Convenience or
Exercise? That is the Question
By Bob Stevens, The
Muddled Male
Ann,
my wife, lectures me in a gentle but firm manner about lots of things. Most lectures stem from the fact that my
affinity for sweet things is coupled with an aversion to exercise. Ann claims that she has to lecture me because
if I don’t change my ways and become healthier I am going to expire and leave
her alone up here on the hill. If the
truth were known, however, I am guessing that in her former life she was a nutrition
professor and just enjoys lecturing.
Take this morning for example. It
was a chilly day as I began this column, and Ann was insisting that we keep the
thermostat down to our usual sixty-nine degrees Fahrenheit because she is
adamant about saving Propane. When I slipped
on my winter coat to sit down at the computer in our den, she assumed that putting
on a coat meant that I was going outside.
When I told her that I just trying to keep warm while typing my column,
she told me to man up, a little cold is good for me. Of course it could be worse. My friend the Professor’s wife insists on
sixty-six degrees Fahrenheit maximum in his house. A contrasting comparison is my lucky Polish
friend whose wife likes him to keep the temperature in their house closer to seventy-four
degrees. I have tried to get my Polish
friend to adopt me but Ann put the kibosh on that by telling his wife that I
would be a pain in the neck. When Elvira
said that she already has enough pains I knew that my chance to be adopted into
a warm home had just been thwarted.
Ann’s
lectures about sweets are general discussions about sugar being bad and fiber being
good. But our disagreement over exercise
is more complicated. I like
convenience. Ann likes inconvenience if
it means I will be forced to walk. Take
parking, for example. If Wal*Mart would
let me I would park inside the store where they keep the shopping carts so that
my walking distance would be minimized and I could load our car inside, out of
the weather. Ann, on the other hand,
insists that we park a quarter mile away in the far corner of the parking lot
so that I am forced to walk at least a half mile just to get a box of frozen
waffles. The same goes for shade. I like to park in the sun with the windows
rolled up so that for just a few moments after first getting back into the car following
shopping I can feel really warm. Ann insists
that I hunt for the shade of a tree at the edge of the parking lot so that the
car stays cool while we are shopping in hopes that the frozen things we just
bought stay frozen until we get home. I
know her real reason, however. She is
just trying to condition me so that I think that sixty-nine degrees back in the
refrigerator where we live is actually warm.
Then
there are our disagreements over the assortment of tools I keep in a drawer in
the kitchen so that they are handy and able to be reached without me having to
walk. Ann feels strongly that tools
(pliers, screwdrivers, hammers, etc.) should be kept with the saws and drills in
the garage so that reaching them requires me to go out in the cold and walk to retrieve
them. My argument for storage in the
kitchen is that such tools are for quick repairs and need to be kept close to
the area where emergencies happen.
Besides, I argue, those same tools can double as kitchen utensils when
needed. I use the pliers all the time,
for example, to crack Pistachio’s, pull the hard-to-remove aluminum foil seal
off the top of my snack time yogurt container, and remove hot waffles from the
toaster. A screwdriver works as a handy
skewer for use in toasting marshmallows over the open flame of our propane cook
stove … provided that Ann doesn’t catch me using propane. But the hammer is used only for the finest of
delicacies. You know those succulent,
big as a catcher’s mitt, battered shrimp that you used to get at the Utah Noodle in Ogden, Utah. You may be surprised to find that a shrimp doesn’t
grow that way, it has to be pounded out flat with a mallet. And that is where my hammer comes in handy.
It
was then that I saw the look in Ann’s eye and realized that I was about to be the
shrimp and she the mallet. Out of
respect, or maybe fear, I decided to move the tools and my computer out into
the garage and start walking. Next I
plan to purchase an inclined treadmill so that I can do lots of uphill walking
while checking emails on the new iPhone I am planning to slip past her during
her reverie over my new regimen of exercise.
No comments:
Post a Comment