Me and the boob tube have a long and full relationship: I remember the first music video I saw on MTV ("Kyrie" by Mr. Mister), and sneaking out of bed at naptime to quietly watch the Frugal Gourmet as mom feverishly scribbled down recipes. My little brother and I played "commercial games" which consisted of trying to shout the product or company name before your opponenent. In hindsight, this seems like a rather frightening exercise in brand recognition conditioning, but we needed to amuse ourselves for 3 minutes. When I was eight, I taped "Doogie Howser, M.D." every week and scrawled hearts where the O's should have been on the label. Oh, how I loved the Doog-meister.

My husband bought me Tivo a couple of years ago, and a new and improved era of viewing began. Program arrangement and management became more efficient and with a dual tuner, I became able to watch even more whenever I got the urge. Of course, I'm not bragging. I've potentially missed out on numerous life altering and horizon broadening moments because I was watching The Gilmore Girls or something.

Right now, there is a bar of wavy white lines running across America's Next Top Model from a year ago when my husband accidently dropped the living room's 32 inch box, but I don't mind and barely even notice it anymore. I've learned to look beyond the imperfections, and try to see the soul, or in this case, vacuum tube.

This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I have major TV attachment issues. I mean, at every stage of my life, its one of the few things that has remained constant. Through childhood, my parents' divorce, adolescent angst, young adult rebellion, marriage, and motherhood, that magical little cube has resided in some corner of every place I've called home. A place to escape, pretend, and distract.

Sometimes when I'm particularly fed up with my own sloth, I declare that we should just cancel our cable and be done with it. I get the urge to theatrically hurl the unwieldy box out of our front window in a passionate fury. However, we live on the bottom floor of our apartment, and the dramatic quality would be seriously lacking as my TV bounced daintily upon our grassy lawn. That kind of stuff is only cool when it's on TV, not to TV *sigh*. Besides, my inner-lifecoach tells me that its really about balancing priorities and leisure activities.

So why all this rambling about my telly addiction? Well, I'm slowly targeting and changing a few of my less than desirable ways, and I'm considering directing some of that to cutting back on the tube. Will it actually happen? I can't say for sure, but I'm seriously weighing my options here.

Tell me about you've conquered or minimized your own naughty habits; it might just inspire me...