Blessings

I know it has been awhile since I blogged. My goal is to post something once a week, so I just missed one week. In my last post I complained about being bored out of my skull now that we don't have a T.V. to watch. I must admit that I was having a hard time coming up with things to do. But these past two weeks I have had a lot to do, and it's been nice that I can get things done without being distracted. After my last post my fabulous mother-in-law called my husband and told him that she had bought me a piano and that it was being delivered in the next week. I couldn't believe it! She bought me, and my sister-in-law, a new Yamaha digital piano. This was an unexpected blessing! I have spent the past two weeks playing it almost everyday. I love it! Last Saturday my husband and I went to the music store and I picked out an easy praise songs piano book so I would have something else to play than just a hymnal, not that there is anything wrong with a hymnal. The emphasis is actually on the easy because it has been a long time since I have played the piano and I'm a little rusty, and I wasn't that great to begin with. Also last week I was able to do something else that I love which was a blessing. As a thank you gift for the piano I was able to arrange some flowers for my husband's mom. This is one of my most favorite things to do and I really haven't had much opportunity to do it because our cats like to destroy anything that is pretty and it really can get costly.

This past week has been a little bit tougher and a bit more stressful but there were many blessings. Last Saturday my husband and I were driving around and saw some condos that were for sale. My husband wondered out loud: "I wonder what those go for and what they look like inside." I told him I could look them up to see. For those of you who don't know we are trying to sell our current single family home and are looking for a townhouse because we hate yard work. I know it's kind of a silly reason to move, but we have tried the single family house thing and realized it's not for us. Anyway these condos that are for sale are no where near the area we were looking, but are very close to our church and my work. We got home and I looked them up, one of them was in our price range and looked very interesting from the pictures. On Sunday we were invited out for lunch right down the road from the condos. I asked my husband if he wanted to go over and check them out because I noticed that they would be open from 1-4pm. We got there and walked into the place and it was like angels singing, at least for me. My cool-as-a-cucumber husband didn't say anything. I was almost giddy and giggled a lot. I'm sure the realtor showing us the place thought we were really weird. This unit had everything we were looking for. It also had an underground parking garage with a space big enough for 4 cars, seriously it was fantastic. We knew when we left that this was the one. I started off on Monday calling our lender, whom we haven't spoken to since we first put our house on the market 6 months ago. I just wanted to make sure our financing was still there and there wouldn't be any surprises. Next was to our realtor to let him know we had found it and would like to see it again! After an exhausting week of thinking up of every possible scenario for us to get into this place we still had/have one big problem, our current home. It still hasn't sold. We went over more scenarios, should we rent it? Should we try to carry two mortgages for a few months till it sells? So after much prayer and discussion we decided that we would put in a subject to sell offer, meaning we will buy that place if our current home sells within a certain time frame. If someone else decides to make an offer on the place we love they can accept it, but they have to give us notice. As it stands right now we are waiting to see if they have accepted our subject to sell offer or not. I really hope they do! Here are the blessings out of this situation...we have options financially. The Lord has blessed us with good credit and good stable jobs. Also, we have learned a few things about how things are done in the home buying world and if we have to make an offer on another place we already know the process. We have picked out a back-up home, it's not as wonderful as the one we put the offer on, but it is certainly very nice. Someone looked at our current house today, I don't know if they liked it or not, but at least someone is looking. There were some stressful moments for us over the past week, and I'm sure there will be more to come, but I feel the good outweighs the bad and the Lord has a plan for us. The greatest blessing this week was that I got to learn to rely more upon my Lord. It is because of Him and what Christ has done on the cross that we can truly experience all the many blessings He sends our way.

Withdrawal

I think I am going through withdrawal. I'm saying that because here I am on a Saturday afternoon bored out of my skull. The same thing happened to me last Saturday. I finished my to-do list very quickly and here I sit with really nothing to do. I shouldn't say there isn't anything to do, there are things to do, I just don't want to do them. Here is what I have done today: got up, showered, laundry, dishes, shovelled some snow, more laundry, cleaned kitchen. Yes much was accomplished, without the television to distract me I got it all done in record time. I even tried to stay as long as possible snuggled up in bed this morning knowing that I would finish my list quickly. I knew that Saturdays would be hard for me, but I didn't realize how bad. Today is worse, I think, because my husband decided to do some overtime at work and is working until 10:30pm tonight. Now I am counting down the hours until I can go out with some friends this evening. This particular set of friends invited my husband and I both out, but since he has to work I am going alone, but I don't care!

This past week has flown by quickly. I didn't miss television at all this week. There was a brief moment when the buzz about an American Idol auditionee sang something about pants on the floor that I wished I knew what was going on. But then I thought about it and decided I really didn't want to know about someones pants being on the floor. Maybe one day I'll be curious and see if it's on You Tube or something. I told a co-worker yesterday about our decision. Her response was: "How could you live without T.V.? What about the news? I would never be able to live without T.V." I should mention that this particular co-worker has 7, yes 7, televisions; one for each room in their home. I know, I don't get it either. As far as the news goes I stay informed by reading about the news instead of watching someone tell me the news. I did know about the earthquake in Haiti and I'm staying on top of current events.

We have seen a few movies in the last week. The first one was Leap Year. This was your typical romance and you pretty much know what is going to happen. There were a few laugh out loud funny parts. With that being said, it really wasn't that great. The main character is amazingly selfish and the two men in her life are both big jerks. Also it kept telling the audience that marriage was old fashioned. Yeah, if it were sooooo old fashioned why do people still do it and why did the main character want to get married so bad? We should've just waited to put this one on our Netflix queue. The other movie that we saw was Book of Eli. I had no idea what this movie was about. The only thing I knew was that is was a post apocalyptic story. The trailers for this movie only seem to let you know that something big happened to everyone and Denzel Washington's character was wandering about a desolate land. I was thinking it was going to be like Mad Max or even kind of like Waterworld but without the water. When the movie first started I thought it was going to be boring and that afterwards I would feel like I had to take my brain out and scrub it to try and forget this movie. I was surprised! This movie had a biblical worldview. I really was dumbfounded and couldn't figure out if it was all going to be tainted at the end. It wasn't, the message got even better. After seeing the movie it makes sense to me why Hollywood did not include the Christian themes in the trailers, they want people to go see it. I am still trying to digest this film. A word of caution, it is not for everyone. If you are a bit squeamish about violence then do not go see this film. While it is not as violent as a Quintin Tarantino film, it comes close and is similar to his films. I do highly recommend this movie.

It did occur to me that while this blog was about making our own adventure without having to watch one on T.V. we have not really made our own adventure. I'm sure that in the future we will have many adventures and the blog will get more exciting, but for now the only adventure is having a really clean house.

The First Week

I have accomplished much this week. I don't mean to pat my own back, but it does seem that things have gotten done this week. In a normal work week I would come home in the evenings, prepare dinner or beg my husband to prepare dinner and then we would sit and eat dinner in front of the T.V. After dinner we would sit and watch T.V. If I needed to get something done I'd procrastinate until the weekend. This week however with no T.V. I have gotten things done. Every night this week I came home from work and accomplished what I set out to do. Monday it was cleaning. Tuesday my husband and I played a game. Wednesday sat in front of the fire and finished a book. Thursday created an envelope system for my wallet so that I could keep track of our spending money a little better. Friday was spent with my husband's family and then I started a new book. Thursday's project was the one I was most looking forward to doing. It helped me get just a little bit more organized. I have a set a goal this winter/spring to do just that, only I'm going to do just a little bit each week. There's no sense in trying to organize our lives in just one day! It's a process and takes time. Below I've posted a picture of my Thursday project which I found a template for here.



Have I thought about T.V. this week? YES. I do have to admit that I have wanted to watch it on occasion. I did think of a show that we will be missing, Lost. We love Lost and this is the last season, we have been faithfully and patiently watching this show. So if are a follower of Lost please do not spoil it for us because we will have to wait until after the show has aired to view on the Internet. If I can only think of a few shows that I will surely miss, and one of them will be over with after this spring, then I think I can do this! I was blessed this week with more time, how many people say they don't have the time? I found some! I am really excited that we decided to do this. We were able to use our dining room this week as well, it only gets used once a year when my family comes to visit. This week we have eaten dinner in it every night, played some games and worked on our budget in it. I have enjoyed spending time and talking with my husband this week as well. There was a moment yesterday when I wasn't sure this was going to work. We were moving the entertainment center to another wall in our living room and taking out all the systems that we will not be using anymore and it seemed like there was a moment of panic on husband's face as he realized there wouldn't be anymore Tivo or satellite. I kept asking if it was OK that we were doing this and he assured me it was. The moment of panic that had come over him had to do with all the cords that were tangled, he just didn't want to tackle it. Today will be the most tough I think because it's Saturday. But I have made a list of things to do and that should keep me busy through most of the day. One of the things that is the list for today is to go and see Leap Year with Amy Adams. I'll let you know how it is. As we continue on this adventure I am excited to see what blessings God has in store for us, because I have truly been blessed this week and it's only the beginning.

The Decision

My husband and I have several friends who either do not own a television or have one collecting dust in the basement. One day this past fall my husband said: "I wonder if we could live without T.V. like so and so..." This started the wheels in my head turning. Could we really go without a television in our home? We only have one T.V. set, we would've had two if mine had not gotten stolen right before we married. We do have satellite and have the expanded channel selection. When we first got satellite our reasoning for paying for more channels was that it included Boomerang and more History channels. While we do watch these channels, we don't nearly watch them enough to warrant paying that extra money. As I thought more and more about a life without television it dawned on me that I watch a lot of T.V.. Not just a few shows here and there like my husband but I could/can/have literally sit/sat in front of the T.V. all day on a Saturday and do nothing else. I soon realized that I was addicted to television! My husband, however, is not addicted. He can go days without viewing any of the shows he has Tivo'd, then he will sit down for about 2 hours watch those shows and be done for the week. I think this has a lot to do with how we were raised. His family is from a small farm town and the T.V. he had growing up could only receive 4 channels on a good day. Life did not revolve around the what was on the tube, but what was happening on the farm. I was raised in the city and I cannot remember a time when we did not own at least two televisions. I remember getting up in the mornings and turning on the T.V. before school and watching cartoons. I remember getting home from school and turning on the T.V. and watching cartoons. Then the T.V. was turned off briefly for dinner, which we did eat as a family, and then it was on again after dinner. It seemed like the T.V. was always on in our home. On a side note my sisters and I turned out just fine, it's just that we watched a lot of T.V. The only time I lived without a T.V. was 4 semesters of college, we weren't allowed to have them in the dorm. After college when I lived in Russia I watched Russian T.V. even though I didn't understand half of what was being said! As I thought about all of this a decision was made. Last Saturday I asked my husband if he could live without the television. His only concern was that we have an Xbox and a Wii and he still wanted to play them as well as watch movies. We decided that we would keep our big, "ancient" T.V. but cancel our satellite service and not get a digital converter box. Now there will be no temptations to veg for hours on end doing nothing productive.

Several more reasons went into the decision to change our (er...my) lifestyle other than my addiction. There are the obvious ones like: T.V. rots your brain, which oddly enough there is a study out there to see if T.V. really does rot your brain. There is a link to obesity and the amount of T.V. that one watches, that's a great reason alone to get rid of it! But my main reason for no T.V. is it's nothingness (not sure if that's a word but I'm going to use it!) When I watch television what am I accomplishing? Nothing, it's the biggest time waster that was ever invented. At least with the Internet you can engage other parts of your brain than what is engaged when you watch T.V.. Anything that is taught on television I can learn elsewhere and find out if it's even true. Plus I could've avoided a lot of hoopla about Tiger Woods if I had made the decision two months ago! It's not just wasting time, it's that the time could be filled with better and more fun things. I can't wait until the weather is warmer so that my husband and can go for evening walks. I want to play more games with him and spend more time with friends, T.V. just gets in the way. I do not want a life of nothingness. So now that it's done tomorrow night we are rearranging our furniture so that not everything points to the T.V. Now that the T.V. is off we can make our own adventures and not live vicariously through a big box!