Augustine spent Book XI of the Confessions puzzling over time. The past lives as memory, the future lives as expecting, and the present lives as attending. The mind stretches between all three at once.

A child waiting for the park lives almost entirely in expecting. The park fills their mind so fully that asking about it feels like pulling it closer.

Each are-we-going-yet checks the stretch. Is it here yet. Is it here yet. Every check restarts the expecting, so the morning gets longer with every question.

The whine is the sound of that stretch. Expecting has filled the whole room and there is nowhere else for the feeling to go, which is why the reaction is so strong over nothing happening.

You do this refreshing a pot of water or tracking a package across town. Watching does the same thing to you. The water still boils on its own schedule.