Normally, Raphaela goes to sleep between 7:30 and eight pm, and I devise all these plans in my head for my own enjoyment, for some adult time. More often than not, reality sets in and I collapse from exhaustion, maybe have dinner, and park myself in front of the television for about two hours. The TV provides me with the comfort of English speaking escapism at the end of a Hebrew speaking day, not to mention some off-color language and humor which I dare not speak while Raphaela is within ear-shot.
My television is ancient by today's standards, large and clunky, and every once in a while it has a nervous breakdown or looses its connections to the cable system and the DVD. That started again today, and some voice in my head spun into a panic; what would I do without my good friend to entertain me and put me to sleep at night?
The dependence I have on that random voice in the background, it scared me, though I suppose it is symptomatic of my being a single parent. In lieu of a human being, a partner who asks me about my day, I have come to rely upon the boob tube (no breast feeding pun intended) as a companion of sorts.
I shall make this one of my birthday resolutions, to bring friends who are human into my life on a more regular basis, in order to replace the vapid noise of the machines.
2 comments:
I think you're worrying too much about this. There's nothing wrong with background voices. You're also -- and please get this through your head, because you bash yourself about it unnecessarily all the time -- you're in the middle of a long, long span of incredibly demanding, exhausting, and yet often quite dull work. It will end. You will come back to yourself. But right now you're doing the job. Stop criticizing the things you do to get yourself by and making it harder. Just congratulate yourself at the end of each day for having done an excellent job -- and if the child is healthy, growing, and loving, you've done an excellent job. Forget the rest, you can worry about it in several years.
You can watch a lot of TV online these days, so as long as you've still got your broadband connection, your TV crapping out shouldn't keep you from your down-time relaxation.
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