At least there are cats in the box.

There seems to be something horribly--even morally--wrong with being bored. Thankfully, most of the time I am too busy to notice.

The thing is, as much as I’ve studied and learned and compared notes, I cannot help thinking--when there’s a person who does, really, nothing all day and all night apart from reading the paper and 3 different books (again)--that I should be providing an activity. But the thing is--he, apparently, is not bored. Me, keeping him company? Bored.

But you can’t leave a person alone all day. So I do stuff. I be a writer even though the world has its fill of them, as far as I can tell. I think, actually, the world has its fill of almost everything a human could possibly contribute. Except for Concert Association database keeper. So I do that too. And study Japanese. Even though chapter 3 in the textbook is really getting on my nerves in being legible only to people younger than 35 and ants who might be literate. I fiddle. And I sponsor errands.

Tonight I decided to try something new, so I rooted through the chest of drawers in the computer room where games are stashed, and pulled out Railroad Rush Hour. It’s a puzzly thing where you set the little plastic engines, boxcars, and cabooses in a frame in such a way that the red engine can’t escape until you’ve slid the other cars out of its way, sequentially. I’m not so great at it. Even using the “beginner” cards to set things up. But I did get Jeff to sit down with me. It was clear that he was humoring me and had zero interest in trying to free the red engine. I fooled around with it a bit. Reminded me, unfortunately, of those dumb little sliding number frames you’d win as a consolation prize, and which I more or less detested. Rush Hour was better. But only a bit. Still...I guess if a puzzle doesn’t stimulate the slightest interest in a person, there’s not much I can do about that.

So I feel like I’m living in a box, sort of. It’s a relatively nice box, with some things to play with. I guess I’d like a slightly bigger box with a few more people in it.