Not a Matter of Life and Death

Are you ready to cry my a river? To hear such a sad sob story that you'll roll your eyes? Yeah? Good, cause here we go.

For the past two days-ish (because admittedly, some of it happened through the night), we had a recent wave of severe thunderstorms roll through our area of the country and had some interesting lightening strikes near-by. I didn't think much of it, though once it did knock out the power and I had to reset everything. Like I said, didn't think much of it...

Until yesterday...

When our tv went on the fritz. Yep. Our less than four years old flat screen splurge...er...tv is no longer showing any kind of picture at all. You can hear everything, but from my research, it appears that a video card (or the like) has been fried, so we no longer get a picture. And based on everything else, the only thing we can think that caused this problem is the lightening storms we've had.

Oh heavy heavy sigh.

It's darn annoying, but it's definitely not the end all of anything, except maybe the tv. Not to fret, the children are still able to get their tv fix thanks to the lesser used, smaller (oh the sadness) tv in the basement. And, they get to be reunited with all their toys they've forgotten about that live in the basement, so they really aren't hurting for entertainment in the least.

But, like I said. It's annoying. AND the DISH satellite system we subscribe to seems to having issues as well. I've had to reset the thing several times this morning to get things working in the basement (because, see, I didn't know it was having problems yesterday because our main tv isn't working...you get the picture. Pardon the pun).

Super J has smelled the blood in the proverbial water. He is anxious for us to get rid of all things television and has told me that we should, since the one tv isn't working, just get rid of all of it--the tv and the DISH. "It just seems like the natural time to do so, doesn't it?" he reasons.

Hmmmm. I'm not so sure. I'm not sure I'm ready for that, much like I'm not ready for a financial planner or a trip to the dentist for a root canal. Not that I can't be without tv. I can quit any time (yeah, clearly!!!). But the only tv that got the digital signal is the one that is now dead. So, we would literally be without ANY tv....Super J says that this will help us all to be better readers and communicators, but I've got three kids who aren't even reading and that means that *I'm* the main reader and, let's be brutal shall we? I'm lazy. This doesn't sound like a good time to me, since I wouldn't be able to just read what *I* want to read...I'm stuck reading Barbie and Dora books over and over and over, and I kinda do that already.

Tsk. See how whiny and complainy this is?

Now, I do have a friend (and you know who you are) who lives a happy and fulfilled life with no television (well, she has a tv, but they just use the *gasp!* free stuff that comes over the airwaves or use it for just *gasp, again!* dvds and videos!!! ...or they watch stuff on the computer). There are probably more of you out there. More incredible women who are raising their children without a television nanny.

Yeah...but that's not me. And this isn't to say that I haven't told Super J that I'd get rid of DISH so I could keep my YMCA membership. He's just been good enough not to force the issue so far this summer. And it wasn't like we didn't talk about getting rid of DISH when Super J wasn't working, because we did! Several times. And our contract has now expired, so we can do so without any financial cancellation fees. But that was when I could comfort myself with knowing we could still get some form of kids shows, like PBS or Qubo.

So, see how sad my life is? Don't you just feel so sorry for me? Yeah, I know. I kinda feel that way, too. It's a sad sad river full of tears flowing through my life right now.

Thanks for letting me kvetch.