All hail, the DV-R

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that DV-R is the best invention ever. I used to have all kinds of space in my brain to remember which shows were on what night, but now all that extremely useful knowledge has been pushed aside so there is room for me to juggle who is watching L on what day. (And all I have to say about that is thank God for the calendar that has L's daycare info written in because my once stellar memory has given way to permanent pregnancy brain.)

Now all I have to do is set a series record and like magic, all my favorite shows are stored for me to watch at my convenience. (Meaning, on weekend evenings when I don't have to fight to stay awake later than 9:30.) And can I just tell you how happy I am that L is still young enough that I don't yet have to filter what I watch around him? Pretty sure I don't want him to start talking like the Real Housewives of New Jersey, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that his first words aren't "prostitution whore".

So especially on weekends when D is working, the DV-R is an awesome thing. While L is down for his nap, or while he's playing on the floor by himself (for all of 2 minutes where he's happy playing alone) I can watch some of the awesomeness saved under "My Recordings". I've mentally ranked each of the shows I record.

Gold Medal - The shows I look forward to watching and get really excited about. I know what night these shows air on and I purposely ignore the channel they air on during that evening because I don't want to catch a single snippet of the show until I can watch it in its entirety from my DV-R. The Office is the perfect example of a gold medal show. In fact, The Office is so important to me that I've managed to kick D upstairs to watch his hockey games in the past because I wanted to watch the new episode on the "good" tv. (I hope you realize what a feat this is. The tv upstairs is the "small" tv. Then again, most are small compared to the tv in our living room.) Other shows also fall into this category but I'm worried that you'll judge me if I say them.

Silver Medal - These are shows that I like and look forward to watching and will watch when I can view them relatively uninterrupted (read: not very often). If a distraction happens to arise, I will pause it so I don't miss anything, and I'll even go so far as to rewinding if I do miss something. An example of a silver medal show is Project Runway. I've watched season after season and I still love this show (even though they bordered on over-load when they had approximately 5 seconds of lag time between the most recent season and the season before it).

Bronze Medal - These are the shows that I still like enough to record but am otherwise indifferent towards. I can put these shows on for background noise, but episodes usually end up stacking up until I decide either a) I'm going to sit down and have a marathon one night or b) after 9 episodes have been recorded and I haven't watched any that I probably don't care about the show anymore and just delete them all.

Miscellaneous - Right now, two shows fall under the misc. category - Parenthood and Deadliest Catch. These are shows that D and I both adore. We have mutually agreed that we will not watch one of these shows without the other present or face the wrath. They are recorded and saved for a time when we are both home and undistracted. If it were just me, I'd give them gold medals, but since I can't watch them whenever I want, it detracts a bit from their appeal (but not enough to make them silver).

And then there are shows that I can't figure out how to rank. They are shows that I used to be obsessed with but no longer care about too much. But I can't bring myself to break up with them because we've had such a long relationship. I'd say The Biggest Loser is the best example of this type of show. I used to LOVE TBL. It was my favorite in college. My friend and I would order Chinese food and watch TBL and cry. I looked forward to TBL nights more than any other night of the week. Then I stopped watching, but got hooked again when I was over at my parents' house one night and they were watching.

I know this is a slight tangent, but you know what really bugs me about TBL? How half that show is totally unnecessary and could be cut without losing the integrity or point of the episode. Is there really a need for every episode to be 2 hours long? Especially when I'd say a good 1/4 of each episode is poorly-veiled product placement? And I've taken to just fast-forwarding through the voting session BS because I noticed that I was rolling my eyes so hard every time someone started crying that one time my right eye almost popped out of my head.

Am I the only one who only watches a show out of a sense of loyalty and for "old-times' sake", rather than because I enjoy it? I currently have 5 episodes of TBL stacked up in my DV-R. And I can't bring myself to watch them because I've realized that that would be 10 hours of my life spent on watching a show I barely care about anymore. Yet I can't bring myself to delete them, because we're old friends. And I'm not sure what other show would make snacking during it feel so rebellious.

Anyway, sometimes I miss the old days where the only reason I needed DV-R was so I could record the first part of shows and start watching them half an hour later, just so I could fast forward the commercials. Being a mom has really made me decide what's important in my life. I can't just watch any old shows anymore. I need to choose which shows mean the most to me. This must be what everyone is talking about when they say that you have to make sacrifices when you're a mom.