Home Gym, Month 2
It's amazing how things work out. Like puzzle pieces that fit together. Sometimes you never get the complete puzzle, but you get a cluster of pieces and they all fall together without any effort and you sit back and go 'huh'.
I'm making a home gym. It's a work in progress. I'm allowed to spend $70 a month on it, which is the equivalent I would spend at the local gym. It consists mainly of a pulley system, tied to a dumb bell. I needed more weight so I went to the shops with my littlest and spent $40 on two weight plates.
On the way home, they wanted to go right instead of left. Fine, why not. I'll go right. So I went the long way and travelled down a length of my street that I never go. And what do I find? Somebody has thrown out a complete multifunction gym.
So of course I stopped.
Now, it wasn't actually complete. Somebody had taken all the cables and the pulleys. That's fine, it's the weights I was after. So I loaded them up, and then the next day I came back and took the support columns, too: one thing about using a pulley system is that the weights tend to sway. Having a commercial support to keep them inline would just make it so much better.
And then I saw that they were throwing out a punching bag stand, too. Fancy that, I have a punching bag in need of a stand ...
... So the next day I came back and managed to fit the stand in the back of my little Yaris. I drove the two hundred metres back home and unloaded it all. I gave it all a clean. All I need is a few bolts and pulleys and my gym will be rock-solid.
But first I need to clean the shed.
The shed's caked in dirt and sediment. It's been a disaster for years. And today was the day I was going to clean it. I'm only working half a day. I've got the time. I just need the tools. I do not have the tools.
Morning comes. My youngest wants mum to drop him at kindergarten. And my eldest wants to go, too. Buy she needs the other car, because of the car seats. So I told her I'd go and change the gas bottle and meet her at school and we can swap then, and then I could also say goodbye to at least one of my kids for the day.
Perhaps it was a silly thing to do, because there was traffic everywhere -- I forgot that, just because I was only working half a day, didn't mean everybody else was. I only just made it in time ...
... Which worked out perfectly, because a friend at school had promised me weeks ago that he'd lend me his pressure washer, and of course he forgot and I wasn't about to bug him for it. And he waved me down and, lo and behold, there's the pressure washer. Perfect timing!
And now my shed is clean, ready to be loaded up with the gym that's cost me, so far, only $110. And I'm exhausted -- I'm getting more of a workout from creating this beast than I am from using it.
I wonder what the next puzzle pieces will be?