The T.V. broke, I know I know and before you panic rest assured we did get a new one, but not for THREE days!!!
Let me start by saying that T.V. is a big deal in our house. I never thought I would be one of those moms that turns the T.V. on all day every day for her kids because it keeps them quiet. I actually didn't realize I was one of those moms until this weekend.
Grant and I had big plans to rent a movie on Saturday night and have a mini date night at home after the kids went to bed. I was getting ready to head out to rent a movie, I was just about out the door when I head a sound much like a robot dying a horrible death. Bewwwwwww. . . . that's what the T.V. said when Grant tried to turn it on. So the obvious thing to do is turn it off and try again. I waited to leave to be sure that our precious was going to work before traipsing off at nine o'clock at night to rent a movie. Bewwwwww, that's what the T.V. says a second and then a third and a fourth time. At this point we realize that something is terribly wrong. It's never done this before and we're starting to panic. So Grant does what any man would do, he takes it apart. . . the whole thing. Now this isn't just any T.V. I have often referred to it as "The Monster". It is a sixty inch projector type T.V. from the 90's. The first of it's kind and it's massive, not only the screen, but it's this giant 70 inch box that encases the screen and is at least 2 feet wide. We have converted the top into the holder of all things that we don't want to take to their home right now.
When he opens the monster up there is about 9000 inches of dust covering all of the components. I'm sure some of the accumulation is from our house, but we picked this thing up from a garage sale 2 years ago for $50. So not only does it have two years worth of our dust in it, but another 15 years of someone else's dust in there to. It's a mess, he declares that this is the problems. No worries he tells me, I have some air in a can, I'll dust this baby right out! At first I think OK great we'll be able to have our movie night after all. Then it dawns on me, he's going to blow all of this dust all over my house! I just vacuumed the carpets and even cleaned some walls this week. There's no talking him out of it now though, with the can of air in hand he pulls the trigger and a huge cloud of dust has now filled our entire living area and I'm pretty sure neither of us can breath.
Once the dust settles around the recently cleaned room he tells me to fire it up and see what happens. Bewwwww. . . That's all the T.V. says and we know it's a goner. That doesn't stop him from trying to fix it for the next hour and a half until he is positive that it will never again be used for our personal enjoyment. So we decide to call it a night early and head to bed.
The next morning I'm up a little earlier then the rest of the family which is actually a rarity around our house because the kids are usually up at the butt crack of dawn. I'm sitting in the chair reading when Alaina comes downstairs first for her morning dose of cartoons. She goes to turn the T.V. on, Bewwwww, she looks to me confused like I have just played an evil trick on her. I explained to her that the T.V. was broken and that she would have to read a book or something quiet until her siblings got out of bed.
For 45 minutes she glared at me like I had just told her I was dying of cancer while I read my book waiting for our day to begin. Finally Olivia and Mason get up and both of them the 1 and 3 year old look very confused when they make their way to our living room. Olivia asks me turn on her shows and Mason brings me the controller as if to say "yes please turn on Olivia's shows", really all he does is grunt and make his noise for here. I then explain to them that the monster doesn't work and that we'll have breakfast and then they can play with their toys or watch a movie on the even older semi broken T.V. we have upstairs. (We don't have cable due to some budget cuts we made, we rely entirely on Netflix and Huluplus all played from the Xbox so there's no way to watch anything other than a movie they have seen 100 times on a T.V. that has to be turned up to an ungodly level to hear over the strange almost scary buzzing noise it makes as it heats up.
Needless to say they were MAD! By noon they had played with every toy in the entire house including the ones I keep put up for rainy days. They are now following me around proclaiming their boredom when I finally decide it's time to break out the big guns, play dough followed by painting and then we found something to glue.
Once we finished all of these projects at 12:15 they looked to me for something else, anything and I've got nothing. We've done all of the "arts and crafts" I can come up with and now I'm bored too. So we settle on board games for the rest of the afternoon and make dinner together as a cute little family with no T.V. should. Then it's time to read some stories and call it an early night, it's not like there's anything good on T.V. anyway.
The next day Grant gets up and heads out to purchase a new T.V. the kids and I were really excited. We picked a place that offers 120 same as cash because around the holidays money can get a little tight. We just finished over doing it once again for the kid's Christmas and we don't have a lot of extra money just laying around the house. Plus they had a killer package deal on a 46 inch LED flat panel T.V. with a blueray player and T.V. stand, a little smaller (ok a lot smaller than we're used to, but still a good size T.V.). Then I get the call, they won't allow you to bring your stuff home by yourself they must deliver and "install" it for you. I use the word install loosely because really all they do is drag this thing in with wet muddy feet, plug in a couple of cords and hand you the remote. That's not the problem though, the soonest day the can deliver is Tuesday between 10 and 12. So now the kids and I have to endure ANOTHER day without something to do! It's terrible and I've run completely out of ideas. None of my family members want to come over because we can't watch T.V. why would they? I don't even want to be here anymore. So we played, A LOT!!! By 4 o'clock in the afternoon I couldn't take another imaginary game so I told them they needed to get creative and play by themselves for a couple of hours while I read my book and got caught up on some laundry. So they fought, A LOT!!! By 7 o'clock it was time for bed, I couldn't take another cry or whimper or tattle about how someone has run into someone else, so bedtime comes early in our house.
The next day my darling sister in law takes the kids while I get the house ready for the delivery of our T.V. I need to move out The Monster and make room for the new T.V. The monster has served as not only a loyal entertaining friend, but a great barricade to keep Mason from the laundry room and computer area so I had to wait until the last minute to move this thing. As I'm getting ready to try and push it out of the way myself it dawns on me, this T.V. is to big to move by myself and I don't want to be alone when I see what has been living under it for two years so Grant comes and helps me move it to it's temporary resting place until we can rent a semi truck (or just find time and couple of friends to help us load it up and take it to the dump) to dispose of it.
I was very surprised that there wasn't more food or toys or whatever else might live under a T.V. just A LOT of dust. I got it all vacuumed just in the nick of time and they delivered our new television with no problems at all.
I anxiously pick the kids up, I can't wait for them to discover HD and flat pannel and LCD and whatever other wonderful things our other T.V. didn't offer because it was as old as a dinosaur. We get home and Alaina goes rushing in to meet the newest member of our family and says to me, "It's really tiny, I guess it will do though." so we all sit down to watch some Curious George and a half an hour later this is what happens . . .
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