Jessica and I are still rounding up all the fabulous and inspiring Project: Life Change posts that we can find across the blogosphere, but while we hover over our Google document, I wanted to share another change we are making to the CityMama household. Do-able change is what Project: Life Change is all about, so...
We killed our cable.
I know.
Oh, trust me. I know.
I don't know about you guys, but the next PLC thing we tackle in this house is sharing the accounting duties more effectively. You'd think we'd have figured it out after 13 years of marriage, but neither of us likes to do it. We both hate automatic bill pay so don't even go there, so we usually pay the bills when we get a phone call or friendly reminder letter that it needs to be paid or when I go, "Here, this came, pay it."
When the cable turned off last week (I know. We're lame.) J. turned to me and said, "What if we just get rid of it?"
And I gasped.
When we first started living together, we didn't have TV. We actually DID things like went to concerts and plays or for walks or played board games. We went to movies since we lived within walking distance to two great old art house theaters. We worked out together. We lived across the street from a book store and coffee shop. We were enriching our lives on a daily basis.
That's uh a lot harder to do when you have kids. The same old refrain...
We tested it out this weekend. No cable.
So what did we do?
- We read books. Lots of books. Both individually and to our childen.
- J. cleaned out and organized the garage and put all the summer patio furniture away for the winter.
- J. baked me a birthday cake. I swear he did it because there was nothing else to do.
- I made soup and Korean beef stew (enough of both to freeze for lots of future meals.)
- We took the girls to a Fall Festival and went to the park.
We both agree that sitting on the couch with our laptops in front of the TV night after night has really taken a toll on our lives in many ways. We want to end that.
We're going to take the money that we'd normally spend on cable and pay-per-view movies (which is a lot even with the package deal) and join our local Y so we can swim and have some active family fun this winter.
We reminded each other that we love to watch TV shows when they come out on DVD because then we can watch 5 episodes in a day if we want. We also reminded ourselves that a lot of our favorite shows are available online, and if Mad Men's second season is also available episode-by-episode on iTunes like season one was, I will be a very happy camper. It's the show that—if I had to pick—I really love the most.
So here we are, four days into this experiment. I have to admit that tonight I'm pretty antsy and since my neck is still not feeling 100% I just want to kick it and watch something stoopid on TV.
But then I think about last night, and how Chef Sister, J., and I played a bunch of board games and how the evening flew by and how much fun we had, I think I might be able to give up cable.
Again.
We'll see.
