Like all family decisions, I went from absolutely hating the idea of buying a cabin to being its most passionate defender. I love it so much. Since I spend at least once a week in Michigan for client junk, I’ve been able to use the house as a poop pit stop and occasional sleepover spot. I love sitting in my big chair with a big glass of bourbon and a big dose of Netflix shows the rest of the family hates.
As such, I constantly beg the family to spend weekends there. Which is kind of the point. Diana is always in, but the boys tend to need a little more coaxing (threatening). They miss their friends and cousins and stinky beds. But mostly they miss their screens.
The cabin has the most charmingly awful Wi-Fi, which is the point. It takes forever to download/stream/TikTok. Instead of everyone watching screens all day, it forces us all to spend time together as a family watching our screens’ loading bars.
With Christmas and Mexico and other holiday commitments, we hadn’t all been to the cabin for several weeks. So I put on my best whiny voice and cajoled everyone to head up last weekend. The only issue was The National Football League, or NFL. It was the last group of games before the Super Bowl and Luca was desperate to watch.
I promised him we’d watch the games live. I hoped we could scoop all our Wi-Fi into a big pile and use it to stream the game. And if worse came to worse, I thought I could take him to the one bar in town, charmingly called “Freedom.” But I wasn’t sure it actually they’d be watching TV, what with all the militia meetings and bayonet sharpening.
We poured chips into bowls and moved the tv into our dining room, the location of our router. Said router would puff up its little chest and say, “I think I can…I think I can…” and give us the best four minutes of live broadcast it could. Then it would fall over, wheezing and covered in sweat.
Luca took this complete lack of actual football as a challenge. He gathered every Wi-Fi enabled device we owned and placed them strategically around the room. Racing around the room, he’d refresh devices like a master plate spinner on Ed Sullivan.
Eventually he got into a rhythm where we could see the almost the whole game. The afternoon was exciting and fun and full of family bonding.
After the games, we had a lovely spaghetti dinner, lit a fire and retired to the family room to watch a movie.
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