WHITTLE!

Tonight my boredom reached an all-time high and at my most desperate moment I decided that I needed to start learning how to whittle immediately. Without access to the necessary tools and supplies (my mom isn't home so I don't know which knives I'm allowed to use), I grabbed my miniature swiss army knife and a stick that I've kept in my house for about a year. A thought occured to me; why is it that almost anywhere I spend time I end up gathering and storing sticks there? This particular stick actually made the journey from our old house in Connecticut to our new house in Indiana. Meaning my mom must have noticed it while packing up my old room and thought it important enought to pack and carry half-way across the country. It must be in my genes, then, because it's a habit that I've had since childhood. In every bedroom I've had, one could probably find a stick underneath the bed. Perhaps this is some evolutionary tool. Sticks often come in useful. Tonight, especially, a stick saved me from a potentially dangerous outburst because of my recent inactivity.

The stick that I used I found in a pond in Weston. CT, and carried it back to my house in Newtown. Now that I think about it, this is probably the most well-traveled stick in the entire world. Because it spent so much time in the water, it is light and soft. I'm no expert but I do think if a professional whittler were with me right now, he would tell me that this is the best type of wood to widdle with. It was very easy to carve even with my knife that I haven't sharpened in quite some time. The stick is very long and skinny so all I could think of to carve it into was a spear, which eventually turned into a snake. I even carved little scales on the sides. A keen eye could probably notice that the stick isn't actually a snake, but I am only just starting to widdle. By the end of the summer I hope to carve a snake so realistic that I will put it in my brother's bed and scare him into a coma. If he touches it, though, he will realize that it is fake.

Since I have recently quit playing the personality-altering game that is tetris, I am hoping that this new hobby will fill that void and stave off the boredom that awaits me in the next few months. Maybe I will start taking pictures of my creations and will share them with all of you readers. Now that I think about it, I must be really losing it to look at whittling as my last resort to going on a antsy rampage, and then find that interesting enough to write a blog entry about it.