When the Answer to “How’s it Going?” is “Boring!”

As you may have picked up from some of our previous posts, we like a good adventure. We realize they’re not all winners, and in fact some of them are solidly in the “once was enough” category, but we like to feel like we’re doing stuff. We also realize that being bored is a first-world problem, and we own that.

So what is there to report from our family for the first quarter of 2019? A whole lotta NOTHING.

The “Nothing is Happening” Report

That investment build we are trying to make happen is languishing in the form of building permit application on the desks of the people who made McDonald’s change the yellow in their “M” sign. Sedona is the only city in the world to hold that honor, by the way – not an easy place to get approved for a building permit.

Also, after much noise about eliminating my student loans by the end of last year, I failed to hit that self-imposed goal (more on this soon).

And as for the kids, we started off the year with a solid week of Baby Jet Lag, which is its own special sort of hell. Then Baby got the flu, followed by a double ear infection, followed by a surgery (he’s fine), until one day we realized that our 12 year-old had been raising himself for a month and had taken to eating dry Ramen Noodle packets for breakfast (really). And then the 12 year-old got super sick too.

Of course either my husband or I have had a low-grade cold for the duration – because that’s what you get when you have two small kids who are basically petri dishes for viral mutation – the kind of colds that are just bad enough to make you feel real gross for a long time but not bad enough that you can justify staying home on the couch.

To add insult to injury, our irrigation system sprung a leak, spraying water that quickly turned to ice all over our deck and costing us a bunch of money, and as soon as we got that fixed the garbage disposal decided to join the fun and then we needed a bunch of new sink parks and had to make a homeowner’s insurance claim because the kitchen floor had water damage.

Then one of my favorite candles somehow overheated and the glass votive full of melted wax exploded. That was really just perfectly symbolic of the not-serious-but-still-really-annoying problems of the last three months.

Fighting the Boredom

So what to do when your own answer to “What have you been up to lately?” bores you to tears?

I don’t have any cure-alls, but I do have a few go-tos that I know work for me. A very small dose of Things I Really Like can carry me through the doldrums for a surprisingly long time. Three of those things are being outside, being active, and travel.

Obviously I can’t pick up and travel every time life is ‘blah’. But usually I can work on planning the next trip, however far out it may be. To mitigate the ‘blah’ this time I did a little on-purpose travel dreaming and researching places we might go for C’s high school graduation trip (in 6 years). The internet is now sending me targeted ads for diaper rash creams and flights to the Azores, which I appreciate.

Getting outside can usually be accomplished fairly immediately, even if it’s just a walk around the block or a few minutes sitting in the sunshine. In one of our recent bouts of “We haven’t done anything fun in weeks and how is the baby sick again?!” we were able to find a sitter and get a few hours of skiing in, so that the magic of winter in the mountains could set our minds right.

And fortunately some friends must have noticed that we were getting cranky and maybe losing a little muscle tone since our last race, so they convinced us do a Ragnar Relay next month. That added some “Oh shoot we need to train!” activity back into our lives, even if it’s been entirely on treadmills because the trails are still covered in ice and mud.

Onward, to Glory!

Okay, maybe not so much on the “glory” part. Maybe it’s just “onward” because moving forward is what we do. Even when we’re bored or tired or annoyed. Especially when we’re bored or tired or annoyed.

We try again where we failed before. We take on new challenges. We seek out enjoyment even in the lackluster moments. We wait for time to pass (because sometimes that’s all we can do), and we fill that time with people who are amazing when circumstances are not.

Maybe there’s not much “glory”… but typing that heading made me feel like I was setting off to do something epic, so I’m keeping it. And I’m off to do laundry, because all our linens are covered in snot.

Onward, to glory!