Lying on my bed melting in the dark. My husband falls asleep instantly. It’s the last few moments of summer vacation. Immediately the first day we could get away I booked us on a flight to Cancun where we spent about fourteen days in a sublet waking up in a bed where you could see the ocean from your sleeping raft. Sublets are the most cost efficient way to travel.

Day three of insomnia. I could put the air on, but we run it in the day time. When we took the dogs on the long walk in the hills behind us we noticed immediately a break in the heat. But the apartment seems to have absorbed the hot sun rays. The breeze from my office window feels cool. The problem is it is not much of a breeze in an apartment that soaked up the sun all day long, despite the respite of air conditioning that ran until seven~ish.

So melatonin day three will be the solution to finding those zzzz….s. But why not take advantage of the plug of energy and do some writing? What is insomnia for if not to write? Even the younger dog has pushed himself up against the bath tub  to feel the cool porcelain wall and  linoleum floor.

Being the last dog days of this vacation; which felt busy leaving for vacation so soon, but four weeks in feels cooked and done; I’ve been winding down my list of summer to-dos. As my husband works on television shows, and most shows go on hiatus over the summer, he has had few days of work here and there. On Monday he went in for a regular ten hour shift, and stayed on as that particular show was noisier than some and needed more tlc.

I easily fell back asleep once that blissful cool of early morning hit the bedroom, before the rays fully sliced through the blinds. And being not a school day yet, I turned the blinds closed instead of letting myself be woken up by the hotter stream of sunlight that was going to hit my head around nine a.m.

I did get up anyways around eight forty-five, and filled out a student financial aid application for this last year of working on a math credential. Hoping for a Pell Grant. Worked on an M.F.A. in writing application for the following year, they say to get it done early now. Asked around for two letters of recommendation. Read, then finally headed out of the house to Star Bucks and Trader Joes to get ingredients for the Cooking Light garlicy meatballs and spaghetti I was going to make for dinner.

I got to Star Bucks at the exact wrong moment. A man was buying his film crew eight large coffees with all kinds of things added to them. The barista making the drinks was on the verge of seeming postal-mad. The Toluca Lake teens who were casually leaning on the coffee bar told the harried barista that he had it under control, they were not worried, not to apologize. This smoothed his building thunder. Ten some minutes later he thanked me for being so patient as he handed me an iced latte. The second such type of thank you for being so endlessly patient I’d received in as many days. What have I to do but be endlessly patient with my endless summer, waiting around while other’s toil, while I wait patiently?

In and out of Trader Joes, the check-out-clerk was so hurried he couldn’t remember if he had said hello before. I was not worried.

The pace of the working world runs on a different axis. Soon I will be in the throws of it all. Throw up three shared classrooms this year. Teach middle school, a bump up from third grade. Two math classes, three different literature classes, and computers…a warm bodied computer teacher who knows not much about computers. Make it up as you go they said. I just want to teach math, but the literature will be fun…

Throw up the bulletin boards, wrestle with a back to school letter, rules and expectations for teens. And slide into a busy schedule of teaching, studying teacher’s geometry,  driving two days a week instead of five, fifty miles a day in swarming Los Angeles traffic, and tutor students at the center for a few hours a day and on the weekends. Maybe get accepted to an M.F.A writing program for next year. And maybe, just maybe, the weather will get cooler, and I’ll catch some zzzzz…s.