When we were at Disney in Florida in October we made what seemed at the time to be a financially poor purchase. We were leaving The Magic Kingdom, it had gotten dark, and they had some very exciting looking balloons that not only had a second balloon inside the bigger, clear, round balloon shaped like Mickey's head, but it also had an LED light that cycled through a multitude of colors and patterns. But it was fifteen dollars.
"FOR A BALLOON?!" I think I said something like that to my husband when he returned from buying it off the man holding the biggest bunch of balloons I'd ever seen. He said, "You told me to go get one" or something similar, and that was true, I had told him to go get one. "Well, we'll try to have as much fun as possible with it until it deflates," I said.
We did have a lot of fun with the balloon. The good news was the LED portion had an on/off switch, so for the remainder of the trip the various children in our rental house had fun turning it on and playing with it. The light still was going strong when Mickey's head began to lose one ear and then the other inside the clear, exterior Mylar balloon.
Before we left, I dis-assembled the balloon and took the still working wand-looking light component and put it in my son's "doctor bag" with the rest of his doctor tools. We came home and forgot about it entirely.
A few weeks later he found the light-up wand and he figured out how to turn it on. He had fun with it many times, although he never bothered to turn it off. We'd find it blinking on the floor, turn it off and stick it back in his doctor's bag.
One day he bent it and my husband had to tape it to keep it working, but this wand wasn't dying yet. A week later, on the other side of the house, I was preparing to go on a run. I donned my heart rate monitor belt and got ready to leave the house when I discovered the belt wasn't working. That's no good; it was an expensive belt. I sure hope it was just a dead battery. I went online and ordered some replacements to arrive in a few days and I went on my run without heart rate statistics and less-accurate calorie burning data.
The next day I found the expensive balloon wand, this time re-bent and now definitely broken. As I was holding it over the trash can I noticed the battery compartment and realized it looked about the same size as my heart rate belt battery. Could it possibly be? I opened it up to find not one, but two batteries that were and exact battery type match. But, did they still have power left in them?
I put one in my heart rate monitor and sure enough, it started working again. And I've used it on two runs already and even if it did die, there's still the second battery to go. And as I'm sure you know, those little batteries aren't cheap.
So it turns out that the total duration of fun, October to January, for my son and the unexpected use of the batteries in my heart rate belt have made the fifteen dollar investment more of a value than I would have ever expected on the evening my husband bought that balloon.
That, and every time I run until those batteries are dead, I'm going to think of Disney and our very colorful balloon.
The Big Boy Update: "Where's Kaycee?" Me: "Kaycee is at her house." "Where's Gabin (Gavin)" Me: "Gavin is at school." "Where's Shealyn?" Me: "Shealyn is at school too." "Where's Kaitwin (Kaitrinn)" Me: Kaitrinn is at school with Shealyn. Maybe we'll see Shealyn, Kaitrinn, Gavin and they're mom, Kaycee, at the park later today. I'll let them know you asked about them on the way to school today."
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Oopsie Poopsie. It had to happen eventually. Someone pooped in the tub. A two-year-old and a one-year-old totaling over three years of baby baths and not one poop incident. We looked over to see her standing up and looking like she wanted to exit the tub with an anxious face on. And then we found out why. Bring on the shower nozzle and the Clorox Clean-up.
Someone Once Said: Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament—it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing risks you can't avoid. This permits you to play out the game happily, untroubled by the certainty of the outcome..
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