on boredom

The grandbaby spent the day with us. It is not yet 5 p.m. as I write this and she is playing with the dogs. She's just returned from a trip to the market with her granddad.  They tied up tomato plants and picked the fruits of several of them.
There is chicken spaghetti cooking for supper, made from angel hair pasta, since tonight is "Tangled" night. We scrapbooked a while. She played dress up for a bit. She's gotten better and better at occupying herself, though we she still interacts with us and with we with her a good deal of the time she is with us.
I blogged recently about diversions and distractions and the fact that we are pretty good, in my family, of finding ways to occupy ourselves.
Even in the summertime, my sisters and I could find fun and seldom complained of boredom.
I think it is a lesson we learned at our Grandma's house.
My sister once declared to one of our offspring,
"No one gets bored at Grandma's!"
and it was true.
There was always something to do.
We are all VORACIOUS READERS and there were always books and magazines to read.
From inside some magazines there were paper dolls to be cut out and played with.
There were card games to play: go fish, spoons, crazy eight. There were board games:  namely Scrabble and Chinese checkers.
Pick up sticks and jacks.
There were tins of pictures to look through.
At any given time there was a porch swing on the front porch and another hanging from a huge tree near the flower garden.
There was a bag swing under the hill in an alcove carved out for us amidst a stand of canes, flowering vinca and a crag of rocks.
Yet another swing hung from a tall stand near the garage.
There were balls and bats in the garage and croquet mallets on the patio.