The bird of boredom

Possible cures for poverty-related boredom include making pasta dishes and taking walks. Pasta, actually, is a stone capable of killing two poverty birds:  the bird of boredom, as I just mentioned, and the bird of food expenses. At Trader Joe's a bag of bowtie pasta containing eight servings costs only 99 cents, making it the perfect food for the 99%. But of course you can't eat pasta plain (unless you're a genuine poor person and not just playing one in the blogosphere), but if you're like me (that is, not genuinely or dangerously poor), your refrigerator contains random cheeses, which you can add to pasta for flavor and a protein boost. In addition to being cheap, pasta has pretty impressive protein content, so adding cheese isn't nutritionally necessary. There probably isn't anything about cheese that's nutritionally necessary. (A serving of tofu contains as much calcium as a serving of milk or cheese. And while I'm parenthetically comparing foods, I would like to share my personal favorite food fact:  ounce for ounce, split peas contain almost as much protein as most cuts of steak.) So, to fill some time and some stomachs, shake some pasta with cheese and olive oil.

Luckily, one of the cheeses in my fridge was crumpled goat, and I also had grape tomatoes and pesto, so my pasta salad looked and tasted pretty fancy—fancier, anyway, than it would've if all I had had was a block of cheddar. The pasta salad has lasted for days and only cost a few dollars to fix, but to be honest there's no real money-saving secret here. I also made egg salad for cheap, because I happened to already have eggs.

Walks are free, naps are free, books are free to read.

When Aron got home from work today I was in the middle of writing out a shopping list, which wasn't entirely necessary because I only needed three things from the store, and three is an easy number of things to remember. But my list-making did the trick I intended it to do:  it made Aron ask if I needed to go to the store. Yes, I needed to, but there was also desire there, because, well, no matter how much I love Graham, and I love him tremendously, it is endlessly frustrating to me that he has to whine, toss and turn, and scratch the skin off my face and neck for an hour before he will submit to taking the nap that his crankiness makes obvious he needs. As he gets more interested in the world—moving through it, looking at it, touching the things it contains—he becomes less willing to sleep, and his resistance is angry, and it exhausts me. And because Graham only stays asleep for about thirty minutes at a time during the day, we engage in the pre-nap battle at least twice a morning. It exhausts me, both times. Graham spent practically all night last night practicing rolling over in his crib, which is three feet from where I sleep, and every sound he makes—even if happy—keeps me awake. So today I was exhausted before noon, and exhausted-er after the nap battles, so I told Aron that yes, I needed to go the store. I went. 

I went to Target, where I returned a digital camera memory card that we bought there a few months ago and that ended up not matching our camera. While I was in the line at the return counter, I heard customers talking about a fist fight that had just happened in the store, and an employee was mopping a spot on the floor where, I assume because I want to, a pool of blood had collected during the fight.

I never know in advance whether something will relieve or aggravate my boredom. Maybe I'll enjoy looking at Eric's pictures on Facebook, or maybe they'll just make me feel ever farther from the ocean than I am. Maybe I'll like to watch Mad Men, or maybe it'll just makes me wish moodily that I could so freely drink. Maybe a trip downtown to have a coffee will feel vacation-y, but it might just make Athens feel like a larger version of my house, where I chore-out my existence. But I don't doubt at all that I was fortunate to miss the fist fight, which I'm sure was pretty frightening.