Need an adventure

I've been having serious issues with boredom.

I don't want to be a zombie in front of the tv or computer but I don't see the point of sitting on the couch doing nothing. I can't decide on a book to read, I started reading Fever Dream by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child last night but I'm finding it hard to read because I have a signed limited edition copy and feel like I shouldn't read it.

I have plenty that needs or could be done but who wants to do that. My pile of laundry is crazy big, the whole apartment is a mess, all my animals could use a good cage clean, there are 3 different piles of junk that need to be dealt with, but again why would I want to do any of that boring mindless "housework".

Boredom seems to grab a hold of me at night when I feel like I should be calm and do relaxing things and not get caught up in a new sewing project or even making noise with my sewing machine. Night definitely doesn't seem like the time I should take out my drill and other tools and finally get back to work on my beer cap light shade. It would be different if I had a garage to go into.

I've been itching to go on a trip, even just a local day trip. It's been YEARS since I've done anything in nature, since I've walked even a trail and taken in the scenery, since I've paid too much attention to some random critter foot prints or droppings, since I've just sat somewhere and watched the wild lives around me go about their business.

Almost every day I think about my trips to the Sea of Cortez and what it was like to walk where very few have before, to spend my day on a small uninhabitable island full of raw wildlife, to visit the nesting site of Elegant Terns and Hermanns Gulls, to spend a day in the water swimming with Sea Lions, having them tug on your flippers and swim away before you could turn around, to have them get right in your face and blow bubbles at you, tide pooling and finding a place with so many beautiful Nudibranchs you end up doing nothing else for the rest of the day, being on jellyfish watch as my new friends jumped off the top deck of the boat, learning that those weren't a string of some sort of eggs but a string of some sort of ctenophore (luckily their sting wasn't too bad), watching someone cursed the "stingray shuffle" and struggled with jellyfish wrapping around his ankles as he tried to walk ashore and being glad I decided to skip that snorkeling trip, making a small fire on an island in the pitch black and have scorpions come crawling out of the wood and straight for you feet in sandals (ok I don't miss that, I hated that).

I think about my 2 week trip to Belize, walking among Howler Monkeys, walking up and down ancient Mayan ruins, being forbidden from lying down on a sacrificial altar because it was creeping out the people I was with, having your new friends drag you and the guide over to a local at every new town and asking them what slang term they use for a redhead and then having the guide translate it (match head is the only unique one I remember), taunting a tarantula with a long blade of grass so we could get a picture, spending the day snorkeling, trying to follow and keep up with a large Spotted Eagle Ray (failed miserable), realizing that tropical waters are too warm for a wetsuit, having cute little tropical fish nip at my purple bathing suit, always knowing that if you looked over your shoulder you'd see at least 2 Barracuda "stalking" you, diving for conch and making fresh conch fritters on the boat, watching a small child in a tiny row boat smash fish to death as his father was spear fishing some where below and tossing his catch into the boat, seeing Manatee nostrils take a breath, learning that covering yourself with a sheet only up to your head at night results in mosquito bites ALL over your face, waiting to see if the enormous lump/bite on your leg was going to go all sci-fi movie on you and bare some sort of insect out of it (it never did), seeing for the first time and falling in love with Frigate Birds.

There are the family trips I've taken, many Yosemite trips, crossing a large stream via a fallen tree, travelling up and down the California/Oregon coast, summer in Vermont playing in the stream for hours on end making our own rock dams and creating a small pool, walking in the forest, looking for newts and toads, stepping on a garter snake barefoot and wondering why the grass feels like it is moving beneath your foot, being a co-pilot on the search for covered bridges on back dirt roads with no signs, finally finding a bridge getting out and finding ourselves in the thickest swarm of mosquitos, family trips to Baja to see the grey whales, fresh ceviche, giving chocolate chip cookies to the Federales while we change flat tires, being told not to get out of the cars because whenever I did I would hear a slow leak in a tire, petting grey whales that would come to the side of the boat, spending a day on a beach with the bluest water that was knee high for as far as you could see (or go because you knew you had to walk all the way back too), attempting snorkeling in freezing cold waters, always finding and visiting unique and cool places no matter where we were, my honeymoon in Maui snorkeling and watching a small eel among the rocks having everyone ignore me because they were just there for the turtles that I guess were further out, I just stayed at there watching the eel and little invertebrates moving around, walking to a black sand beach.

No wonder I've been so bored lately, I've never spent this long in one place without going on some sort of adventure. Doesn't help that my boss always tells me how great I would be in the field because he's impressed by my ability to spot creatures, being told how I don't seem to bother the animals with my presence, I just walk among them for the most part and they don't feel the need to flee like they do with others. (For the record Kinkajous do not fall under my spell, quite the opposite actually, I've worked with 8 or 9 different individual kinks at 2 different facilities and they ALL hate me, even the one that others could do anything to screamed at me!) Of course of late these creatures are the doves and bunnies that are in the back yard at work.

I would never use the word adventurous to describe myself but I think I might need to change that thinking. It was just normal for me, not adventurous in my eyes.