Daisypath Anniversary tickers

January 12, 2010

Unplugged

OK - thanks to Farmwife for this awesome plan!

I'm taking her challenge one step further.

As you may have read yesterday, I've given myself a pretty large New Year's Challenge (not a resolution, really.) and I intend to stick with it.

I got derailed yesterday because I reacted to things in the mail. Not that I was reacting to unimportant things, rather things that had to be taken care of. However, I allowed myself to get all worked up, riled up, flustered, "het up"...whatever you choose to call it. and it took me a good part of the evening to come back down and relax. Not good when you're 30 weeks pregnant...the baby was all riled up and spent a good part of the night doing these little shimmies and making me feel like I was being clawed from the inside a la Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol 1...not pleasant to say the least.

SO...Farmwife is going for Tech-Free Tuesdays, wherein, she will not participate in watching TV, using the Internet, no ready-made microwave meals, to focus on being plugged into her husband and children more.

I am taking this one step further, and while not going totally Tech-Free every day, I am going to practice limiting my online time to 15 minutes per day. Period. Whether I choose to use this on FB, checking emails, blogging, or shopping with my nonexistent money is up to me. I only get 15 minutes marked with a big old fat kitchen timer that is really obnoxious and can be heard from any room in the neighborhood...this thing makes the fire alarms at the nearby station sound quiet... I will keep the TV turned off, and let the DVR do it's work, and I can reward myself with my shows while I do my weekly ironing, or am sitting and folding a load of laundry while the kids nap. I will limit the kids to 30 minutes of TV each day, because they watch far too much of it...I didn't realize how much until we were on vacation, and the first thing out of Captain's mouth was "Mommy, there aren't enough toys for me to play with, so I will watch something for kids please. Maybe Handy Manny, and then Jungle Junction will come on." Uh...when your 31/2 year old has the programming guide memorized it is time to unplug...

I also want to stick with my goal of making meals around what I already have, and to do that, I can't be watching the shows with commercials for my favorite restaurants and snack-food...It is no good...

I plan to spend my tech-free time sticking to my list of things to do...I can fold laundry in a short time (so can you!), get supper started, and still have more than enough time to play Memory, Chutes & Ladders, Candyland, or color, paint, draw, build an entire Lego settlement (trust me, we have enough), read 57 books to my kids, be underhanded and work in some learning and have Captain practice drawing shapes and writing letters all while learning to put words together! I have a batch of bread rising, and plan to make at least one kind of cookie, a double batch of chili, a roast, and grill some salmon all before Sunday.

I might even break down and make DestructoGirl's birthday cake myself after all...

SO...whether you want to try for half a day, one full day, one full week...or not at all...find ways to unplug from the "convenience" of technology, and plug into quality time coloring and building Legos with your kids, building snow people, making cookies, baking bread, actually keeping on top of household chores like dishes and laundry, making your hubby's favorite meal (only sneakily making it healthier) for no reason other than that you feel like it...visit your library and pick up a new book to read and read while you're on the treadmill or elliptical machine working out...heck! Get outside and do your cardio in nature...for real! Explore the bike/walking paths and plan fun things like free days at a museum or the zoo...our local museum has Discovery Days for kids where they can go and do things FOR FREE...

Who knows, after this baby is born, and I'm allowed, I might even find myself doing crazy things like exercising because I have time while the 3 kids are napping.

So good luck with your New Year's Decisions (or resolutions or promises, or whatever you want to call them)...and I'll see you sometime later if I choose to use my 15 minutes to blog.

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