Our Midwinter TV Break

 

We keep our television in our back room—the sunroom. This room was added onto the house about ten years before we bought it. It has skylights, floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, and French doors leading out to our deck. We love it in the summer, when we can open skylights and windows and the doors. But in the winter—no way.

 

 

On sunny days the room can be comfortable enough during the daytime. It also has supplementary electric heat (our home has gas). But at night it’s freezing, and it takes a while for the electric heat to warm up to a tolerable level.

 

Several years ago my husband went into the crawlspace underneath and stapled in some insulation, but it didn’t help enough, not with more glass than wall in the room. So in order to get me to watch TV in there, it has to be something very special. And this year it just hasn’t been worth it.

 

I’m a basketball—Celtics—fan, and I’ve spent lots of winter nights over the past years suffering heat deprivation to watch them. We’d bring up a space heater and cuddle under afghans, but it still wasn’t as comfortable as I like to be. This year I’m boycotting the Celtics because of the trade they made that upset me. So nothing has lured me back into the refrigerator.

 

I thought the Olympics would get me back out there, but surprisingly I’m not enough into it this year to make the sacrifice.

 

And I’ve discovered something better.

More time eating in our dining room instead of in front of the TV. More time to talk with my husband, to listen to music, to play board games. And best of all, more time to read! I’ve just finished my fifth book since the beginning of the year, and I’m loving not having the distraction of TV. We really don’t watch any shows regularly, so I don’t feel I’m missing anything.

In a couple of months the Red Sox will be back, and we’ll be out there watching them. Hopefully by April the snow season will have finally passed and we’ll have more comfortable temperatures, even if we do need a blanket for a little while.

 

In the meantime I’m enjoying my “sabbatical.”