Help! I'm in a rut!

"I'm bored!"

It's not just the mantra of 7-year-olds during summer vacation. Sometimes a 34-year-old working mom of two falls finds herself saying it. Like me, for instance. Like today, for instance.

It's not that I don't have things to do. I have plenty. I have things to write, things to edit, things to fact-check AND edit, toys to rummage through for the donation pile, laundry to do, dinner to cook, dogs to bathe, kids to parent. I have seven years' worth of pictures that need to get put in rough chronological order in a photo album I haven't yet procured. My house could stand another vacuuming, even though I did that this morning. I could scrub the baseboards, for the love of God.

But!

I don't want to. I'd rather just sit here while these things don't get done and think about how bored I am.

And I wonder how much of it is real boredom (if I were really bored, one might argue, any one of those things listed above would cure me of it but quick) and how much is that dreaded rut that people sometimes fall into, when days beget days beget days that all start to bleed into one another. Get up. Make breakfast. Drink coffee. Clean kitchen. Work. Do toddler things. Work. Make lunch. Beg toddler to eat lunch. Work. Work. Prep dinner. Eat dinner. Watch TV while working. Wait for bedtime.

Well, you get the idea. Sometimes I want something crazy to happen. A ghost sighting, maybe, or to win the lottery. Even finding a lost dog would up the interest quotient of the average day. Maybe I'll hold a seance, drive to Georgia to buy some scratch-off tickets, or roam the neighborhood looking for collarless dogs. We make our own luck, they say. 

Maybe it's just insecurity about mentioning "The Rut," which I think is sort of a taboo topic, but I can hear people telling me to appreciate what I've got, to live in the moment, to find beauty in the small things. Shush, you. I DO. But I have to believe that I'm not the only person in the world who has a good life and gets bored with it every now and then. And for some reason the antsiness is at its worst on Sunday afternoons. (What IS it with Sunday afternoons, anyway?)

This week Alex goes back to school, Katherine starts Mother's Day Out, and I have about fifteen thousand things to do. I'm betting this time next week, I'll be missing my rut. Maybe between now and then, I'll win the lottery. Or see a ghost.








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WARNING: I've made a halfhearted pledge to blog at least once a week for the rest of the year. I don't know how I'll fare with that, but I feel it's my duty to warn you that the topics might wear a little thin. Or be boring. Not unlike when one WRITES ABOUT BEING BORED.