My inbox was not invited into the shower.

At 11:47 I was in bed explaining, by text, why a table for twelve would not seat seventeen. My partner looked at the glow on my face. "Are they coming here?"

They were coming to the restaurant on Friday. Somehow I had brought them into our bedroom on Tuesday.

My shift had followed me home.

I manage a restaurant. I leave around ten, then apparently volunteer to manage it again from the sofa. My old evening routine was dinner, phone, phone during dinner, very hot shower, bed. Then one last message, obviously.

I tried a relaxation app. By Thursday I was behind on relaxing. The app sent a reminder. I deleted it with more feeling than the situation deserved.

What finally interested me was a review of warm bath and shower studies: timing them one to two hours before bed was associated with falling asleep sooner. I could try that. No account to create.

The stool got a promotion.

I dragged our chipped blue kitchen stool into the bathroom. It had been holding mail since February. Now it held a towel, clean clothes and a paperback I kept optimistically buying time to read.

The phone stayed in the kitchen. I told the closing supervisor to call for an actual emergency. A missing marker did not qualify. None of our markers are heirlooms.

I showered when I got home: comfortably warm, roughly ten minutes. Then dinner. Then the book. There was about an hour and a half before bed, which I mostly spent discovering how little I remembered of chapter two.

I sent my partner a photo of the stool. "Very nice," they replied. "Any plans for the T-shirt on the floor?"

I kept the stool. I abandoned the graph.

I did not sleep like a miracle. The upstairs neighbour dropped something. I remembered the toothpaste. I was still a person with ears and errands.

But nobody asked me about a table at midnight. I was cool and dry instead of rushing from the shower into bed. The evening had contained a little time I hadn't given to work.

The next night I forgot and checked the phone. The night after, I left it charging out of reach. No streak. No score. Just another go.

On Friday, seventeen became fourteen. The supervisor found another table. The marker was behind the till.

I learned all three things on Saturday morning. The stool was still in the bathroom. So was the T-shirt, but let's stay on topic.