So during the week of Halloween, me and the hubby decided to give up TV. Not even really for a full week, just the work week mostly. It’s not that I’m against TV or anything, I’m as big of a TV junkie as anyone and after all, I had everything I might miss DVR’d. The hubs and I are like most people I assume; sometimes we have weeknight functions, but mostly our weeknights involve
eating dinner and then slouching in front of the television (often these things happen together) until it’s time for bed. I really just wanted to know, without TV, what the hell would we do in the evenings? I have your answer, in pictures. There is also a surprising revelation at the end of this whole ordeal.
Day 1, Sunday:
On Sunday we didn’t finish a game of Scrabble, but our wordplay inspired new house rules for the game. Let me introduce you to: silly points! Any silly word gets an immediate 5 extra points. If you play a word off another word that makes it at all silly or raunchy, it’s 10 points. For example, playing “deuce” off of “urine” does not entitle a 10 point bonus, because urine is already silly (under the “potty humor” category). Now if you were to, for example, play the word “red” on “rocket,” that would be a 10 point silly bonus because rocket itself is not necessarily a silly word until you put it after the word red. If you don’t think “red rocket” is silly, then you clearly have no idea to what I’m referring and should not play scrabble with us because you will lose. If the silliness of a word is in dispute, you will text a person of the non-player’s choosing to determine whether or not said word is, in fact, silly.
Day 2:
As it was Halloween week, we invited some friends over for dinner and pumpkin carving. Giving up television during a holiday week makes it easier. To start, this happened:
That’s apples cored, but leaving it in tact at the bottom. I stuffed it with a mixture of oatmeal, brown sugar and cinnamon and then drizzled some brandy in there. Yeah, BRANDY. I then topped each with a pat of butter and baked it. (Yeah, you know that butter melted down in there and mixed with the brandy.) Then of course we sliced them in half and topped with ice cream. It was actually a gluten-ish free, healthier take on an apple pie and it was delicious. Oh, and here are our carved pumpkins:
Day 3:
We didn’t do much on Tuesday, we just “didn’t watch TV.” I think I cleaned the kitchen, and my husband helped me prep the wild turkey I was cooking the next day for my recipe blog. Then we read and went to bed like the old married couple we are slowly turning into.
Day 4:
Wednesdays is when I cook for my recipe blog, so my willing associate came over around 3 and we started cooking wild turkey “au vin.” Then we got distracted:
Please note that I have specially trained the dog to be okay wearing hats. It involves commands and lots of treats and “positive reinforcement” training, because putting silly hats on the dog is something I like to do from time to time. Anyspray, then we went back to braising turkey in a wine bath. Then we got distracted with wine and then we ate. It was a good day.
Day 5:
Day 5 was Halloween and we had a party to attend, so we mostly just threw together crappy last-minute costumes. I tried going to Wal-mart for some last-minute inspiration, and the costume aisle practically had tumbleweeds blowing around it was so bare. There was a package of spider webs that some dumb company labeled a costume, a bee outfit for an infant, and this:
Clearly I could do SOMETHING with an afro. Then we had too much fun at the party (hello jello shots) and woke up on Friday wishing we had less fun on Thursday.
Day 6:
This was our final day of no TV and you know what? Right around 8 pm we caved. We even went out to dinner just to give us something to do, and then we learned how to work the fireplace (which is actually kind of awesome) but still the end of the evening rolled around and finally… we turned the tube back on. You want to know the craziest part? Once we turned the TV back on, we didn’t even really watch it. I don’t even know what we watched, and you’d think we would remember considering we hadn’t watched so much as the news since the prior Saturday. What really happened was, we just went back to our respective devices (my phone and his iPad) and sat there pretending to do something “together” (watch tv) when really we just played around on our phones, me with a game and him probably looking up gun powder or some such nonsense. Without even realizing it, our tv-free week was less about watching less TV and more about setting down our damn gadgets and engaging with each other, because for the most part the TV is apparently just a ruse to make us think we are spending quality time together. How about that.
