I watch television. I watch it sort of a lot. A more accurate statement would be that I listen to it.

Mostly, I watch/listen to “Law & Order” and its iterations. And Cold Case. And Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) and its iterations. And now, The Closer (on TNT). I blame this fixation on my Grampa Naylor … he first got me hooked on Ironsides when I was little. We watched it together in his livingroom on the black and white television. Yeah! Justice for the little guy! Hah! Me and Gramps.

LightHusband tolerates this fixation. He claims that he does not watch television. Although he is in the room at the same time as I am. The television is on. He is following the plot line. Hmmmm. Interestingly, whenever I am gone in the evening I come home and the television is not off. If he does not watch television then it should be off. But it’s not. It’s on. He watches the most vile, bad (as in poorly done) sci-fi you can imagine. It’s amusing.

So that’s the confession … I am a smart-ish, funny-ish, educated, Jesus-following, television watcher. You heard it here first.
Now, here’s the twaddle.

Our home was originally built as a builder’s model. So we have some upgrades. One of them is that we have a gas fireplace in our family room. That’s nice at this time of year. Another is that we have “eye” above the fireplace. That’s not so wonderful. By “eye” I mean this. When our house was built it was sort of vogue to build these huge nooks above fireplaces so that you’d have a built-in spot for a television or entertainment unit of whatever sort. I hate that “eye.”

When we first moved in it seemed like a really wonderful feature. A defined space for the television. No more need for the somewhat broken, yet handmade entertainment unit (by LightHusband many moons ago). A spot for all the crap stuff.

You see, for all the television I watch, I really could not careless what sort of television I watch it on. As long as the picture is not fuzzy and I can see it … as in it’s bigger than say my laptop screen. I don’t need surround sound. I really don’t care. Really. I don’t.

LightHusband, on the other hand, does. Yeah … remember him? He’s the guy who does NOT watch television. It bugs him to no end that our television does NOT fill up the hole in the “eye.” That it doesn’t fit. That our crap stuff looks ugly up there. And … he wants a bigger, better picture. He says we can stream YouTube videos from our computers onto the dang thing.

Six years now we’ve been having a running argument about that dang “eye.” You may of course understand that I have used several other more colorful words in place of “dang” over the years. I am completely functional. I say we build some shelves in the back of the “eye” for our crap stuff. He says we can get a television that will replace all of our crap stuff and will be aesthetically more pleasing. But he doesn’t watch television. It’s a senseless silly argument. And not one that we spend a lot of time on … we use it more to poke fun at one another than anything else.

I have threatened to make a quilt to cover the “eye” with. He was less than impressed. He has threatened to just go buy a television with “his” bonus money. I was less than impressed. We give each other the flat eye look a lot in that case. You know the flat eye look. It’s the cartoon look where their eyes get flat on top. Well, people get that look too. The flat eye look … you’re pushing the envelope, but you’re not in trouble yet and you’re probably being funny too. But … watch it.

So why am I telling you all this? Because it’s been an ongoing argument for six years and I might be losing. I hate that. It goes against all of my standards for myself and I just had to say it somewhere. Getting a television that big is simply wasteful, verges on sinful and really feels like I’m condoning and becoming a part of the commercialism and etc. that I just do not want to be a part of. And I hate being a part of it. I don’t care what all the good reasons are … so now I’ve said all that in my outloud voice and I can be done with it.