Today has been a scrambled one. I woke up at 7:53. I had twelve minutes to get showered and in the car to take the kids to school. I grabbed a package of Graham Crackers and ran down the steps to the shower. I emerged from the shower, shaved, and didn't even have to scrape the car. It was sixty degrees outside. In January. In the Catskill Mountains of New York at 8:24 a.m.!

I drove the kids to school, and on the way home stopped to get a gallon of milk for the two still at home.

I got the milk from the Quickway. I had told myself I wouldn't patronize that place since Chavez of Venezuela owned it, but I forgot. It was 3.29 about fifty cents more than at the Price Chopper but the lines at the Price Chopper are long and the cashiers are young and have better things to do than to hurry to help me speed along, and the Quickway can at least be counted to live up to its name.

I then went back to the elementary school to ride the yellow school bus with kindergartner Tristan on his field trip to the Pizza Hut. His whole class went, and I had been volunteered to chaperone. Tristan got to make his own small pizza. The dough was already rising in a pan and Tristan just had to push down a circular plate and then pour in tomato sauce, and choose two toppings. He spread the cheese, and then chose pepperoni and olives.

I sat and watched him eat it, and then he drank two cartons of fat free milk. His friend Roman has been sick for a week, but today they sat across from one another. "Are we still friends?" Roman asked.

"Sure," Tristan said.

It was uneventful but it was a good time.

I then drove a urine sample out to a small rural hospital. My three year old has suffered fatigue from time to time and I've wondered if he has Lyme's disease. The doctor thinks I'm nuts and just want his attention, he actually said. I can never tell who's joking in New York State. They have a more brutal sense of humor than anything I'm used to, and they keep poker faces.

Then I finished reading the marvelous book on Richard Brautigan that just came out from McFarland. It's an expensive academic book, but it's worth every penny. (39.95 in paperback!) In it, is among other jewels an amazing biographical essay by Michael McClure. McClure knew Brautigan and had a love-hate relationship with him for thirty five years. The proximity, and the fact that McClure can REALLY THINK, makes the essay a pure vein of gold. All in all, the book is great for those of you, like me, who grew up on Brautigan. He was the first writer I ever LOVED. I can hardly wait to review the book more extensively for an academic audience. Perhaps I can go over it in detail for five pages! I think I learned more about a single writer from this book than from any other book I've ever read. I'm a Brautigan fanatic but never had the least clue as to his character or his aesthetics. I was unable to even think about him from an objective viewpoint. Now I think I can!

I then checked Ron Silliman's blog. Yesterday he mentioned me twice on his blog, and I always like to check to see how I appear in the comments. But there were few comments today. He monitors his comments, and so perhaps he didn't have time to read the waterfall or tsunami of positive comments concerning me.

I've been a rabid Bush supporter at times in the recent past. Right now I feel more centrist than anything else. McCain seems too far to the right. Hillary seems too far to the left. I want someone right in the middle. Edwards is close to that. Bush strikes me as a nice guy who is out of touch right now. I'm not sure why he's gotten so out of touch. I miss Rumsfeld. I felt at least I knew what was happening with him around. Now I feel like there's some secretive plot hatching and we won't know what it is for another twenty years.

The only candidate I ever really cared about was Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. They won't make another candidate in that mold, however, again. And if they did, he would be squashed like a bug, as he was in 1984. He was too innocent.

What weather we're having. Can you believe it at the beginning of January?

And I feel scrambled, fragmented, like a puzzle I can't quite fit together. The pieces seem to go, but perhaps I lack the patience or the time to find the way this day fit together. 15 minutes more and it's time to put the kids to bed and start on a serious Brautigan review.