Amy’s Week in Review (Oct. 21-27)

WwosGrowing up in the early 70s, I remember long stretches of weekend afternoons stuck at home with my dad while my mom was out food shopping or doing whatever else it was she couldn’t do during the week with six kids in tow. I was never one of the chosen ones, the child lucky enough to get to accompany her on these outings, and was instead relegated to spending the long day with the rest of my rejected siblings rolling around the small room that served as our TV room back then.

Those were the days when families owned exactly one television set, that played exactly seven channels (including PBS), and if you were stuck at home with your dad all day during the weekend, that meant you were stuck watching sports.

And if anything could have made not being selected as my mom’s shopping companion any more painful, it was being forced to watch four hours of sports programming on a Saturday afternoon.

Talk about the agony of defeat.

And if you know anything about 1970s sports programming, you know you’d be facing a few hours of auto racing or golf or, if you were lucky, Mexican cliff diving courtesy of ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

None of it would ever interest me. I don’t even remember what I’d do to keep busy – maybe I read a book or pestered one of my three brothers – while our dad dozed on the couch watching whatever sporting events were on that day.

But I’d always perk up for the intro. I mean, how could you not find it compelling – the skier tumbling off a jump or the victorious driver spraying a shaken bottle of champagne, host Jim McKay celebrating “the human drama of athletic competition”? And of course, the iconic “thrill of victory and agony of defeat”?

It was grand and global and the exact opposite of being trapped in a small house in New Jersey watching sports on a boring Saturday afternoon.

I pondered the highs and lows of life this week in a couple of posts that were neither grand nor global. But it turns out, that’s how life rolls.

I shared tips for getting nothing done each day except checking a lot of Facebook statuses and enjoying the significant improvement in 21st Century television offerings here:

522591_379600385471432_307731171_n5 Habits of Highly Ineffective Bloggers

People ask me all the time, “Amy, how do you manage to get absolutely nothing done, day in and day out?” (READ MORE … )

 

 

And then, in a stoke of organizational genius, I scored a personal victory the following day, which I shared here:

photo(61)The Thrill of Victory

Although I’ve confessed to you all that I am a hopeless procrastinator and not-doer of things, I did experience a triumph in organization and planning yesterday that was really too good not to share. (READ MORE … )

 

 

And finally, I wrote about not wanting my 10-year-old son to masquerade as a murderer for Halloween, an feeling kind of bad about it, here:

photo(58)The Thwarted Ninja

The kids and I crossed a lot of things off our to-do list this weekend. We stocked up on milk and Greek yogurt at Costco, cleaned out about seven contractor bags worth of outgrown clothing, old magazines and Nerf guns from our closets and finally got around to buying the 10 year old’s Halloween costume. That last one was the biggie. (READ MORE … )

 

And here are some links I shared on Facebook for one reason or another last week:

Now We Are Five, By David Sedaris (The New Yorker)

50 Years of Girls Names (The Atlantic)

What American Accent Do You Have? (GoToQuiz.com)

Remember you can sign up to get new posts emailed straight to your inbox.

Just fill your email address in the “Subscribe to blog via email” box, which is to the right of this post if you’re on your laptop or if you scroll way to the bottom if you’re reading this on your phone. It will generate an email and you just need to confirm your subscription and you’re good.

Ciao!