My so-called TV life.

What's that?--you want to know what I watch, week to week, on television? I thought so. Well, I am happy to oblige.

I feel like I'm maybe the only person in the world who still watches TV, as opposed to watching television shows via the internet, and likes it. This makes me feel a little like an old person, but the habit of regular TV watching can be explained: I believe it is due (a) to having come of age when watching TV was your only option, as there was no interweb, and (b) to liking the rhythm of a week being paced, in part, by the show that's on each night, if there is one. (I can feel your horror radiating all the way over here, through the tubes and onto my screen, because of how much TV you surmise I must watch. Well, horror away. I do watch that much TV. And I like it.)

So this means that, if the world is good, there's a show on most nights of the week that I like to watch. This is especially important for week nights. The world is most in balance if I can get through my working day on a Monday, for instance, and there's an episode of The Closer awaiting me at its appointed hour. That episode redeems whatever drudgery or difficulty or simply the long hours of the day that preceded it. On Tuesday, The Good Wife; on Wednesday, Modern Family; and on Thursday, the glory that is the NBC lineup, but especially Parks & Recreation. And 30 Rock.

Well, I have just named the television shows that are my mainstays at the moment. Like every other thinking person, I am awaiting the new season of Mad Men. I have several little DVD things lined up, because I either didn't have HBO, or I wasn't able to finish the series in real time (The Wire/In Treatment and Saving Grace, respectively). And I am about to go into mourning because The Closer is winding up its current stint, which will lead us inexorably into its very last episodes ever.

This summer, I started to watch Criminal Minds with my daughter, who is a huge fan of the show. I myself love a police procedural, and I came to appreciate the show. I am looking forward to the new season, which I will have to DVR so I can watch it later, as it is up against Modern Family, and the historian and I watch that one together. The DVR is hooked up to the downstairs TV. Currently, running son is residing in the downstairs lair, so it's possible that there may be a whole slew of Criminal Minds for me to watch sometime, when I don't feel I will be intruding on the whole lair-ness happening down there. Who can say.

I would like to have a bunch of new awesome shows to watch. I wish I had started Breaking Bad when it started. Ditto Men of a Certain Age and other stuff, like House. I guess. I guess I should have watched Downton Abbey, so maybe I'll try to catch up on the first season before new episodes start.

But I need to get this whole project organized. The television routine is part of what keeps everything else in its proper place, and I need that, the people. I need it, or everything else, and I, will feel crazy. Or maybe I might have to, what? do something else, like something productive. Write, or read.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself. I will be checking out a few things in the new season. And if you have something you think I should watch, something that's still broadcasting in the real world, in real time--on television, and not on my DVR--please let me know. I will consider it an act of generosity, and a kindness, which I shall never forget.

(thanks to Amelia, who pointed out this post on every day I write the book)

My life is so busy, I can barely watch all my shows.

For instance, tonight, Monday night, is 

(a) The Closer

(b) Trust Me

(c) an important rerun of Saving Grace from its first season, in preparation for new episodes in March

and, painfully,

(d) a concert in our jazz series.

So I put my DVR into service.  This scenario has happened more than once.  There was a concert a couple of weeks ago, before the above shows had started, but there was--in fact, these shows were also on tonight!--

(e) Big Bang Theory

(f) How I Met Your Mother

(g) Two and a Half Men (reader, I confess it.  I know it is unworthy.)

(The concerts were both lovely, thank you for asking, despite the small amount of discretionary whining I did about how I would rather stay home and watch my shows than go out to watch some jazz concert which might be lame.) However, I have hours--hours!--of DVR'd television.  

Of course, it's even more complicated than the labyrinthine dilemma outlined above.  The DVR is attached to the downstairs television.  (Don't even get me started on why.)  And the downstairs, while infinitely groovier than it once was (see: retrotastic blue sectional couch), is so very very cold.  Cold and icy.  Venture not into the basement without thine cozy blanket. And mittens, probably.

Yet, you say, there are hours and hours in the sabbatical day when one could knock off these recorded shows.  Hours and hours to watch television while bundled up in the basement.  A person could cross these shows off the to-do list, in an afternoon, probably--or a couple of afternoons, tops.  The problem with that is:  I am actually writing these days.  Oh yeah.  I am writing.  So all this recorded television is building up, I'm writing, there's the odd jazz concert, the basement's cold.  Who knows when the shows will get watched? Someone's got to do it, and someone's got to get her priorities in order.