A few years back, I was really heavy into trashy TV. It started with Engaged and Underaged. And then I dabbled a bit into 16 and Pregnant. I dipped my toes into Real Housewives (just NY and Orange County - I wasn’t TOTALLY addicted. I had standards). 

I don’t know if this is because I have a drama tank like Vicky from Real Housewives has a Love Tank (sidenote: Gross). I needed these strangers to fill it up. I was working with all dudes at the time and there was zero drama with them. I used to make my friend Matt gossip with me because there was no one to gossip with at work. It wasn’t even bad things because I can’t be mean to save my life (oddly enough though, I have three arch-nemeses - they rotate in “arch” status as I think you can only have 1 arch nemesis. I don’t think any of them know about this as I have never been outwardly mean to them). 

OK, I digressed a bit. My point is that I used to watch this shit like crazy. I’d say it was my crack but I think that analogy is a bit overdone and I’ve never been one for drugs. I guess you can say that it was my second bagel. You want the second bagel…but you don’t really need it. You don’t really want people to know you just ate TWO bagels, but you just couldn’t help yourself. The first one was too good. 

Anyway, when we made the move to NOLA, Real Housewives of New York started to get waaaay too dramatic and it made my stomach hurt to watch. I realized that maybe having two bagels is too much. This was rather unfortunate as I had gotten Rodney to watch these shows with me and I even taught him to respond with, “I know, right?!?” to everything I said while watching it. He did it while typing away on the computer…but he did it nonetheless. The man is a saint. 

I realized I had to cut back, but the people I worked with watched it so I just watched the NY season, stress-induced tummy aches and all. 

Then, a few months back, Rod and I decided that we really didn’t need cable. I work A LOT and he usually plays on the computer at home and we never watched shows when they aired anyway. We ditched our $100 a month cable service and bought a Roku, Netflix streaming-only account and a Hulu Plus account. And we rent things on Amazon from time to time and we don’t fret about it because now we are only spending about $20 a month on TV stuffs. 

So, my trashy TV watching came to a screeching halt. When you have to actively think about what you want to watch, you realize that maybe you’d rather catch up on your Modern Family rather than Teen Mom 2. And of course, you hadn’t yet trained your husband on the proper responses for Teen Mom 2 yet because…wow. I don’t even know if there ARE proper responses. 

I still indulge from time to time when Rod is out of the house or I just need background noise. But it less Second Bagel and more Rice Cracker. Not nearly as indulgent as it once was and somewhat lackluster and sad. Is this my age or the fact that we have over-sensationalized these people and made them think they are something greater than they are and then we are disappointed when they don’t deliver?

I’m not sure of the answer…but now I really want a real life bagel.