Daily Activities - These are the days......

One last activity that Dad spends a lot of time doing each day.... is watching TV. When he lived in CA, he had an antenna on his roof, and got enough channels so that he could watch his two favorite shows: Wheel of Fortune, followed by Jeopardy. In CA these shows aired on ABC. I told Mom, "Don't worry, ABC is one channel we do get, and it's crystal clear!" You see, we don't have cable, and we don't have a roof antenna. All we have is a "mouse ears" antenna, and a digital converter box. From that we are able to get ABC, which we use to watch presidential debates. We also get a "UHF" programming channel, a Telemundo channel and Korean soap channel.

The first week after they arrived, after the hub bub had settled down, Mom asked, "hey could we watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy?" So I turn on the TV and dial it to ABC, and the first thing I see is some tabloid news show. Then I see it's only 7:30, so I tell her, "Oh wait, we're on the East coast, so everything will be an hour later. I'll leave the TV on and at 8pm you'll see the game show." Only 8pm comes and goes and what's on? Some show with a lot of astronauts and their wives, looking an awful lot like a soap. What the heck??

It takes a little digging but we discover that games shows are syndicated, and different regions air these syndicated shows on different channels. Unfortunately out here in Northern New England, Wheel of Fortune airs on CBS, a channel we've never been able to get.

So what to do? It seems that Dad spends every weekday evening watching these two game shows before starting to turn in. For a few days we are able to find enough episodes on Youtube to keep him happy, but eventually he cottons on to the fact that "this isn't real TV." So we are looking into getting an antenna put on our roof, which was very successful in getting a neighbor many more channels than I can fathom. In the meantime he has gotten hooked on different shows from Taiwan, which Mom streams from her laptop, connected to their TV.

I started thinking about the routine of Dad's day: eating breakfast, doing a puzzle or reading the paper, going for a walk or watching TV, eating lunch, taking a nap, doing another puzzle, dinner, then more TV before turning in. Dad was a pastor and a political activist in his day. He had a TON of energy, and would stay up late every night working on something. Is it sad that this is what his days have come down to? Should *I* feel sad watching him do puzzles that my 6yo has outgrown, watching games shows every night? I asked Mike about it, and he said, in so Mike-like fashion,"What would be the point? Heck there are times when I think it would be GREAT if all I had to do was work on puzzles, take naps and watch TV!" To understand this you'd have to know we're at the stage of life where a good night's sleep is rare, and the to-do list is always growing. In any event, I know I don't feel sad. Not now. Maybe because Dad doesn't seem sad. Sure he's not turning cartwheels and bustling from here to there like he used to, but most of the time he seems ok. I don't know if that will always be enough, but for now it is.