May - no TV

May without TV went well.  It got us eating at the dinner table almost every night, something I love doing, and try to do as often as possible.

It started off a little rocky.  On May 2, Josh and I were watching Jeopardy, and a light bulb switched on in my head.  I said "I don't think we are supposed to be watching TV this month".  I'm not sure if we forgot what May's without was, or if we didn't realize it was May, but either way we added two to the tally for May 1 and 2.

Then there was one night when Josh was exhausted and just wanted to veg out to the TV.  I don't blame him - his favorite spot to sleep is the couch, and there is no better way for him to sleep on the couch than to watch TV - but, I held strong.  He fell asleep to Treasure Quest, and I read in the other room.

Full disclosure: we did watch Netflix toward the end of the month.  We talked it over and decided it didn't count.  With TV, we found that we just watched whatever was on.  It sucked us in, and took up the entire night.  With Netflix, we are much more mindful about what we watch.  Netflix requires you to actively select what  to watch - meaning you don't get drawn into some celebrity dive show that comes on after Jeopardy and you really don't care about it, but it has lots of shiny costumes and similar to a train wreck you just keep watching until its over.  Although unlike a train wreck, in five years I won't remember how that one celebrity I don't recognize totally rocked her dive, but I'm sure I'd remember the train...motivation to keep avoiding TV.

Lesson:
Don't waste time on something that is not worth remembering.

Tally:
Josh: 3
Kiki: 2

Update on TV as of June 14 - we still aren't watching TV.  And we don't miss it.  Its wonderful!  We still watch Netflix, right now we are totally into Wilfred and Arrested Development (we realize we are late to the party on both of those shows, but they are great!), we only watch 1 or 2 episodes a night - that's only 40 minutes of TV and no commercials.  Instead, we spend our evenings doing fun things, last night we decided to go see the new Star Trek in 3D, earlier this week we went to Leonard's favorite dog park.  Most of these nights we end up chatting and eating dinner at the kitchen table.  It feels good to connect, catch up with each other, and enjoy the lovely centerpiece my husband brought home.

April - no drinking

Unlike March, April's without went swimmingly!  Avoiding drinking was very easy, and Josh and I both succeeded with flying colors.

The only time Josh or I felt challenged was when we went skiing.  After finishing up our ski day, heading down to the camper, taking Leonard for a long walk and getting dinner together, it was 7 o'clock.  Then we realized we didn't have anything to do.  We might have gone to the Elk for a beer, but that was out.  None of our other friends brought their campers up that weekend, and UNO is only fun for so long. 

It was actually really interesting to learn how hard not drinking at Crystal was.  I didn't realize how much of the fun of taking the camper up is the ability to have a few drinks after a ski day, and that skipping that part changed the experience.  Its something we could get used to but it was an eye opener.  And that, is the entire reason we are doing the year without, to be more aware of these types of things.


That said, I did go to Boston and visit Belle in April.  I see her 3 times a year if I'm lucky and I can't be expected to have a girls weekend without sharing a bottle of wine with my best friend.  I visited for 3 days.

April total:
Josh: 0
Kiki: 3

March...in June

March update!

It took me so long to get to this because I am ashamed of how awful we were on the withouts in March.  The goal was to get rid of one thing every day, and we thought it would be easy.  We were so wrong!

I took a piece of paper and wrote the days of the month on it.  Every time we got rid of something I added it to the list.  Every day we missed, I wrote an "X" on it.  Here it is.

I tried (in vain) to continue this without through April and beyond, which is why some of the "X's" have an item next to them.  It didn't work.  "Cleaned out fridge"?  I got desperate...

If I do this one again, it will be get rid of 31 things (or however many days there are in the month), but not one thing every day.  Its very hard to come up with one thing each day, it would be easier, and probably more effective to do a couple of mass clean outs where we come up with a bunch of different things to get rid of at one time.  Lesson learned.

Bad month for us, good month for charity - Add to the Tally:

Josh: 28
Kiki:  21