That afternoon Jake and I built the tallest Lego tower ever. I felt invigorated, energized, and reborn. When I woke up there an hour later, I realized I had been sitting on a pot of gold, figuratively speaking. Somebody was pinching me from the inside, so I just sat on the toilet and tried to relax. Maybe it was the coffee, but suddenly, I felt the need to dash to the bathroom. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down to write. Coincidentally, that’s the running time of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.Ībout six weeks ago, I put Snow White in the DVD player, planted Jake on a chair, and gave him a carrot and an apple for snacks.
My effective working time shrank to three hours a day: an hour in the morning during Jake’s nap, an hour during his afternoon nap and another hour right after the afternoon nap and his snack. Suddenly, clapping hands together just didn’t cut it. When Jake got bigger and started sleeping better, he also learned to walk and talk, and demanded more of my time and attention. I would start writing a sentence, fall asleep in the middle of it, and finish it in the REM phase of my sleep. For the first two years, I was like a zombie. I still needed to work.Īnd then there was the sleep deprivation.
But, whatever I made in fun times, I lost in money. Time flies when you’re having fun, and I was having the time of my life. This was all just the first act of my routine.Īn hour later, it was time to thank the audience. The taking off the socks to the tunes of “I wanna be loved by you,” the removing of the pants by counting to three and then just yanking them off really fast so Jake would giggle, the tickling of the stomach before opening the tape on the diapers. For me, the first fifteen minutes were just the warm-up, working the one-boy crowd, and getting him in the mood for the show. I never really knew how some people could change a diaper so fast. There were all the chores that come with a baby, too: changing diapers, feeding, and … well, mostly those two, but they seemed to take up a lot of time. He was also an evening and a night person. She worked long hours anyway, so I had the apartment to myself most of the time.įirst of all, Janet was now home all the time. When I finally decided to dump my pants and move into her apartment, which was admittedly much nicer and bigger than mine, we made some ground rules: I was a writer who needed to write. She said she wouldn’t move in with me unless my sweat pants moved out. That, and the fact that she refused to move in with me. One of the reasons I had originally put off moving in together with Janet was that I loved that freedom almost as much as I loved her. Most days, I was still wearing my sweat pants at lunch time.
I had notebooks and pieces of scrap paper lying around everywhere. I’d be writing one piece on the sofa, walk over to the kitchen table to make a sandwich, and type another paragraph in the other piece I was working on. I always had two laptops somewhere around the apartment when I was working on two things simultaneously. In my bachelor years I had become accustomed to doing my writing whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted. I am pretty good at shutting out the world when I’m working on a story, but there are certain things that can penetrate any fortress, get around any obstacle and wear down any human mind.
He didn’t have to know I had locked the door. My four-year-old was on the other side of the door, looking for Daddy, and while there were reasons for my hiding in the bathroom, I still had a heart. I was trying to unlock the door without making any sound. I pulled one of the earphones out of my ear and listened. (But you’ll miss photos, some sound effects, and my lulling voice.) If you don’t want to listen to my reading of the piece, the entire text can be found after the jump. It’s a short short story about a man, his job and a baby, with some autobiographical elements in it. It’s my wife’s birthday, and I wanted to do something special. Here’s a special post for a special occasion.
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