results {unplugged}

i guess i should begin with an apology for not posting my *unplugged* results on sunday, as promised. i know you all were staring at your computer screens in anticipation of the miraculous results that would be forthcoming. i'd love to report that the day was so successful that we just decided to unplug for three days, thus the delay. but c'mon...not even close! i have a million excuses of why i haven't posted anything in three days -- none of which you care about, right??? now to the results...

first, a recap of what our day looked like:
up at 7:00 - very late morning for coleman
out the door by 8:30; cross country race; back by 11:00
naptime from about 1:00 to 3:00, i think
3:30 to 5:30 were at my in-laws, then a trip to wal-mart...
home before 6:00; matt home from work around 6:45

television: when coleman and i came downstairs in the morning, the TV was on because matt had been watching it before work. i immediately turned it off which resulted in a distraught "is off?" from the addicted toddler. we were gone so much of the day, that this wasn't a huge issue. it *felt* a little weird not to have it on, just because i'm used to the background noise. i had a really hard time getting coleman to go down for his nap, and i typically would put on cmt as we rock in the recliner, so i was flying solo on that (but he did eventually take a nap). and i have to confess that while we were at my in-laws, they had the tv on the entire time - tuned to CMT for coleman. so, i feel like we unintentionally cheated on that. oh, and when we walked into their house, i got a very enthusiastic "is on!" from the tot!

internet: i did a really good job with this (which was my biggest goal). matt called in the morning to tell me there was an email from spencer's baseball coach that i needed to read. i pulled that up on my phone and that was the only thing i did that was internet related.

texting: i didn't think about addressing this in my "rules" as i was brainstorming the day. i got a text from my sister in the morning about the time we were to meet her, but i called her back instead of texting back. i also sent a "happy birthday" text to a friend of mine. she was out of town with family and i liked that it was less-instrusive than calling while they were vacationing. in general, it felt a little weird to not be glued to my iPhone every time i had a free second.

music: i used my iPhone to play some music for a short while at home. we listened to the radio in the car. and as i mentioned above, my in-laws had cmt on during our visit.

conclusions

• i feel like we didn't receive the full effect of *unplugging* because we were gone from home for so much of the day. next time, we need to be home more. that will make it tougher, but that's kind of the point!
• being gone for most of the day (and spending almost 2 hours trying to get coleman to take a nap) made it impossible to do some of the more fun things on my list of ideas.
• i loved that it forced me to do something more productive with naptime. normally i may have just vegged out, watching prison break through netflix, or goofed off on the computer (or both...i'm a crazy multi-tasker like that.) but instead, i worked on my LOM system and even scrapped a layout!!!
• i actually used the newspaper to check the weather forecast (instead of the app on my phone). crazy old school.

my husband currently works on a 4-week rotation that includes one weekend (like this past one) where he works during the day. i think i'm going to try and "unplug" on either saturday or sunday of each of those weekends. i believe if i do it on a more regular basis, i will reap the benefits more (as will coleman).

thanks for humoring my experiment...i know it wasn't very profound. maybe next time!