The Two-Pound Club

Here Madison is, lifting weights today as we did some Christmas shopping. Just in case you can't read it from the photo, those are in fact two-pound weights she's lifting. That means our little girl is curling about four pounds there: a regular power lifter! Oh yeah!

In fact, we're thinking of starting a gym: Madison's Gym. There you'll find all the latest strength training equipment along with a dynamic exercise program that includes classes like "Muscle Endurance," "Weight Training 101," and "Making Pretty Candy Cane Ornaments."

I'm not going to hold back here: Today we had one of the most intense pillow fights ever known to mankind. Madison vs. Daddy. The Biggest Smackdown of the Decade. I think you already know who won.

About ten years ago, I first started to seriously think about all these bedrooms that have a great big bed with about fifteen pillows on them. You know the kind I'm talking about? Well, we have one of those beds now. It has about fifteen pillows on it.

Growing up, I had one pillow. That's all I needed. That's really all anyone really needs.

But somewhere along the line, I was introduced to the concept of a fancy bedroom with fifteen pillows. I have no idea why a bed needs to have fifteen pillows on it. Maybe there are pillow lobbyists hard at work somewhere, perhaps using subliminal advertising.

Anyway, every time you make our bed each day, that basically means you have to fix up fifteen pillows after you've made the bed. This is all so you can have an aesthetically pleasing configuration of random pillows piled on the bed. I'm sure our visitors over the years have left the house saying to each other, "Now that was an incredible stack of pillows!"

Though this pillow thing is still a foreign concept to me, I have learned to deal with it. But all along, I've always wondered why do people have to put so many pillows on a bed?

I did not know that answer until today. That's when Madison and I got involved in the largest pillow fight this side of the Mississippi. All fifteen of those pillows were flying, hurled at each other with the ferocity of a rugby championship game. It was the sort of pillow fight the neighbors wanted to call the police about. It was the sort of pillow fight that could have been a pay-per-view event. It may have even been the first pillow fight you could see from space!

Again, I probably don't need to tell you who won. After all, she's been lifting a lot of weights lately!