Boredom

There we were, having this situation all under control, happy with our perspective rolls in this world; she a baby and me a daddy. Where do you go from here? What do you do when there is no crisis, no feeding, no changing, no nothing? Do you just sit there and stare at each other? We play for a little bit every day. I mean, there’s only so much you can do with a newborn, but there is some stuff. We do sit-ups, we roll on our tummy, we make our legs kick more while saying “kick kick kick”. By “we” I mean I actually manipulate the baby and she drools. That’s not true at all, sometimes there is no drool. Boredom was a huge problem for me. I’m a man’s man, remember? I’m used to action, right? This was tough for me. I would take her downstairs, put her on a soft blanket on the couch next to me, and once the play was done, all we would do was watch tv. Noise, as it turns out is soothing to her, by the way. For the whole first week, that’s what my life was. I thought I was going to die. One day my wife came down there and told me she went through the very same things I was now going through. Remember, she was staying home with Joy for the first 2 months or so, so her opinion held credence with me. She told me that, while I could sit here and catch up on all my ‘80s movies playing on cable, I could do something else as well. I didn’t know what that meant. What can you “do” with a baby? Well, for instance, you can put her in a bouncy chair and let her watch you fix the garbage disposal, or put her in her car seat or in her stroller and let her watch you pick up debris in the yard (as long as it’s warm enough). Seriously? She can do that? I can… WE can do that? Yah. You can. My laundry didn’t just do itself for those first 2 months, although it seemed like it. My wife is a pretty smart cookie.

Slowly I started to engage the child in that way. Now – there is a limit to how much she’s willing to “help me” with. By “help me” I mean “don’t scream while I do this”. There is a limit but there is an opportunity to do things while you have a baby. Fortunately, we had just moved into a house that needed LOTS of work, so there was NO shortage of projects. Some were longer and required more resources and time than others, but for the most part, I kept busy. I’m grateful I had the mad skillz to get some of that stuff done.

During all this plumbing work and electrical repairs and general spiffing up, I still felt short somehow. A piece of me was missing. Enter The Dodge. The Dodge is a truck I received in lieu of some payroll my company, who was going under and desperate, never gave me. It was a 2007 Dodge 2500 4x4 Heavy Duty with a Cummins Turbo Diesel. WOW. Talk about manly! Well, it had a bad transmission. So, all this manly potential was draining out via this broken transmission. Do I have the nerve to rebuild a transmission with a baby on board? Damn right I do. Stay tuned.