When my children are bored, I put my hands on my hips with exasperation and say, "How can you possibly be bored? You have so many toys, so many books, so many friends, so many things you could be doing!" and then I start listing them one by one with my head cocked first to one side, then the other, until the kids run screaming in capitulation from the room to amuse themselves elsewhere.

When my husband is bored, I kick him out of the house, which is really where he longs to be. He's happiest doing something outside that involves either sporty motion or power tools.

When I am bored, I usually multi-task: picking up around the house, finishing half-done projects, surfing the web, reading a chapter or two. But right now, the house is spotless, the laundry is done, the dishes are put away, there's not much action on the interweb, and on top of a sore throat, I have the mother of all earaches, which caused me to wake up this morning feeling as though the entire left side of my face was made of pain. I called in sick, heated up the buckwheat beanbag in the microwave, stuck it on the side of my head and went back to sleep for several hours.

I feel a little better, hours later, but now I'm officially bored. Or maybe it's just that I'm too restless and foggy-brained to settle to anything. I'm sad that I'm missing choir tonight. And it's not as if I don't have things to do. I have plenty of things to do, but none of them seem appealing, and my motivation is at an all-time low. I shall go try reading some more and see if it helps.

Really Great Writing Out There Right Now: Bud & Esther, plus the rest of the Good Stuff to be found in the Mosaic Minds—Generation Gap Issue