Monday, July 7, 2008

Life: now in bite-sized pieces!

Getting ready for a baby keeps you plenty busy. You spend hundreds of dollars on furniture, toys and conveyances engineered to move your baby from point A to point B, all of which are guaranteed to be universally despised by your child. You "score" hand-me-downs from friends, who were coincidentally en route to the dump with that crap in their car when you called. You read books and you take classes. Too many classes.

You try to buy your way into preparation, but there are some things that you didn't/couldn't prepare for because it was all you could do just to survive 15 minutes in the pit of despair that is Babies 'R' Us. Those afternoons sitting on your couch, watching baseball, and drinking beer? Those days are over. Spur of the moment plans to meet friends for dinner down on the beach? Not anymore. Need some decompression time after a long day at work or a little "me" time after a Fourth of July blowout? How about a screaming child with a poopy diaper instead?


There are no days off. In fact, there are no "days" anymore, since a newborn's life exists entirely in 3-4 hour increments. My previously exciting and spontaneous existence has devolved into a movie-of-the-week format, with 6-8 episodes daily and with each episode following a predictable path:
exciting opening sequence of angry awakening, rabid feeding, a little gratuitous nudity, a musical interlude with pterodactyl-like screeching, some manic flailing and then finally the slow descent into sleep (by way of lots and lots more angry crying). The credits roll, there's a short commercial break, everyone hits the bathroom, and we do it all over again.

Just to keep it interesting, the genre does change periodically. We've got comedies and action scripts. We've got horror masterpieces, with screaming, too many bodily fluids, and a certainty that someone is not going to make it to the finale. Usually, however, it's a lame TV movie. It's got some laughs, it's got some tears, but mostly it's just a boring story with boring characters muddling through boring situations.


And at the risk of getting all Lifetime on you, we couldn't be happier. Well, that's not true. I personally would be happier if we could get David Caruso to guest star, but I don't think our sunglasses budget is big enough.


A big shout out to the planet's newest star, Millie Grugan. Welcome to the show! Feel free to stop by our house any time. I've got a bunch of crap that I'm just positive you're going to hate.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the shout out! I can no longer distinguish between a weekend and week night. So sad... As for the 3-4 hour increments, Millie seems to prefer the feeding every hour schedule. I hope she will eventually move on to the 3-4 hour block schedule. Life will never be the same, and I think the initial shock of that is subsiding. At least I am no longer crying about it!