I’ll admit I’m guilty of letting the girls watch a little too much TV on occasion, especially if I am trying to get some work done at home. I’m a realist. Sometimes TV is a lifesaver or, at the very least, a guaranteed half hour of peace and quiet. This is especially great if I am on a conference call or trying to talk to a client and the girls are at home. I’d rather have a little TV background noise then screaming over what princess name to bestow upon a pony.

I will cling to my ideals, dreaming of a day when the TV collects dust and we instead keep ourselves busy doing family crafts and baking bread and planting heirloom tomatoes. In reality, though, I have been known to break out in a sweat if one of the girls’ favorite DVDs is scratched.

Recently the girls have become quite into Scooby-Doo, especially Miss C. This is all fine and dandy because Scooby and Shag take me back to my own childhood, until I realize how scary Scooby-Doo can be with all the ghosts and witches and general occult themes…nice. It doesn’t really seem to phase them much, though, because it is, after all a cartoon. Also don’t get me started on what kind of clandestine activity the kids are engaging in the mystery machine to crave Scooby snacks all the time. Highly suspect in my book.

The other night we stopped at a Red Box rental kiosk to check out the new kids’ DVD releases. I tried to steer the girls toward a movie that I might actually enjoy sitting down and watching, maybe Adam Sandler’s latest flick Bedtime Stories, but they saw Scooby Doo and started jumping up and down and chanting Scooby Scooby Scooby! Never mind that it was a Scooby special on vampires and that I was sweating between my toes and the heat from the blacktop parking lot was starting to set the backs of my calves on fire.

I rented the DVD and the next thing I knew the girls were brainstorming on their killer vampire girl Halloween costumes on a 95-degree summer day and asking me umpteen times “how much longer” until Halloween. Next week we may rent Frosty the Snowman and bake Christmas cookies. Anything to escape the summer heat and anything that keeps them occupied and imaginative at this point is OK because we’re on the downhill slope to the first day of school in August.