Happy New Year!

Well, after a very disappointing New Years, life went on as normal on January 3^rd. It was back to school, back to work and back to business as usual. I must admit that the Y2K weekend, lacking its news events of terrorism, computer catastrophes and total destruction made my Saturday, the 1^st, very boring. I had planned to stay home and watch my last bits of television absorbing in every news worthy episode throughout the world. I tired of fireworks, even those spectacular ones from the Eiffel Tower were only exciting the first few times. I had held out on keeping our television through the end of the 1^st because I was sure something exciting was going to happen in the world and I was going to miss it because we wanted to end the 20^th Century purifying ourselves of the commercialism on TV. Anyway, I could have thrown the dang thing out the 31^st and I wouldn’t have missed a thing!

So, ...life without a TV at the Fords. I know you are either asking how or so what. The TV entered our house when Erika came home from the hospital nine years ago. My mom told Jim that a woman needed some entertainment at 3 in the morning when she is nursing, so unless he was will to wake up too, he should grant me a TV. He agreed but has been trying to get rid of it ever since! There is always some reason to keep it. First it was The Simpson’s and Star Trek: NG, then Deep Space Nine and now Voyager. But when my children started memorizing text from Simpson’s re-runs and singing commercial jingles in the car, I started understanding why Jim wanted the thing out of the house. Erika was turning into a couch potato, but what is so wrong with that? I come from a strong line of couch potatoes. So I have yielded for one year. No commercial TV in our home for twelve months, but an occasional video is allowable for special emergencies. Sometimes you just need to get something done and when it is 15 below outside, go play doesn’t help.

Amazingly, very little has changed. I thought we would all go to bed at 8 PM out of boredom. I am still fighting to get the kids in bed by 9 and I still stay up past midnight most nights. Instead of watching TV, it seems we are making a mess. The girls are playing and fighting and building and tearing up the place more. I am constantly sorting and sifting and re-organizing. There are more places to go to and more things to do. After the first week of whining (mostly from Erika), the TV wasn’t even missed.