Confuse A Gnome

This is a follow up to our resident brownie (home dwelling gnome).

In the second week of November I was exercising in the lounge room. It was the first time I'd done a workout in the lounge room, as I normally do it in the bedroom. I don't know why it never occurred to me before to do it in the lounge, where there's more room. I started in the lounge in mid November. I've done similar workouts to this since I was a teenager and I'm confident the bumps and footsteps I felt in November were not done by me.

I love dancing and the workout I do is geared for that. It's a ballet workout, there's no equipment or running or jumping around. Most of it's done on the floor and it's pretty quiet for the most part. I mention this because I don't know how it got the attention of our little friend.

So the first time in the lounge I'd been working out for about ten minutes. I was doing a stomach exercise where I'm laid on my back, knees bent up, legs parted in a '10 to 2' position. I've seen this exercise demonstrated on aerobic instructor things on TV, but the ballet version is a little different. It's the one where you raise your pelvis off the floor and come down again, repeat. In this variation you bring your knees together as you lift, and apart as you lower, to engage the thighs and butt. Also in other aerobic fitness I think they lower the pelvis down to the floor and up again. In this one you stop just shy of the floor, without touching the floor and come up again. It keeps the muscles engaged. Your feet are in a demi pointe position for the same reason. So there's very little contact with the ground and next to no noise or vibration through the floor.

I started feeling vibration through the floor like something was running around the room. It was light, like a dog or a cat. It kept doing this in bursts here and there. It continued for the duration of the workout and I'm pretty sure it stopped around when I finished. I thought of our brownie, but also thought of the neighbour's dog, maybe I was feeling the dog through the floor. We've never noticed neighbour's pets through the floor, but then doing activity on the floor might let you receive more than say, hanging out on the couch.

The next day, the same thing happened. But I paid closer attention to it. A lot of the workout is spent stretching/flexing throughout. So I do one group of exercise, stretch it out, move onto the next, always stretching/flexing the appropriate muscle groups in between. This time, while stretching in between, I could focus my attention better to analyse the bumps I was feeling. It felt like a small dog or a cat running around in short bursts. I could also feel a bit of a direction to it. I particularly didn't like when it felt closer to me because it was very distracting. But apart from this I wasn't bothered by it.

The day after that same thing. Except this time before I started I laid on the floor and felt for vibrations and footsteps, nothing for a good two minutes. I started my warm up, a lot of stretching, some done standing. No bumps on the floor. It wasn't until I got into the workout that the shuffle of quick, light, footsteps could be felt again, like the days before.

I was doing leg exercises and, just like with the pelvis lifts, you bring your leg up and down but stop just shy of the floor and come up again, repeat. So it was very confusing when I could feel a slight bump in the floor here and there, where there shouldn't have been. When I started another leg exercise the bumps kept up. This one I was holding the leg out and rotating round and round with toes pointed. I could feel the bumps through the floor, as I was laying back. I watch the circles I draw with my toes with this one so I know I'm keeping straight. But I cannot multi task for nicks and the bumps and what have you distracted me so much I forgot which direction I was up to (rotation wise) when I switched legs. I started getting a bit pissed off.

So I stopped and spoke out loud to whatever ghost was present. Assuming it was our little brownie, I addressed him. Said something like 'Hey little guy, this is an exercise routine I do. I've been doing it for many years. It might look strange or painful to you, but it's actually good. You might not know but before I was doing it here, I was doing it up in the bedroom. I'd prefer to do it down here though.' Just like that, no more bumps or scuttling through the floor, and I've not felt a peep since. Conclusion? I don't know, maybe brownies hate a change in routine. That figures, they're reported as being methodical and temperamental little so and so's, though we love ours. What gets me is what alerted him, assuming it was him, to my doing this in the lounge. I guess I'm giving off a different energy while working out and he followed that to investigate, found me, thought 'What the HELL is she doing?!' and freaked out. Maybe that's it, poor little dude, but that would be funny.

A typical workout goes for half an hour to forty minutes, depending on how much time I have. The bumps and padding around through the floor were felt in very short bursts throughout the workout for those three days in a row. It felt like they were coming mostly from the doorway and up in the direction of the bathroom. Then I might feel another closer to me, more scuttling in another direction in the lounge. Then some more at random points, I couldn't predict where. There might have been a pattern to it, but I wasn't really paying attention. Well, I was sort of but it's hard counting four sets of this and that, holding some position for thirty seconds blah blah blah, and keeping track of random bumps.

Our little brownie hangs out mostly in the bathroom and kitchen. We've heard, but never seen, the noisy lounge door open or close slowly. This could be any of our ghosties though, and that was going on way before I started exercising in the lounge room. Maybe the little guy hangs out in the lounge room and we don't know it. Or maybe I was giving off a different energy, one unknown to him, in part of his perceived territory. We've never heard any brownie type activity in the bedroom. He seems to hang out downstairs.

I wonder what he was doing scampering about like that. Probably jumping up and down, telling me off.

Thanks for reading.