In my mind I could hear the phone ringing, but my eyes were fixated on the first page of a chapter in my thesis that needed work. All I could think about was how sick I was of that thesis. It all seemed pointless. None of the contents of this two hundred–page document was going to change the world in the slightest way . . .
I woke up at 1:00 a.m., when Jimmy had a bad dream, and at 3:45, when Sarah peed in her bed, and when my alarm went off at seven I got up and stepped on a lego and by mistake Jimmy got toothpaste on my last clean pair of pants, and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, really crappy day . . .