And Now A Word From My Sponsor

We all have our moments when we question our ability to parent.
Where we are sure we are focusing on the wrong issues.

I am having one of those moments right now.

I started writing about all these things going on…how it was my daughter’s birthday party, how my son just started smiling, how it makes me so happy that my children have fantastic Uncles and Aunts, while I grew up with none. I could write up something, slap a couple of penis or porn references in there and badda boom badda bing , I will have blogged.

But I can’t. I can’t write about all the things I should write about.

I’m too distracted thinking about what is going to happen with Derek and Meredith tonight.

And then I get all distracted knowing that I won’t be able to find out in tonight’s 2 hour Grey’s Anatomy season premiere.

Nope. I’ll find out in the Stretched Out Over 6 Hours and 2 Days season premiere.

Darn fresh child getting in the way of my vice.

I really have a problem. I am totally and completely addicted to the television. I find it soothing and funny. I don’t have a problem setting up an evening around a favorite program. And while I do tend to get up and out and do things with my life nowadays, it’s really largely due to the advent of Tivo.

And you know what’s worse? I don’t see a problem with it. Not at all. I surround myself with people who suffer the same addiction so I don’t have to feel guilty about my struggling. I try to go a few hours without looking at the screen, but then I will turn it on. Just for a moment. Just for a second. Just to check out that new ridiculous PC commercial. Just to watch the Bonus Round on Wheel of Fortune. Just to watch that movie on Lifetime with the really lonely woman who falls in love with a man who turns out to be her brother’s identity thief. That’s it. And then I’ll turn it off. I swear.

And it stinks because I love my children but sometimes I find myself longing for Sex and the City reruns on TBS (I mean they don’t even show the good stuff!) in the middle of dollhouse play time. I get bitter about having to wash dishes at the end of the day instead of sitting in front of a new Project Runway (which is probably why there is a pile of dishes 6 feet high in the sink right now). And I swear, I think the hardest thing about the new baby isn’t the lack of sleep or the lack of control or the lack of puke free clothes, but the lack of TV face time I get.

That’s not right.

And I can’t even defend myself. I need a support group. There are definitely better things I should be doing in my free time and weekends. But I LOOOOOOOOOONG for television. I need it. If I play too long with my daughter I have to sneak a peak on youtube just to catch a glimpse of something moving on a flat screen. And heaven help me when it is the holidays and all that good Orthodox brainwashing keeps me from turning on the new House on the second night of Rosh Hashannah.

Now let me do what all good addicts do and try and rationalize.

I have 0 me time nowadays. None. Even if I find a moment to sit and say-read a book, in the quiet I remember about the laundry that needs to get done. Or how all the fuzzy animals that are in the purple bin in the toy room got shoved in the plastic animal blue bin in the rushed birthday party clean up. That needs to get fixed. But if I turn on an episode of Friends? I laugh. I get engaged. I don’t have to get up and get dressed and out there. I am far too exhausted and busy to spend my free time expending more energy and being more busy.

And you know, I talk to my husband, he makes me laugh. He is engaging. I talk to my friends. I have play dates and date dates. I am not shut out. But when I need to turn myself off I turn the TV on.

Thankfully my addiction is not illegal. Or cancer causing. Or costly -unless I discover the joy of pay-per-view porn (phew-almost wasn’t able to squeeze one in). I’ll find a non TV related hobby when both the kids are in college….by then they’ll have figured a way to implant TV shows in my corneas and I can take them to go.