We're going on month 6 now with no cable, & it's nothing I've missed. I've never been a big TV person, or TV person at all for that matter, so having no cable hasn't been a challenge for me. Many nights my husband and I like to unwind together and watch a movie or tv show before bed, but we have a cheap video store up the street for rentals when we're in the mood for some cuddles & popcorn. I get my news stories online & my HGTV fix when I'm working out at the gym and I'm so much more content knowing that Landon is playing with his favorite trains or "reading" books instead of watching Sponge Bob Square Pants (god help those kids).
This isn't to say my kid has no screen time at all, he still has a TV in his playroom for movies that we own (big Disney fan, Baby Einstein, & other Thomas & Cars films) and he will frequently take my iphone and ask for "choo choos," meaning, YouTube videos of live train footage. (He will actually scroll through my phone and choose the video he wants to watch....kids these days and technology). But this will entertain him when I have to get stuff done, cook, or when I have to take him along to run some really boring errands with me. So overall I keep his screen time limited and I get to control what his little eyes and ears absorb, and (right now at least) I get to shield him from learning from the garbage, violence, and stupidity that is out there.
When I tell people I don't have cable, they look at me like I just told them I've been living without electricity or running water for half the year. But I strangely feel like a better person for not having it. Our lives our simpler, its one less bill in the mail, & it fosters a home full of conversation and DOING, and and that is the type of home and family life I want to cultivate.
All that being said, my husband and I still do enjoy a good scary movie or getting sucked into a good TV series every now & then (Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, & Homeland, to name a few), but more than anything, I enjoy sitting down and watching a good, non-fictional, documentary. I've really only seen a few documentaries but I just spent a long time compiling a master list of documentaries that I want to rent or buy in the future (below). This isn't to say that I already agree with some of these titles {yet}, but just that I'm interested and want to be more educated on.
Documentary Master List (in alphabetical order):
*Lots of these are free to watch in their entirety on YouTube, & if not, most all have trailers on YouTube that you can watch before renting/buying.
A Beautiful Truth
A World Without Water
Addicted to Plastic
The Age of Stupid
Agenda: Grinding America Down
All in This Tea
American Politics All you Can Eat
Are Vaccines Safe?
Babies
Beyond Treason
The Big Sell-Out
Birth As We Know It
Birth Into Being
Born Into Brothels
The Botany of Desire
Burzynski, The Movie
Bush Family Fortunes
The Business of Being Born
Chow Down
Collapse
The Corporation
The Cove
The Creature From Jekyll Island
A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash
Cut Poison Burn
Cut: Slicing Through The Myths of Circumcision
Crazy Sexy Cancer
Dear Zachary
Diet For A New America
Dirt! The Movie
Dive! the movie
Doula
Dying to Have Known: The Evidence Behind Natural Healing
Earthlings
The 11th Hour
The End of Poverty
Enron: The Smartest Guys in The Room
Ethos
Eustace Mullins: Murder By Injection
Farmageddon
Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead
Fat Head
Fed Up!
Fiat Empire: Why the Federal Reserve Violates the U.S. Constitution
Flow How Did a Handful of Corporations Steal Our Water?
Flu and Flu Vaccines, What’s Coming Through That Needle
The Fluoride Deception
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
Food Fight
Food, Inc.
Food Matters
Food Stamped
For Liberty: How the Ron Paul Revolution Watered the Withered Tree of Liberty
Forks over Knives
The Future of Food
Freedom Fries & Other Stupidity We'll Have to Explain to Our Grandchildren
Fresh
Frontline: The Medicated Child
Frontline: Sick Around America
Frontline: Sick Around the World
Gasland
Generation RX
Gentically Modified Food - Panacea or Posion?
Gentle Birth Choices
The Gerson Miracle
GMO Film Project
Grass
The Greater Good
Healing Cancer From The Inside Out
Hemp Revolutio
The Human Experience
The Idiot Cycle: What You Aren't Being Told About Cancer
Ingredients
Innocents Betrayed
Invisible Empire A New World Order Defined
Killer At Large
King Corn
Life Running Out of Control
Loose Change
Louise Hay: You Can Heal Your Life
Making of A Killing
Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve
The Money Masters
Money Talks: Profit before Patient Safety
More Business Of Being Born
The Naked Truth
Natural Born Babies
The New Medicine
No Impact Man
Nutricide & Codex Alimentarius
One World Birth
Orgasmic Birth
OutFOXed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism
Pregnant in America
Processed People
Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?
Radically Simple
Raising Cain
The Real Dirt on Farmer John
Scientists Under Attack: Genetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money
Tapped
The Secret of Oz
Seeds Of Deception
Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes
The Story of Stuff
Stupidity
Supersize Me
Sweet Misery
Sweet Remedy: The World Reacts to an Adulterated Food Supply
The Tapping Solution
Thrive
Transcendent Man
Unconditional Parenting
Uncovered: The War on Iraq
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
Vaccination: The Hidden Truth
Vanishing of the Bees
We Feed The World
What in The World Are They Spraying?
What The Bleep Do We Know?
What’s on Your Plate
Who Killed the Electric Car
The World According to Monsanto
A World Without Cancer
Zeitgeist
Seen any of these? Let me know what you think is a 'must view' or what's not worth checking out.
Have any other recommendations or suggestions? Let me in on 'em!