Wants VS Needs

 

By G. E. Shuman

 

          I stopped by my daughter Emily’s family home last night, or at least last night from the time I wrote this column. As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that a piece of exercise equipment was on the front lawn, with a big FREE sign on it. (Note: If you have never seen a house with a piece of exercise equipment on the front lawn, you’re not paying attention.) The kids, Emily, her husband Nick, and daughter Nahla were outside and asked me if I would like to have the thing. My first thought and reply were to ask how much laundry could be successfully hung on it. I then politely declined the machine, and we went about talking of other things.

          On my way home from their house, I began thinking of the day before, when Em and I had spent some time together, having breakfast out, and then shopping. Firstly, I am not a shopper. I spent far too many years working within the confines of retail stores to want to do more of that now. (Mailmen probably don’t take long walks after they retire, either.)

Emily certainly IS a shopper, so whenever I agree to go shopping with her, I always ask how many stores she ‘needs’ to go to. If the answer is more than two, I ask her to drop me at home between visiting some of the stores.

          In Emily’s defense, when she shops, she always buys things for other people. She is very generous that way. Em also just LOVES seasonal decorations, and will go to great lengths, often travelling many miles, to get a good deal on all that stuff. She especially loves getting seasonal dec’s AFTER some, (translation: ‘any’) particular holiday has passed and seems to like the clearance prices she pays at least as much as she likes the decorations themselves. Please do not be offended if you are like Emily in this way, because if you are you’re in incredibly good company. Still, I could never bring myself to buy a bunch of giftwrap the week after Christmas. My stomach just would not take that.

          So, back to the exercise equipment. You see, on that ride home from Em’s family’s house last night I realized that she often seems to want things she doesn’t ‘need,’ and I (exercise equipment in mind) probably need things I don’t want. She loves shopping, shopping, and more shopping, and buying things that are just too good a deal not to get. I love avoiding ANYTHING post-season, and would, frankly, rather pay full price next year. (I know, I know, I’m a sucker. But people like me keep Disney selling full-price Mickey Mouse ears forever.)

To end all this babbling, might I just say, once more, that my very generous daughter definitely loves shopping. My opinion is that she should enjoy the seasons, and that at least she goes after good deals on the ‘stuff’ that makes the seasons magical. I do think she could ‘need’ what she wants… a bit less. In reference to the exercise equipment, maybe I could want what I need… a bit more.

But Isn't Quitting for Losers?

By G. E. Shuman

 

I put a new app on my phone a while ago. It’s one of those that is supposed to help you, more precisely, help me, keep track of weight, calorie intake and exercise regimens.  (Exercise regimens… Ya, sure.) I don’t exactly know why I would want to do all of that, but evidently it might help me lose the 20 extra pounds I accumulated while hibernating last year, so I downloaded the app.

Anyway, I grabbed the app and was soon very impressed by one part of it; that was the weight tracker, which, at first, seemed pretty cool. The tracker makes a graph of your (I mean my) progress as I drop those terrible, guilty pounds. What I envisioned was the displaying of something resembling a downward-sloping Vermont hill as my disgusting-fat weight-loss progress continued over the weeks and months. Unfortunately, that is not the envisioning I seem to be producing. My graph looks like a fairly smooth road, maybe somewhere in ultra-flat Florida, with a few potholes and speed bumps here and there, although, actually, there are no potholes in Florida, so there’s that. So far, as far as that app is concerned, I’m a little disappointed.

The other ‘helpful’ area on the app is where you put into it everything you put into your mouth, and it then counts the calories for you.

Gee… how much simpler could it get than that? This all works well in theory, but I’m here to tell you that some days, you, I mean I, just cannot count calories. The app doesn’t tell you how to input the ingredients in a Chinese restaurant buffet, to say nothing of calculating the calories in that extra cheese you always order on your pizza. Those things are just parts of the great unknown. Also, nowhere at all does it mention how many slabs of homemade lasagna there actually are in a serving. That lack of information is just ridiculous. Then there is the problem of remembering to input the results every single time you innocently walk through the kitchen and end up at the refrigerator door. Geez!

Some things are just not as easy to accomplish as they are advertised to be.  For instance, with mine or any other diet app, there’s always the problem of correctly counting the calories in something like a handful of potato chips. Wouldn’t that all depend on just how big the hand is? Duhhh? When dieting, are we just supposed to stop EATING potato chips? And isn’t it better to grab all the chips you can with that hand, so you don’t have to take two handfuls? Seems pretty elementary to me. When you think about it, all this counting and recording can become just impossible, and believe me, all my counting so far hasn’t done much to change that weight graph.

On the different, but somehow related subject of self-care, let me share that I’m not much for the idea of that at all. Seriously, I think most of that self-care stuff is just an excuse for being self-ISH. My parents walked a mile to school in foot-deep snowstorms, uphill both ways, without complaining. My wife and I raised our kids before the term self-care was even a thing, or deemed ‘needed’, but that’s all stuff for another column.

Yes, dietary-wise, I may seem to you to be a bit self-careless, but let’s just say that I do try to control myself somewhat, and, at least as far as food is concerned, I can pretty much resist anything except temptation.

I guess diets, like exercise bikes, only work if you stay on them, which is a bit disappointing for someone like me. Bad habits, as in the over-eating of things like chips and french-fries, are what I need to quit. But now I’m confused. Think about it. Isn’t quitting for losers?