Thank you for being a friend

Things have changed around my house since my mom came to live with us in July.

First, Bill and I remodeled our formerly disgusting teenager room/dirty storage dump of a basement into a surprisingly comfortable bedroom.

Yes, we have stackable washer and dryer machines in our closet, but we've also got privacy and new carpet and a memory-foam mattress topper and a TV in our own room. (And it's remarkable how convenient it is to do the laundry right before I got to bed and never have to leave my room!)

In our almost 10 years of marriage, Bill and I have never had a TV in our bedroom before. What a luxury! I mean, I could totally live without it, but man oh man, it's so nice to be able to do my nightly yoga et al. while watching reruns of Top Chef in the privacy of my own room. (Yes, I do watch TV while I do yoga and it probably does spoil the centering/earthy goodness of yoga, but it's how I roll ... plus it's better than lying there eating tiny box after tiny box of Junior Mints while watching TV.)

I no longer have to worry about the neighbors making the unfortunate mistake of glancing in our windows while I'm in the middle of downward dog ... yeah, it's not a pretty sight. All those months of indulgent eating has made one wide, Haute-Mama derriere.

One of the best things that has happened is that Margaret no longer comes into our bed anymore.

No, silly rabbit, she didn't start sleeping in her own bed. That would be some kind of child torture to make that girl sleep in her own bed (according to her, anyway). Now, she sleeps in my mom's bed.

And you know what, I think it's great.

All those years of her stealthy moves getting into our bed and sleeping on the tiniest of slivers of mattress has made Margaret quite a decent bed companion. She stays on her side of the bed, leaving ample room for my mom and she's not bothered by my mom's TV.

Being that my mom still spends a lot of time in bed due to the pain in lower spine and hip from that stupid cancer, she had the TV on a lot for distraction and entertainment.

When it's time for Margaret to go to sleep, my mom doesn't have to turn off the TV. Instead, she simply tells Mar it's time bedtime and Mar dutifully places one of her stuffed "guys" over her eyes and goes to sleep.

Really.

It's crazy, but it works.

And I don't have a kid in my bed anymore.

Hallelujah!

But there has been one strange side effect from Mar sleeping in my mom's bed. Margaret has developed a taste for old reruns, most notably "Golden Girls."

You know, the sitcom from the '80s with Blanche, Rose, Dorothy and Sophia.

Yeah, that one.

In the mornings when I come up out of the basement on my way to work, I often find Margaret eating her breakfast in the living room watching "Golden Girls" instead of "Ben Ten."

It's not really appropriate for a 9-year-old girl, but the bawdy humor mostly goes over her head and Sophia's zingers make Margaret laugh out loud.

Plus she and I like to sing the theme song in duet. Let's all sing along: Thank you for being a fri-end, traveled down the road and back again ...

Upgrading the luxuries

Back in June, my Haute Mama cohort, Richie revealed that her family was forgoing TV once the digital transition occurred.

We're basic cable people ourselves so we didn't have to contemplate whether to let our TV die or not.

We watch some TV, but it's not that important to us. OK, I should rephrase that. It's not that important to Bill and I. It's very important to Margaret and my mom.

Bill and I like watching some really crappy reality shows, but we also really like the smart stuff that's out there, too. Last night on Discovery was a very good program about Cleopatra that I couldn't stop watching. I was supposed to be playing my guitar, working on some new songs, but I couldn't turn away from the idea that researchers had found the skeleton of Cleopatra's sister. Sometimes my nerdy side thwarts my attempts at being cool.

Bill loves Conan O'Brien in a way that is just not natural. But who am I to judge, I was irritated that VH-1 killed "Megan wants a millionaire" after one of the contestants hideously murdered his ex-wife. I am, after all, not a good person.

But we could live without TV.

Mar might "die" of tween angst if she couldn't watch iCarly or those other tweeny shows on those kid channels that I skip over religiously. But she, too, would recover as she's very good at keeping herself entertained with crafts and books and music.

My mom gets a pass allowing her to watch as much as she wants because her cancer is pretty much keeping her in bed for now.

She enjoys watching shows about people buying real estate and cooking shows. Recently she admitted to wishing we had better channels. She misses the DIY network and some other specialty channels that cater to crafty folks like herself.

Because mama gets whatever mama wants, we're in the market for more channels. We're looking at getting some kind of satellite programming or maybe just upgrading our current cable plan.

I don't care which, I just want the most channels for the least money. Any recommendations?

Thank you CBS!

I work for a newspaper. At my newspaper, I do a lot of work on the editorial page (I don't, however, have any decision making in the content — just so y'all don't start asking me why we endorsed Meis or why your letter didn't make it to print).

On a daily basis, I am inundated with politics — all day long, every week day. It's my job.

I like my job a lot. But this campaign season — on top of a lot of other things going on in my life this year — has dragged me down, down, down.

I'm utterly and completely disgusted with our political system, politicians on the state and federal level and ESPECIALLY with this presidential election.

Both presidential nominees can simultaneously kiss my ass and go suck it.

Having said that I feel that I must admit that I did watch the first presidential debate and I was planning on watching some of the vice presidential debate (that is until Palin's nasal voice and idiotic responses forces me to gouge my eardrums out with a dull chopstick), but I was only going to watch the debate after we were done watching Survivor tonight (because watching a schmaltzy reality show where they have scantily clad people running around with their junk out is always going to beat out politicians spouting our their nonsensical rhetoric).

But then this morning I became afraid that the second week of Survivor was going to be preempted by the debate. So I checked the listings.

Phew!

Those in the know over at CBS had the good sense to push back their coverage of the vice-presidential debate until after their popular reality show.

And that's what I'm talking about, right there. Common sense. Fake "reality" TV trumps real reality. Awesome.

Dork night

Toward the end of my pregnancy, I started getting bloated. I looked like the corpse of a pot-bellied pig dredged out of a lake after a week and a half.

And my blood pressure started going up.

A week before my due date, my doctor put me on bed rest ... and I was thrilled. I got permission to lay my bloated carcass on the couch and watch TV. It was awesome.

During that time, I started watching a brand-new TV show. A show unlike the sit-coms and medical dramas, I'd watched in the past. It was at the forefront of a new genre called reality TV.

That show was the first season of Survivor.

I watched that show while I was on maternity leave and since I've seen every season.

I'm not bragging, I'm just saying I'm one of those people.

My name is Robin and I watch reality TV.

But I'm not alone. (Thank goodness!) My dear friend, Tracee, has been making the trek to my sofa every Thursday to watch Survivor with me for ... gosh, how long as it been, Trace? A couple years at least.

A couple seasons ago, we thought it would be more fun if we devised a game to play along.

I had to take a break from our Survivor game the last couple seasons, but we are back at this time.

And better than ever, I must add.

Last night we watched the 2-hour season premiere and took notes. We got to know the characters and started looking for possible winners.

We also did this:

We crafted up our Survivor bulletin board.

What?

See, this season, not only are Tracee and I playing, but so are my gramma and my mom. So we had to get organized. We each have our own square where we'll have our weekly ballots. There's a place for pictures of the contestants along with a place for those voted out.

Yeah, I know. We're dorky dorks. But sometimes you have to let your innerdork shine.

Ours are blinding our husbands.

Let's just pretend mommy's on vacation tonight

So tonight begins the fall television season for me. And it's going to be a jammed packed night full of TV watching.

So please don't call me tonight. Or drop over ... unless you want to sit quietly and look at the idiot box.

Oh and if you're my kid, don't need anything from me after 7 p.m. tonight. I know you're sick, kid, but isn't that just a better reason to go to be early and not be all, "I can't breathe" and "I think I have rickets."

Mommy's gotta watch the 2-hour season premiere of Survivor and the 1-hour premiere of The Office, so she's going to be too busy to get you tissues or water or a college savings account or whatever else you think you need to get through the night.

Daddy gets home at 8, you can survive on water and bake Cheetos until then. Mommy's gotta watch TV.

Don't say, "It's time to face the hole."

OK, I was raised watching Family Feud and The Price is Right.

I watched a former neighbor's granddaughter win a million big ones on Deal or No Deal recently.

Even though I failed the test to become a contestant on Jeopardy, I still watch it.

I like games shows.

But I don't know about Fox's new game show Hole in the Wall.

It's based on a Japanese game show — which means that it's silly and degrading ... two of my most favorite things.



But there's something about the American version that just makes me cringe.



And it's got nothing to do with the game itself.

It's the silver, clingy unitard that all contestants must wear.

Yeah, it's just way too clingy ... especially in the ... um, down-there area.

Hello Fox TV, please spare us the man camel toe or camel Joe or package highlights or whatever you want to call the outline of man junk.

It's too much.

And that's saying a lot coming from me.

Who let the dog in?

Yesterday after work, we were standing around talking to the neighbors when our dear friend Tracee pulled up with her back seat loaded with their home-grown peaches.

She jumped out of the car and exclaimed, "I just saw Dog the Bounty Hunter down at the blue goodies store."

Because we're dorks, we all jumped in our car and went off in search of Dog and his posse.

Unfortunately they were no longer at the blue goodies store (formerly known at the "big chicken" until the big chicken went MIA — I have no idea what the actual name of that store is), so we went to dinner.

But we were sure to check GJSentinel.com to see if there were any other Dog sightings.

Oh man, not only is Dog and his posse in town, but they are hunting tweakers.

I didn't know it was tweaker season.

Dog and his posse should be easy to spot around town as they are said to be driving around in two gold Cadillac SUVs.

Have you seen Dog?