Cabletown

I've taken up residence, it seems, inside my television. For the first time in my adult life, I have cable -- not counting basic cable, which we got for the reception, of course, and which included no fewer than seven public access government channels, featuring "Board of Zoning Appeals I" and "Board of Zoning Appeals II Fast II Furious." Which my husband and I actually watched, when we weren't tuned to our one fancy channel, TBS, for the occasional Seinfeld rerun. Zoning is hawt. You never know when a neighbor is going to request a carport variance, or when a lawyerly friend-of-a-friend shows up on screen to discuss parking plans to accommodate the new building going up downtown. The channels don't have rating systems, but it can get pretty racy at times, watching lawmakers shake sugar packets into Styrofoam coffee cups. Reheated drama straight outta the City/County Building.

But those viewings were mostly larks. Occasional bouts of latchkey youth aside, we've never really been TV people. We are readers and writers. We love books, newspapers, the backs of cereal boxes. We print out articles from the Internet for each other, we e-mail links. We tear out or dog-ear magazine pages and leave them around the house. We ensconce ourselves in novels and nonfiction, and history books (at least one of us, the one who is not me, loves history, and could be named an honorary member of the Greatest Generation.)

But one fateful day, as I was lightly crunching numbers, I realized it would be approximately $3 cheaper a month to bundle our services and have real cable. We were about to become first-time parents, and friends advised us of the life-saving powers of cable television. The sleep deprivation, they warned, would allow little brainpower. We needed mindless entertainment. And hey, the fourth season of Mad Men was approaching, which we usually watched on DVDs checked out from the library. We could have Mad Men as it aired? Um, yes, please.

What I had not factored into the bargain: the Kardashians. The Jersey Shore. Married to Rock. That wily old coot, Larry King. I was finally getting cultural references that had evaded me for years! I'm obsessed with Cash Cab. I WANT TO BE ON CASH CAB. Oh em gee, the Gilmore Girls repeats. I've spent far too many hours in Stars Hollow of late, as evidenced by my feelings of whimsy, my desire to banter wittily about relationships -- yours, mine, it doesn't matter. My husband arrived home from work yesterday to find me feeding the baby and watching yet another GG episode. Shhh, I told him. Mama's watching her stories. (He gets his stories too, in the form of the Military channel, where nine times out of ten, WWII bombers are flying through the black-and-white sky. I swear it's the same footage.) I've also noticed that no matter the hour, "Remember the Titans" is always playing somewhere.

Last year, I read 70 books. This year's been a little different, what with months of pregnancy fatigue and naps, followed by the arrival of baby boy, now 2 1/2 months old. I'm closing in on 40 books, not counting all the baby manuals I've read cover to cover. Could probably have squeezed in a few more books if I'd turned off the TV a little more. But you know what? Sometimes it's the brain that needs turning off.