by Beth Burns

Created on: April 29, 2008   Last Updated: November 13, 2011

After working all day, making quick decisions, and chatting and smiling at everyone I see, the television welcomes me home along with all the cats.

I walk in my front door, patting each cat hello, put my keys on a hook, my bag in a chair, grab a coffee and from the kitchen, bring the mail and sit down into my large overly squishy couch with too many pillows and a giant blanket. The television goes on immediately.

I flip through the mail, sip my coffee while trying not to let the one cat head butt the bottom of my mug. These are the moments when my brain starts to slow down, settling in while my body grows looser and more potato like. By the end of the mail and the coffee, I am ready to watch anything.

I'd like to tell you that I only watch the shows with wit and charm and intelligence. This is simply not the truth. I flip channels until something in my brain says, "ooh, pretty!"

I do not watch television to learn anything. I watch television for the sweet escape into someone else's life. Not that I dislike my own, but it is almost like the vacation I keep not taking. Every evening I give my brain a little vacation from reality. I cheer for those silly girls fighting for the love of Bret Michaels, I cry and scream with the doctors on Grey's Anatomy, my legs twitch along to the stars learning to ballroom dance. I enjoy Cash Cab, and squeal with glee when I know something the New Yorkers do not. I watch reruns of Sex in the City and Friends, I watch music videos, I watch kid's shows, I watch comedians. I watch, entranced, not having to think about anything at work or in my life. It is a state of bliss. Even the cats watch along, though I think they'd like me to stop more often on the Girls Next Door.

Watching television with someone else just isn't the same. I don't feel I have the same freedom to allow myself to be completely enveloped into a program. The other person wants to talk, or take a walk, or play a game, or something.

So, I start to wonder if I'm broken. Have I chosen this existence of cats, coffee and television over human contact? Or do I just have enough human contact throughout the day that I need this break?

There is a certain comfort in the constant that is television, single lady and cats. Let other people go have wild and crazy lives so I can watch it on tv after a long day of discussing business things!

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