9:05 AM – Sit down  to write.   Open new Word document.  Look at blank page.  Go  check email.   Check  blog.    Check Facebook.

10:05 AM –  Realize  hour has passed.   Close Facebook.  Return to blank   document.  Write for several minutes about not writing.  Decide to check blog stats.   Go like  stuff on Facebook.  Eat a bowl of  cereal. Go back to blog.  Fiddle  with blog themes.  Visit other blogs. Like some stuff.   Write a few comments.  Check email.

10:20 – Glance at kitchen.  See  I have not cleaned up kitchen after breakfast.  Also have not started   fire,    swept floor , vacuumed rugs or pulled stew meat from freezer.    No laundry  started.

10:25 –  Return to document and write for several minutes about not writing.   Go back to Facebook.  Read about bad house designs.   Look at pictures of bad house designs.   Check email again.    Check Netflix queue.     Realize feet and hands are cold because no fire started.   Add movie to Netflix queue.      Think about how long stew meat will need to thaw.

10: 30 –  Congratulate myself for writing more than ten minutes.        Think about posting “essay”   on blog.   Think how funny it would be if liked.  Ha ha and at all that. How ironic. Writing about not  writing.  Think about writing  about how hard it is to be lazy.   How difficult true  procrastination is, what a fine art it can be.  Think about how modern life  has opened the doorway to ultimate procrastination, extreme procrastination like all those other extreme sports. Google procrastination to see if anyone has ever called it an extreme sport before.     Sure enough.

10:35 –  Son’s  favorite new word is ironic.  Mom,  he might say, wouldn’t it be ironic if I  injured myself playing flag football because of course we don’t let him play tackle football due to the chance of injury,   concussions and all that.  Or he might say mom isn’t it ironic that we got that kindle to read books on and I still haven’t read a book on it yet?

10:40 – Telephone rings.  Library.  Overdue items.  Been busy, I tell phone. Like yesterday,  drove  three hours for three hour meeting and then  back three hours.  Think about the Christmas shop stop. I try on a lot of clothes and some boots   then buy a bunch of spices instead. Remember I got one present.  At the sports shop. Recall the boy in the sports shop asking if I was excited for Christmas.  Do  I lie, I wondered?  Be ironic, sardonic or witty? Just say I love Christmas?

10:45 – Look at me! Still writing about not writing!    I have two essays I’m working on, both of which bore me to tears. I open them up and look.  Do a spell check on one.  Stare at the other as if I’m doing something.  Resist deleting.  Think about all the pretty pictures on the internet.

10:50 –  Look at pictures on the internet. Christine Brinkley in a bikini!  At age 61!  As if its news.   Try not to be annoyed.   Ask the dog how Christine Brinkley can look better than me?  I’m younger!  Think about taking dog on walk.  Think about  stew meat still in the freezer.

10:54 – Think about   yesterday’s drive and news.   Probably would not have heard  news stories if I had been home pretending to write.     Recall story of  Yeb Sano, former climate change  conference delegate from the Philippines, turned activist,  walking to Paris from Warsaw, from the site of one climate conference to another.

10: 55 – Google walk for climate change.  Pilgrimage really.  Recall clips of Sano speech in 2013,   “If not us then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?”  I know those words.  JFK speech?  I Google it.    Not Kennedy but Hillel the Elder,  of Jewish descent.   The ethic of reciprocity – the golden rule and all that.  Way back in Babylonia.      Hillel’s  words started showing up in american political speeches in 1960’s.   Ironic, my son would say , since he just did a big project on Babylonians.  Empathy is what Mr. Hillel is talking about, brotherly love, do onto others.

10:57 –  Sano wept at the Warsaw summit. Typhoon Haiyan, the largest Typhoon in recorded history, having  just devastated his country.  Sano  wasn’t allowed at the next climate conference.

11:00 –  Sano’s brother is interviewed too as he walks to Paris.    He recalls  his  changed plans  before  Typhoon Haiyan made landfall, how  he  didn’t stay with his  best friend and his friend’s family.       How they  all perish.     After the typhoon, Sano’s brother   helps   collect bodies.

11:05 –   Remember other news story from yesterday.  Syrians and Prince Edward Island. Google Prince Edward Island and refugees.     Find Prince Edward Island Association for Newcomers to Canada (or PEI), sponsors of  Syrian refugee  resettlement  on Prince Edward Island.     They  want to help.  People tell them no – they are too rural – too isolated – but they persist anyways.

11:10 – Remember story of surfers, the ones that disappear near Guadalajara,  their  burned van and charred bodies having just been  found after missing for some time .  Google surfers in Mexico.   Find  interview of friend of surfers. The reporter is gentle.  A grim image she says. Yes, hard to get out of one’s mind, the friend says.  I   want to know this could never happen to me, to us.   I want to think the surfers   took a foolish risk,  did something we would never do.   The reporter asks tentatively,  kindly  enough,  did they know this highway was known for hijacks and robberies, known for drug trafficking and gang violence?

11:14 – Go to Google Earth and look at   place we’re visiting spring break.  Mexico.    You’ll love Mexico, I said to my husband.  Safe.   Search area on Google Earth. Search the sea and beach, the deserted jungle areas nearby, as if I can spot danger.

11:16 – Google irony.  Check synonyms.  Satire, biting wit, paradox   “Incongruity between what is supposed to happen and what really happens esp. when this disparity seems laughable”.    What about when it’s not laughable?  What is that?  And paradox.  What’s that?   Things that seemingly contradict. Absurdity?   None of yesterday’s news seems ironic.

11:20 – Put a title at the top of the page.   Might make  it seem like writing?   Will  be in a rush soon to make stew,  take dog for a walk, get to the  kid’s basketball game,  return the overdue library items, go to meeting.

11:23 –     Conclusion needed?  Can I  have a conclusion yet ?   Is there always a conclusion?   ” Our wills and fate do so contrary run ”  maybe?   That’s how Shakespeare said it anyways. When  humorous its  irony. That’s what I say to the young boy in the sport  shop.  Well not exactly, something more about Christmas, so much expectation and then?  We both laugh; we know the  disappointments,  those odd expectations, what we thought was going to happen and what really does.  We agree the food is good;  teacakes and sugar cookies and peppermint.  I say Merry Christmas.  He smiles and waves goodbye.  Your son will love those socks, he says.

11:27 – Disparity.  Sometimes there is no humor in it.  Only tears and sorrow.  Irony is a more fashionable way of coping though. Sarcasm.  Snarky and snide, critical, as if one could see  those twists coming,  as if some kind of wisdom was owned about the workings of fate  and chance  and  coincidence.  What if  irony and sarcasm  are  the few things that makes living bearable?  Humor.

11:33 – Well we all cope somehow. Maybe I should go back to writing about childhood, about marshmallows and campfires and nostalgia.   What kind of world did I think I was bringing my son into anyways? Remember the excitement?  So many beautiful places to go, things to learn, fun to be had. We peruse atlases  and Google Earth.  Is this irony? What are we humans? Who would kill the surfers and burn them?    Why pollution?  Why  war and exile and suffering? Why school and mall and movie theater shootings?

11:40 – Won’t tell my son about the surfers.    About the marchers’ maybe, the climate change pilgrims.   Maybe the Prince Edward Islanders, rural like us, I’ll say. Why not us?  I’ll say.  Or not. It will be late and we’ll be tired. It will be enough to watch the basketball game, go to a meeting,  eat dinner and do homework and go to sleep. Feed the dog.  Clean the kitchen. Chop wood. Make a fire.

11:45 – Will imagine the surfers and their van for some time.    Will imagine the  moment  of knowing, the moment   they realize they’re  leaving this world forever .   How they must have loved this place, its beaches and waves and quiet coves. All the exploring and discovering.   Imagine the parents,  the girlfriend, the friends – their sorrow.

11:47 – Imagine retrieving  bodies day after day.   Imagine  Sano weeping in Warsaw.  Imagine  refugees in their new homes.  Imagine the good people of Prince Edward Island in their meetings, asking each other what they can do, how it is they might be able to  help.  Imagine the climate summit   pilgrims  in a late November rain.  Imagine twilight and owls as they  near a place to rest.  Imagine Hillel so long ago.  Love of peace. Love of man. Love of earth.

11:55 –Pull stew meat from the freezer. Like some stuff on Facebook. Fiddle around  on blog. Eat lunch.  Take the dog for a walk.

1:30 PM –  Go to kid’s basketball game.  Go to library.  Go to meeting.

6:30 – Return home.   Stew meat thawed.  Feed cat. Feed Dog.  Make sandwiches  for dinner.  Help kid with  homework.   Husband chops wood, makes fire, cleans kitchen.

9:00 – Tell husband about surfers,  about Sano,  about Prince Edward Island .

9:30   –  Bedtime.   Sleep?   Dreams maybe?   Ah there’s the rub, isn’t it?   To wake again and start anew another day, with this same madness and continuance of deeds.     If we are  to be,   how is it we should  be?  How to continue?     Can we   will  ourselves   a better outcome?Do we love it here?  Wildly and dearly?