butter, milk. butter, milk.

It's a trick for people who, according to one gentle writer, are too creative to stay on task. Because we get so easily distracted. So you're putting something away, and you keep saying, out loud, oh, I'm taking this tube of paint and putting it with the others, until you've done it. So you don't get confused and start doing something else, while you still have the tube of paint in your hand.

In my case last night, it was a completely delirious trip to the Cala up on California and Hyde, which is happily open 24 hours, so the fact that I couldn't get out of the house to grocery shop until 9 didn't make a difference. I'd made myself eat something before I left so that I wouldn't be completely stupid, but the contents of my basket still leaned to the fanciful...several kinds of spreadable cheese (I have no crackers or other substrate), a bottle of tangerine juice (actually intelligent), two packets of Le Petit Ecolier cookies, the ones with dark chocolate tops. I wanted Deluxe Grahams, I wanted to regress that much, but couldn't find any, and stood there with my mouth open looking again and again at the Spongebob-emblazoned packages of Fudge Stripes and Grasshoppers, hoping perhaps that maybe one of them would magically turn into a packet of Deluxe Grahams.

If I stood there long enough.

Didn't happen. So I trudged off to find chorizo, which should be easy in a city with such a large Latino population, but for some odd reason, Cala has their sausage products spread out over at least four locations. Seriously. I thought about cheese dogs, the kind with the cheese piped into the middle, I was feeling that small and sad and eight-years-old, but didn't buy any.

So eventually it came down to the last five or six items on the mental list, and I just couldn't be in the store any more. Too many couples shopping together, too much cheerful music, too much potential of spending all the money I had on raw cookie dough. So I started mumbling butter, milk, butter, milk to myself. Just to remember. Just to stay on track.

To the brave folk who called or wrote yesterday and got this from me--oh, other than feeling like I'm being eviscerated, I'm fine, thanks--I'm sorry. And thanks to everyone who commented, directly or through other people, on the last post; your kindness means so much to me. More than I can articulate. I'm a little better today (he wrote! from the plane!) and might actually get some work done.

And I have dairy products.