Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Can you actually die from boredom?

We've been experimenting in boredom this week. We have a 12-year-old boy cousin on the premises and the 9-year-old girl child is not here which equals negative girl plus one boy which equals three boys, 3, 7 and 12.

Which equals lots and lots of lego guns.

I neglected to schedule anything solid during this week because I figured an experiment in how boy children relate to each other would be edifying, to say the least, and also, seriously, how bored can three boy children get? So bored they think up something else to do? Exactly!

That was my hypothesis. Also, I am lazy.

We are on Day 3 of the experiment and I am happy to report that today is the first day my older boy child has fallen into a pit of despair regarding his boredom and how truly boring it is and how he hates me because I have FAILED to entertain him, drive him somewhere, let him play a video game, etc.

Even in normal life when the girl is home and we have no 12-year-old boy I am always torn about how the summer should be. I love the idea of spending entire days entertaining oneself by playing/beating on one's siblings, reading quietly to oneself, counting petals on flowers outside, tormenting small animals, etc. In reality, however, I am not very good at getting myself going toward a meaningful task and slothfulness turns to depression quickly. I will list the things I have done today to keep myself away from the internets:

1. Watered the garden. This did not take much time because the weather has been very mild and the soil is not drying out fully every day.
2. Refilled two bird feeders. This also did not take much time. Because there were two of them. And it was a fast chore.
3. Cleaned my car, including vacuuming. This took a surprisingly long time. It was filthy.
4. Read a book to the little boy. Tried to sneak a nap in there but he got wise to my attempts.
5. Feed the chickens. I guess I could have included this with the other bird feeders, but I chose to make a separate event out of it.
6. Pruned a bit. Not much.
7. Ate lunch.

What I have there is roughly 45 minutes of hard work. I have stretched it out over 7 hours.

Oh my god I am so bored.

We're totally going swimming tomorrow, I don't care if it's not hot.