It rips my life away but it's a great escape

Is is really possible that I have not posted since October 3? What the hell happened to this month?!! I have no idea. Sick kids, a trip to visit the parents, and some very busy days equal zero time to post. And oh yeah the Yankees lost. Really is it possible to feel depressed over a baseball team losing? It must be. I hate the Red Sox.

Anyway, I finally got a chance to watch the new ABC drama Desperate Housewives last night. If you've read my profile at all you'll see I am addicted to guilty pleasure escapes like soap operas and trash novels. Because Desperate Housewives is on on Sunday nights, and this is often a fairly busy evening for me, I had not gotten to watch it before. It was advertised like crazy during the ABC soap operas I was watching earlier this fall. I am happy to say that it lived up to its guilty pleasure billing. I laughed. I gasped in horror. I grimaced in sympathy. I plan to watch again next week. Very fun.

This got me to thinking about why guilty pleasures like this are so enjoyable and yet something you try not to admit to enjoying. I have been watching soap operas on and off since I was a pre-teen. My mother watched All My Children and so I started to watch with her. I found Santa Barbara (now canceled) and spent many an afternoon after school watching with a friend and neighbor. We knew all the storylines and characters. I even had a scrapbook I put together of my favorite characters. Makes you sick doesn't it?

Eventually I would watch all three of ABC's afternoon dramas at various times depending on how interested I was in the storylines they were playing out. (IMHO- All My Children needs to end the babyswitching thing NOW, One Life to Live needs to drop the Santi family crap, and General Hospital needs to focus on someone other than Sonny and Carly all the time.) I have not seen much of them lately because their storylines have been weak and I have been way too busy. I also don't like my kids to watch so I usually only either listen to them on my kitchen radio or watch on Soapnet at night. But I still know entirely too much about them.

My other major guilty pleasure is romance novels (aka trash novels). I was 12 or so when I picked up my first one. They're kind of like crack to me. I am very particular about them. I only read historical ones that are mostly set in 1700 or 1800s England. They can't be too formulaic (I love it when the heroine isn't a virgin, especially if she isn't married or a widow.) and it is a big plus if they actually have some historical value attached to them. For years I have toted about my "Hall of Fame" collection as I call them. Only the best books by the best authors. But I probably have about a hundred of them right now. I bought a few new ones a couple of weeks ago and I have given myself permission to read them in small increments. I have been known to sit all day on the couch until I finished one only to start on another one as soon as I was done. (Crack!) That isn't really feasible with two small children around, so I can't allow myself to get so swept away that I forget the world around me. Also with the price of a book now up to $7, I can't afford to be getting a new book every couple of days.

Sometimes, for various reasons, I haven't read a trash novel in awhile and I can feel the need for one sneaking up on me. I start to get depressed. I can't see life beyond the loads of laundry, dirty floor, and dinner that needs to be cooked. I forget that I actually need and want a dynamic exciting relationship with DH. Life gets very grey. And so I stop by the bookstore and find my favorite authors, get a book, and leave this reality. And when I come back (if it was really a good book) life is more worthwhile, more colorful, more fun. And it sounds so pathetic to say that this is all from reading a trash novel, but I think sometimes we need to step outside our lives and immerse ourselves in a world that doesn't exist so that we can begin to see again the possibilities in our world. Life gets so narrow sometimes and it is hard to see your way out. Then you laugh at someone else's life, admire someone else's courage, grapple with someone else's dilemmas, and yes get exited by someone else's incredible sexual escapades, and suddenly (at least for me) it seems possible to fall in love, have great friends, find your calling, enjoy your children, and look beautiful doing it. All hail guilty pleasures! Now hand me that trash novel and will someone please put One Life to Live out if its misery.