More Guilty Pleasures

Honestly, I barely watch television. It is not on all day, the kids are not permitted to watch it on weekdays (unless they are sick, Bugaboo watched his Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom video about thirty times!). Regardless, Bug Boy wakes up each morning, stumbles into our room and asks, with bleary eyes, if he can turn it on. I remind him of the rules, he pouts and then goes about his morning routine.

The past two weeks I have been exhausted. Instead of finishing housework or getting ready for the next day I have been procrastinating. I sit on the couch once they are asleep and I cannot move. It does not help that I have had the fireplace quite active the past few days. Ahhhh! Nothing more relaxing than snuggling on the couch with your honey with the fire roaring. And being in control of the clicker because there is no Survivor and no football. 24 has started again, boohoo!

So, my lastest guilty pleasure is a show I am ashamed to admit I have started watching. For some reason I have been watching marathons of "The Girls Next Door" which is the reality show about Hugh Hefner and the girlfriends at the Playboy Mansion. Don't ask me what the draw is. Perhaps it is the abundance of silly bleach blondes with perfectly perky (and oversized, darn plastic surgeons!) boobs and their artful manipulation skills. I am awed by the fact that they have fifty dogs running around that mansion, that there are about seventy people that work there, that Hef runs around in his Pajamas all day and that the girls all take college courses, have lives on the side and think they have the best life imaginable. Oh to be twenty-five, pre-child, blonde and big-busted!

Naahhhh. My home is my castle. I don't need no stinkin' mansion! I have the best here. So why am I drawn to this nonsense?

The only thing I can think of is escape. I have not had the brain-power to read a book lately. The fantasy that I used to escape to in between the pages of a good book have temporarily been replaced with bad reality tv. I love makeover shows, surgery shows, episodes about large families, those side-show type of shows and Dr. 90210. Do not ask me where it comes from. Everything in me says, "This is drivel! This is nonsense! Television at the worst, there IS a reason they call it the idiot box!" And while I can stand on my soapbox and rattle off exactly how I feel about television and the evils it projects, at the same time I currently regard it as my escape from real life. If I cannot concentrate enough to lift a pencil and complete a crossword puzzle I might as well watch something completely useless.

I just need my brain to soften once in a while. I spend the majority of the day thinking about important things and worrying about Bugaboo's future. I am constantly making appointments, reading about treatments, deciding on options. I am fried like an egg by the time they go to bed and have nothing left to give. I guess it is fair to say that I cannot fall asleep until the wheels in my head stop turning and I can just be blank up there. Now, my brain NEVER stops! It does, however, take a little break and kinda get sidetracked when I watch television. I enjoy that little break.

I have kept the television off today. Bugaboo will not watch videos (but he will tear the house up, one room at a time) and I will not sit at this computer, aimlessly surfing because I am beyond bored. Instead I have rebooted my laundry, cleaned the stack of dishes from two days ago, made beds, picked up a few rooms. I plan on returning three phone calls, picking up a few more rooms and doing some decluttering. I am well on my way. My brain is in a happy place today!