Fathermucker Read Online Free PDF Page B

lad as if he were the Messiah. Enjoy.
    In addition to tending to the insatiable needs of two preschoolers (sippy cup of watered-down apple juice, Z-bar and/or bagel with cream cheese, Noggin On Demand) and a vociferously greedy and shrill cat (Friskies Buffet, release into the pitch-black yard), the following elements comprise my pre-dawn hours: coffee, Facebook, fetch the newspaper (if it’s there), horoscope, more coffee, e-mail, glass of water, bathroom, more coffee, bagel, another glass of water, Facebook, e-mail, bathroom, shower. The order sometimes changes, and the shower is often sacrificed for expediency, especially when Stacy is away, as she is, for the fifth Fifth! The very word screams for hard liquor morning in a row. But coffee is always first. Coffee is paramount. When parents pray to the God of Easy Mornings, the burnt offerings are roasted coffee beans.
    Ceramic tiles cold on my bare feet, I scoop the ground manna into the Proctor Silex, pour the water (the dishwasher attachment doohickey saves me the trouble of first filling the pot), hit the magic button. There is a timer mechanism, but any time I’ve tried to use it, I’ve set it for the wishful-thinking hour of six o’clock, only to have to start it manually well before that; setting the timer on the coffee maker is the wake-up equivalent of mentioning a no-hitter in the seventh. I stumble into the bedroom, fall into my faux-leather desk chair, and return to the laptop.
    Jennifer Hemsworth is in a relationship, and it’s complicated.
    That’s understating things.
    Mike DiLullo became a fan of The Colbert Report.
    Wow, Mike, way to take a stand.
    Simone Smithson hope heaven is peacefully cause I’m sick of crap.
    I’m right there with you, Simone, [sic] and all.
    Outside the window, a black abyss. Only my faint reflection in a pane well-fingerprinted by tiny hands. Steve is still asleep, curled into a ball—a hairball, if you will—at the foot of the bed. The mice, mercifully, have moved on. Through the baby monitor I can hear, in the “East Wing” of the upstairs, Roland banging around with some or other toy, probably his Thomas tracks, judging by the clatter and the proximity to the microphone; in Maude’s room, all quiet on the Western Front. I should probably jump in the shower now, while I have a fighting chance, but no, not without the coffee.
    Sharon Rothman was tagged in an album.
    Wow. Her hair was big, back in the day.
    Matt Harris just barely has enough sense to not download and start playing a new video game at 2 a.m.
    Michelle Strange just beat Laurence Rand in Three Towers Solitaire.
    Unless you have a Sibylline personality disorder, how can you beat someone else in solitaire? It’s been a while since I took French, but doesn’t solitaire imply solitude ? Isn’t the point to beat yourself? (Right-click, hide updates from Three Towers Solitaire. I’m a big fan of the HIDE feature, a huge concession in the historic treaty that ended the Mafia Wars .)
    Eugenia Last is a syndicated astrologer. In the picture they run with her column in the Poughkeepsie Journal —which won’t be deposited on my driveway until six thirty or so; I’m on her website now—she is attractive, with long, kinky blonde hair and the Slavic features (wide, flat face; tiny eyes) she shares with Debbie Harry, Neko Case, Michelle Pfeiffer, and my friend Meg. Eugenia’s New Age bona fides are impeccable. Every morning, she offers up her oracular wisdom, and, while lesser pliers of the zodiacal trade fall wide of the mark, damn if she’s not bang-on most of the time. When Eugenia Last proclaims a five-star day, the heavens will smile upon you . . . but if she metes out the minimum two, you’d best go back to bed.
    Raising the ceramic chalice of the Mud of Christ to my unworthy lips, I take my first sip of coffee—a perfect blend of Fair Trade Organic Kenyan Gold, light cream,