When I moved in, the space available to me was limited. Some shared public rooms (living room, dining room, kitchen, and the second bath), and two bedrooms, one of which would be my sleeping quarters, the other my office / den.
In the office / den I managed to fit a filing cabinet, a five shelf lawyer’s glass front bookshelf, a smaller bookshelf, a small dresser, a large dresser, a desk with computer and extra monitor, a desk chair, a television, a rocker / recliner, an antique coal bin and several pieces of artwork.
There was not a lot of extra space.
The idea was that I would have a private space that I could use to “get away”.
A lovely idea. However….
Lucy likes to be close, so there had to be enough room for her to lie at my feet. And the ‘other’ cat decide this was the only room she was willing to be in. Princess can not tolerate a closed door, nor would Boo, and Lucy made frequent trips outside to patrol the perimeter, work on her gardening projects, bark at the neighbor dogs, and water the lawn. In other words, the door could never really be closed all the way.
My mother likes certain TV programs, but has no interest in others. And there are a very few which she finds objectionable. One of those is THE SIMPSONS.
I’m not sure why she finds THE SIMPSONS so objectionable, but she does. So I recorded it on my TIVO and would watch that, along with a bunch of science fiction and horror programs in which my mother had no particular interest, in my room.
With the door ajar so the animals could come and go.
My mother would watch her programs, many of which I had no particular interest in, in the living room on the larger flat screen that I had moved over with me.
So there I am, sitting watching my programs, with the door ajar, Lucy at my feet, trying to keep the volume down. And it seems that … the volume in the living room just got a bit louder. Unfortunately, this means I have to turn up my TV just a bit, or I can’t hear the witty dialogue between Bart and Lisa.
Then my mother’s TV seems to get just a bit louder. So I turn mine up. And … and… On it goes till it is just too loud to be reasonable.
Night after night, the unintentional (I assume) volume wars, invariably result in my giving up and going into the living room, usually after my mother gives forth a heavy SIGH, loud enough to hear over both TVs all the way in my little fortress of solitude.
One night, as we are sitting there watching something I like, but my mother doesn’t particularly care about, she starts telling me about her friends. They are a married couple, been together 40+ years. She just can’t understand how they can each be in different rooms watching different TVs. Sometimes they are even watching the same program.
How, she wonders, and people live like that. Why, she and my father never needed more than one TV. If she didn’t like what he was watching, she would just read. And if he didn’t like what she was watching he would do something else, sitting there, together, in the same room, watching (or not watching) the same TV.
It’s what decent, normal people DO. Or, at least from my mother’s point of view, it’s what people should do, decent, normal or not.
It became a recurring topic of “discussion”, meaning that as I would be trying to watch something my mother would have a new story, about some other couple she knows, who don’t watch TV together. And she is truly and profoundly confused how they can do this.
After about six weeks, I finally figured it out. Not that she was intentionally trying to make this known. It’s just something, that at some core level, is TRUE for her: People who care about each other do not sit in separate rooms watching separate TVs.
So…. I sold the second TV. Gave the rocker / recliner to my sister, Amy (on loan!) and moved the second TIVO unit into the living room.
And stopped recording THE SIMPSONS. Because, normal, decent people who care about each other apparently sit in the same room, watching (or not watching) the same TV because it show you care.