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Health & Fitness

Eat Your Broccoli, or You'll Have to Live at the Brasils,' Unplugged!

I've heard that some of our friends have been using our house as a punishment threat.

Our family of five plus my brother in-law have been unplugged for more than a month now. I pulled the plug on the high speed internet, telephone and the digital cable on June 1, and we’ve barely been surviving. I decided to pull the plug when I added up our communication bill and found out if we turned it off for the summer our family would save $800. That was reason number one.

Number two was when I told my oldest, Christopher, the cable was going off, he was beside himself with grief. I was expecting a big to-do, but not that big.

My brother in-law, who moved in with us last year and is residing in our unheated, no-shower pool house, has changed his situation a bit. Shh, don’t tell the kids. He went out and bought an antenna. He paid $16 and now gets 20-plus channels, one of them being Disney Channel. If the kids find out they will be moving in with him.

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Ever since our family started this crusade, it’s been funny to see/hear people's reactions. I’ve found that some of my family are proud of us, but most of them think we are crazy. My mother has offered to tape a couple of our favorite summer shows, which my hubby is very grateful for. She has been our biggest supporter in this endeavor. I’ve heard that some of our friends that have kids have been using our house as a punishment, "If you don’t clean your room, you're going to go live at the Brasils.' "

I returned the cable boxes and the internet router last week. It was so hard, and so final. When I got back into the car, I turned to my oldest, Christopher, and said,  That was really hard." He replied with a pat on the back, "It’s ok, Mom, you’ll be all right." Love it!

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The kids are chatting up a storm. All the time they are talking to Bob and I. Without our black box babysitter, there has been nothing for them to do, so they talk to us. We’ve adjusted to the constant chatter. For a while, Bob told me he wasn’t coming home; his plan was to work later. Since he was partly responsible for the plug pulling, I told him to suck it up and come home. We’ve defiantly kept Tylenol in business this past month. The headaches we’ve been having every day, from the chatte,r is a reason we’ve considered turning it back on. But we are staying strong and hanging in there.

I’m become shocked at how much I relied on the internet. I "searched" a lot of things. Every time my kids asked me a question that I don’t know, I’d google it. Shopping has been tough, too. Usually when I’m looking for something, I check it out on a website before I go. I was having my groceries delivered by Peapod, but not any more – ugh. My Blackberry has been able to help a little, but I can’t answer posts on Facebook, so that has been difficult.

Christopher and I have been checking out the free WiFi around town a couple of times a week. We love it. He watches a few videos on his iPod or downloads a couple of free apps to get through. I’ve gotten to where I don’t want to go. By the time I delete all the junk emails, which are in the hundreds, check out all the Facebook posts and check out the back stories on Patch, it’s been hours. We have been known to stay for two to three hours. I’ve come to make a list before I go, like a grocery list, of websites to check out.

I think at this point I’m the one suffering the most. After my last post I did the math again. I was wrong. There are 92 days left as of July 1. How am I going to make it?

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