To kill a television

I'm going to kill the TV.

I guess "kill" isn't the right word; that verb implies that its object had a life to begin with.  Everyone knows that a television is an inanimate object, incapable of either life or death.

Still.  I'm gonna kill it.

Why has the TV become the subject of my wrath, you ask?  (granted, you may not be asking that, but for the sake of my ego I'm going to pretend you are) 

It's simple, really.  It's easier to be angry at an inanimate object than a person, especially when the person really isn't doing anything wrong. 

Our apartment seemed so large when we moved in.  There were just the three of us, and two of us claimed the same bedroom, so the extra space of our three-bedroom was nice.  Excessive, perhaps, and a bit of a splurge, but nice.  Add to that the fact that our daughter doesn't hang out in the living room much; she typically either entertains herself reading or working on her computer in her room or watching movies with strange Japanese-sounding titles with her mother in our room during the hours I sit at my desk in the living room pounding out prose. 

Then....  The son came to visit.  He's a great kid, really, and enjoyable to be around.  It's just that he likes to entertain himself by watching TV.  There's no real TV service in the third bedroom, so guess where he hangs out. 

I've tuned out the daughter's TV time when I've had to by covering my auditory canals with earphones full of Mozart.  It works great, but I've come to realize that's because her preferred shows contain some talk, some laughter, and occasionally some scenes where the guy and the girl aren't even talking to each other any more.  The shows our son watches, though, contain a lot of crashes and explosions.  He seems to get a kick out of watching crap get blown up.  Being a guy, myself, I have to admit that it makes for interesting entertainment, certainly, and if they'd just time the bangs and booms to the rhythm of the Mozart song I'm listening to it would be great.  Unfortunately, they don't, and it actually makes for more of a distraction than if I'd just gone without the music when I start whipping my head around looking for the well-armed zombie horde that's coming after me. 

Between February and November I wrote, revised, and published (well, soon to be pubbed for some of it) well over 200,000 words.  Since the start of November?  2,200 words.   *sigh*

At night, I've just given in to the inevitable and started enjoying family time every evening, which left me an hour or so in the morning to be creative.  It's not a huge block, but I've been able to do some revisioning during that time.  This morning, though, he was up when I got there, and the TV was already rolling.

Now, I know it's really my problem.  Were I a better communicator, I'd be able to discuss the conflicting needs evident in our situation and navigate us to a mutually pleasant resolution.  As I said, he's a great and reasonable kid.  Problem is, this was 30 minutes B.C. (Before Coffee).  Any attempt at reasonable communication on my part would've sounded like "Blurgy arf arf zroom rallim TV fissun."  I mean, there's just some things I've learned not to do.  I don't hold financial conversations with the wife after consuming alcohol, and I don't speak with students or the kids B.C. 

On the other hand, the TV is a 52" beauty that I love watching football on.  It would be a sin to kill that, no?

Ah, well--Starbucks, here I come.  At least I can order coffee reasonably well B.C.