Going Cold Turkey

Recently I rented my friend Mich's spare bedroom. We decided to try co-habitating on a trial basis for 3 weeks and if it worked out I'd formally move in (& start paying rent) on October 1st. Mich doesn't believe in watching television and is a vegetarian. I, of course, have the TV on constantly and eat pretty much anything that is no longer moving. Is there any hope?

There was a computer outlet in my room BUT my monitor broke during the move and so there I was with no computer. There was also no TV signal. We went to Time Warner and ordered TV reception, a DVR for me and to have a computer line run into my room. We didn't schedule it until October 1st though.

Going without TV was extremely strange at first. There was a TV in the living room but it was only connected to a DVD box. How would I survive without my daily General Hospital fix? How could I get by with no Duggars or Gosselins and without knowing how Florence Henderson was doing on Dancing With the Stars?

As I went through withdrawal, I could only watch what Mich rented from Netflix or had in her limited DVD collection. She had a lot of feel good movies and the last 5 seasons of Frasier. I occasionally popped something in to relax by. But to my surprise, once I got over the habit of having background TV noise on, I really didn't give much thought to any of the shows I'd previously thought I couldn't live without. Samantha Brown and Anthony Bourdain had to get by without me. I confess that one day during my lunch hour I pulled up a synopsis of what had happened episode by episode on General Hospital in my absence. I was pleased to learn that the show was pretty much as I'd left it and I wasn't much interested in what had happened since I'd last watched.

On the other hand, not having a computer really hurt! I felt so disconnected from everyone - no daily Facebook fixes, no friend's blogs. I couldn't check my personal email from work as there is a strong firewall in place at school sites. Once in a while after work I'd steal a few minutes at someone else's computer - my daughter's or Mich's laptop. It was amazing how little time it took to catch up on facebook and deal with my email. All the extra time I had spent online in the past was spent playing games and blogging. Hmmmm, food for thought.

Mich and I had a serious chat while Juan from Time Warner was here hooking us up today. She asked me not to watch TV in the living room while she was home so that she wouldn't get sucked back in and become a couch potato again. She begged me to be her savior. I confessed that I was afraid I'd become her corruptor and warned her that within a week she will know the first names of all of the DC Housewives.

I hope it's not true though. I hope I'll retain something positive from this experience. But since it is 2 in the morning and I'm sitting here on my new (used) computer blogging while watching Holly's World on TV, I can't say for certain that any good habits have set in. Only time will tell.

Reality TV

We spend a lot on our cable bill. I just can't bring myself to go back to basic cable, plus we don't go out much so ... what to do but pay up and enjoy ourselves? Over the last couple of years, daughter J & I have become addicted to Reality TV. One of our favorite shows is Jon and Kate Plus 8. Like the rest of America, we just love those kids.

Monday night we stayed up late to watch the start of the new season. At least it appeared to be the first show of the new season, but it looked old because of Kate’s hair which was short and red. She’s been growing it out lately, based on recent booksigning photos and those photos sure didn't match how she looked on this show. The network must have a ton of old footage that can be made into episodes but are limited by having to keep the kids around the same age and trying to match the parents evolving looks.

This episode was about making soup at home. I watched it carefully and don’t believe I heard Kate use her favorite word “organic” even once. She & Jon described some of the ingredients in her soups – broccoli & cheese in one and beef with an assortment of veggies in another. Once again I was amazed me at what sophisticated and adventurous palates her 8 kids have. When my 3 were growing up, they never cared for cheese-based soups or the squash or root vegetables that she named. She had two huge lobster-style pots on her stove and were cooking both soups at once which had to have taken forever! I also wondered at how many meals she’d be able to get out of that batch, since there are 10 in the family – she claimed that she’d be able to get 5 or 6 lunches out of it if she included grilled cheese sandwiches. This definitely made it worth all that effort!

Kudos to Kate in this episode for keeping her cool when her stovetop exploded and she had to get a entirely new stove. Trust me, non-working appliances are a biggie in the Mom stress-o-meter level counter. It was always the one thing that threw me as a single parent - the one hassle I couldn’t just shrug off even back when money wasn't so hard to come by.

The kids were jumping on a Little Tyke inflatable bouncy toy. I saw something like that at Sam’s Club recently and thought it would be a great thing for the Gosselins to have since they have so many kids of the same age. Lunch time brought about the oddest part of the episode - watching six 4 year old children sitting in high chairs and wearing bibs ... all righty then!

During lunch they announced that they would be moving soon. Kudos to little Alexis, the oldest of the septuplets, for figuring out how to get her own bedroom. Evidentally she’s “disruptive” and so sleeps on her own and was informed that this arrangement would continue in the new house. Yup, she scored a major coup in that family!