Is This You? The follower

There’s something following me around inside of my house. It’s my stationary bike.

I leave it in a room where I think it will be the perfect place for me to ride my, uh, you know what, into “tinyhood.” Then after some time that place doesn’t work out — and neither do I. Since that position doesn’t seem right, I find myself moving the non-moving piece of equipment to another room where I just know it will be used each and every day without fail. But again, it just didn’t fit, so it moved again.

I finally decided I got just as much exercise out of it by moving it from place to place as I would by pedaling each day. So by default and metamorphosis, it has transformed from a bike to a big ole weight that I move around. Hey, at lease my premonition of the bike becoming just a place to hang clothes on, like I have heard other people tell me about, didn’t come true.

Oh, this isn’t the first piece of exercise equipment that has burrowed into our home. There was a rowing machine I just knew would help me build up the muscles that are still to this day hiding somewhere in my arms. Those silly muscles that have never been able to pull me up and hang my chin over a bar. I don’t remember why I thought it was important to do a chin-up. I was already lifting 50-pound sacks of dog food, throwing around 75-pound bales of hay and hauling 94-pound bags of cement. So the rowing machine is somewhere under a pile of stuff in one of our storage buildings.

Even though I was, at the time, walking three to five miles a day, we decided winter was coming so the next goodie we bought was the treadmill. Oh, that one was a heavy dickens. But it also walked into our home to help with winter buildup that always seems to occur in our lives. After a time, I was just too tired after working all day and late into the nights to even consider getting on a treadmill. Shoot, I was on the treadmill of life, and that seemed to be quite enough for me, thank you very much!

We installed an above-ground pool to swim circles around the weighty problems of our lives. But turns out after cleaning the pool and filters and dealing with the bugs that just loved to live and swim and bite me when I got into the water, I was washed out too much to exercise — I just wanted to float!

Oh, there were more. The hand weights that were put on the floor by my chair in the living room just waiting for me to pick ’em up and work out with as I watch TV. How so easy would that be, I thought. Well, about the third time I stumbled over the pretty pink things as I sat my buns down in my chair? They got stuffed so far under that chair as to never be seen again.

A cool thing my other half made was a little wheel with two handles sticking out either side you hold onto and roll the wheel while you’re on the floor and stretch forward and then back up. Rolling up and down — easy. Working on those tummy muscles. Turns out we had just gotten a puppy and we all know when you’re on the floor when you have a puppy — you’re a toy. So that exercising miracle instrument didn’t last too long. Boomer was sure a cute puppy, though.

By far the best of them all is this stationary bike that keeps following me around. Kind of like that albatross I’ve read about. I have, however, vowed not to hang clothes on it, or jewelry or bags or ... why only this morning I dusted it and it wasn’t all that dusty. After all, I just moved it from the “piano room” (where we have a piano that I can play four whole songs on) into the bedroom where I have to scoot around it to get to the bed where I can lay down, watch TV and contemplate where I will move it the next time I get up in the middle of the night to use the little girl’s room and stub (yet another) toe coming back to bed in the dark!

Even though we’ve gone the full circle of exercise equipment, I think each one was money well spent. Especially after we sold one ...

Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Share with her at itybytrina@yahoo.com.