Day 93 - Yes, I'm Still Alive! And Still TV Free (Sort of)

The more activities I find to keep myself busy, the less time I have to blog about them! It's been awhile since my last post, and I'm way out of touch updating anyone who might be following my TV free self-challenge. I don't have much time today for a long post, so I'm just going to give you some bullet points on the finer aspects of TV-freedom!

• When you open yourself to the universe, the universe responds. Somehow, by eliminating TV and welcoming new opportunities, those opportunities seem to be finding us! We were invited to a neighborhood "happy hour" and met lots of people for the first time who we've lived near for years (and drank some awesome peach sangria); we attended a backyard BBQ of a former coworker and met some new friends; and we'll be playing euchre at a charity event (our first time accepting an invitation to this event that's been offered many times in the past). We want to stay busy and friends are helping us to do that!
• As indicated in my early blog about THE RULES of this challenge, I planned to watch the summer Olympics. They only come every four years, and I love them. I don't think they rot my brain. I think they make me patriotic! As intended, I did watch some of the gymnastics at my mom's house - somehow they seemed extra special this year, maybe because all the commercials and everything were new to me, too! I may have slightly cheated a bit on my own rules, though. My husband hooked up the antenna to our own TV so we could watch more Olympic action. That wasn't really the cheating part - the cheating was that I watched events that I never watch,just cause I was enjoying the TV exposure so much. When you catch yourself watching badminton and water polo, you realize you're not watching for enjoyment - you're getting your TV fix.
• My garden is doing great. Cucumbers are growing like crazy (and I'm researching new ways to prepare them!), lots of tomatoes, and my cantaloupes are starting to look like cantaloupes! All in all, I think my garden is a success. Also, for someone who could never keep ANYTHING alive, I'm quite proud to say that all the houseplants I planted in Week One are still thriving. 
• We just got back from a week long camping (yes, in a tent) and canoeing trip. As always, it was a great experience to get away, fully away, and commune a little with nature and family. (The first few days, just me and hubs. Later, joined by in-laws and then all the extended relatives.) This experience was even more noteworthy because it didn't occur to me to think about any TV shows I was missing.
• I straight up cheated last night. When we got home from the trip, we were exhausted. I wanted nothing more than to throw the laundry in the washer and then veg out while it was in. I had no mental capacity for doing anything. The antenna is still hooked up from during the Olympics, so I flipped it on. We only get something like 6 stations. While hubs took a well-deserved nap (he did all the driving), I tortured myself with an episode of Ugly Betty, a show I've never seen before. I had no idea what was going on. This was a good move - because it didn't get me re-interested in watching TV or in watching a show I've always enjoyed. When it was over, I was rested and re-dedicated to my TV-freeness. Though I have to admit, winter is going to be a real challenge. I might cheat. But going without TV for so long makes even a few minutes of cheating special, so I feel like I'm still winning!
• Continuing to volunteer at the farmer's market - and the week before last, we went to the volunteer event and enjoyed free food and a free concert as a reward for the effort. Something we never would have done before, but extra time now allows for trying new things!
• Next week, the citizens academy classes begin. Have I blogged about that before? If not, sorry! I'll be in an 11 week program for citizens with our local police. I'll get to play with the K9 dogs, learn to sniff out drugs, and do ride-alongs. I have no idea what I get at the end of this program, other than a greater knowledge of my community and understanding of the trials and tribulations of its police. Maybe I get a badge and can run around doing citizen's arrests? Not sure - but I'm doing this because it will be research for my next book, and I'm pretty sure there will be cute cops in uniforms there. I'll be sure to blog about the experience. The only drawback - the classes take place on the nights I do yoga with my bff. So no yoga outings for me. On the upside, I'm trying to talk my hubs into letting me take a zumba class with his sister. "Letting me" because basically the class is expensive and I barely make enough money to cover my bills right now, and by "barely" I mean pretty much "do not". Such is the drawback of new business ownership and my own lack of personal "rainy day" savings.

As usual, I'll throw out a couple of garden pictures to prove that it's still alive...

This picture is actually from two weeks ago. It's one of my cantaloupes, which is now even bigger and there are a half dozen more like this. I'm just crossing my fingers that they'll be big enough to harvest before the first frost. Grow melons grow!!

Just a full shot of the garden from the usual perspective (left to right) to show you how much it's grown. Those are the watermelon plants in the foreground, which are now flowering but no little melons as yet. Might be too late in the season now? See that stuff on the fence? Who knew cucumbers took over like that? I didn't, but I do now! And so does my neighbor!

Okay, first, I don't know why this picture won't rotate correctly. But whatever, you get the gist. That's one odd cucumber. I continue to be entertained by the strangely configured cucumbers I seem to have such a talent for producing.

Day 63: A Cucumber a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

It's day 63, and we're in the thick of summer. Most days, I've forgotten that I even used to watch TV. Given where I started from, I find this amazing. When people told me after a month I wouldn't miss TV at all, I thought they just didn't know me and how deeply rooted was my addiction. Now I understand the real meaning of out of sight, out of mind.

It helps that I've been so busy! My first book is being made into a short film (I wrote the screenplay, too), and I've been on set. It is unusual for the author/writer to be on set, however, this is a small picture, and I'm trying to wear a lot of hats to make myself useful, from doing PA duties when needed (like running errands and picking up lunch from the caterer) to helping with props. I even got a chance yesterday to be in the movie - controlling a few of the puppets, fulfilling a life long dream - remember, I love Fraggle Rock - and crossing off an item on my bucket list.

Me (background) and Stephen from the Art Department (foreground) controlling the magical dragon puppet in front of the green screen.

I'm also continuing to write my next novel. I'm about 30 pages in and the story is starting to write itself like I'm reading a book, always a good sign. I can't wait to see what happens next.

All week, I've been so immersed in the filming and the writing, I feel like I've been on another planet. I walked out into my backyard today to find the garden almost unrecognizable to me. It has been rainy off and on all week, so I haven't watered in a while.

My dream for some time has been to put on a flowery summer dress and floppy hat, float back to my garden with a wicker basket, and gently harvest all of my amazing vegetables. Instead, I threw on a t-shirt and jeans, a pair of hiking sandals, stomped back there with a mission, and plucked two cucumbers, raising them in my hands triumphantly like I'd just won a few Oscars. Funny, the last few days I've been feeling like I'm getting sick (scratchy throat, really tired, headache), but today when I snatched those veggies out of the dirt, I felt refreshed, like I hadn't had such a crazy whirlwind week. Maybe a romp in my garden a day will keep the doctor away. It did great things for my spirit to bite into a fresh cucumber that I grew on my own little piece of Earth. I think every child should have to grow something edible as a class assignment - it will certainly make me appreciate in the future all the work that goes into the food on my plate. Not just the value of a dollar, but the care and effort that goes into growing something that will nourish my body.

A few pics of my growing garden - and then I'm off to take a nap. Yes, I've finally mastered the art of the afternoon nap, now that I'm not sleep-watching the television set.

Cucumber City. I had no idea the leaves would get so big or that they would climb the fence! I may have to offer my apologies to my neighbor by delivering a few fresh veggies to her doorstep.

This is a tomato plant. You might mistake it for a vigorous weed or even a small tree. It's ginormous, and it's beginning to overshadow the smaller tomato plant and the marigolds below it.

Can you see us? We're going to be cherry tomatoes! Hopefully, we're high enough off the ground and buried deep enough within the plant to hide from the squirrels who ate our brothers off the small tomato plant.

The pepper plant continues to grow, as observed in relation to the cage around it. However, I didn't expect peppers to take so long. The plant is flowering, but has been doing so for a while...and still no signs of peppers growing.

A cucumber! There are lots like this one - I picked two today.

The cantaloupe plants are doing well and recently began to flower prettily. I'm hoping this is going to be my gardening success story - from what I hear, cantaloupes, with their tough outer skins, are pretty resistant to bunnies and other critters.

Just a shot from the left of the most successful part of the garden - notice the marigolds are growing bigger? They may not do squat for chasing the bunnies and deer away, but at least they look good while doing nothing else of value.

Two cucumbers...yes, they could have waited a little longer to harvest, but I have my reasons.

I know it was probably a little premature to pick these today. However, after my beautiful tomatoes were eaten right off the vine and my green beans have been chewed to almost nothing, I really wanted to make sure I got a chance to pick and eat something, even if it wasn't quite ready. Also, there are lots of cucumbers out there, and I'd like to pick them in various stages to get an idea of when they are perfectly ready. We ate one of these today and it wasn't quite ripe, but still pretty darn tasty - crisp and warm, straight out of the sun and into our kitchen!

Day 47: Look at my little garden grow & stuff with spiders

I keep forgetting that I don't watch TV anymore. Isn't it strange that something that used to be such a big part of my life has gone away, and I hardly even notice? I keep telling myself that it will get harder when Winter comes and I'm confined to the house. And then I mentally shake myself with a reminder: I'm trying to live a more interesting life, and stepping out of the box to accomplish it. So who says I have to stay inside in the winter? Yes, the days will be shorter. And yes, I won't be sitting for long hours on my patio. But maybe being TV free will help me to discover something I would never have tried that will also get me out of the house. Maybe I'll learn to ski! Or, more likely, maybe I'll learn to walk in snow shoes! (Much safer for a klutz like me.) I live in Michigan. Perhaps it's time I find some Winter activities I enjoy, so I can do more outdoor living year round!

Until that day comes, I'm continuing to stay true to my TV free challenge. I've made some great strides in work lately (the book is fully edited with author's approval; my company blog is now up and running with some solid content; I'm three chapters into my own new novel). I've also continued working on my outdoor projects, and though most of the stuff in my garden survives, I must admit to feeling challenged with the bunnies, insects, and weird weather. In fact, the easiest thing to grow so far is the lasagna garden - and I mean that as a joke, because the lasagna garden doesn't grow. And even more of a joke, because even that isn't exactly easy. (As a reminder, "lasagna garden" is just a fancy way of saying horizontal composting.) Even that takes time and dedication. I have to save my kitchen scraps, veggies only - and find a place to store them until I add them to the green layer. Sounds easy, but I catch myself digging through the trash after banana peels and other greens, which I'm just not accustomed to saving. Then I juggle bags of juicy and decaying veggie carcasses between my fridge and freezer for a week or two until I can't take it anymore and dump them all out in the lasagna patch.

As part of the lasagna garden, you also have to build the brown layer. The brown layer consists of corrugated cardboard, newspaper, and junk mail. Sounds easy. However, today I spent the better part of an afternoon breaking up the empty boxes in our storage room. (Don't judge when you see the picture. Yes, we had a lot of boxes - in our defense, we do a lot of online shopping and selling.) The worst part wasn't breaking down big boxes, even the very large one from the new toilet, or removing all the packing tape and labels from them, which I didn't want polluting my future compost. The biggest difficulty was the mental obstacle: I hate spiders, and there are spiders in our basement.

Now they'll probably be upstairs too, because I shook things up in spider utopia today when I came in with my vacuum and intent to break up boxes. I sucked two LARGE spiders into the vacuum, smooshed one with my shoe instinctively cause he was making a run for it and the vacuum was out of reach, and discovered several dead ones curled up inside boxes - just as scary to me as live ones. If you still fail to comprehend what an exhausting, paranoid-filled day I had, I suggest you read a previous blog I wrote a while back about an incident with a spider: Vehicular Arachnophobia. Reading it might help you to picture me today looking anxiously at the ceiling, the floor, every shadow, every cobweb, thoroughly vacuuming and inspecting each box before I would touch it to break it down. At one point, I was using all three of the vacuum wand attachments stacked one on top of the other to put the farthest distance between me and potential spiders, using it to wildly nudge boxes and shelves like a blind person in a fun house. My goal was to startle spiders out of their hiding places so that I didn't discover them later with my hands. Our vacuum sometimes spits out tiny pieces of things. A tiny grain of kitty litter spit out of the vacuum, pinged my leg, and sent me running out of the basement and up the stairs. I was a little edgy.

Anyway, long story short (too late), I spent the afternoon breaking up boxes for the lasagna garden, and it was a pain in the butt. I'll take a moment to share a couple pictures of my "chef's garden" and the lasagna garden:

My cucumber plants. They are starting to get large and sprawly. In my gardening naivety, I didn't know they would actually start growing out. I was wondering how they would grow up vertically and not collapse under the weight of heavy cucumbers. Well, duh!

The smaller of my tomato plants, but the one that actually has tomatoes on it. Two of them! I feel the need to document this because the leaves are getting brown and crunchy despite persistent watering, and I fear the plant might still die. Or, it will thrive, I'll grow bunches of tomatoes, and they'll get pilfered by squirrels before they are ripe enough to harvest. Regardless, best to get photographic proof that I can, in fact, grow something!

Look how big my other tomato plan is! HUGE! Can you see the little piece of tape on one of the limbs? That's where I broke the nicest stem trying to put it inside the tomato cage. I'm so handy. I used masking tape to bind the wound. I'm hoping there's no hard feelings and the plant will continue to grow despite my best efforts to cripple it.

Look at us! We're cantaloupe plants! We grew from a seed and will probably start growing fruit right around the time the first snow comes! Wee!

Here's the lasagna garden. Though it's at the very back of our yard, it is visible from the street. I hope someone doesn't think we've started a garbage dump in our yard and calls the city. We're trying to do something good for the planet, and that's just what I'll say when they issue me a ticket. ;)

So there we are at Day 47. I'm still loyal to my TV-free challenge, loyal to my garden and still fighting those bunnies, doing my best to condition my lungs and body for running (still run-walking), and generally appreciating the summer. Best of all, lately it seems like we've been much more social. More people asking us to do things who we haven't seen in a while, or who we've never hung out with. Perhaps they are trying to help us stick to the challenge by offering us something fun to do? Or, maybe, we've just opened ourselves cosmically to new experiences and the universe is answering. To all those who are being so sweet and supportive and giving myself and my hubs fun alternatives to TV, thanks for the invitations. Keep them coming! You make it so much easier to be TV free! 

Day 42 - Sweet William & Other Updates

We're doing our best to stay cool here in Michigan. I hope everyone else is doing the same.

My dad called today to say that he and my mom are giving up TV for the weekend to support my efforts. A little humor there - they actually lost power and have been told it won't be back on until Monday. Hoping they find lots of interesting things to do to keep themselves occupied. I know how hard that is when it's 100 degrees outside. Not much to do but try find things to do inside. (A TV free Winter will be much easier for me, when I can sit by the fire and crochet, than a TV free summer where it's becoming hard to get outside and enjoy!)

A few updates from the week:

1) I worked the Farmer's Market on July 4th, and it was a scorcher. I sweated my buns off, just sitting at the booth doing nothing. The biting flies due to the rain the night before were a nice touch.

2) I sprayed another dose of organic repellent on my garden. A few more things seem to have been nibbled on, but I wasn't sure. I didn't dilute it down as much this time, and I could really smell that garlic as I misted it around my plants. My marigolds are loving this heat. I might not grow many veggies this year, but at least my garden is pretty.

3) I have two itty bitty teeny weeny green tomatoes started. I've been so busy trying to water and keep my plants alive, I keep forgetting that I may get to actually eat something, too. In the meantime, I'm spending too much money at the Farmer's market, indulging in fresh greens.

4) I remembered why I hate the French language. Too many things sound alike. I gave it a few weeks and then gave up. I've now switched to Italian. Less practical, but I majored in Classical Archaeology in college and took five semesters of Latin. I would love to go to Rome someday (my concentration was in the Romans, versus the Greeks, though I did take quite a few Greek courses too), and my husband is Sicilian, so it would be great to take a trip someday and use our Italian skills.

5) We've watched a few DVDs. It's damn hot. When you get inside, all you want to do is collapse. My brain doesn't want to work when it's hot. We've now watched 4 DVDs I think since the TV free effort began. Less than one per week on average. I still don't feel like it's cheating. We're within the rules. I just wish the heat wave would cool down so that we could spend more time outdoors.

6) I'm continuing with the couch potato to 5k. I've graduated to walking 5 minutes, then run/walking for 20 minutes, and then cooling down to walk another 5 minutes. During the run/walking, I'm now running 2 minutes and resting only one minute in-between sprints. My pace is about 4 miles per hour. Basically, I can run walk a 15 minute mile. Terrible I'm sure to real runners, but it's more than I was doing before, and less than what I'll be able to do later! When it's too hot out - like it has been for many days in a row now - I'm thankful that my parents have a treadmill in an air-conditioned house that I can borrow for free. (Sadly, I won't be using it until at least Monday now!)

7) I've started writing again. I finished the macro and line edit on the 2nd book that I'm publishing (for an Atlanta area author) and decided it was high time I write my next book. This one is a novel (i.e., for grownups), and it feels great to be back to writing for myself - not a paid blog, not web content for my website, not editing someone else's work - ALL ME. Maybe my Doc was right all those weeks ago. I'm filling my bucket with the right kinds of things now!

8) The Words With Friends continues. I'm starting to think I'm spending too much time on it. About 30 minutes in the morning with breakfast, sometimes during the day during lunch, and then more in the evening. I may be filling time with a fruitless endeavor. Therefore, I've started rejecting offers of new games. I'll get down to where I'm only playing a few games and keep it at that. Entertainment is good. Too much, and I'm simply replacing the TV for something else that prevents me from doing other more important things.

9) Last (and best) note -My hubby is very thoughtful. He found some 60 year generational Sweet William seeds on Craig's List - for free. He picked them up for me as a surprise on Friday, and even got the seeds out of the dead blooms (a little false advertising there) today. Looking forward to some beautiful Sweet William blooms - in two years. They are biennial. If you're not familiar with Sweet William flowers, they are annual in cooler temps and perennial in warmer temps. Below is a pic. They are just lovely, and I'm trying to decide whether to save the seeds for next year, or attempt to cultivate a few indoors and transfer to my yard in the late summer...

Stay cool!!!

I found this pic online. Aren't Sweet William flowers pretty? They come in white, pink, red, and purple blooms. I don't know what these seeds will produce. A variety would be great. They are good for borders and flower boxes and like full sun, but can tolerate some shade. Their hallmark is the frilly edges. I've read that they smell nice too, and longer varieties are great for putting in vases. I think what we have will be the shorter variety, based on the dried blooms hubs brought home, though it's possible they were simply trimmed to fit in the bag. Either height, I think they will be a beautiful reminder of this summer spent making things around our home better. All by turning off the TV.

Day 34: And the War Begins

Who needs TNT channel for DRAMA? I've got rabbits in my new garden. That's all the drama I need to keep myself occupied these days!

I've calmed down a little since my last post. Okay, I wasn't really that upset. I was just feeling a little disappointed and perhaps even a little helpless. I'd put a lot of work into my garden. I hated to see it being devoured before it had a chance to flourish, and I had no idea what to do to stop it.

Now I have a plan of action, and that's making me feel a little better about all of this. Armed with some research, I've put together a strategy for fending off the bunnies who are treating my budding garden like their personal 24-hour salad bar.

First - I bought and planted Marigolds today. There seems to be some differing opinion on whether or not this will actually deter the bunnies, but they're pretty, so I figured why the hell not. I bought up all the Marigolds Home Depot had left - 12 plants - and strategically planted them across the border of my garden, a few inches inside the edge so that we can still mow the curve of grass. I may also hit Lowe's later and buy more for planting along the back.

Second - I took some old plastic decorative border that I hadn't been using and placed it along the back of the garden, along the fence. There are spots in the fence where I've seen bunnies come through, and I'm hoping this extra fencing will at least slow them down so they have time to smell the marigolds. Otherwise, they might just come leaping in, eat their fill, and leap out without taking a breath - or a sniff.

Third - Tonight I'm making an organic spray that's supposed to be good against pests, including bunnies:

Garlic/ Red Pepper Spray

1 onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 heaping Tbl. red pepper
3 pints water

Heat this mix in a saucepan on low heat for 20 minutes. Strain, and keep in a glass jar in refrigerator for over a month. To use, add 1 Tbl. solution to a pint of water plus a few drops of Ivory soap. Put mixture in spray bottle, and use as needed.

I know the soap is supposed to be in there to help make the spray stick. At least, that's what I've heard. However, it doesn't sound very organic to me. A friend recommended I buy a vegetable based soap, like Target's Seventh Generation soap. So I'll pick some of that up. I'll spray the perimeter and the pathways first. If I see any bunnies around, I'll try it on one section of plants and see if it hurts them before trying it all over.

Fourth - I replanted the green beans. Since my entire crop of green beans were de-leaved in one day, and I had leftover seeds, I decided to pop them in the ground. It might be too late in the season, but I'm going to water the bejeezus out of them and hope that I get a second wave. I really had my heart set on fresh green beans.

Having a plan makes me feel a little better. If these things don't work, I'll go with chicken wire, though I loathe the idea. It's hard to mow around, and I've read that it needs to be buried at least 24 inches in the ground so that the bunnies don't tunnel under it. That seems like an awful lot of work - if I can avoid it by using other methods, I will.

Today is Day 34 (I actually counted on the calendar to get myself back to accuracy on this blog), and as you can see, I've got more things on my mind than who is doing what on shows that I don't miss! I'll leave you with a few pictures of my newly flowered garden. (Also, my roses are doing good since I took the time to prune them - although they're slightly wilty since it was 102 degrees yesterday and 97 today. So I'm including a pic of them too.) Enjoy!

Day 31? - Damn Those Bunnies

I'm too distraught for a long post. Today, my husband discovered that every single green bean plant in my lovely garden has been eaten by bunnies. Silly me for thinking that I could simply shoo them away with my hands and a loud voice whenever I saw them.

Tonight, I'll be buying every damn Marigold flat I can find to surround my garden. Maybe I can save what's left by offending their little bunny noses.

Too bad I don't watch TV anymore. I could get ideas from the rednecks on the Discovery Channel for how to catch rabbits. I'd threaten to have rabbit stew, since I won't be having fresh green beans from my garden, but that seems a bit too morbid a thought, even for me at this moment.

4 Weeks Down! Accomplishments & Annoyances

Four Sundays ago, I began the challenge to get my buns off the couch and become a more interesting person. If you've read previous entries, you know I intend to continue for another 11 months!

Let's celebrate and recap the top 10 (in no particular order) of what I've accomplished to date without TV:

1. Planted a garden
2. Started a lasagna garden
3. Cleared the backyard of weeds (more hubby than me, but I helped.)
4. Began taking Rosetta Stone French Courses
5. Started my training for Couch Potato to 5k (I'll be running my first 5k ever in September!)
6. Published a book & Edited half a book
7. Read 13 books & Reviewed most of them on Goodreads
8. Volunteered at the Arts Festival
9. Volunteered weekly at the Farmer's Market
10. Re-potted all my houseplants

This in addition to things I was doing before, like writing blogs for pay, doing yoga, visiting with friends/family, our annual garage sale, etc.

Overall, I feel like I'm respecting and keeping to the goal. I don't know that I'm a more interesting person, but I'm opening myself up to more interesting experiences! Case in point:

I practice yoga with my friend Kate. We both have packages at a local studio, and we enjoy doing evening yoga once a week on Wednesdays together. Some weeks, we slack - especially lately because I've been devoting a lot of time to yard work and she's been doing a lot of running/training. When we do our yoga like good girls, we sometimes follow it with a drink or two at the nearby bar, catching up in loud voices over the sounds of bad karaoke. It's known to us as detox/retox. We don't always "retox", and admittedly, I don't usually like to stay out too late when we do. My routine used to be to come home and watch my DVR'd shows before bed because Wednesdays was "good TV night" - i.e., Survivor, Idol and Harry's Law nights.

This past Wednesday was a little different. After yoga, as we packed up our things and slipped on our shoes, Kate asked if we were retoxing. I was tired and tempted to go home and veg. Then I remembered - there is no vegging anymore. Without a TV to run home to, there was really no hurry. And I could really stay out as late as I wanted and not think once, even for a second, about what I might be missing. As a side note, I've been trying to think of my TV Free challenge as a sort of "Yes Man" challenge. If you've seen the movie "Yes Man" with Jim Carrey, the theme of the movie is that the main character has to say yes to every opportunity, which is problematic sometimes, but in general, leads to a series of hijinks that take him to a much more interesting, varied life. So, when I thought about retoxing that night, I thought about my goal to embrace life more. To stop being a couch potato and be more social. It would be against everything I'm trying to do to go home and read a book when I could enjoy the company of my best friend. In this situation, that would have been just as bad as going home and clicking on the TV. It went against the spirit of this adventure.

As our yoga instructors were on their way out, I spontaneously asked if they wanted to join us for a drink. They told us they were in fact planning to get a drink at a different place than where we were intending to go, but were happy to enjoy together. We shrugged and said SURE, wherever they were going, we were game!

We ended up at a brewery around the corner that we'd been to before but never knew had outdoor seating off the back alley. There was an outside grotto hidden from the general sports bar atmosphere, lit with white strings of lights and filled with little tables for couples and foursomes. Lucky for us, our instructors knew about the hidden seating and led us back there right away. It was 97 degrees that day, but now it was cooling off with the sun down, and it was a lovely evening for a drink outdoors. As an added bonus, when we got to the patio, there was a fun, blues/jazz band playing. Next thing we knew, we were grooving to great music at the front table, toasting with the band members, listening to the sax players, trumpeters and cello dudes shouting and encouraging each other in their solos, tipping back some beers with people we never hang out with...I even got a little serenade from the band's singer, and we enjoyed the music so much, we bought CDs. We didn't care that we were messy from yoga and the four of us were still in our yoga attire. Or that it was late on a weeknight. This was the place to be.

It's possible I would have had the same experience, even if I hadn't given up TV. But somehow, it didn't feel like it at the time, nor does it now. It feels like I was where I was supposed to be at that moment, and it was a result of the decision to change my life. I pledge to myself and to whomever might be reading to continue to try new things. This experiment isn't just about not watching the television, it's about doing new things that I haven't tried because my spare time was going to that one activity.

Included in the above benefits, the retox being one example, I notice that there are things I'm NOT missing at all about TV:

• Any commercials
• Political Ads
• Things that make me worry about my self-image (sexy ads, sexy people, etc)
• Things that make me worry I'm not active enough (like Nike commercials)
• Things that make me eat more (food commercials, TV shows about making food)

There are a few things I DO miss:

• The news. I feel out of the loop a bit, even with reading Internet and print news.
• Crafty shows (on occasion, these shows actually inspired me to get up and do something)
• Knowing what people are talking about in pop culture. Already, I'm starting to feel left out of a few conversations. Nightly shows like TMZ or Jimmy Fallon kept me up on the latest entertainment news!
• Humor (listening to music/radio or reading a book doesn't tend to make me laugh out loud like a funny sitcom could do!)
• The zone out factor - you can't zone out with many things like you can with TV.

A few final notes regarding reactions of friends and family. Though no one comments much on this blog here on blogspot, I usually post my entries on Facebook, and friends do tend to respond there. I have to say that I'm sometimes disappointed/annoyed at how some people sort of passively burst my bubble. I'll post an achievement, and they'll post something about how long it's been since they've watched TV or how rarely they watch TV. I know in reality that these people are my friends and they are trying to be supportive, like, "hey, I know what you're going through. I did it too." What it comes off as sometimes is what I'm doing isn't that big of a deal. The comment is usually accompanied by something like "I didn't miss it a bit." Perhaps it wasn't a big deal TO THEM. But I feel like they don't understand how critical it is to me. I'm fairly certain some of them haven't even read this blog, just seen my posts that I've stopped watching TV. Do they know where I started?

If you met an alcoholic who said she was 30 days sober, would your first reply be "Oh I never drink" or "Oh, I haven't had a drink in YEARS" or "Oh, you were an alcoholic for 20 years and gave it up cold turkey? Nice! I gave it up for Lent once. So I know exactly how you feel!"

One person in particular told me that they gave up TV for a period of time when they were a kid and didn't have a TV and didn't miss it at all after a month. I think they said when they were 7 years old. My first thought was seriously? At seven years old, how much of TV was a life-long, ingrained routine for you?? I'm sure it's much harder for an adult who's come to use it as an emotional crutch for stress-relief! My second thought was Hmm, how much time did I spend watching TV when I was 7? The answer that came was that I didn't watch a fraction of the TV I watched as an adult - I would have been outside playing until the streetlights came on at seven years old. Maybe a little TV after dinner and after my bath and cartoons on Saturday mornings, but I didn't grow up in a home with the TV on 24/7. My third thought was I could give up TV real easy too if my parents took it away. Much harder to exercise your own self control! So basically, when I really thought about the comment, I was annoyed. I probably shouldn't have been. Folks are just posting a quick comment. Little do they know I'm sitting there analyzing it and taking it personally.

The other thing I notice is that people haven't read my RULES for this challenge, so without any information, they want to call me out on stuff. I posted that today my hubby and I celebrated 4 weeks TV-free with a trip to the movies. I received 5 inbox messages from friends calling me a cheater in one form or another. Isn't that TV, they ask? I know I can't expect everyone to be up to date on this challenge, but I'm very proud of the fact that I'm not cheating. I'm not bending the rules. I've made a huge change in my life (and my husband has by extension as well). I'm NOT eliminating every bit of entertainment in my life. I'm simply not watching the television set. I can only wonder why anyone feels compelled to try to "catch me" cheating. Give me a little credit to know the difference between a date night at the movies and watching 8 hours straight of Law & Order.

I suppose the only way to avoid these little annoyances is to simply do the challenge and stop talking about it. But that seems unfair to me - as I should be able to celebrate the fun I'm having - and to anyone who is actually following this blog and is somehow inspired by it. So I will endeavor to see the positive and try to remember that if anyone is taking the time to respond at all, it is because he or she is making an effort to show interest. I should be happy anyone reads my damn posts at all!