kiwords

This is the second in a series of four posts about the Wii game Active Life: Extreme Challenge. In return for my review, I received a Wii console and the game.

I haven't used the Active Life: Extreme Challenge game a huge amount this week because I've INJURED MY ACTUAL SELF. My calves, to be precise. So now any time I try to do any sort of hopping activity, my legs hurt and kill me and I'm forced to lie on the couch and whine at my long-suffering husband about how I'm so old and massive that my legs are giving way under the strain. Then I weep and say how I've given my best years to our children, and I would never change a thing, DESPITE THE PAIN. Then I gaze at them with love and sorrow all mingled in my eyes. HEY! Guess who got taken out for a date night this weekend?

Nonetheless, I figured the fact that I couldn't actually play much was no problem, because what do I have all these children around me, if not to do my work for me? As a friend of mine says, if you're still doing the dishes, you need more kids. I just figured I'd expand the concept to writing my own blog posts too.

To make matters even better, we had plenty of kids coming over to play, so I could not only get the input of MY children, I could happily exploit the children of dear friends also! And my plan worked perfectly. Children would arrive at our home, I would casually suggest they play a wee Wii (snicker), and then I would fling the Active Life: Extreme Challenge mat down in front of them and step aside. Time would pass, and children would appear in my kitchen, all sweaty-heads and snack requests. I would place food in front of them, like some modern-day calf-injured Donna Reed, and then I would pounce.

I asked them what they thought of the game, and I wrote down their actual answers, so you can get the FLAVOR, if you will, of the sort of input I was getting from them.

13 year old boy: "Uh-huh. It was cool."

17 year old girl: "Fun!"

9 year old boy: "It's good. Can I have more goldfish?"

Hot tip: children are useless at writing your post for you.

However, I will point to the following evidence: sweaty heads, and they played it for much longer than I would expect them to if they thought it was lame. Kids do not suffer lame willingly. And my actual children will spontaneously pull the game out and play it. AH-HAH! Says I! EVIDENCE OF ENJOYMENT!

Despite the *ahem* helpful comments, and the EVIDENCE, I felt like I still didn't have quite enough to SHARE with you this week, so I played it again myself. There are plenty of activities you can do with just your arms, and I decided to give rock climbing a try. I'd passed the beginner level, which I have to tell you was SORT OF LAME. I am just telling it like it is, friends. LAMETY LAME LAME. So I didn't expect much of the intermediate level.

You can imagine my delight, then, when it ROUNDLY KICKED MY ELDERLY BUTT. The intermediate level has you smacking the mat all over the stinking place, and after a few rounds my arms were ACHING LIKE CRAZY, all shaky and tired. I was kind of tickled by this, actually, because it felt like a real work out, which I have been SADLY lacking in this week (see: Elderly Calves). But what made me crazy is that I could SIMPLY NOT beat the stinking level. I tried and tried and one night I kept smacking that mat so hard and repeatedly that Raphael (who sleeps in the basement, directly under where I was smacking and swearing) came upstairs to ask me nicely to PLEASE STOP HE IS TRYING TO SLEEP.

I did stop eventually, and tried again another night, and as of this writing I am STILL unable to beat the stinking thing. I'm trying to figure out whose fault this is.

So that's this week of our ACTIVE LIFE. The children enjoyed themselves, if not all that eloquently. I was able, despite injury, to find a fun activity that is making me insane with its unwillingness to be defeated. And my husband is patient and long-suffering.