Productive

I took today off work to run some long-put-off errands (helllooooo? Passport??) and do some things around the house.

I slept in until 9:30, made coffee, surfed blogs, looked at Whoopi on The View, and am about to watch General Hospital for the first time in more than 10 years. Not because I plan to get in to a soap opera, but because I want to see if I can still recreate the Great Soap Opera Phenomenon from the summer Son was born, eleven years ago.

I watched GH faithfully in high school, but the autumn I was seventeen I left it behind forever. (Young Robyn finding a naked space alien in her garage pretty much did it for me.) So nine years later, I was at my mother's house with my newborn (read: "about to become someone who was going to home during the day.") My mother was ironing, and turned on the TV to keep up on Her Stories.

After my nine year hiatus, I still knew most of the characters, and was able to figure out most of the plots in that one sitting, simply by applying my decade-old knowledge of these characters' pasts. I was hooked again.

I stayed home for three years, but after about a year of tuning in religiously, I let it go again, first and foremost because one can easily allow an age-inappropriate TV program to run in the background with a three month old, by the time your child can actually focus on the TV screen, it's time to turn the idiot box off (or at least make more child friendly choices. Stupid Barney.)

I work during the day, and have no interest in learning how to use my VCR so I can keep up on a soap opera. But for the next hour? Go away, because Sonny is about to do something dramatic....