Don't feel sorry for her, but my daughter is bored.

And I get it. I'm not a fan if the time between when school gets out and when it starts up again. It'd frickin' freezing outside, but there's usually not enough snow for sledding. Everyone's broke from Christmas and done with crowds. Redbox stands in the grocery store, sucked dry down to The Hangover 2.

It's boring.

So today we went through her art projects from 2013, dividing them between grandparents and my sister, boxing them up and sealing them with leftover Halloween duct tape. This activity reminded me of being bored when I was a kid, cranking the top 100 countdown of 1987 and digging through old jewelry boxes and treasure chests, looking at my stuff. Reading old bad poems. Thinking about life.

We talked about the good old days in second grade, and I was again struck, looking at the school pictures from the past, at how grown-up she really does seem now.

Maybe the end-of-year, walls-closing-in school break is important in order to make us appreciate weekday coffee and a full to-do list. A school bus full of friends, their wrists full of Rainbow Loom bracelets. A new calendar, a new semester.

Every day is, in fact, a new chance. But it feels newer right now. Being bored in a way is being present when there's no crisis going on.