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The holiday hoopla is over and done. All fine and well and good. It’s a New Year. We’re moving on. Already, resolutions made and broken. Such is life.

And now, the COLD spell begins. I saw a headline in my Google feed this morning containing those dreaded, winter-month words, polar vortex. Yikes! I remember well, those frigid days and weeks, from just a few years back.

Ah, well. Bring it on, I say. We’re Iowans, Midwesterners. We can handle a few frozen temperatures. We’ve got Netflix and Hulu and Apple + TV. There are LOADS of books on our shelves and downloaded to our Kindles (and we know where to get more). There’s the Internet! Streaming! Painting tutorials: watercolors, Bob Ross, acrylics! We’ve got quilting, reorganizing, Sudoku, baking bread, crock-pot lasagna. Take-out, for crying out loud.

Knife sharpening!

The miraculous wonders of YouTube….

Yeah, we’ll manage alright. That doesn’t mean we have to like it.

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We’ve been cable-free for several months now after paying homage to the DirecTV gods for far too many years. Not being chained to endless political programming and 24×7 news coverage as well as getting sucked in to one cable TV documentary and special feature after another is refreshing. We now have more time (though in truth never, never enough) to pursue other interests.

If ever I thought I might miss the plethora of options cable TV provides, those fears have now been laid to rest. Late this afternoon, while out and about, we caught a glimpse of some of the cable news stories du jour. The overly dramatic posturing, the hype, the propensity of the news personalities, regardless of your political persuasion, to insert themselves in such a manner as to being the story nearly induced nausea. The only thing we’ll miss is easy access to televised sporting events such as away games for our beloved Iowa State Cyclones. A small price to pay, however, for a return to sanity and clearer thinking. No regrets whatsoever. I heartily recommend cutting the cord and returning to network TV. With the easy and affordable availability of streaming and movies we don’t feel like we’re missing a thing. And saving almost $1200 a year sure feels good on the old pocketbook as well. A winning proposition no matter how you look at it!