SortaCrunchy

the confessional: in the tank

feelings as big as the oklahoma skies

There's this great moment in Season One of Project Runway when Michael Kors looks at his judging card and says to a designer about her just awful sad mess of a design, "I wrote down farty."

 That pretty well describes the past few weeks for me.

But wait, that's not fair. There is some good stuff, but my overall vibe has been just farty. 

When Kyle was coaching, he used the phrase "in the tank" for years to describe an athlete who was just suddenly and inexplicably completely dejected. So much of athletic performance is mental, and sometimes the slightest bump just throws an otherwise outstanding athlete into the depths of despair.

Generally some kind of great public success could lure the athlete out of the tank, but more often than not, if things were going badly on the field, it was because of something off the field.

I can identify with that, though I am far from being an athlete. But every now and again, I find myself in the tank. The bump that caused me to stumble in is usually something petty and insignificant. Like, hypothetically speaking, after hearing over and over for several years that anyone can wear skinny jeans and ordering a pair and realizing that's one of the biggest lies ever told. I mean to say, that's just as an example that's how petty it could be. Or it could be the public recognition of someone else's success and facing the truest true truth that I'll never be what that person is. Or it could even be a brief illness, something as transient as a cold. And suddenly, everything is farty.

Especially me.

* * * * *

I get dozens of requests for Pinterest invites every day. Mostly people just say "Invite me" or some variation of that, but sometimes people write personal notes. A week or so ago, someone had come to SortaCrunchy for the first time to get a Pinterest invite and shared that we had so much in common, she couldn't believe I was real.

Oh.

I'm real.

And sometimes I think that's what pushes me into the tank - the realness of myself. The real is so heavy, so far from the floaty ideal I think I am. I feel clumsy and ache-y with the real. I feel so real, so impossibly, breath-catchingly real that I just can't stand to feel it anymore, and conjure some mystical numbness to cover myself in, and under that cover I slouch and hide.

* * * * *

But then, as quickly as the wind sweeps an Oklahoma sky free of clouds, I'm over it. I'm out and I'm buoyant and I'm back. I think I can say, right at this moment, that yes. The farty has lifted and things have re-centered and I shrug off the numbness.

And I carry on.

open to vulnerable

Being scheduled for the very first post of 2012 at A Deeper Story is a little bit daunting. What to write? What to share?

It is the new year and we are all thinking all things new right now, but there is part of me that struggles so hard with living into the newness of life that is mine in Christ. It makes my stomach hurt a little bit to share with such vulnerability, but along came open to nudge me along.

I would be honored if you would join me today over there as I confess to you that I wish I knew how to quit  me.

the confessional: i might be failing my daughters

I still see babies when they sleep

A few weeks back, Dacey was sick (again) and so after the doctor's office, I took her to the grocery store where she got to pick out canned soup. We never, ever buy canned soup unless someone is sick, and it's a bit of a treat/tradition for the ones who need healing.

I asked Dacey which kind she wanted. Regular chicken noodle? Alphabet chicken noodle?  Maybe Toy Story or Dora?

My almost-seven-year old, my girl child with the tender heart and the fierce love of animals, my child who has never played with a doll a day in her life, who has always eschewed all things Cinderella and much preferred backyard experiments and art table creating, that child said:

"I want the princesses," she said, "because I'm trying to be more like a normal girl."

Heart. Stop.

My eyebrows lurched toward my hairline and I leaned in really close and breathed my crazy right into her face:

What do you mean? Who told you that you have to like princesses to be normal? Who told you that?! I demanded.

"My own mind, I guess," she murmured. I think she was a little bit terrified of the maniac that had possessed her mother's body right there in the canned soup aisle.

I pulled our cart over to the side and sputtered in short, halting sentences that I don't like princesses and I'm (mostly) normal and it's okay to like what YOU like, even if no one else likes it and no one should ever make you feel like you have to like girly stuff to be normal and I think I ended by asking too loudly and perhaps a bit too incredulously:

Who wants to be normal anyway?!

* * * * *

And then there is A.J. That child changes her mind every five seconds about what she likes and what she wants, but one refrain was repeated for weeks: all she wanted for Christmas was a pink guitar and high-heeled shoes.

At first, we giggled about it. So Aliza Joy. But the more she repeated it, the more we realized she was serious. And so.

I bought them, y'all.

I bought my four year old daughter some sandals with little kitten heels on them. I found them on ebay and they had the word "pageant" in the tags because who buys heeled shoes in a child's size 11? Pageant moms, that's who! She has plenty of the clunky, plastic dress-up heels, but that is not what she wants. Those aren't real and she knows it. So on Christmas morning, she'll get her pink guitar and high-heeled shoes.

Happy Birthday, Jesus.

* * * * *

Over the weekend, we wandered through a department store and both girls squealed at once, "Mama! They're playing Baby, It's Cold Outside!"

It was not the somber and theologically poignant O Holy Night bringing them such delight in the crowded aisles, nor was it the ubiquitous and innocent Jingle Bells. No, no. It was the song decried by feminists everywhere as the "date rape anthem" (it so is not!) that I have every version ever recorded in my Spotify and that has played in heavy rotation since Thanksgiving. The one with pouring drinks and cigarettes? Yes, that one.

And they were delighted because they know I love that song, and they love what their mother loves.

* * * * *

I mean, I knew it would be complicated. Raising girls. Raising women. This isn't the first time I've written about it. It's just that my heart is breaking so much more than I thought it would, far earlier than I ever dreamed. When I asked Dacey last night to choose three stuffed animals to keep on her bed because the rest were going back to the playroom, she asked, "Which do you think are the three girliest?" My chest seized up again.

And when AJ changes clothes five times before we leave the house, huffing and grumbling about how "nothing is right!" I can't get too frustrated because don't I know it?

I guess I feel like I'm failing because I want for them what I'm only just now learning in my thirties. I want them to be confident and whole in who they are. I want them to fast-forward past the years of trying to live into what people expect of them and I want them to learn RIGHT NOW that all that they are is more than enough.

The Confessional: Confessions, Various and Sundry

I haven't done a confessional post in a long time!

Let's do some confessing one to another, want to? It's good for the soul, you know.

I'll go first:

1) I really hate eggnog. Every time I say this, I have beautiful well-meaning friends trying to convince it is because I haven't had REAL eggnog, only store-bought stuff. While I will be the very first to admit that store bought anything skews perception for most things, I just don't know. I don't have any desire to taste the real stuff.

2) Kyle makes dinner every night. He either does a big batch cooking on the weekend or he'll make something for us when he gets home. I find this to be immensely wonderful, even if it does step on the toes of biblical man and womanhood. (*big wink*)

3) I let my girls watch some shows on Cartoon Network, and we like to watch with them. I know exactly who Mordecai and Rigby are.

4) I don't drink enough water.

5) Related: I still drink too much diet coke. I know it's bad for me, yet ...

6) I am not sending Christmas cards this year.

7) I am going through a really, really hard parenting stage with Aliza. I love that child dearly, but some days I just want to hide from her. And when I do, she does things like get into my nail polish bag (that I thought was cleverly hidden) and decides to paint her toenails. In our room. On the carpet. OF COURSE she spilled it.

8) Related: she recently cut her bangs. Off. Completely chopped them off. I thought I was okay with it. I didn't freak out or anything. But I'm not okay with it after all. It looks terrible and it's really bothering me.

9) I haven't been taking my vitamins. It's stupid. I know I need them (and it's probably why I picked up strep so easily earlier this month), but I just. I don't know. I'm out of the kind I like and I don't have time/energy to drive to OKC to get more and so I haven't been taking any.

10) I miss LOST. I think about that show a lot. A lot, a lot.

11) I've never read a single Jane Austen book, nor have I seen any of the movies based on the books.

12) I am obsessive about bed-making. Even when I'm sick, I'll get up and straighten the sheets and comforter. And if the girls' beds don't get made before bedtime? I will make them right before they climb in. I feel like everyone should get into a made-up bed each night.

13) I am mildly-to-moderately obsessed with Once Upon a Time and spend way too much time that I don't have reading the discussion boards on it at Television Without Pity.

14) I used to be a big country music fan, but these days? I can't stand it.

15) I hate, hate, hate cleaning that bathroom and rarely do much in there other than the occasional wipe down unless company is coming over.

16) I make prolific and liberal use of the "unsubscribe" feature on Facebook.

17) I spend more time sending Pinterest invites than I do actually looking at Pinterest. (Oh, the things we do for Google rankings.)

18) Right now, at this moment in time, my toenails look like this:

I should probably stop here.

So now it's your turn! What do you want to confess today? Been overloading on processed food? Binging on reality TV? Food fetishes or aversions to own up to? Help me not feel so weird in my quirkiness today!

The Confessional: I Need a Warning Label

A few days after we started the Oasis project, I printed this out for my husband.

I needed for him to read this part especially:

Not a bit of that was a surprise for him. 

I think the reason I find such comfort in understanding my personality type is that I struggle with feeling like I am defective.  (Heads-up: transparency happening.)  As much as I have grown into my skin, grown into who I was created to be as my 30s have unfolded, I still can't shake a perpetual belief that deep, deep down, I am broken.

And so when I read assessments that pretty much perfectly describe how I function in this world, I can't help but to feel better.  It's not just me.

People with my personality type tend to live by a strict internal code.  When my outward actions don't match my inward idealistic standards, I am miserable.  And yet, because of that big old P at the end of my type, I am prone to just thinking about how I am unable to do what I know I need to do instead of acting on what I need to do.

I truly do feel like I need a warning label:

WARNING: The person you are meeting, speaking to, reading, or emailing is most often experienced by others as flaky.

She operates in the world of The Big Picture, and therefore details often fall off of her radar screen. 

She will most likely:

1) Read your email and need to think on a response.  She will then forget to email you the response, even though she has spent a good deal of time thinking about it.

2) Hear your prayer concern and feel a great deal of empathy for you and your situation.  She will probably think about you for days, praying for you often as you come to mind.  She will, however, neglect to tell you this.

3) Recognize that you are going through a difficult time and think of no less than a dozen elaborate and thoughtful ways to minister to you in your need.  She will probably act on none of these ideas, even though she has given them all a great deal of thought.

4) Be your biggest supporter and cheerleader at the beginning of a project.  Her enthusiasm will eventually fizzle.  She is distracted easily by shiny things.  Going the distance is not her strong suit.

5) Agree to read and review your newest book or project.  Weeks will pass before a review is finally published.  This does not mean that she did not love your project; on the contrary, she probably loved it so much that she feels her review of your work must be absolutely perfect before she can publish it.  She is often crushed by the weight of her own standards which propels her directly into inaction accompanied by guilt.

6) Interrupt you.  Her mind is constantly making connections, often at a speed which outpaces human speech and good manners.

7) Astound you with her incredible clumsiness.  This may or may not be related to her personality type, but you should have fair warning nonetheless.

8) Start a multitude of projects and finish few.

9) Not take criticism well.  She is keenly aware of her shortcomings and imperfections, always hyper-aware of the ways her outward actions don't meet her inner standards.  When those imperfections are recognized by others, it can be crippling.

10) Personify capriciousness, fickleness, moodiness, and procrastination.  She is also prone to being driven by her feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings.  

If you have the great misfortune of partnering with her on a project or serving as her editor, please know that she will accomplish absolutely nothing without a deadline.  Be assured, however, that she rarely misses deadlines altogether as she is capable of intense micro-focus and dedicated energy as a deadline approaches. 

Finally, if you are counting on her to take an action of some sort, she will probably disappoint you.  And even if you aren't actually disappointed with her, she probably thinks that you are.

Do you think I could have that printed up on business cards to hand to people I meet? 

This is all very true about me, but I'm not telling you to garner any sympathy or to have you respond with warm fuzzies. In fact, I'm closing comments on this.  And I'm not sobbing at the keyboard as I write, either.  In fact, I amused myself quite a bit as I thought of all of the ways people should be warned about me.

These are just some things I thought you should know.  Tomorrow, I'll be sharing with you the other side of the shiny coin that is moi.

(Ohhhhhhh, shiny . . . )

The Confessional: Living in the Tension

photo by b_barbet

I haven't done a confessional in a while, but if I don't talk to someone about this, I think my head is going to burst.

I am increasingly beginning to understand what it means to live in the tension.

I didn't come up with that phrase and I've heard it so often that I honestly cannot pin down for you who originally coined it, but I can't find a better description of what is happening inside my heart and mind these days.  In fact, I can't even pin down for you when this tension really began to take shape. 

But here's what it comes down to - I don't know how much longer I can live life the way I've been living life.

It took me ten minutes and lots of delete button-ing to get that out, but there it is.

As you know, I've been reading David Platt's Radical and I'm preparing to teach Jen Hatmaker's Interrupted in my Sunday School class and I feel like everything I've believed to be true about following Christ and being a Christian is being stripped away and I'm all raw and bewildered and excited and depressed and in the meantime, it's completely business as usual in the place I go to to fellowship and worship with other believers.

And it makes me feel tense.  It makes me tired and cynical and, honestly, judgmental towards this "attractional model" of church, this Six Flags Over Jesus mentality that seeks to entice, bribe, or even guilt trip people into coming to us instead of challenging, equipping, and even demanding that we go to them.  It's overwhelming.  I don't know what to do.  I don't know where to start.  I don't know if I should buy copies of Radical and deliver them to each staff member or maybe even every deacon in our church body.  I just don't know how our local church or our denomination as a whole will respond to such a revolutionary message.

I've had a passion for sharing the gospel of the Good News of Christ in places around the world since I was a little girl delighted and inspired by what I learned in my Girls in Action meetings each week.  But I'm married to a man who is much, much more interested in what is being done locally.  I'm at a place where I would sell everything and move to India or start filling out paperwork to provide a home to a child through adoption but my husband . . . we are far from unity in this.  So there's that tension.

And Dacey needs new clothes for the fall and winter.  She is bursting out of last year's clothes.  And I almost spent $50 at The Children's Place online last night, but couldn't push the Submit button on my order because I can't verify that their clothing is ethically manufactured, that it's free of sweatshop labor.  And I love The Children's Place, y'all.  Love it.  But I can't continue to contribute to a system that fosters oppression so that my girls can wear cute clothes.  And the tension pulls tighter on my heart.

I can't even grab dinner at Sonic anymore without thinking about what that $20 I just dropped could do for one of the 24,000 children dying every day from hunger and preventable disease.

I'm all messed up. 

I'm all messed up.

It's almost paralyzing.

And it's a lot to carry around with me right now.

And I certainly didn't mean for this to be such a bummer of a confessional.  I just started writing and this is what spilled out.  You're probably not so much a fan of all the transparency now, right?  Thank you for hearing me out anyway.

On Transparency

this is me, unedited. I have gray hair and, apparently, a thin spot.  I have wrinkles and sometimes bad skin.  Bad teeth not pictured.

Your responses to yesterday's post on the yelling have overwhelmed me.  I had no idea how it would be received, and so to hear from so many that were thankful to have the topic brought into the light of discussion has given me such comfort and hope.

I have to be honest, though.  A few minutes after I hit "publish," I got really uncomfortable.  I wanted to go back.  I wanted to ameliorate, to tell you, "I mean, really, it's not that bad.  I'm not that bad.  It's fine."

I had to resist that overwhelming urge to edit.

The Confessional: Mess

Riley draws lots of dots.

"Those are raindrops," says Rose.

"No," says Riley. "They're dots."

"No," says Rose.  "They're raindrops, and this is a great big tree."

"That's not a tree," says Riley. "That's a mess."

"It's a tree in the rain," says Rose.

"MESS," says Riley.

-- from Riley and Rose in the Picture by Susanna Gretz (an all-time favorite here that I memorized years ago after many readings)

It's all in the perspective, isn't it?

Recently, I looked through old posts and realized it's been quite a while since I visited the confessional.

What I need for you to understand is that although from time to time I share thoughts that you may find to be encouraging, uplifting, or even inspiring, my day-to-day reality is pretty messy.

At this very moment:

* Aliza is watching a movie (a Disney movie!  horrors!) while I type.

* Also?  She's naked.  As a jaybird.

* It's ten after ten in the morning.  I had purposed to have my disaster area of a kitchen immaculate and shining no later than 9:30.  I haven't even begun to take it on yet.

* Although I am one of the biggest evangelists of the Oil Cleansing Method you'll ever meet, I have to confess that at this very moment on my chin is a zit that brings new depth of meaning to the word YIKES.

* I have 460 unread items in my Google Reader.

* Last week, I found out much to my big, huge dismay that Typepad's commenting system has not been working the way I thought it was working.

When I comment on another Typepad blog and the blogger responds to my comment, Typepad sends me an email with that blogger's response.  Ergo, I thought each of my commenters were getting emails from Typepad each time I responded to a comment.  I cannot tell you how bummed I am to find out that this is not the case.  (Evidently, it's only fellow Typepad bloggers/account holders who are getting emailed responses from Typepad?)

I've been so overwhelmed with disappointment about this that I, for some illogical reason, haven't done much at all in the way of comment response in the past week.  If you are new here, just know that is not usually the case.  I promise.

* My email inbox?  Oy. If you have sent me an email in the past two weeks, there's a 100% chance I have read it, and a 99.9% chance I haven't responded.  I'll get there.  Eventually.

* The truth?  Since I'm confessing today . . .

When I get overwhelmed (and believe me, it doesn't take much), I shut down.  I choose the path of inaction and avoidance every. single. time.  And I don't like it.  In fact, I hate it.  And I am thirty-two years old and seem to lack the maturity/self-discipline/internal fortitude to change it.

So, that's me.  Here in this little corner of the sprawling universe, I can offer you the prettiest pictures of what I have to share.  What you'll find here has been polished (at least a little bit) and has been edited (usually a lot).

More than anything, I want to be authentic, transparent, and real.  I post things like this not because I am fishing for encouragement (in fact, comments are closed), but I just crave and very nearly demand balance.  You take the good, you take the bad . . .

So.

Things are pretty messy here.  But I like to emphasize the pretty more than the messy.  That kitchen that awaits me the moment I hit "publish" is a disaster area because of the remnants of art projects and sloppy, happy cooking, and time spent in there as a family that just doesn't lend itself to orderly.

No one will ever accuse us of being tidy, but we sure are happy.

(I'll be back later today - hopefully - to talk about what I had really intended to talk about today.  But I had to come and confess first.)

(ALSO!  Project Spring Green kicks off on WEDNESDAY!  Don't forget!!)

(Also, the link to Riley and Rose is an Amazon Affiliate link.  Thanks for keeping me real, FTC.)

Shred It or Dread It

Anyone up for a confessional?

I am overweight.  That's just the truth of where I am right now.  Not only did I never lose the weight gain from AJ's pregnancy, I've slowly been gaining more weight in the past year.  In April, I started Jillian's 30 Day Shred and made it about ten days before sickness and travel allowed me the distractions and excuses I was looking for to quit.

This week, my friend sister Sasha launched her Shred it or Dread It challenge, and I am going to join her.  Sasha has a lovely vaca in Mexico in six weeks to motivate her weight loss goals - if she doesn't shred it, she'll dread it.  I, however, have no such trip planned and no big event to spur my motivation, but there are plenty of other factors causing me dread: 

• I dread getting dressed on Sunday mornings because I can't (won't) wear the one pair of jeans that still fit marginally okay to church and everything dressy that I own gets tighter with each passing week.
• I dread outdoor activities with the girls because I don't have any summertime clothes that fit right - and I refuse to buy the next size up again. 
• I dread shopping for clothes because I have a closet jammed full of size 8s that I cannot squeeze into right now.
• I dread getting in front of the camera because it provides such a shocking and accurate reminder of how I have not taken care of myself

I had no problems at all losing baby weight after Dacey.  This is what I looked like when Dacey was 9 months old and I was so content and happy with my weight - just right for me:

I would like to get back to that place.  I would like to fit back into those jeans.  I would like to shred away twenty-five pounds.

Sasha laid out her three goals.  Mine are similar:

1) Count WW points every day except Sunday. 
2) Wean myself off of the Diet Coke addiction, beginning with cutting back to one a day.  (Obviously Diet Coke is calorie-free, but it does weird things to my blood sugar and makes me feel really hungry.  But, oh, Diet Coke.  I do love you so.)
3) Exercise six days a week, completing the 30 Day Shred and then rewarding myself by getting back to my favorite exercise routine - alternating between jogging and Windsor Pilates.

This is the last time I'll take about the challenge here, but you'll see in the side bar the Shred It or Dread It button and the link to my weight loss journal (including my weigh-ins!).  Some of you know I was keeping a weight loss journal in April when I first started the Shred, but without the challenge of very public accountability, I fizzled out.  I'm hoping Sasha will pop in from time to time and kick my big booty if I am not keeping the challenge journal updated.  (You know, in your copious free time, Sash!)

So that's that.  Anyone else have some weight-related dread going on?  I'd love to have you join us!

Turnoff Week: How It Went

I've been dreading this post.  I even toyed with the idea of not even sharing this - ever.  Just pretending I didn't agree to the challenge last week and proceeding with regularly scheduled programming.

I went back and looked at the directions given at Unplug Your Kids for this challenge.  I noted that Phase Two of the Turnoff Week was:

Do your best to meet your goals from April 20-26. If you aren’t successful, it’s OK. What is important is to try, and to learn something from the experience.

Okay, so that gives me a little more freedom to be honest here.  Because Turnoff Week for us was mostly a gigantic FAIL.  Not a complete fail, more accurately a 60-65% fail.  Monday, Tuesday, and even Wednesday went great.  Monday and Tuesday we were my parents' house, and as I suspected, neither girl was interested in TV.  Of course, they had grandparents at the ready who were all-too-happy to read to them, color with them, and go sit outside for them for hours at a time.  Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were not great.  As in, I just gave up even trying to count the hours the TV had been on.  Yesterday was better, but we had church in the morning and evening to keep us pretty busy, too.

I've thought a lot about why this was so hard for us last week, and these are my conclusions:

1) bad timing - like I wrote last week, the past few weeks have just been enormously busy for our family, and we were out of town for days at a time.  By the time we finally landed mid-week, the house was a wreck, no one had clean clothes, and I simply didn't have the time or energy to devote to creating distractions to keep Dacey's mind off of the turned-off TV.  (As usual, AJ didn't care one way or the other if the TV was on or off.) 

2) poor planning and lack of discipline - this all ties in to the bad timing, too.  I had it in my mind that Turnoff Week started today, so I hadn't done anything concrete to prepare for a week of reduced TV time.  And so when Dacey was insistent on watching "Dacey shows," I caved pretty easily.  Additionally, towards the end of the week, I had a bout with monster headaches which happens to me every now and again.  This did not help or encourage me in my resolve to limit our TV time.

3) I realized throughout the week, I don't know how to do this.

(This is the part that is hard for me to share.  In my quest for ever-more authenticity, I know I need to write even that which makes me feel squirmy to deal with.)

There are just some parts of effective parenting that I don't know how to do.  I don't know how to go about doing the tasks I have to do to keep our home running without relying on the TV as a distraction for my children.

When I was preparing to be a classroom teacher, I got to spend a whole semester under the guidance of a veteran.  By the end of the first week of student teaching, my veteran had turned over five of her classes to me to teach on my own, but she was ever present in guiding and directing me.  We planned and talked through lessons together, she showed me the most efficient and effective ways to grade papers, she gave me feedback on classroom management and stepped in when it became necessary.  Every bit of that last semester of preparation I had before I was released into the wild was about collaboration.  She offered and I readily accepted her tried-and-true wisdom on how to be an effective teacher.  I learned so much more than I could have ever learned in textbooks on pedagogy.  I left student teaching with a model in mind of how to teach language arts to high schoolers.

I don't feel like I have a good model of what day-to-day effective home management (minus TV) looks like.  I most certainly can devote hours of my day to art projects and nature walks and trips to the library and imaginative play.  Those are the most favorite parts of my job.  But I cannot do that all day, every day.  I must also make time for cleaning house, the constant clutter pick-up, paying bills, making and returning phone calls, meal planning, cooking dinner, washing dishes, keeping up with laundry and ironing, and the other myriad of responsibilities . . . all of which is completely common to the average homemaker.

The problem for me lies in that when the TV is off, I have children at my feet, getting out what I put away, undoing what I have done, begging me to play, asking to get paints out or dreaming up any other number of things to do while I work, all of which makes getting my work done take about ten times longer than it should. 

Truth be told, I really do not love the housekeeping part of homemaking.  I just want it to be done.  To do it quickly as possible, I turn the TV on to keep them distracted.  My daughters are four and twenty months, so having them go read quietly or make up games to play doesn't last very long.  I can remember when I was growing up my parents had limits on TV, but I can't remember what we did prior to being school-age.  I also grew up in a time where parents could turn their kids outside to play for hours on end with little fear of anything horrible happening.  Our yard is not fenced in, and even if it were, I don't think I could turn them outside without me being there to keep an eye on them.  Horrible, horrible things happen even in small town Oklahoma.

Wow, this is getting a lot more whiny and rambly than I thought it would be.

Here's what I learned:

1) I don't think the TV has been excruciatingly negative for my children.  Dacey is completely on-track in social, cognitive, and physical development.  A friend emailed after my challenge post last week and shared some ways TV has sparked learning and conversation for her family, and I have to agree with what she said.  In some ways, TV has played a positive role in our family.  This could change, certainly, but I don't know that we will ever be a completely TV-free family, and I am okay with that. 

2) I do want to work towards less TV on a regular basis.  I want to learn how to go about my tasks as a homemaker without resorting to TV for babysitting.  I want to learn here, but I don't know where to start.

3) Even though I didn't meet the goals for my Turnoff Week challenge, I am glad I participated.  It caused me to do some heavy critical thinking and self-analysis about myself and our family that I probably would not have engaged in if it weren't for Turnoff Week.  Thank you to Unplug Your Kids for hosting!

I'm open to any feedback on this.  I know most all of the Turnoff Week participants live mostly TV-free lives, and I'll happily accept any insights you can share.  For those who also struggle with the TV time, just know you have a fellow struggler in me.