The idea began when my treadmill decided to just up and quit on me (I'm lucky I didn't go up and over the console when it stopped and I didn't). When Daddy took a look at it for me he discovered the monstrosity was sinking into the carpet too much. This caused the belt to rub against the mat beneath it and eventually broke pieces off, which subsequently were spat up into the motor. So my darling husband managed to get it running again for me in a fairly short amount of time but also found it amusing to inform me that I could only use it at the highest level of incline in order to prevent the problem from re-occuring. That or wait until we got a harder material to place underneath the contraption. Meaning if I ever wanted to exercise on the thing again I would have to mountain climb.
That's when the brilliant idea came to me.
Why not create a little bit of 'my space' in a house that supposedly has my name on the paperwork but is truly owned, and overun, by the mini-people? In other words, why not move LH into the playroom and move the workout equipment and my scrapbooking mess (currently taking up precious counter space in the kitchen!) into her old room? Which, by the way, has laminate flooring, not carpet, so the hard-surface problem would thus be solved and I could return my workouts to a more comfortable elevation.
But putting LH into the playroom, with all its marvelous toys, meant giving her late-night ammunition while placing her as far as possible away from where we spend our evenings. Slipping out of her bed to play would be easily missed. Not to mention the dis-assembly, awkward manual labour and re-assembly that would be required for the swap.
Then came that extra grain of rice on the scale: Daddy was home from work for the day due to a slow day in the shop.
So, after some swearing and bruising on the male end, the move was completed fairly uneventfully and the new surroundings proved to be great evening entertainment for both kids.
Lil' H loved her new room and was quite cooperative with the bedtime routine. Daddy got even further motivated and finally did what we'd been thinking about doing for a while: He took a piece of duct tape and blacked out the last two numbers on LH's clock. Then we told her that she had to stay in her bed until the number on her clock was a '7' again. (We've been seeing way too much of her crawling into our bed at 6:30am.)
So we closed the door.
I went to my new 'me' space, plugged in a movie and fired up the treadmill.
Daddy went to the computer for his evening fix and was watching the clock in order to go check on Lil' H in 15 minutes to make sure she wasn't going to cause problems with all the toys now available to her.
The first time he peeks into her room, the hallway light shining in to illuminate her, she squints crossly at him from her cozy little place between Tigger and Teddy Bear. Bleary she mumbles "Something woke me up!"
"Sorry Goose, I was checking to see if you were having a good sleep." Daddy says.
To which Lil' H replies, "No I not! You woke me up!"
So much for playing all night long.
Daddy appologizes again, gets her snuggled back down and then returns to his computer. Another 15 minutes or so passes. Then suddenly little feet come padding towards the living room. When she emerges from the hallway and spots Daddy Alexi protests, "It didn't change to a seven it changed to an eight!"
Oh, and my 'me' space is currently airing out the goalie's hockey gear.
No comments:
Post a Comment