No Good Intention Goes Unpunished

As part of the goals I'm trying to achieve with my whole new Diabetes lifestyle, I'm trying to get more exercise.  My husband graciously rose to the occasion and with some heavy lifting, shifting, dismantling and reassembling, we managed to get our treadmill from the garage upstairs to our bedroom.  The idea being I'd be more likely to use it if I saw it. 

So I can't let all his hard work go to waste and since I've already shed several pounds (in thanks I am sure to the adverse side effects of my medication), I'm all the more eager to use it.  Until today.

My five year old was home sick having complained of a headache last night and a headache this morning and what appears to be a nasty sinus cold.  Of course, once the advil kicked in she perked up and was happily playing with her brother.  They had set up a game on the living room floor and I figured surely I could steal 10 minutes on the treadmill. I told them what I was doing and then reminded them that they were to behave and not do anything they weren't supposed to.

Eventually they came upstairs and I thought nothing of it... even when they closed the bedroom door.  You see they like to play house in the hallway landing and will close all the doors so it will be dark and then get out their flashlights.  No so today.  When I was done my time and did some cool down stretching, I walked into the hallway only to be greeted with stripes of black felt all across the carpet.  They led a path into each of their three bedrooms.  Aghast I turned only to see wild black felt scribblings all along the wall.  A quick glance downstairs showed me the offending felt marker lying on the floor. 

Well, you can imagine that I lost it.  My five year old daughter swore up and down that O did it all himself and that she told him to stop.  She didn't seem to get it that I was just in the room next door and she could easily have told me what was going on.  Going downstairs (after banishing the offenders to their rooms), I found more striped carpet on the stairs and could all but follow the line of felt markers all around my kitchen, living room and family room, picking up felts and caps along the way.

I will admit that I lost it.  Not only did each of them get a good swat on their butts and sent to their rooms, I broke down and cried.  Must be all the endorphins because I was furious.  They have been told and told and told.  I've tried yelling, I've tried talking firmly to O, I've made him wash walls, given time outs.  All markers have been banned from being upstairs even accidentally to avoid temptations.   Because the main culprit is generally O.  He just can't seem to get the message.  And J is just as bad.  I think she figures by O doing all the bad work, that she can live through him vicariously and so escape all responsibility.  So far it hasn't worked for her so I don't get why she persists in playing dumb.  Especially when as they started cleaning, there was ink mixed in with all the felt.  Guess who was the pen wielder?  Yup.  She still justified herself by saying that she only did a little bit. 

Now I know that O occasionally gets up to mischief while I'm busy or distracted but usually it's pretty harmless and usually it's when he's on his own.  My mistake was in thinking that because his sister was there, that it would be alright. 

Don't worry, I'm not about to let this stop my exercising. He will just be sitting in the rocking chair under close supervision in my room while I'm on the treadmill.   Poor hubby he came home to clean the carpets for me.

BTW I'm sorry but I didn't take any photos of the crime scene.  I was just too angry at the time to even think about blogging.  I figured I would strike while the iron was hot in getting the little monsters to wash the walls etc and ended up getting carried away in cleaning myself.  Imagine... getting carried away with cleaning.  sigh.

So the big question is... we were going to do Christmas cookies after school today.  Do I still do them?