Netflix

I don't watch the normal things other people do. The popular shows seem to be Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad.

It's hard when all of my friends watch these shows. They think I'm crazy for not wanting to watch them. I "have to" watch them because they're just "so good." When we are hanging out in a group and someone brings these shows up, I am left out of the conversation.

But it's just not my thing. I have no interest in explicitly sexual scenes, zombies, or a man selling meth because he has cancer (where did that idea come from anyway?).

So I get on Netflix and watch other things (and think about how I should probably be working out). Although my show selections aren't any less strange. I watch documentaries about people who have been stalked. I like "Switched at Birth" which is about these two teenage girls who found out (of course) that they were switched at birth - and one of them is deaf, so it has ASL, which is really cool. I like to watch space documentaries. Raising Hope is a nice little light-hearted comedy. English shows like Call the Midwife and Doc Martin. I really love Mythbusters. Fatal Attractions, which is about people who kept deadly pets (and died as a result).

My latest has been Alaska: The Last Frontier. I started watching the first show thinking I would stop if it didn't look interesting. It focuses on the Kilcher family, who have a 600 acre homestead. They live the life of pioneers. There is no indoor plumbing, so they use outhouses (this Phoenix girl is having a really hard time imaging that in freezing cold weather...or any weather really). They have a small summer window, which is four months but can be shorter, to prepare for a very harsh winter. When I first started watching the show my first reaction was that it was just a bunch of poor hicks (who chooses a lifestyle with outhouses?). But as the show went on (yes, I watched the whole season in about two days) I really came to respect the family. They know how to do SO MUCH. Tracking animals, skinning the hunted animals, preserving the meat properly so they don't get botulism, rebuilding broken heavy machinery, building their own structures, chopping enough wood for eight months of winter, protecting cattle from predators, building fences, growing and harvesting hay and a garden...it's so much. It's not anything I could do. And how the heck do they not get lost in a snowy forest that is covered in snow?

I did an online search to do a little more stalking research since this family had piqued my curiosity, and I discovered something interesting. Jewel, the famous singer, belongs to this family. Her father and brother are two of the main characters. She and her father sing the opening song for the show. (It's mostly her father, she only sings a couple lines, otherwise I should have recognized her distinguishable voice).

I hope Netflix gets the rest of the season. Or I'll see about watching them online. Maybe J and I can take a trip up there and learn how to Homestead. Hahahahaha....yeah right. This city girl doesn't even like camping. But I still like learning about this different way of living. And it sure makes me appreciate my toilet and shower.