Saturday, February 12, 2011

Open up your eyes.....

I haven't blogged in a couple weeks because we had our cable & internet interrupted.
Apparently that's what happens when you only pay about 1/2 of your bill for several months in a row.
Who knew?

When I was younger, up until about age 21 in fact, I barely watched TV at all.
I didn't really start going online until around then, too. But in the last 8+ years since my I became a stay at home mom, I've become a TV addict.
My husband & I actually plan things around what TV show is on, and that's totally fine but this was a DAILY occurrence, not some weekly program that came on after the kids went to bed, but something we'd do all dang day if we could.

The first day we had no cable or internet, I thought the children might go all Lord of the Flies. My 3yr old was the absolute worst. She is normally so bossy and particular about what she watches.
The second she woke up in the morning it was "I want a PINK show!" (as opposed to a "boy" show. I don't know, she's 3, ok?) and I'd turn on PBS so she could watch "The Cat in the Hat" followed by whatever else would keep her busy enough to allow me to get some things done around the house.
Now, I'm a homeschooling Mom, so we don't really just sit around all day watching cartoons, but it seemed like there was always a TV on in the background, even if nobody was paying any attention to it.

Without the distraction of cable (the kids) or internet (mom), we were forced to find other things to do together. We played tons of board games. The kids helped make meals & clean up.We visited parks that we'd never been to. We took drives around neighborhoods we were curious about. We went to the library 6 times in one week. And I cleaned the house like WHOA.

When we had our cable & internet restored yesterday, I thought we'd all jump at the chance to sit on the couch like we are so often wont to do. But something had changed in us, in that small amount of time, technology had taken a backseat to the more joyous and honest activities we'd been forced to re-learn.
The kids did eventually watch some TV, but for the most part they chose to draw together, laying on their bellies side-by-side on the living room floor. Magic.

As for myself, I shooed the kids into their rooms and declared it "Mommy TV Time!" fully intending to catch up on whatever programming I had been missing. But even after I was sure they would not bother me and that yes, I could greedily choose whichever chic flick I wanted from the onDemand menu, I sat quietly on the couch, staring at a blank screen until finally deciding to join my youngest in a story.

Because, you see, every night for the last 10 days after I put the kids to bed, I sat in the silence of my home and looked around at what we had done that day.
New kids paintings littered the table next to a stack of board games, handmade sock puppets, and newly borrowed library books.
And when I lay my head on my pillow at 9pm every night, I fell fast asleep, exhausted from the actual, physical act of living life.

Though I am happy to be reunited with technology, it is the perspective I received from losing it that will stay with me.

4 comments:

  1. and you cleaned the house like WHOA?!
    we need to do that.

    my oh my i love this post.

    p.s. i missed you! but yes. when my laptop was getting a new screen (took 2-3 months, :P) i got that perspective too. it's good.

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  2. Great post! I had to comment. =)

    One of my 2011 resolutions was to unplug for a month from social media, tv, Internet, and everything that needed to be plugged in. While, I have yet to make it past a week, I find that tv is the best way to keep my man from complaining. I refuse to pay more than $40 a for Comcast, so we only have Internet access. If it weren't for Hulu and Netflix, my boyfriend would go crazy, which would make me crazy because he spends all his free time bugging me.

    In the one week that I unplugged from FB, I found that I got a lot of homework done, I cleaned my apartment, and I went to yoga without feeling the need to "check in." The way I feel about tv and the Internet is this: both can distract me for hours and that makes me feel like I've wasted my life. On the other hand, the Internet allows me to answer my own questions and plan outings. TV is also a great boyfriend distraction, so when I just want to be alone with my tweets, I can sit him in front of the flat screen & enjoy some "me" time.

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  3. you've been tagged:
    http://onesmarmymama.blogspot.com/2011/02/day.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. Welcome back! I don't hate TV. I love TV. I think balance is mederation is key. That said, it must be nice to recover from unplugging and discover that you did just fine without it.

    And are you watching Glee?
    I'm hooked. I watch it on Hulu.com.
    So much for moderation. Hee hee.

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