Living Large In Our Little House

On a recent weekly gro­cery jaunt to Wal-Mart, we found our­selves look­ing at board games.

“We should try to find Twister,” I told Dale.

“Just get­ting up from the chair is a game of Twister,” he said.

You remem­ber the game of Twister, where you spread a plas­tic sheet out with dif­fer­ent col­ored dots? When you spin the dial, it tells you which body part should be placed on what color and if you touch your knees or elbows to the mat, or fall, you lose.

Well, every night is fam­ily game night at our house.

We may not have the col­ored dots on the floor, but with four dogs in less than 500 square feet, floor space is at a pre­mium. Moving around with­out stub­bing a toe, step­ping on a tail or falling down is a chal­lenge and every time we can do it with­out harm­ing each other, a dog, or our­selves is a win­ning night.

Usually, when I get up from the sofa, I have to place my first steps over Emma, our German Shepherd/Rot mix, who is usu­ally sprawled out on her back right below the sofa. I bal­anced myself by reach­ing for Dale’s chair and then I step over Sade, our pit bull, to make my way into the kitchen.

Dogs aren’t the only obsta­cles in our path though, some­thing as insignif­i­cant as a small floor fan or even a mis­placed pair of shoes can cause us to “lose the game.” One night a cou­ple of months ago, I got up in the mid­dle of the night, put my foot between a metal stand and the fan and got the whole fan stuck on my foot. Dancing around, half asleep in the dark, I fell into the dresser, stepped on Emma’s tail and finally made it to the light switch.

Emma was fine, but my leg had a bruise the length of my shin and I had a bruise across my chest from falling into the dresser.

I would say I pretty much lost that night.

When the dogs are done eat­ing, we slide their bowls under fur­ni­ture out of the way. More than once, I’ve tripped on a dog bowl while cooking.

More times than not, we do remem­ber to put things back in their place and even in the dark, we know where things should be.

I told my hus­band that we should dec­o­rate the floor with dots and make it a real game. We could play for doing chores such as wash­ing dishes, feed­ing the dogs or tak­ing out the trash and the recy­cling. Although in our game, it would have to be the win­ner who would have to do the chores, as the loser is usu­ally too banged up to move.

It just goes to show that in The Little House, every move we make is an adven­ture. At least, for the most part, we even enjoy that and can laugh about it – that is, unless we’re hold­ing our foot in pain.