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!

What I Wish I Had Known

I'm in the process of going back to school. Since I've spent the majority of the last decade fighting the good fight, I never really thought that this would happen again. Of course, I've always said I would do it. And there was two years that I studied my behind off trying to become a traditional midwife which involved more education than I ever anticipated. But I never thought I would actually be attending a legitimate college again.

I did it when I was younger. In fact, I "went back to school" quite a few times. I did it so many times that I got myself into a great deal of debt. Terrible debt. Twenty-grand of useless debt. I managed to accumulate 23 credits. I essentially paid a grand per credit for a measly 23 credits. Ridiculous.

When I was 20 years old, no one ever sat me down to talk about financing my education. They just slid a piece of paper in front of me, I signed it, and next thing I knew I had paid for my tuition and books and there was an overage check in my pocket. No one bothered to point out that even though tuition at a community college was less than 2,500 a semester, I was taking out ten-grand in loans that I didn't need. I figured if the school's financial aid office was going to offer me that much, that's what I should take out. Yeah, not the greatest thought process I've ever had.

My financial aid award letter arrived in the mail today. It seems I will be spending the next few days doing math (which may be why I have avoided college for all these years). Maybe this time I will only borrow what I need. well, maybe that and a little more because I'd love to have a laptop that doesn't randomly shut down.