Thy Brother’s Splinter

“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

Matthew 7:5, King James Bible
Quoting the Bible doesn’t mean I’m religious. I’m not…but you knew that.

The Bible says that you should not cast aspersions on others. Specifically, don’t judge the splinter in your brother’s eye before you take out the beam in your own. Good idea.

This morning I found myself—caught myself—doing exactly that. I was writing in my journal and thinking about how much TV I watch, then judgmentally thinking about how much TV my mother watches, and then I remembered the splinter. Or the mote, or the speck, depending on which version you read.  I can’t do anything about my mom’s TV watching splinter, but I can take out the plank in my own eyeball. Ouch.

            My husband and I watch too much TV, roughly an hour or two per night. Most of the time it’s two hours, although sometimes we watch one and then play cards for an hour. I like that better, because at least it’s less mindlessness and more brain-plus-ish (good word, I like that one). But damn, that Great British Baking is just so good!

            We watch “Midsomer Midwives” (is that what it’s called?) and, of course, “The Crown.” Until it ended, we watched every episode of “The Queen’s Gambit.” Those are mostly our regular shows. “Dead to me” played in there, too. I also happen to love “Grey’s Anatomy,” but we don’t watch it anymore. Jack (my husband’s new pretend name) gave it up after Derrick died. (Post-spoiler alert. Derrick died). Jack felt disgusted that they killed him off. Besides, who is there without Derrick? Other hotties, that’s who.  Even for me, they just don’t do the trick. To be honest, I still watch “Grey’s” once in a while, and only if Jack goes out of town, but after they killed off Derrick, that sexy doctor show lost its luster for me, too. Oh, well.

Post-spoiler alert. Derrick died.

I hate that TV is in my life so much, let alone that it plays such an important part of my life. That’s the thing, though. TV is not important. Time is important. Time is all there is. I am quite sure that when I am one day on my death bed (hopefully not too soon, and hopefully not due to Covid) I will not likely say, “Jeez, so glad I watched the second season of ‘Dead to me.” It’s not important. Am I glad I watched it? Well, maybe, but it didn’t really matter. I didn’t accomplish anything by watching.

Yesterday, we put in tiles to our new fireplace, and it looks gorgeous. We didn’t used to have a fireplace at all. Ever since we bought the house, and actually before, there had been a chimney that, for whatever reason, didn’t connect to anything, let alone a fireplace. About three years ago, Jack took the chimney down and used its bricks to build an entryway into our house, which was gorgeous. Then my man built a firebox for the ethanol burner thingy that he’s putting in and it looks great. Now there’s a fireplace but there’s no chimney, because you aren’t really allowed to build authentic fireplaces and chimneys anymore, thanks to city ordinances. Spoiler alert: within a sentence, no chimneys will be allowed in our city. Spoiler: Chimneys are no longer allowed. So we adapted. Anyway, now that there is no fireplace, we decided to install one of those groovy ethanol burners, you know, the kind they have at swanky restaurants in the outside patio section? Well, we started that project a few ages ago and yesterday, we finished it. It looks gorgeous, and I am so pleased we spent the day laying tiles, me handing them to my husband, my husband doing that cementing thing (thin set?) which keeps the tiles up once they are placed. It looks wonderful, and I know for a fact that if we had spent the afternoon watching more episodes of “The Queen,” our lack of fireplace would have continued. So, I’m glad we didn’t watch anymore TV and glad that we finished the fireplace instead! What a treat!