Count the Headlights On the Highway

It is just after midnight.
I'm sitting at the dining table, eating vanilla sandwich cookies after dunking them in milk.
I just got off the phone with Jacob.
At the moment, I am senselessly shirking off my responsibilities: I have a four-page literary essay due on April 9th, an anatomy practical on April 5th, and ten more pages of Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor to read before 10:45 tomorrow morning.
...oh, and somewhere in there I need to read Synge's The Playboy of the Western World and choose my discussion questions for that, write another response essay, study for an anatomy test (April 10th), continue to volunteer at the homeless shelter (once a week), watch my sprouting tomatoes continue to grow, and try to have somewhat of a social life (ha!).

And, yet, all I can think about is the fact that the only time I've really had a problem with my tragus piercing is when Bailey tried pulling it out the other day.
Also, Los Angeles has been sticking out in my head a lot lately: the way the traffic starts at 6am, humming through the sleepy city, slowly lolling its inhabitants awake. The way that the sunlight shines brightly into the blue building-shadows at 7am as people make their way to DuPar's for the best pancakes in the world. (Seriously.)
...there goes Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" looping through my head, again. (Or is that song really called "Tony Danza?")

The milk is gone; Bailey grows restless.
Perhaps I should put this entire pursuit to bed, myself included.
Those ten pages can wait til morning.

The other responsibilities will still be there, too, waiting.