The picture below is what the inside of a combination VCR/DVD player looks like. I never thought I'd spend a few hours on Valentine's Day taking apart the darn thing but with a naughty toddler loose in the house it became a necessity.

Being a lover of the band Queen, I got myself a Valentine's Day gift of the new movie Bohemian Rhapsody and planned to watch it together with my husband while enjoying a nice meal together. We don't have shelves yet where our TV mounted on the wall is at so there is no place to keep our DVD player. I only hook it up when we need it and put it away when don't. I had hooked up the VCR/DVD player yesterday to watch a movie with my toddler and left it hooked up thinking there was no use unhooking it and then having to put it back to watch another movie the next day.

My two year old, Little Rabbit absolutely loves cats. I had gotten her the Disney movie Oliver and Company for her birthday. The main character Oliver is a cat and once she saw him she was shouting "a cat, a cat" while bouncing. She enjoyed the music and would stop and dance. All in all it was a good choice for a movie to let her watch.

After the movie was over I put the DVD player in a corner where it was hidden and put a pillow over it. Little Rabbit is no so easily fooled and when I wasn't in the room she decided to explore the new device. The biggest mistake was I didn't take the DVD out of the player.I don't know how she did it but some how she made the DVD fall out of it's tray while inside the player and go deep inside the machine. Somehow the disk got lodged into a crack in the back of the machine so that it was stuck. Shaking wouldn't get it out. It was lodged in there tight.

My only course of action to rescue not only Oliver and Company but our expensive machine (it records and dubs VHS tapes to DVD so it wasn't cheap) was to take it apart. I unscrewed the cover determined to fix the problem and watch my Valentine's Day movie.

I was automatically surprised at how much crap was in the thing. I guess at some point my daughter had shoved all these little cards with pictures of animals on them in the VCR side. I'm glad I didn't put a tape in there. Quickly, I realized the DVD player side was a whole nother animal. You can't get inside a DVD player section (right side) without taking apart the machine to an extent I was uncomfortable with.

The only thing I could do was use a butter knife and try to unlodge the DVD. Flashlight in one hand, knife in the other, I fished around the DVD slot which was very narrow. I tried the butter knife method for an hour with no change. I switched to a carving knife because it was longer and that didn't work. The DVD was really lodged in a crack or something. I then took to wandering around the house looking for something I could stick in the slot that might work. I walked around and around....couldn't find anything. Then, I went back to knifing the machine.

Then, I went back to wandering. After spending 15 minutes digging through drawers throughout the house I found a tool...a knitting needle. It was a thick metal one. I got my husband to help me bend it so it was straight with a little hook on one end. I figured I could now pull the DVD out. The needle was too short.

Then, I decided to come in from the back of the DVD player. There was a super small hole big enough for the needle. Looking in the front with a flashlight I fished around through the back and managed to get the hook through Oliver's center hole and pushed. It moved! It moved just enough I was able to use the needle to pull the disk out the front.

In the process Oliver got scratched up beyond saving. What a waste of a good Disney movie to get played only once before destruction. At least I rescued the VCR/DVD player. That's harder to replace.

My Valentine's Smokehouse Burger with Onion Straws

My husband and I got to watch Bohemian Rhapsody and have our meal. We also watched Coal Miner's Daughter about Loretta Lynn so we got two biographical type movies in for Valentine's Day. Little Rabbit enjoyed all the singing in both movies so she played with her toys until songs came on, then she danced to them. It was a peaceful day for the most part. With my husband coming down with a cold it was nice to just chill and enjoy a few movies together.