Dog Bed and A Little Bit of Math

Sunday was a busy day. Kiera, Grandmommy, and I did some deep cleaning on the house and also moved furniture in preparation for Christmas decorations. We even managed to pull some of the decorations out of the garage.

Kiera was ecstatic. She was dragging out Christmas trees and boxes before I had even made it into the garage. We did lose her help for a bit once she found her little Christmas tree that she sets up in her room.

I had several tasks that I wanted to complete that day, one of which was to fix Reis’s dog bed. In my garage was a memory foam mattress topper that did not fit either of our beds. I had decided several weeks ago that it would be perfect to cut up and put inside Reis’s bed.

Once Kiera had finished decorating her tree, I assigned the memory foam-cutting job to her.

We took the awkwardly bundled topper out on the back deck and spread it out.

“Let’s grab the measuring tape and measure Reis’s bed so we know how to cut this.” I stated to Kiera.

We quickly measured his bed and I wrote the measurements down on the back of the memory foam topper in black marker. Then we measured the topper and I wrote those down as well.

“This is what I am thinking.” I said.

Kiera interjected. ‘We need to find the area of this topper.”

“Umm… that is not exactly what I was thinking.” I replied.

She took the marker from my hand, lay down on the topper and began to write out numbers.

“I… I’ll come back and check on you in a minute. Make sure you don’t cut anything until I come back.” I said, backing away from the math problems she was creating.

“I won’t” She responded as she continued to add numbers.

Fifteen minutes later I came back to find her still laying on the topper, but with lots more writing.

“I’m not sure if I should subtract this number from the area or this number.” She stated pointing at the measurements.

I knelt down and took the marker from her hand. “Well, I was just thinking…” Before I could finish my thought, she interrupted.

“Oh! I know! I added the area wrong!” She exclaimed, grabbing the marker and beginning to scrawl numbers again.

My brain was beginning to hurt as she managed to turn something simple into a crazy math problem. I’ll be honest… I fled.

“Be back in a minute!” I said as I hurried back inside as if being chased by area and perimeter themselves.

The next time I came out, she was still lying on the memory foam topper, but was petting Reis who had taken up residence on a large chunk of her figures.

“I just can’t figure out what I am doing wrong.” She stated.

She has a tendency to overthink things… I have no idea where she gets that.

Not wanting to bust her bubble for trying so hard, I suggested a different tactic.

“What if we bring Reis’s bed out and lay it on top of the topper?” I said.

Her eyes lit up. “Then we can trace around it and just cut it out!” She exclaimed.

“That will work.” I replied.

A short time later, she had managed to outline the bed, cut the pieces and had even added a prayer in writing on the mattress topper.

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw what she had written. “Oh, God. May they sleep well, dear Lord, the whole night. – Kiera and Mom. Amen.”

I consider that a project well done.

Rowonna McNeely works as the Communications Manager for the Brownwood Area Chamber of Commerce. She and her husband, Aaron are regular volunteers in the community, and have their hands full with their daughter, Kiera, along with three dogs and one cat.

Thank you for sharing in our weekly journeys. If you have missed any of our past stories, check out our blog page at www.lifea2k.net or drop us a line at lifea2k@yahoo.com.