I wandered around the empty house today, bored, restless, anxious, and looking for something to entertain me. I sat in the sunny chair and glanced over the bookshelf. Touched the books. Picked one up, flipped through it, put it back. Gazed at the craft supplies. Walked back downstairs and wandered through the kitchen. Nothing there. A cat stared at me. I ignored her. An interesting change, I thought. I picked up my laptop and flopped onto the couch. Opened up Eleanor and wrote in a new character, Arnold Crumbly. He’s missing and probably dead. She doesn’t know what happened to him. Neither do I.

As I lay on the couch staring at the ceiling, still in my pajamas, I thought how pitiful I am to want to do all these things but have no desire to make the effort. So I got dressed and drove to Jersey Mike’s. I listened to classic rock on the way there and wondered whether rock music is still being produced. I know what the kids are listening to these days because I’m around them most of the time, and it’s not rock. I have a “class time” playlist to expose them to the good stuff, but they already know a lot of it. It’s fun to watch them sing along while they work. Sometimes they feel the beat and show it.

Right now I’m sitting in a parking lot typing this because I like writing in warm parking lots. Robert Plant is singing, and the sun just dipped behind the treetops. Flecks on sunlight dot the concrete end the cars and the dash. A security guard dressed in black and red is sitting on a horse in the shade like a Mountie, and I wonder what he is thinking about as he watches cars. Watches people. Making up stories about their lives, maybe. I feel ya, man. I feel ya.

Why is it that I can’t sleep when school starts back up? Anxiety, maybe. Constantly thinking about what I can do better this time around and all the things I need to do immediately to avoid getting behind, maybe. Yes, and yes, and yes. My mind spirals down a rabbit hole of past failures as I tire of these contemplations.

Knowing my alarm goes off in two hours and that lack of sleep makes my brain less usable isn’t helpful..

Neither is this lit screen I’m looking at as I type and erase and retype with clumsy thumbs.

…

The book I recently finished left me unnerved. I started the book over a year ago. No, two years ago. I put it down for a year after reading halfway through because as the story progressed I became less interested. But not finishing ate at me over time. I read another quarter of the book last year and then put it down again. I recently picked it up again because I got bored with Game of Thrones (how?), and as I approached the end of the book, I became more determined to finish. I couldn’t give up so close to the end. The snowball gained speed as the end drew near, and faster and faster I became more engrossed in how this perpetual, agonizingly plot might redeem itself and whether anything good would come of the protagonist’s suffering. The book ended with the same uncertainty it maintained from the start. Did he trap her into a bondage that would play out the rest of her days out of spite? Did she welcome her destiny?

The captain looked at Férmina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glimmer of wintry frost.

Was it that her grey eyelashes showed the sign of her last days? Was winter coming? Not likely in the Caribbean. Was the shudder she gave when she heard the familiar, desperate love in Florentinoo Ariza’s voice an indication that her heart had suddenly become cold? Was she happy to finally live the life she rejected 54 years ago? Was Florentino’s decision to live the remainder of their days together revenge for her denying him a lifetime of love?

…

One hour and ten minutes is what I have left for sleep. I will try again to close my eyes, but now I have that confounded book in my head.