Berlin, 24.11.00 I am paying for yesterday's comments, obviously. I was actually in a fairly positive mood when I finally dragged myself home from work yesterday, things were going well, but then all hell broke loose in the middle of the night. Gas, or something. Four hours sleep. Jesus christ. This morning Annette said to the baby "okay, we'll feed you..." and I was a split-second away from adding "...to a fucking alligator if you don't stop keeping me up nights." Luckily I caught myself in time. The novelty has seriously worn off here. Once you get past the miracle of life business, babies are a tiresome pain in the ass. Berlin, 23.11.00 I knew those "damn, this isn't so bad" emails would come back to haunt me. Hubris is still hubris, even when you know it ahead of time. Babies are irritating. Irritating, irritating, irritating. People say "Enjoy this time, they grow up too quickly" and I'm like, fuck, where's the fast forward button on this damn thing? The scary part is, she is still relatively low-maintenance, I'm told. But it just wears on you, the lack of sleep, the endless obligations. I don't mind the various domestic chores, though monotonous they are not especially unpleasant, but what really gets on my nerves is the fact that she, like most babies presumably, cannot be left alone unless she is deeply asleep (and deeply asleep rarely lasts an hour in the evening). Even holding her isn't necessarily enough - you actually have to pay attention or talk or do stuff, you can't just watch TV or read the paper. So you get nothing done. This is irritating. And if she's going to be cranky or fussy or have gas issues and yell for a bit, it will happen right around midnight, just as we're getting sleepy, and will keep us up an hour or two longer than we'd like. This isn't too huge a problem early in the week, but by Friday I'm a dead man. Sleeping on the couch is going to be more common, I suspect. It also irritates me that I'm not training anymore. It's partly time, partly energy. Some evenings Annette is clearly tired and I need to help her; other evenings things are going fine at home but I'm too exhausted from having been kept up the night before and I simply couldn't be bothered. Hopefully this will get better, but for now I've just given up trying - it's too frustrating making plans and then not being able to keep them. No sport makes Scott a grumpy boy. I am not enjoying the restrictions on my freedom, evidently. Meanwhile, I have been asked to banish certain subjects from conversation. No more jokes about cooking, eating or otherwise consuming the child. Annette's point - and she's quite right - is that I have to say something nice before I can earn the privilege of saying something nasty and having everyone understand that I am being unquestionably sarcastic. Fair enough. (She pointed out that I spend more time talking to Vita than I do to Madeleine. I could only reply that we've known each other longer and have more to talk about.) The cat, at least, is behaving herself. Seems quite content really. I have a litmus test that will tell me whether the experience of parenthood (well, of reproduction, since I'm not feeling or acting very parental) will have effected any sort of psychological transformation. The test is as follows: will I still find this joke funny? Q: What's twelve inches long, has a big purple head, and makes women scream? A: Crib death. I still find that funny. Not surprisingly. Okay, enough whining. This will get better. It will, I'm sure. Otherwise, I'm jumping in front of a train... It's just so damn... irritating.