowing, so I lay face down on the bed for a minute to think and fell asleep right there. #1GF! woke me up within a half hour and I had no idea where I was. I never fall asleep like that. Needless to say, neither the lawn nor the food shopping got done.

I got up and finished off the LOR post by 8:30 PM that was supposed to be out two days before.

Thursday (Day 1068): Just Skip This

I had a normal morning of baby care, and looked up landscapers and jotted ideas for a book in my spare time. At lunchtime, I went to my parents’ house because my mother left a message telling me to. I was either taking the baby to their house, or they would be coming to mine. If I went to their house, I would have to drive, but I wouldn’t have to clean.

The baby and I stayed for a couple of hours and got home by midafternoon. I got the baby fed, and into bed within the hour. I continued working on the book until she got up. I fed her again, and #1GF! came home. #1GF! mentioned that she wanted the lawn done, so I went out and mowed it. She tried to stop me, but you know, if the lady of the house gently requests a clean lawn, that’s no problem. I showered and made dinner while #1GF! put the baby to bed. I warned you to just skip this.

Friday (Day 1069): Destination Unknown

I had a normal morning of baby care, and once the baby was down for her midday nap, I started working on my book again. It was an amorphous, headless pile of crap. I hate the beginning of a story. It’s randomly pulling things out of the air. It’s wasting time. It’s driving around at night without a destination.

#1GF! called to remind me to order flowers for my mother for Mother’s Day. I spent way too much time looking at flowers. I still didn’t have anything for #1GF! for her first Mother’s Day.

Once #1GF! got home from work, we took the baby out for a walk through the neighborhood. It was so quiet. I typically don’t like walks, but it was pretty nice.

I made pesto for dinner and felt the inkling of a migraine before I went to bed.

Saturday (Day 1070): My Clones And I Will Be Waiting

I woke up at 4 AM with a full-blown migraine. I tried to watch TV and read magazines but everything was making me want to throw up. It was a good fucking time.

When #1GF! got up a couple of hours later, I told her about how Facebook stuck an application into my profile that I didn’t authorize. “No big deal, right?” I said with squinting eyes, “Except that when applications get authorized, the application has access to all of your profile information.”

“So?” said #1GF!.

“So?” I said as if #1GF! didn’t hear me correctly.

“Yea, so what? It’s not like you have anything personal on your profile anyway, Mr. Paranoid.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s not the point. All my info could end up in a database somewhere.”

“Where? And what are they going to know?”

“What about your name, face, and e-mail address? Is that enough?”

#1GF! shrugged.

“Or your relatives’ names? Or photos of them?”

“Okay maybe that’s not good, but what are they going to do with that sort of info?”

“You mean besides sending us more of those goddamned Lillan Vernon catalogs?” I made my hand into a phone. “What about, ‘Hello, #1GF!? It’s Bill Bradly from capitol One. You owe $13,000 for the seven credit cards you opened.’ Or what about, ‘Hi, #1Cousin? I’m Tom Shaverhaven from Shaverhaven Landscapes. #1GF! and #1SisterInLaw paid me to cut your lawn. May I come in to murder, er, discuss the details with you?’”

#1GF! stared at me. “Seriously. You need to write another book. You have a wild imagination.”

“When they start building clones from your MegaMarket Database profile, I’m going to say, ‘I told you so.’”

“My clones and I will be waiting.”

It rained all morning. I kept talking about looking at a foreclosure that we discovered on our walk the day before. It was ridiculous to think about buying another house, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. On the surface, the house seemed like a really good deal.

We tried to do the whole Mother’s Day thing a day early so that #1GF! could spend her first Mother’s Day relaxing at home with the baby and me. We did regular baby care all morning, and brought my parents lunch. We stayed there until late afternoon, and then went to #1GF!’s mother’s house for Chinese food. My last head-blasting, stomach-churning, sleep-interrupting migraine was still a little too fresh in my memory to take a Chinese food migraine risk, so I wandered around the house with the baby while everyone ate. Try to not eat in a house full of Italians. Smoking crack is more acceptable than having an empty plate. We left by 8 PM, and put the baby to bed once we got home.

At 11PM, we got a call that #1GF!’s mother was rushed to the hospital. As with all rushings, there were no real details. I offered to go because I suck at social situations unless they’re emergency in nature, but there was no way that #1GF! could stay home with the baby. I understood completely. I stayed home and watched TV while the baby slept, and waited for an “all clear” phone call.

What I Learned

• Three freeze-dried yogurt bits will choke the baby and make her throw up.
• Writing websites are a lot like blogging websites. At their best (or worst) they’re a collection of really pointless pointers masquerading as helpful information.
• I can inadvertently whack my head on almost anything.
• I do baby care in my sleep.
• Grading a lawn isn’t even close to reasonable.
• The words “breast pump” have the ability to make me nauseous during an early morning migraine.
• Facebook is increasingly treating its user base like a cheap commodity.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article


]]> http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/05/10/life-of-riley-week-153/feed/ 1 http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/05/10/life-of-riley-week-153/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dyers/~3/Piv3dGKtvlI/ http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/05/03/life-of-riley-week-152/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 00:34:21 +0000 Jon http://www.dyers.org/blog/?p=2085 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.

For lack of anything better to do, we tried to figure out dinner. A quick tour of the refrigerator indicated that we needed to do some food shopping. Once the baby was awake, we hopped into the car and went to check out a new store called “Fresh Market” that had opened nearby. I was hoping that it was going to be a Haymarket style open air vegetable market, with disheveled men with mustaches yelling fruit prices, but it turned out to be an upscale bastard child of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

We walked between the dark wooden bins, holding piles of brightly colored fruit that were as perfect and shiny as if they were raised and trained by a woman who gardened in khaki slacks and pearls. I went over some of produce prices in my head as we explored the store. From the prices that I could remember, Fresh Market commanded an ivy league premium for its produce. We left the store without buying anything, and were pretty sure that we wouldn’t need to go back unless we happened to need to put together an expensive gift basket.

We went to the normal supermarket across the street, and I picked up just enough things for #1GF! to make lasagna with. #1GF! carried the baby and I grabbed what we needed. Even though the produce was much more reasonable, most of it looked as if it had made it through three semesters of state school before being tossed in the middle of a drunken brawl.

When we got home, #1GF! made lasagna and put the baby to bed. I sat in the office writing. When I emerged, I realized what a great idea that lasagna was. Not only would it provide two days of homemade pasta goodness, but I wouldn’t have to cook.

After dinner, #1GF! and I made it through twenty minutes of Area 51 before shutting it off. It’s probably a fine movie, but I can’t sit through cartoons anymore no matter how great the animation. We filled the remaining time before bed with a couple of TV shows. I could’ve got the same comedy fix from watching the neighbor’s cat roll around in their front yard. Other than sitting next to #1GF!, it was a complete waste of time.

“Seriously,” asked #1GF! while we stood facing the bathroom mirror, “can we talk about it?”

I knew exactly what she was getting at. “No.”

“Seriously. I just want to know when.”

“Look. You’re making me feel bad here.”

“But, you don’t even like it.”

“I don’t like that I haven’t done a bench press in years either, but I don’t want you poking at my middle and making the Pillsbury Doughboy laugh every other day. Do it a couple of times and I get the point, but the more you do it, the more I want to resist. I’m built for resistance.”

“You are. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Good. So, when is it coming off then?”

I touched my chin to my chest and puffed my cheeks. “July. July 45th. I’m going corporate and padding the date so that if it’s any earlier, you’ll feel like you won something.”

“Well, not if you tell me!”

Monday (Day 1058): Switched Into Adventure Mode

I turned the radio dial back to the oldies channel because I could feel parts of my brain rotting under the influence of teenage pop. I wasn’t sure that repeated oldies would be any better, but at least the rage that I felt every time “American Pie” came on would elevate my blood pressure enough to count as exercise.

#1GF! had to pick up her mother and take her to some appointments, so we were up before 6 AM. There was no reason for me to get out of bed, but the guilt dragged me out. I sat at the kitchen counter and had a bowl of cereal and read another book on writing. I was barely paying attention to the words and realized that I was simply waiting for the baby to wake up. I would look at the monitor at every rustle and wait before going back to reread the same line again. I didn’t have to wait too long. The baby was up an hour early.

#1GF! left, and I entertained the baby, fed her, and eventually put her in for her morning nap. By the time I was showered and dressed, the baby was already awake again.

I entertained her for a couple of hours and fed her a couple of times. The baby is pretty mechanical about when she goes to bed, so I was holding her in my arms and waiting for her to get drowsy. She was looking up at me, so I kissed her face. Her little blue eyes danced as she laughed. I knew that she was supposed to be slowing down, but I couldn’t help myself. I kissed her again. She twisted in my arms and the kiss caught part of her neck. She tucked her head and laughed hysterically. Once her laughter ebbed, she’d stick her neck out and wait for me to kiss her again. It was funny as hell.

All the laughter wore her out, and her small body eventually got heavy as she snuggled into my shoulder. I held her for a few moments longer before gently putting her to bed.

As the gears wound up and the smile wore off my face, I grabbed a quick sandwich and sat down at my desk to reconstruct the weekend. I couldn’t understand how it was already noon.

The rest of the day was fairly normal, although the baby launched herself onto her head from the couch once. I was actually paying attention to her at the time. She just happened to make a decision to push herself away from me faster than I could grab her. I picked her up and stopped her from crying before feeling around on her back to see if someone had accidentally flipped her switch into “adventure mode.”

I put the baby on the floor, and she spent her time trying to pull herself up on everything. She has an unstoppable desire to stand up. Even when I walk her down the hallway, she tries to pull her hands out of mine. When she realizes that she can’t walk without holding my hands, she cries. I don’t know where she might’ve gotten such stubborn independence, but come hell or high water, the baby was going mobile.

#1GF! went out to a wake in the early evening, but was back in time to feed the baby. I had been steadily slowing down as a result of chasing Adventure Baby around, so I chugged a cup of tea to try to bring myself up to speed. It didn’t do me any good. I was tired. Sometimes, even particularly easy days of baby care wear me out. I sat down to write at 6:30 PM and got LOR 150 completed in a couple of hours.

#1GF! and I ended up eating dinner at 9PM, and watched The Marriage Ref. Kathy Griffin and Tracy Morgan were guests on the show. Griffin somehow annoys the shit out of me every time she opens her mouth, and Morgan was as erratic as a seven-year old on drugs. The show was not only terrible, but it even managed to ruin 30 Rock for me because it made me wonder whether Tracy Morgan’s idiotic portrayal of Tracy Jordan on the show was really an act. I had to ask myself why I bother watching television at all.

We went to bed soon after.

Tuesday (Day 1059): The Human Seesaw

I woke up with a headache and groggily emptied the dishwasher. #1GF! was scheduled to go to a funeral. She won in the “my day sucks worse” competition.

#1GF! headed out to a funeral, and I gave the baby a bath in the kitchen sink. Because I had to use one hand to keep her from bouncing her squash off of the edge of the sink, my baby washing capacity was cut by half. Add some soap to make things slippery, and I soon had to wrap an arm around her to keep her under control.

I remembered all the trouble #1GF! had giving the baby a bath a couple of days before, and realized it wasn’t lack of practice that made it awkward. The sink was more difficult than a baby tub that kept the baby in a conveniently reclined, but upright position.

After the bath, I lay on my side on the floor while the baby climbed up on me to practice standing. She was doing fine until she decided to pitch herself over my legs like she was the board on a human seesaw. She did it so fast that I couldn’t even react. Her little legs were sticking up in the air after her head hit the floor with a thunk. She didn’t have to think whether she wanted to cry or not, she just let loose.

I calmed her down, and took her to the freezer to find something cold for the red spot that was blossoming on her forehead. I tried an ice cream container, and the baby pulled away and looked at it with awe. I think she thought it was a giant chew toy. I took out an ice pack instead, and she did the same thing. Her wonder had replaced her tears.

Nothing cold was going to stay on her head for more than three seconds before being removed, examined, and tasted, so I gave up. I wasn’t sure whether she’d have an egg on her head, so I called her mother immediately to give her a few hours to get used to the fact that I was a bad parent. While I was on the subject, I admitted to the baby pitching herself off the couch onto her head the day before. I suggested that #1GF! get a discount on her child care bill this month.

When #1GF! got home, I overheard a phone conversation that sounded like it was about work. It was from a couple of rooms away, so my satellite dish ears couldn’t pick up the nuances of the conversation, but for some reason, I had the feeling that she was getting laid off. I was changing the baby and calmly thinking, “Well, it’ll be fine. I can get a job. At least I got the Life of Riley series caught up.” I got the baby dressed and went to see what was up.

#1GF! had already hung up the phone and was intensely scrolling through e-mails on her phone.

“Hey,” I said to ease her out of the phone and back into the kitchen.

“Hey.”

“Everything okay?” I asked. I was sure that I’d be spending the afternoon looking through job postings.

“Oh, yea.” She shook her head. “Just work. You know.”

“I thought that you got laid off. I was changing the baby and getting ready to put an end to the Life of Riley series.

“You can’t!”

“No, I meant if I got a job, I would stop it.”

“Ah, okay.”

I know that #1GF! enjoys the Life of Riley series, but her reaction felt like I watched the formation of a sinkhole.

I fed the baby solid food, and she was finally okay with turkey and sweet potatoes. She ate like a champ, and then stuffed a bunch of yogurt snacks in her mouth all at once. I cleaned up the dishes, the bottles, and her, and put her in for a nap. I sat down at my desk and made notes on the day until the baby woke up.

During the baby’s last feeding of the day, I managed to finish Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. It was really basic, but there were a couple of good tips in there for anyone who feels the need to spend their free time brushing up on grammar.

I put the baby on the floor, gave her a few pans and containers, and let her chase them around. She actually crawled a couple of times.

#1GF! ran out to get the truck’s timing belt adjusted, and once she got home, I made another attempt at making the ultimate mac and cheese. This round included a twenty-eight ounce can of diced tomatoes and a quarter teaspoon of red pepper flakes. The tomatoes killed off any bacon flavor, which immediately put them on the “stay the fuck out of my mac and cheese” list. The pepper flakes provided a little kick that had been missing since #1GF! requested that onion be dropped from the recipe. Back to the drawing board.

After dinner, I loaded all the pots and pans into the dishwasher instead of washing them. That’s what a dishwasher is for, they say. We spent the time saved from not washing dishes watching a couple of bad sitcoms. I need to stop wasting an hour on the television at night. It’s never funny enough to justify the coma.

Before I went to bed, I added up all the words in all the Life Of Riley posts over the last three years. There were 553,150 words, which translates to over 2,200 standard pages. Even if only 14% of the posts were interesting, it would still translate to a 300 page book. That was an interesting feeling.

Wednesday (Day 1060): The Sneaky Dicks At Cheerios

I got up, emptied the dishwasher, and had a bowl of Cheerios. As I stood at the counter in my typical, early morning half coma, I realized that there is the same amount of sugar in Honey Nut Cheerios as in a bowl of Apple Jacks or Fruit Loops. And there is more salt. I’ve been eating Honey Nut Cheerios every morning for, oh, I don’t know, the last thirty years under the premise that they were a healthy alternative to sugared cereals. Awesome. If you glance at the nutrition information on the side of the box, the Cheerios people make it look like Honey Nut Cheerios contain less sugar by pure trickery. While other cereals list one cup as their serving size, Cheerios games fools like me by listing its serving size as 3/4 cup. Those sneaky dicks.

Once #1GF! was off to work and the baby was in for her nap, I sat down and roughed out the events of the day before.

Once the baby was awake, I put her toys in front of her and asked her where each of them were. She knows bunny, cow, moose, baby, elephant, and doggie. She got them all correct. As the afternoon lingered, I ran out of things to do, so I tried the game again. The baby picked up elephant when I asked for a monkey, and began picking up the bunny no matter what I asked for. She was in no mood for the game. The only thing she wanted to do was grab onto my shirt and stand up, which she did repeatedly.

Once #1GF! got home, she fed the baby and put her to bed. I sat at my desk and made notes on the day. I had run out of backlogged Life Of Riley posts to go through. I was finally caught up, and it was only 9:30 PM. It was a weird feeling.

Thursday (Day 1061): TVTropes Will Ruin Your Life

The baby was up at 4:30 AM, which is always a good time. #1GF! took care of it, but there was no way for me to sleep with all the crying.

Once our normal schedule caught up to us, #1GF! headed out to work, and I put the baby to bed as usual. Typically, I would spend the time she slept chewing through LOR posts, but those were gone. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, and thought it would be a good idea to keep writing as if I had a deadline. Save money like you need it, and work like you have a deadline.

I excitedly flipped to the back pages of my notebook to pick one of the ten or so incredible book ideas I had come up with over the last few months. I read each of them, and not one had enough juice to get me writing. I thought that I might be able to come up with a better idea, so I patrolled TVTropes.com and ended up mired in plot devices. By the time the baby woke up, I had gone through countless pages, and still had twenty-one tabs open.

When I went in to get the baby, I found her standing in her crib. She had never done that before, so I took a couple of pictures. I thought #1GF! would think it was cute, but mostly, I wanted to document what our house looked like before we had a mobile toddler.

While I fed her a bottle, I tried to use my research to come up with more book ideas. I didn’t come up with anything new, so I tried to expand on some of the ideas that I already had. I didn’t get very far.

I entertained the baby for a while after she ate, and managed to poke her in the eye with the corner of a board book as I flipped one of the pages. Every time she blinked hard and rubbed her eye, I felt really awful. I’m supposed to keep her from getting hurt, not help her from injury to injury.

I went to get the baby’s lunch ready, and she crawled a few steps and somehow smacked her head on the hardwood floor. I reassured her while she cried. When combined with Tuesday’s injuries, I thought that the only books I should write would be How To Be A Bad Parent In Three Easy Steps or possibly Goofus And Gallant On Parenting.

I fed the baby her lunch, and to pay me back for her injuries, she kept karate chopping the spoon. I don’t think she was aiming for the spoon as much as practicing her karate chops. Eventually, her bib was so coated with oatmeal that it was making more of a mess than it was preventing. I took it off of her. To celebrate, she kept dipping her hands into her spoon and rubbing them all over her head.

After she finished eating, I changed her outfit and sat her on the floor next to the couch so that I could clean up the remarkable number of surfaces that had been coated in oatmeal. I looked away for a few seconds to wipe her high chair, and when I turned back, she was standing next to the couch smiling at me. She put her thumb in her mouth, and leaned her head on the cushion as if she intended to fall asleep standing up.

I put her to bed at noon, had a quick sandwich, and sat at my desk to write. I didn’t want to get mired in TVTropes again, but I was feeling a little lost because I was once again without a concrete writing project to drive me on. I thought about updating Better Blogroll, but I thought that I would spend the time keeping the writing streak going. Instead of starting a new story like I should’ve, I went to my blog and wrote down the day’s events because it was comfortable territory.

Instead of moving forward with actual writing, I got off track and researched another book idea to see if it was feasible. The baby was taking an unusually long nap, leaving me to delve into the necessary thinking that goes before the writing. Even though it’s necessary, research and thinking don’t feel like I’m working. I feel like I’m taking a long lunch or playing solitaire at my desk, and I always feel guilty about it.

Because of her long afternoon nap, the baby skipped her late afternoon nap. I entertained her for as long as I could by reading books and playing games. Finally, I stuck a plastic ball inside a plastic ricotta container and let her chase it around the floor. I gave her a plastic spoon and a bowl to bang on to add to her collection of noise making objects.

She pulled herself up on a chair and stood there smiling at me. All she wants to do is stand. I pulled out a notepad and sat at the table trying to start another novel. I knew that anything I wrote was guaranteed to suck, but sometimes you have to write and be confident that everything will be worked out in future edits. The important thing is trying to force that amorphous blob of an idea into something concrete.

When I siphon bits of an idea out of the ether and onto the screen, it gives me a better idea of what the entire story might look like. Ideas evolve into scenes, and those scenes when strung together end up being a book. Sometimes it’s like picking at individual sections of a puzzle without knowing how they’ll eventually link up, but at the early stages, getting the ideas out is all that you can do. With a puzzle, it doesn’t matter which sections you work on, but as long as you’re working to fit something together. Eventually it will fit together, but you have to start somewhere.

I only got about half a page written before it was time for the baby to eat again. #1GF! came home after the feeding and took over the baby care. I made broccoli alfredo for dinner, and was about to make some cookies or cupcakes for dessert, but gave up on cooking.

We ate dinner at the table and then wrestled with the baby to suck two giganto boogers out of her nose. The baby does not like to have boogers sucked out of her nose, but them’s the breaks when you’re a baby.

I cleaned up the dishes, and then went in to clean the bathroom. I was sitting at my desk and smelling of bleach-spiked mints by 8:30 PM.

#1GF! put the baby to bed, and then decided to run out to the store for some gifts and baby wipes before they closed. I quickly wrote down the day’s events and then went back to plotting out the book I had been working on. I wasn’t all that excited about it. I eyed the manila envelope that had been occupying the corner my desk for the last six months. My first book lay dormant in that envelope, and the longer it stayed in there untouched, the better chance I had to convince myself I was a writer.

I sighed and unfolded the orangy-tan paper and pulled out my manuscript. I looked at the title page, not sure if I wanted to continue. “The truth shall set you free,” I said to myself, and flipped the cover page onto the desk upside down.

I read forty or so pages, and even though I had written and rewritten that book several times, I still found a number of typos, and wanted to completely rewrite the first two chapters. I thought of Stephen King’s advice about putting down a book for six weeks after its written. It took me three months to write my first manuscript, so putting it away for six weeks seemed like an unnecessary eternity back then. And here I was six months later, thinking that Stephen King knew what he was talking about.

Friday (Day 1062): Grubby Velociraptors

It was a normal morning of baby care. My parents came over at around noon, so the baby missed her midday nap. I tried to get her to pick out her toys by name to show my parents how smart she was, but she only got it right half the time.

My parents stayed for a couple of hours, and once they were gone, I fed the baby and put her to bed. I went in to continue my research for a book idea. Somehow, the clock read 4 PM. The day was gone. I almost went down to chastise the robot for tinkering with the time-space continuum, but remembered that I didn’t spend the money on that feature when I ordered him.

While looking up some bit of grammar that I could never keep straight, I learned that the common convention now is to put one space after the end of a sentence. Double spacing after a period was abandoned with manual typewriters. I confirmed the rule in a couple of common style guides, but couldn’t believe it was true. I’m trying to do things correctly, but the lack of a double space just feels strange.

It was sunny and warm, so after #1GF! got home, we took the baby out for a walk along the beach. Everyone else had the same idea. A couple of grubby kids ran by, and their father couldn’t seem to keep them from running onto the beach. To distract them, the guy said, “Look kids, a baby!” The kids stopped dead like a couple of velociraptors who suddenly smelled small prey on the wind.

They charged toward the carriage screeching “Baby! Baby!”

I got in between them and the baby like a giant T-Rex and kept them from getting their grubby paws on the baby until their parents could catch up and pull them off the stroller.

As we walked home, there was a biker standing in the middle of the sidewalk smoking pot. I claim to be very libertarian with people doing what they want with their brains in the privacy of their own homes, but the whole scenario made me really mad. I like where I live, and I have developed a very “us” and “them” attitude toward people who visit the beach. I’m very “not in my town” for some strange reason. As we were walking, I was actually debating on whether to call the cops. “There are kids here,” came into my head. Then I thought, “If it’s really about your kid, then teach your kid not to smoke pot. If that guy wants to fuck up his brain, that’s his deal. Let it go.” And somehow, I did.

Saturday (Day 1063): Leftover Words Soaked In Baby Formula

I got up, got dressed, and had a bowl of fruit loops because they were more nutritious than the “healthy” Honey Nut Cheerios that I typically eat every day.

#1GF! walked into the kitchen. “Any idea where the burp cloth is?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” I said through a mouthful of sugary nonsense. “Just grab another one.”

#1GF! shook her head. “Remember when we used to use so many of these in a day that we’d have to do laundry?”

I smiled. “Yea. That seems like so long ago.”

“Doesn’t it?”

It did. The days of the barf ninja seemed to be behind us.

After we got dressed, I worked on one of my ideas for a new book. I sat at my desk and tapped away at the keys, dumping anything that I could think of that would help give me a better picture of the story.

Once the baby woke up from her nap, I downloaded the most recent episode of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me to my phone so that we could listen to it on the ride to #1GF!’s family’s house. It turned out to be a great idea because it killed an hour of the ride.

When we got to #1GF!’s family’s house, I played Fruit Ninja on an iPod touch. It was a basic game, but it kept me entertained for a while. I’m finally getting to the point in my life where kids dominate me in video games. My reaction times still test at around two tenths of a second (test yours), but the video game centers of my brain are flabby, out of shape, and stuffed with leftover words soaked in baby formula.

I went outside to play b-ball with the kids because I didn’t think video games were a good idea on a sunny day when temperatures hovered in the mid-80s. Video games got much more appealing as the bugs feasted on my salted, seaside flesh. I was walking around waving my arms and kicking my legs like I was insane. Strangely, the bugs didn’t bother with the kids.

We listened to NPR again on the way home. It was so much better than music until it veered into some obscure territory that only appeals to academic NPR listeners who tune in on Saturday nights. By the time we dropped #1GF!’s mother off, we were back to music.

We got home at around 10 PM, and took the baby out of the car without waking her up. I had been host to a headache that had been steadily gaining traction since noon, so I sat on the couch and ate ice cream. I know it makes no sense, but when it’s too late to be chugging down caffeine-laced Excedrin, sometimes getting my stomach settled helps my headaches resolve themselves. It didn’t work that time, so I went to bed with a headache and a belly full of dream nitroglycerin.

What I Learned

• Fresh Market is just a bastardization of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.
• Someone switched the baby into adventure mode.
• Tracy Morgan’s rendition of Tracy Jordan may not be acting.
• Washing a baby in the kitchen sink is a lot more difficult than in an infant tub.
• #1GF! really likes these posts.
• Tomatoes were added to the “stay the fuck out of my mac and cheese” list, but Italian pepper wasn’t.
• There were 553,150 words in the Life of Riley Series so far, which translates to over 2,200 standard pages. Even if only 14% of the posts were interesting, it would still translate to a 300 page book.
• A Bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios is actually less healthy than either Apple Jacks or Fruit Loops.
• The baby has learned to pull herself up in her crib.
• The baby would sleep standing up if she were capable.
• A ball inside an old ricotta container is as entertaining as most baby toys.
• My book needs to have at least its first two chapters rewritten.
• The common convention now is to put one space after the end of a sentence. Double spacing after a period was abandoned with manual typewriters.
• I’m finally getting to the point in my life where kids dominate me in video games.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article


]]> http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/05/03/life-of-riley-week-152/feed/ 2 http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/05/03/life-of-riley-week-152/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dyers/~3/6ku17T4hrXg/ http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/04/26/life-of-riley-week-151/#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:58:23 +0000 Jon http://www.dyers.org/blog/?p=2084 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.

“Maybe people kept walking in looking for tax advice. I could see how that could be pretty distracting when you’re trying to give someone a flat top. Or maybe they had nerds walking in there all the time asking for advice on how to pick up girls.”

“I don’t know.”

I paused.

“Stop. I know you’re trying to think of something else.”

“Taxidermy. Maybe they wanted their favorite pet stuffed on a wall so that it played ‘Give me that Filet-o-fish, give me that fish.’”

“Are you done?”

I sat for a second.

“Can you please be done?”

“Yes,” I said like a thwarted twelve-year-old.

We went home and puttered around the house until dinner. I baked some chicken thighs, but threw in some cauliflower against #1GF!’s wishes. It didn’t turn out too badly considering I was working with cauliflower.

While dinner was cooking, I made a few phone calls, including one to a bearded ex-coworker. “So how’s the beard?” I asked.

“Still going,” he replied.

“Nice.”

“Yea, you taught me well. You can’t let a couple of warm days trick you into shaving.”

“Yep. If you do, it ends up thirty degrees and snowing for the next two weeks. Then, you not only get a cold face, but the feeling you’ve been duped.”

From there, the conversation devolved into a discussion about metal, video games, and zombies…as good conversations usually do.

#1GF! put the baby to bed and we sat down to watch The Informant, starring a mustachioed Matt Damon. When the best part of the movie is a bad mustache, the movie isn’t very good. I paid more attention to the room that we watched it in than the movie itself.

I went to bed thinking about beards, and how I’ve somehow worked myself into the position of being a bit of an expert on them over the course of a few years. Besides talking to a lot of beardos all over the world, I couldn’t figure out what real good it did me. Sure, a good beard and a wall of books would be great on the back of a book jacket, but I’m still a long way from a publisher’s photo shoot.

My mind wandered to the fact that people in offices everywhere have been busily advancing their careers over the last three years, as mine has grown steadily stagnant. Although I drifted off to sleep wondering if I’ll ever succeed out here on my own, I was still pretty happy to not be sucking major bosscock to level up in the corporate world.

Monday (Day 1051): Pop And Parental Isolation

I woke up with bad pop music in my head. It was not a pleasant way to wake up, and it made me rethink having pop radio on all day. I had been listening to teenage pop radio for a week because if I heard “American Pie” one more fucking time, I was going to throw the radio through a wall. Why didn’t I get a CD, or play music off of the PC? When you’re the only one in the house old enough to speak English, listening to the radio makes you feel like the rest of the world is still out there. Unlike a CD, you know that there are other people listening to the same thing at the same time you are. Maybe they’re groaning and rolling their eyes, or listening along on headphones while they type out another bullshit status report, but you know they’re out there.

The larger question is: If you’re going to listen to radio, why listen to pop radio? I think pop radio makes me think that there are people out there who party all the time in places that are always sunny. Sure, they might be delusional, immature, or a figment of my imagination, but the biggest problems they face revolve around the time-worn tangle of trusting of a big butt and a smile. The idea that those people exist makes me laugh, and pop radio makes them seem probable.

I made pasta salad in the afternoon without much of a problem. The baby sat on her mat and smiled at me every so often when one of her toys amused her. She’s so much fun. Even without language, she’s getting to be a little person.

Dinner was already made by the time #1GF! got home, so I wrote for a couple of hours while #1GF! played with the baby and put her to bed. We ate dinner and watched a couple of shows on the DVR at around 9 PM. They were all sitcoms, but the only one I actually laughed at was Modern Family.

Tuesday (Day 1052): Sitting (Now With Gravitational Efficiency)

I put the baby down on her mat and went to make her bottles. She was up an hour early, and even though I got a good night’s sleep, I was exhausted. I had woken up from one of those dreams where I was moving the next day, and there was an apartment full of crap that I had to pack. It was 9:37 PM in the dream, and I didn’t even have any boxes.

I put the baby down for a nap, and by the time I wrote two paragraphs, the baby was awake. “You have to be kidding me,” I said to the monitor, but the monitor is one of those machines that doesn’t have the necessary circuitry to play jokes. The baby was awake. I took two aspirin to combat a headache that I had been carrying around for the last day, and went in to get her.

It was normal baby care until the afternoon when I took the baby to the library so that I could pick up a few books on writing. She smiled as we galloped down a long row of books to the writing section, with me quietly making galloping noises to make her smile. I quickly picked out four books and galloped back to the desk. It’s not easy handing over books and cards while holding a baby, so I made the right choice when I had stashed my library card in an easily accessible front pocket. While I was in line two women told me how beautiful the baby was. They somehow forgot to mention how awesome they thought my beard was, but that’s a very common mistake.

The whole trip into the library took about ten minutes. I tried to show the baby some paintings and a large grandfather clock, but she was more interested in a table of flyers. I took her outside and called #1GF! from the parking lot.

While I was sitting in the back seat of the truck with my leg hanging out the door, an old lady tried to park next to me. I pulled my leg into the car rather than risk having my leg taken off as she jockeyed her grey sedan back and forth in the comfortably wide space

We were home safely a little while later, and the baby was a little needy in the afternoon. She didn’t want to be too far away from me, perhaps because she couldn’t stop thinking about me sitting in the parking lot with a bloody stump of a leg while an old woman explained to the gathering crowd that her Oldsmobile must have a stuck accelerator and faulty steering.

The baby had gotten even better at moving from laying down to sitting. She would make a bridge by standing on her feet and hands like a baby elephant, and then walk her legs forward until gravity offered her no other choice than to sit. She was also just about pulling herself up on the couch. I had the feeling that she’d be mobile sooner than we thought.

Once #1GF! got home, she took over the baby, and I went in to write. I got hours of writing in and finished LOR 148 at 11 PM. I was within a couple of posts of having the Life of Riley series caught up. Then, I could finally write something else. Or read. Or do something that doesn’t involve jamming my generic daily moments into flashier packaging.

Wednesday (Day 1053): She Like A The Bunny, But Not A You Sauce

I took care of the baby all morning, and once she was down for a nap, I cleaned up the kitchen, called a landscaping place, and made dentist appointments for #1GF! and myself.

The baby took regular naps throughout the day, which let me get some writing in, and when she was awake she was a lot of fun. I read her books and tried to get her to see the similarities between them. I’d point to a cat in one book and then a cat in another book and so on. I didn’t know if she was getting it, but she didn’t seem to mind.

I stuck some of her toys between the couch cushions, and she sat on the floor in front of the couch pulling them out. At one point I asked her “Where’s the bunny?” and she reached over and pulled the bunny out of the cushion. I sat staring at her for a second before saying “Yay!” and watching her face light up. She was getting it. I made a mental note that the swears were going to have to be actively curbed around the house.

After the baby pulled the toys out of the cushion, I would pick them up and stuff them back when she went for the next one. She soon started dropping the toys behind her back, and then looking at me sideways and grinning like she was making a joke. I kept putting things back, and she kept laughing. It was a really fun day.

In the late afternoon, I put the baby on the kitchen floor and pulled out a couple of metal bowls and a wooden spoon. I read somewhere that letting kids explore and hear the result of their actions was a good thing. Whether it’s true or not, the baby seemed to have a good time.

#1GF! called while the baby was yelling and banging on a metal bowl, causing me to laugh and repeat myself every so often.

I made pasta for dinner, which wasn’t really cooking as much as it was a cheat and reheat dinner. #1GF!, the baby, and I all ate at the table together, and I gave the baby a taste of her mother’s pasta sauce. The baby made a face like she was not psyched about it.

#1GF!’s jaw dropped. “What? Oh, you’re going to be eating a lot of this, so you better get used to it.”

#1GF! put the baby to bed and cleaned up the dishes, and I went into the office and finished my second post of the week at 10:30 PM. I was within two posts of being caught up on the Life of Riley series.

Thursday (Day 1054): Bad News? Try Tuna!

The baby woke up at 12:30 AM because there were some sort of explosions or shots fired outside. #1GF! was worried and kept going to the windows. I was thinking that there weren’t enough shots to be an invasion, and by the sounds of it, it was at least a couple of streets away. I stayed in bed because there was no immediate threat, and laying on a mattress was a lot safer and more comfortable than standing in front of a window if it did end up being random gunfire.

At 4:40 AM, the baby woke up again, and wouldn’t go back to sleep. No matter what bundle of awesome you intend to pack into your day, getting up at 4:30 in the morning to start it is never fun. The baby was wide awake, but we waited until after 5 AM to go get her and start our day because we’re civilized human beings.

I put the baby to bed at 8:30 AM, and swept the contents of my notebook into the blog until the baby woke up.

I gave the baby a bath, got her dressed, gave her a teething ring, and put her on her mat. I cleaned up the bath, and put her bottle in to warm because there were only fifteen minutes before she was supposed to eat. The baby was a lot more mobile, so she spent her time making her way across the living room and into the hall by rolling and spinning herself. She thought it was really funny.

While I was feeding the baby her solid food, my mother showed up unannounced. She tried to call, and I didn’t pick up because I was feeding the baby. She hung out for a while and we had coffee. Everything was going relatively smoothly until #1GF! came home with some bad news about her mother. She welled up once she got in the door. It wasn’t good.

Not knowing what to do, I made tuna fish sandwiches for everyone. I’m really good with emotions. If another human has a problem, the only options I’m programmed with are hug it, feed it, or stand there like a dope. I did all three.

My mother went home, and I showed #1GF! how the baby was starting to get little jokes. I put a ring on my head and make it fall off. She’d laugh and try to put it on her head. It wasn’t an Abbot & Costello routine, but we were starting small.

I worked on the last week of LOR that I needed to catch up on. I only made it to Thursday, but being so close to caught up was more of a relief than it really should have been. It had taken me six full months of filling every spare minute with writing to document the last nine months since the baby was born. Over 174,500 words (698 standard pages) were added to the Life of Riley series in that time. Had I spent the time wisely, I’d have another two books written.

I sat at my desk reading about a new Facebook initiative seeking to link real identities on the web. No one but advertisers and thieves want something like this, yet all Facebook users were automatically opted in. I put together a Facebook group called I’m Tired Of Facebook Grabbing At My Privates to keep track of news related to the new program (dubbed “Instant Personalization”). I don’t know why, but there were only nineteen people interested in it. Maybe people really don’t mind having their privates grabbed these days.

I ate leftovers at 9 PM while watching The Office and 30 Rock. Both shows have obviously given up on having their comedic way with me.

While standing in front of the mirror and brushing my teeth before bed, I took a good look at my mustache. It looked as if a hairy whale had lodged itself in my nasal cavity, leaving only its tail hanging out of my nostrils. It was both awesome and frightening at the same time. #1GF! agreed with only half that statement.

Friday (Day 1055): The Scorpion

I got up, prepped the bottles, emptied the dishwasher, had a bowl of cereal, showered, sent #1GF! off to work, took out a suit for a wake, polished my shoes, trimmed the around my ears, shaved, and sat down at my desk to check my e-mail before the baby woke up.

I was trying to plan out the weekend. I had to go to a wake, rake and mow my lawn, meet with a landscaper, probably visit with #1GF!’s mother, and then rake #1GF!’s family cottage before the rain hit on Sunday. It was barely Friday morning, but I could already see Monday creeping up.

I sat at my desk and tapped out a single paragraph before the baby woke up. I gave her a bath, fed her, entertained her, fed her again, and put her in for a nap. Welcome to noontime.

At night, I went out to a wake. I packed the baby into the car and met #1GF! in a hospital parking lot that was near the funeral home. We traded the baby, and she started crying once she was in the back of #1GF!’s car. I have no idea why. Maybe it was because I was in a suit, and she just wanted to be around a bearded guy in a suit. I kissed #1GF! goodbye, got in the car, and looked in the mirror. The suit matched with the beard made me look like an eccentric submarine-dwelling millionaire code-named “The Scorpion.”

Well The Scorpion almost didn’t find the wake, because the deceased had shortened his last name from the original vowel-infused Italian, and no one in my family mentioned it to me. I had to call my parents from the parking lot to confirm that I was in the right place.

The wake went as wakes typically do, but I’m almost positive that someone asked me how it felt to get away from the baby for a couple of hours. I didn’t quite know how to answer, being that I was at a wake.

After the wake, I met #1GF! and the baby at #1GF!’s mother’s house. #1GF!’s friend was visiting too, and we stayed for a little while before heading home.

At around 9 PM, we ate Ramen noodles for dinner because I was too lazy to cook. We watched Choke, which was packed with a surprising amount of sex and wit, but sort of trailed off at the end like a conversation with a drunken professor.

Saturday (Day 1056): Cleaning For The Cleaning Lady

I had a really hard time getting out of bed, but once you have a child, there is no more catching up on sleep or sleeping in. There is only coffee and plowing down the rutted road of sleepiness.

I got up, had a bowl of cereal, and went out to rake the lawn because I had a landscaper coming to look at the yard. I know it’s like cleaning up for the cleaning lady, and I know it’s stupid. Once the lawn was raked, I put together the new lawnmower. I set the blade height on it with one hand. I pressed one button, and the whole mower rose up like it was on hydraulics. Ah, finally a technological landscaping advance I can get behind.

I mowed the lawn, and it ended up taking half the time of the push mower because I only had to make one pass at the tall patches. I managed to finish up at 10:53 AM, and the landscaper was due to arrive at 11. I was a lot sweatier than I should’ve been for having done so little. I dove into the shower, and was dressed and ready seven minutes later. Luckily, the landscaper was five minutes late.

We met with the landscaper for a half hour, and he got on his way. We went inside, put the baby on her play mat, and #1GF! and I went into the kitchen to make some lunch. We heard the baby laughing, and when we looked over at her, her face was staring at us over a chair. It took me a few seconds to figure out that she stood up without help. She had pulled herself up on me before, but never on the couch by herself.

After lunch, I faxed a plot plan to the landscaping guy. I should’ve used the new scanner/copier/fax machine I bought weeks ago, but it’s still sitting in its box on the floor. I took an old fax machine out of the closet and used that because unboxing a printer wasn’t something I wanted to take on.

#1GF!’s sister in law brought over her kids, and we all went out for a walk. We stopped at a local playground that #1GF! and I walk by all the time, but never notice. I thought it was pretty cool that it had rubber ground to break the kids’ falls, but I wondered if it had the same staph breeding properties of AstroTurf.

Once the kids were done playing, we left the playground, and I walked my niece along the seawall. I would pick her up and carry her around any people sitting her path.

#1GF!’s sister in law left a bunch of plants for us, and then they got on their way.

Not too long after, a friend of mine called because he had just dropped off his wife at a party in the area. He’s North Shore, so he doesn’t get down our way all that much. He dropped in for a few hours to hang out and shoot the shit. Sometimes, it’s really cool when people just drop in.

The guy didn’t want to stay for dinner, so after he left, I went out to pick up pizza and the local paper for #1GF!.

When I got home, the baby was in bed, the lights were pretty much out, and everything was set up for pizza and a movie. Unfortunately we watched Falling Up, which was as trite and predictable as an old after school special.

What I Learned

• Someone had a big enough problem with extras that they named their shop Just Hair Cuts.
• Sautéed cauliflower isn’t all that bad.
• Not only do I have beard wisdom, but some people heed it.
• The baby likes the library.
• The baby knows where the bunny is.
• The baby is starting to make little jokes.
• The baby does not like her mother’s pasta sauce (yet).
• #1GF!’s impulse is to look out the window when she hears shots. Mine is to stay low, and go back to sleep, if possible.
• I’ve written over 170,000 words (681 pages) in the last six months.
• It takes six months to catch up from taking three months off of writing.
• I’m not sure that people actually care what Facebook does with their user data.
• Wearing a suit and beard, and referring to yourself in the third person as The Scorpion” might be eccentric, but it just might be the image change that you have been looking for.
• I mowed for a landscaper.
• Hey, that playground down by the beach isn’t bad at all.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article


]]> http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/04/26/life-of-riley-week-151/feed/ 1 http://www.dyers.org/blog/archives/2010/04/26/life-of-riley-week-151/