Hope It Gives You Hell!

This could have been titled "I Heart TV."

I'm just giggling over a strange technical glitch I experienced today. In the process of burning a couple dozen CDs for our Sunday School families, I found that on the first five I made, instead of starting with "Let Their Be Light," a little ditty about that first chapter in Genesis, the CD's prelude was "Hope It Gives You Hell," from last season's Glee soundtrack.

It was followed by a few other songs sent to me by my SIL Jen to resuscitate my DNR running playlist. That's the one I haven't gotten around to changing since it was my 'labor and birthing' playlist 18 months ago ... yep, a pretty sad compilation ranging from Enya to Barry Manilow to some Kid Rock (clearly to help in the final stages).

So, while I found it hilarious that what's supposed to rock out The Books of Moses to our sweet kids in Sunday School would have instead, rocked their parents in the wrong way, I am sure glad I decided to check the CDs before labeling and distributing.

Back to "I Heart TV."

I am not a big TV watcher. I have a few time limitations given my lifestage, but I've come a long way the past few years from trying to be all elitist and pretending I don't watch it at all, or boasting at a playdate "I don't let my kids watch SpongeBob."

Please, if it were not for SpongeBob, my kitchen would never get cleaned up after a meal (and with three young, growing boys, there are no fewer than eight meals a day served here) or, as was the case tonight, the lawn would have gone a second week without a mowing. C'mon, it's not like those boys don't get appropriate sensory stimulation and music, literature, athletic, etc., exposure during the other parts of their days. I'm just saying, for a half hour here or a half hour there, I heart SpongeBob, Scooby Doo, Johnny Test and anything on PBS. Love my Window To The World.

Then there are MY shows I've come to look forward to this TV season.

I really liked summer when TV was bad (or just repeats) and I would curl up with a book, instead of in front of the TV, before passing out from exhaustion at 8 p.m., but I really enjoyed those Emmy Awards a few weeks ago (Jimmy Fallon ... heart, heart, heart him and his team of writers ... and, please, do not forget the writers). And I'm really hopeful for this season.

Mad Men has not disappointed, especially with the focus on Don's desire to change the trajectory of his life and on the show's female characters, the few whose sole purpose is not about mattress testing. Glee, well, yummy! And THANK goodness I'm neither back in high school nor remember my own high school experience to be so, well, cruel.

I'd started watching DWTS last year for RESEARCH for a writing project I had, but I got hooked. I'm not so sure I'll be hooked this season, but, like a train wreck, I have a feeling I won't be able to help myself.

I like my brands: CSI, Law & Order. Mad Men and Friday Night Lights I love partly because Kevin & I like to watch them together. The Office and 30 Rock is our Thursday night date night. Sad, but realistic, again, given our lifestage, or really, the age of our children.

While I'm sure I'd be better served reading up on the latest developments in foreign policy, tonight I'm going to go see what's new on TV.

We Interrupt this Marriage

It happens every year, without fail, as summer comes to a close.

This year it began slowly, quietly. An hour here, an hour there, gone. Then there was this past weekend. Bam. Practically an entire weekend, gone.

Gone to football, that is.

Saturday: college football. Game after game after game. Sunday, 3:15 p.m., The Game. Then Sunday night, more games. And on Monday, what was this, two NFL games on a Monday night?

I didn't realize it until it was too late that we'd missed our Sunday night date night. It's just the two of us, appropriate cocktail in hand, parked in front of the TV, watching Mad Men. (Listen, with three small kids and an already-stretched-thin babysitting budget, watching a TV show together, uninterrupted and with intention, is a date night.)

Thank goodness for DVR; we should be able to get our fix of a wickedly dysfunctional family and pickled work environment later this week.

I'd made an unforgivable error in judgment Sunday, though. I'd left to run a few errands around 4 p.m.: I returned a playdating child to his parents, went to the grocery store for milk, wine, bananas (the basics), and stopped at the library for the newest John Krakauer book, the one about Pat Tillman. Tangentially about football, the book is for my football-loving husband who's about to embark on a very long overseas flight. Thought he'd like it.

But later that night I heard: "you left me with all three kids for, like, two hours in the middle of MY GAME?" Ok, I did stop for a coffee before my library visit. I could have been gone just an hour.

It's not like I didn't know life would be like this. I mean, the men in our wedding switched from the church-approved, color-coordinating vests to "Packers" and "Bears" vests for the reception.

In fact, our vows may very well have included a phrase about 'interrupting this marriage for football season."

And that's ok. As Kevin likes to point at, "at least" he isn't in a fantasy football league. And it's true. I fully accept having to plan our life around the Packers schedule. And that's all he truly cares about, football-speaking. Yes, he'd like to catch a Badgers game or a few select NFL games, but it's three, sometimes four hours, every week, from September through January.

It makes him happy (as long as the Packers win). I'm willing to interrupt this marriage for a Packers win.

Unless they're playing the Bears.

Tolerate This Topic, If For Just a Moment

Am I the only one who cringes as we approach the "anniversary of 9/11?"

It's not that I don't want to honor those who lost their lives on 9/11.

I'm just tired of the poorly trained pundits, the publicity-seeking pastors and the pontificating politicians.

To them, I'd like to say, "shut the *(&$ up."

For me, 9/11 is a memory I'd like to erase, but know I shouldn't.

That gorgeous boy in the picture? He is my first-born, and he was just a three-month-old fetus when those planes went into the towers. He and I were just blocks away that Tuesday morning.

My trip had been a poor one already. My flight had been delayed, and when I stepped out of my cab in front my hotel in Midtown near midnight on Monday, September 10th, I stepped into a puddle of puke.

Not the welcome to New York I was used to. (I heart NYC.)

Skip to late morning on Tuesday, after we realized just how serious things were, when we all really thought the world was coming to an end. When I really, in my heart of hearts, thought I'd never see my family again. When I holed up in my hotel room, alone. My asthma kept me indoors and out of the smoke and soot in the air, and my pregnancy kept me away from the bars.

As terrible as all this was, something awesome was happening. Do you remember?

People gave blood. People met their neighbors. People helped strangers. People stopped at stop signs and let the other guy go first. People were nice. People came together. Not against something evil. People came together, united, to help one another. People realized the greatest thing they had was their humanity, and that all that mattered was how they treated the person next to them.

Today. Oy. Today. We've got people wanting to burn the Koran. We've got otherwise-reasonable-people defending one's right to burn a holy book. Seriously, when did "... but he did it first" become an appropriate defense past the age of 5?

We've got people using a terrible day in our country's history as a reason to be unreasonable.

The media forces us to remember 9/11; could we instead remember 9/12? When the world, not just the ol' USA, was united ... when religions and races and ideologies and generations stopped thinking about what made us different but what made us the same?

Because I love that little guy in the picture, and I'm quite certain that someone thinking that burning the Koran is a good idea loves his or her child just as much.

And I want that 9/12/01 world back.