i have a confession to make...

...two confessions to make, actually.

First, I am the last hold out when it comes to paying for an Amazon Prime subscription.  I get that it's not outrageously expensive, but I still don't want to spend the money.  Sure, it would be nice to get things shipped in only a couple of days, but I like the earthy sense of superiority I feel when I have to practice the patience and self-discipline it takes to wait 7-10 business days for anything I order.  That's how our grandmothers used to wait for their mail orders, and daggummit, am I better than our grandmothers?  Maybe at driving, but not much else.

Plus, old school shipping really makes me evaluate my choices as a consumer.  "Do I really want this thing badly enough to wait a week and a half for it?  And if I don't need it in the next week and a half, do I really need it at all?"  Deep stuff.

However.  Amazon was offering a free month of Prime, so I was all like, sure, why not.  After all, our grandmothers were frugal and would never have turned down a free offer like this.  Admittedly, though, my motivation was less integrous than wanting to preserve the pride and legacy of the Greatest Generation.  It was basically to fuel my latest guilty pleasure (and my second confession):

I have been watching ungodly amounts of 7th Heaven.

Why?  I don't really know.  If you've ever seen it, I don't have to tell you how cheesy it is.  But pizza is cheesy, and nachos are cheesy, so if liking cheesy stuff is wrong, I don't want to be right.  I just want to hunker down in front of Prime Streaming with my giant plate of nachos, OKAY?!?!?  Gosh.  Get off my back.

I think it all started when I attempted watching Party of Five on Netflix.  I was never allowed to watch it as a teen, and as a rebellious adult, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  But I'm still not sure why people liked it, since it seems like a big dull dud.  I didn't have a nostalgic tie to it at all, so my interest waned by like the third episode.  But what was kindled in me was a fire to watch dramas from my own teen experience -  namely, 7th Heaven, the only WB show I was allowed to watch in middle school.

And you know what?  I still like it, and I'm mostly not ashamed of that.  Sure, it's a show about Christians that is written by people who aren't Christians, so it's a little wonky.  And sure, sometimes I just want to throttle everyone on the show for being a huge dummy.  ('Member when the dad found a joint in his house, and instead of just asking his kids whose it was, he started mentally tabulating all the 'clues' each kid was displaying?  Mary has red eyes from allergies... Simon has had a lot of pressure at school... Lucy is dating a guy with a real bummer of a mustache and a real bummer of a moped... It could really be any of them.  But then when he finally asks them like forty minutes into a forty-three minute show, the guilty party confesses pretty readily?  It could have saved us all a lot of time if the dad had just asked everyone like eight minutes in.  But then again, I would have just spent that extra saved time watching another episode of 7th Heaven, so I guess I'm not really out anything.)

Anyway, I tell you all of this because as of yesterday, my free trial month expired and I'm Prime-less once again.  I feel pretty lost, to tell you the truth.  HOW WILL I KNOW HOW TO MISHANDLE DRAMATIC FAMILY SITUATIONS IF I DON'T HAVE THE CAMDENS TO MODEL IT FOR ME, I ASK YOU??  HOW?  Now that I've tasted Prime Streaming, is there really ever any going back to the old days?