After last week both my body and wallet needed a rest. Between the Food and Wine Festival purchases, the drink refills, and regular food purchases Busch Gardens had made some money off of us. There was also the buying of Mother’s Day gifts, getting my daughter new shoes which turned into toys for everyone too, and of course the new cars. My body was also in a state of pain. The previous night I woke up with a headache so bad I had to take a hot shower at 1:00 AM.
With my back hurting and nothing on the schedule I proceeded to crash for most of the day. I did feel a little useless as my wife made dinner and my daughter had a full blown tantrum because I was watching the baseball game instead of handing the TV over to her so she could watch her favorite YouTube famfluencers. I needed the day and I’m sure my wife now needs one of her own.
The kids are at an interesting place. They are mostly independent now in personality but often still dependent physically. Sometimes in things they shouldn’t be like getting dressed or putting on socks and shoes. They are fully independent in turning on the TV and finding streaming shows they shouldn’t be watching or going outside and digging holes in the yard.
As a parent I have found myself saying things I never thought I would say. Mostly because I said so or back in my day. Yesterday I told my daughter that when I was her age we couldn’t watch whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. There were only four channels and we had to watch what was on. I am unsure if this is true because I don’t remember being four, but I do remember having Media General Cable, Erol’s Video up the street, and an NES to play whenever I wanted. However daddy’s TV was daddy’s TV and if he was watching it there was no butting in and taking it over to watch Buggs Bunny or whatever I watched at that age.
We also had more TV’s when I was a kid. There was the infamous 80’s and 90’s kitchen TV and the small TV’s in every bedroom. I don’t know if other families still have that or if the increased size of modern TV’s combined with the widespread use of tablets have done away with those. I can barely see the baseball score on the 30″ TV we have in our bedroom. I can’t imagine anything smaller being functional. Especially when compared to a tablet. My father refused to buy a big screen TV for our basement TV and the biggest one we had was a 38″ we got from Montgomery Ward at Springfield Mall.
Yesterday was a good day. Today my body is healed, the birds are singing out my window, and I am ready to get back to the work at hand.
David Huzzard Writes 