Food for thought from The Writing Class by Jincy Willett:

Her house was small and cluttered and took only a few minutes to inspect. Amy wondered, as she yanked open the coat closet door, how she could be so full, simultaneously, of dread and boredom. (see similar quote in The Darkest Evening of the Year)

Amy Gallup was a loner who was afraid to be alone.

Amy was not at the moment worried about the cactus, or even the poisonous letter. It was morning, and nothing frightened Amy in the morning, because her will to live never kicked in until after lunch.

It couldn't have been more than ten minutes since she'd sent the e-mail. Carla must have been hovering like a yellow jacket over her virtual mailbox, must have phoned Harry B., who must instantly have read his copy, and together they had managed a miraculous tandem phone call, and for what? The day was new, there was tons of time, and then would do just as well as now. "Do you ever worry," asked Amy, "that within the next twenty years, the noun anticipation, and all its synonyms, will join the ranks of archaic words, like nonce and eftsoons?"