The elephant of ennui

I'll never write a book, and I'll definitely never write more than one, but if I did, here's a list of subjects I'd cover along with the titles:

• on pregnancy:  Suddenly I Don't Recognize My Feet
• on French philosopher Gilles Deleuze:  What Do You Have, Deleuze?
•  on college poverty:  Used Pillows
• on boredom:  The Ministry of Malaise

The last one would be told from the perspective of the director of the Ministry of Malaise, and she would have to be me, and it would be as boring as the phonebook, and like the phonebook, no one would ever read it for amusement.

Last week's bird of boredom has become this week's elephant of ennui. It's a heavy animal, and it's only Monday. Speaking of elephants, one of my daily hobbies is keeping track of the sentences that are spoken in our house and that outside of the context of child-rearing would seem ridiculous. Here are two from today:  You just fell on an elephant, you silly Billy goat! and If that plastic caterpillar teaches Graham the alphabet sooner than I do, I'm gonna be pissed. 

After having an eventful weekend full of traveling and family visiting, sitting in the house with Graham today has felt boring. Really boring. So boring that I've more than once muttered, "I am so fucking bored." So fucking boring that I thought it might be fun to have a nosebleed. So boring that for amusement I flipped through a phonebook that was recently left on our doorstep, and in it, I found this:

Yes, creepy ad, I have, lots of times. This ad is made creepier by the fact that none of the businesses featured on the same or the adjoining page have anything to do with children or parenthood; they're businesses for:  fences, financial planning, fire alarm systems, fire extinguishers, and fire sprinklers. This is terrorism. What's the suggestion? Hug your children before they die in a fire? I felt the fear of losing my child to a fire, and I panicked, lifted Graham from his highly flammable pillow-blanket pallet and squeezed him in my arms, before returning him to his pallet to play with his toys and feeling, once again, very fucking bored. So I kept flipping through the phonebook until I arrived at the Psychotherapist entry, where I saw a listing for a place called Recovery Café, which I plan to visit for an espresso and emotional meltdown soon. A psychologist named Sylvia Knight appears twice under the Psychotherapist heading and allured me for that and other reasons. The name Sylvia will always make me think of Sylvia Plath (my favorite psychotic), and Knight combines darkness and goodness. Sylvia Knight is probably the lady to call if you want some of your craziness fixed without relinquishing everything that might make you interesting. "Feel better but don't bore your date:  call Sylvia Knight." I can't, as a sufferer of boredom, conceive of wanting to be fully healed of a psychological ailment. I wish, in fact, that I had one. And I want to call Sylvia Knight. She sounds like a villainess. Maybe I want to be Sylvia Knight. Maybe I just made her up. 

On the same page as Psychotherapists was a heading for Pumpkin Patches with a note underneath that instructed the searcher to "see Family Fun," and at the sight of the words family and fun I felt a little hope blossom in my bored heart. So I flipped to Family Fun, but it only had one associated business, and it wasn't even for a pumpkin patch. It was for an art gallery. 

Today is rainy, so there isn't the option of going for a walk by the river or to the park. Today is an indoorsy day, and the walls of our house never change, and I'm not strong enough to rearrange the furniture on my own, and Graham seems more content lately exploring his toys on his own than with my help. I know that the lowest trees have tops, but the highest trees also have bottoms. If it's sunny tomorrow I think I will be better able to appreciate both types of trees, or I'll make worthwhile their being chopped down by reading the phonebook for fun again.