Biting the Bullet

For quite awhile now, we have been talking about getting rid of cable.

When The Boy was young, he and I lived for many years without a television. I was a single mom! I couldn't afford a television. And I certainly couldn't afford to pay for cable. So, even if we had owned a television set, it would have been basic broadcast channels. We passed our time reading and listening to the radio. Or occasionally watching a rented DVD on my laptop. We spent evenings playing board games, singing along to CDs and dancing while I made bread and baked BBQ tofu (we were vegan, too, but that's a whole different crunchy story).  Entertainment and fun were hard earned. We worked for it, but it was so much more satisfying.

As I have become more financially stable, entertainment started to come more easily. Flip on the computer and log into Netflix. Turn on the television and choose from one of 300 available channels. If there is nothing on that looks interesting, there's always On Demand.  We all have a bit of a television addiction in our house. The TV is *always* on. Quite literally. Our entertainment is cheap and easy.

During the day, I am home alone and I just turn the set on out of habit. And because it is background noise in an otherwise pretty lonely existence.

In the evening, we are generally catching up on the programs that we both enjoy watching while we cook dinner and then while The Wife works on homework and I putz around on a craft project. A lot of our "couple time" is spent watching programs.

I even sleep with it on because it helps to calm me to hear a voice when I wake up in from PTSD related nightmares. While I can justify my nighttime television, I managed to give it up last year for Lent by using guided meditation and some really great sleep hygiene.

Obviously, of those three times of day, the only one that is forgivable is at night and since I was able to find a suitable arrangement to avoid it during Lent, I think that I can probably work through it again.

So, we're in the process of giving it up. We spent tonight looking through some of the options for still being able to have our television provide some entertainment without costing us a bazillion dollars. We checked out online streaming services that we could run through our Wii or possibly through a device like the Roku.

It's not set in stone yet, but I think we're on our way to a cable-free home!