Cure for Boredom #4...

An anti-boredom tip from my brother, Tristan: make a silly video!

Cure for Boredom#3...

Study!

This week, school started again. (For those of you who didn’t know, I am taking college courses from home.) Because of the way this particular online program works, my courses are each half a semester long; with the exception of the math course I am taking this quarter. That means doing all the work of a full-length class, in half the time. Last quarter I took four classes, -a total of 12 credit hours- all in one half-semester. That was very challenging for me, especially as it was my first experience with college classes, and I literally had to spend nearly every spare minute doing homework. This quarter, I am taking 15 hours, which works out to five classes. Thankfully, though, I was able to spread them out over the whole semester so that I am only working on three at a time. The classes have been challenging this week, but having one less to work on makes me just busy enough not to have time to be lazy. : )

One doesn’t have to be enrolled in college to study, though. I used to do quite a bit of reading as homework for piano teacher training, and I subsequently got into the habit of studying "just for fun". Not that I am by nature very studious, but I am a voracious reader, and once I had read enough “serious” books to get accustomed to them, I found studying much more enjoyable.

Of course, studying needn’t be confined to books. One may study in many different ways, one of which is by observation. For example, I learned more about English ivy than I ever thought to know, just by endeavoring to pull it up! I had to observe the way it grew if I was ever to get it all removed. -Observation does not come easily to many people. In fact, it took me four years of walking the same route nearly every day to begin to observe what I was walking past. How simple a thing it is to stop and notice the sights, sounds, and smells of God’s creation, yet how easy it is to forget!

Another non-literary method of study is that of trial and error. For example, my brother likes to cook. He is the only person I know that can simply decide he’s going to make a cake, -having never made one- and then go to the kitchen, throw a few ingredients together that “seem like what should go into a cake”, bake it, and come out with a perfectly edible cake! And, off the top of my head, I can only think of one thing he’s made over the years that didn’t turn out. And each time he made something, he would try to figure out what could be changed to make it better the next time he made it.

Conversation can also be a form of study. I had the privilege of staying with my Grandma for three weeks last summer, and through our conversations, I learned quite a lot about my family’s history and about my Grandma as well. And much of what I know about homemaking, I learned by simply talking with Mommy as we go about our every day life.

Study may not seem at first like a very appealing antidote to boredom, but as long as the object of your study interests you, it should be fascinating, as well as quite effective!
Warning: Studying may be habit forming, and can become a way of life! : )

Cure for Boredom #2...

Yesterday was an auspicious day for my “little forest” in the backyard. I finally pulled up the last of the ivy, and cleared out the massive pile of already pulled up from where I had been working under the trees. The last patch of ivy ran far back under the lower branches where it was obvious no one had gone in years. The farther back I went, the more I felt like an adventurous little kid, exploring some mysterious corner of the yard. I even got excited when I found a rather mysterious hole, seemingly dark and deep, and, in spite of my natural timidity, could not resist raking up the duff which partially obscured it, to find out how big it actually was. It was noticeably bigger than the holes in our lawn, so it seemed that it could not have been made by the same creature that made them. It had also been completely covered with ivy and needles, but had no spider’s webs in it. I was so perplexed by the size and placement of the hole, that I nearly poked the end of my rake into it to see how far it went before turning, but then I thought of all the nasty things that could be inhabiting the hole, and let it be till Daddy came home. : ) At first, I thought that perhaps it was where the old pump we found in that area had come from, but Daddy said it wasn’t the right kind of hole for that. I did find that, as I raked up more of the thick layer of dead needles in that area, another hole appeared. This one got bigger as I raked around it, and as it was in the same area as the other one, I began to think that it was just an empty pocket between two of the branches that had been buried by the many layers of needles. Daddy, however, thought that it was an animal hole of some sort. I hope it’s not! It is right in front of two low branches that are curved just enough to make a very comfortable-looking seat.

After all the ivy had been cleared away, I started to drag out the random assortment of junk that the ivy had covered. There were some interesting things hiding under the trees! : ) Soon after we moved in, we found a small trailer for a lawn tractor that had evidently been there for quite a while. As I worked, I uncovered a garden hose with one end cut off, some roofing material, and a plastic dishpan.

Once that was all gone, I began to plan out what still needed to be done to make the space habitable. I hope to put a low bench at one end, under a little tree which I cannot identify because it has lost all its leaves, and two chairs and a little table at the base of the cedar tree at the other end. Tristan has made me a swing, which he plans to attach to a sturdy branch on the huge hemlock in the middle. It will be a while before it is finished, but it will definitely be worth it! I am already looking forward to having such a pretty place to study in!

Of course, as soon as I had rid the area of all the ivy, I found another small patch wound around a smaller tree that I couldn’t get at. ‘~’ I am determined to find a way to get in close enough to pull it all up, but until I do, I must be content with watching it closely and preventing it from spreading as I continue to work on the rest of the area.

I am a bit sad that the ivy-pulling task is finished for now, because it gave me a reason to be outside and working at something other than schoolwork. My next big job is going to be pulling up the garden hose that is buried under our lawn. I’m not sure why it was there, but it runs all over the yard, and I have been given the job of getting rid of it. I found an end when I was pulling up the ivy at the far side of the little forest, and would have pulled more of it up than I did just then, but it ran right under the ivy pile, and I was too tired to move it.

So, I suppose cure for boredom # 2 is to take on a task that seems a little too hard for you, and stick with it until it is finished. -This especially works when the task is different from the things you usually do.

-By the way, if you want to see pictures, I will try to post some tomorrow on my Flikr page.