Since Elizabeth has become mobile and often wants to play with the same things she sees Andrea and I using, I’ve become much more careful about where I put certain things, especially if they’re delicate or I use them frequently. I have two shelfs in our big cabinet in the office area off our kitchen where I keep most of my daily-use and fragile items, like my mobile phone, wallet, keys, camera, Garmin Edge GPS bicycle computer, and Hipster PDA. <\/p>\n
Other things have other homes. The chest strap for the heart rate monitor (HRM) that goes with the Edge — when I finish a ride or a run, the strap will usually be pretty salty from sweat, so I wash it off and hang it up on a towel rack in the bathroom to dry, then I put it either with my bicycle helmet, or in the drawer with the rest of my biking stuff. <\/p>\n
I’m glad Elizabeth’s curiosity helped to coax me in to this habitual behavior. I rarely spend any time these days looking for where I left something, because I always leave the things in the same place. <\/p>\n
At least, that’s the theory. Practice isn’t quite as nice. Tuesday I woke up early to go on a run. The chest strap wasn’t on the drying rack, so I went to get it from the closet where I keep my bike helmet, and it wasn’t there either, so I looked in the drawer with my biking clothes. No luck! <\/p>\n
I spent the next half hour tearing through the main floor of the house looking for the chest strap. I even looked in the garage with my bikes, and inside the car! Nowhere! Keep in mind this is all before 6 AM, so Andrea and Elizabeth are trying to sleep through my increasingly grumpy search. Eventually I gave up and went running without it. <\/p>\n
Today, Andrea and volunteering for her Le Leche League group, so Elizabeth and I are doing a little bit of organizing around the house. I decided to go through my shelves in the big office cabinet, and saw the box for the replacement Edge<\/a> sitting in the back of the top shelf. I pulled it out and thought, “hm, this is quite heavy, I wonder what’s in there?” As I opened it up, I remembered Garmin had sent me a complete replacement Edge 305, including a chest strap for the HRM! Bonus! <\/p>\n As I pulled the brand new HRM strap from the box, my eyes settled on the bottom shelf, where the old HRM strap had probably been sitting this entire time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since Elizabeth has become mobile and often wants to play with the same things she sees Andrea and I using, I’ve become much more careful about where I put certain things, especially if they’re delicate or I use them frequently. … Continue reading