Category: Uncategorized (Page 3 of 37)

Many of us are obsessed with our weight and health.  We diet, exercise, pretend to diet, try to exercise, make resolutions, try to diet, and – in extreme cases – pretend to exercise.  We try Paleo, Noom, Keto, Atkins, GOLO, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, gyms, fitness centers, walking groups, the YMCA, Silver Sneakers, and many other programs to lose weight, gain muscle, and/or stay healthy.

               Yesterday, completely by accident, I realized the secret to staying at a healthy weight is really quite simple: stop eating so much.

               Honestly, this is harder than it sounds.  Let me explain.  Yesterday we prepared lunch (a Keto protein serving of meat and cheese) with chips and cheese dip.  I carefully poured half the bag of chips into the bowl and set it on the table.  We were so proud to finish our servings, knowing that if we’d put the whole bag on the table, the bag would be empty!  Instead, we just ate the apportioned amount of chips and were patting ourselves on our respective backs for our willpower and intelligence.

               While putting the clip on the bag, I noticed – accidentally – the number of servings the bag contained.  Usually, my eyes go directly to carb and/or sugar content, but this number seemed to jump out at me:  “servings per bag: about 13.”  13?  THIRTEEN?

               If this was true, we had just consumed about 3.5 servings each!  Of potato chips!!!  Ack!  It turns out, half a bowl is not a serving.  14 chips equal one serving.  “About.”

               This made me frantically root around in our pantry and fridge to make the horrible discovery that we’ve been exceeding a lot of serving recommendations!

               Turns out chips aren’t the only snack that has a limited serving.  For example, pre-popped popcorn.  As it turns out, one serving is about 42 pieces.  This is enough to fill – level to the top, not over – a normal soup bowl of popcorn.  Okay, that’s about a fifth of my normal popcorn intake.  I mean, isn’t the bag a serving??

               Canned vegetables are sneaky, too.  We’ve been routinely splitting cans of veggies in one sitting between us.  But baked beans and corn – in small cans, mind you – are supposed to be 3.5 servings per can.  What?  I’m supposed to not eat 1.5 servings from a can (or about 1/3)?  At least not in one sitting, apparently.

               Another shocker was macaroni and cheese in a box.  This is supposed to make 3 – 4 servings.  Per box!  Yikes, I’ve been known to down the whole box myself!

               Frozen food didn’t encourage me either.  Fish sticks – you know, the ones that are about the width of my pinkie and as long – are 6 “sticks” per serving.  We usually have 7 – 9.  I mean, seriously, these are not “sticks” in any universe.  They are twigs at best.

               And chicken nuggets aren’t much better.  McDonald’s calls 5 chicken nuggets a kids’ meal.  But that’s the recommended adult serving.  FIVE.  That’s barely an appetizer!

               Apparently, I am simply eating too much.  So, I guess I’ll try following the recommended serving sizes of my foods.  The upside is I will likely lose more weight and be healthier.  The downside is I’m going to be hungry.  And not in a very good mood.  Thirteen chips, indeed. 

               I’ve often heard that bad things come in threes. This may be an allusion to the three-on-a-match superstition.  That superstition arose during the Crimean War, when soldiers were told not to share a match when lighting cigarettes.   Doing so gave the enemy sniper time to spot that light, aim his rifle, and fire, killing the third soldier. Ever since, we’ve been told “bad things come in threes.”     

               But good things come in threes, too, for example, the Holy Trinity. Okay, that’s pretty much the only example needed.  But I have another.

               It all started a year ago.  My husband and I were in South Carolina for a wedding the week before Christmas.  I took my holiday jewelry box and also wore a gold bracelet I never took off.  It was a gift from my husband several years prior and very precious. 

               While there, I snagged the bracelet on a door jamb and split one of the chain links.  I put it aside to bring home and have repaired.

               Once home, we entered into the holiday season with gusto and I didn’t think about the bracelet until late January.  I went to my jewelry box to take it to the store for repair and it wasn’t there.  I ransacked my luggage, small nooks and crannies in bathrooms, and my dresser, but didn’t find it.  I assumed I had left it at the hotel.

               Fast forward to November.  My friend lost a gold ring at the store where we both volunteer.  She looked for it but couldn’t find it.  Several weeks after she told me about it, we were working together one evening and I went to the large trash can to remove the bag.  When I moved the can, I spotted a gold ring under the trash can.

               She was, of course, delighted and stunned to have her ring returned.  It made me think of my bracelet and once again, feel very sad that I had lost it.

               Thanksgiving over, I got out my Christmas jewelry box to begin to wear my festive earrings, pins, and necklaces.  It’s not a large box, mostly earrings, and I was poking around in it to find the matching evergreen tree earring when I spotted a little chain.  Pulling it out – it was my gold bracelet!

               My very first stop the next morning was to the jewelry store to have it repaired.  Of course, I had put it in the holiday box, I just didn’t remember it when I put the box away for eleven months.

               On my way home from the jewelry store, I picked up our grandson at the babysitter.  He was delighted to see me wearing the Christmas tree earrings he had given me last year. 

We took him home, played a bit, and I noticed one earring was missing. We scoured his house, porch and the car and turned out pockets, but the earring was gone.

               The next day, our grandson proudly handed me the missing earring.  It had been found on the babysitter’s porch and they suspected it was mine.

               Lost – then found – jewelry.  Good things do come in threes, it seems, and this is certainly the season for it!  Merry Christmas, everyone!

               Another Thanksgiving weekend is in the memory books – or journals – or photo galleries.  I’ve had so many wonderful Thanksgiving memories that it takes me quite a long while to thank God for my many blessings.  Thankfully, the potatoes stay hot! 
               This past Thanksgiving provided me with “take-aways” that weren’t in small boxes, plastic-lidded bowls, or baggies.  In the spirit of the season, I will share them with you, dear readers.

               First and this is actually from a few holidays ago, but nonetheless actually happened: check all your equipment.  There’s not much worse than finding out four hours after placing your turkey in the roaster pan that while the red light is on, the pan is not hot.  That lovely, though mild, turkey smell you are experiencing is merely from the giblets cooking on the stove.  The table is set, the potatoes are on the sideboard, the veggies are being plated and you lift the lid to reveal…a stone-cold, white turkey.

               It’s not great.

               Fortunately, people with wine are flexible and the dinner is postponed a few hours.

               This year I discovered that carb-loading wreaks havoc on my digestive system.  Having completed a full three years of a keto-based diet, I’m at a healthy weight, I feel great, and I am down several sizes.  Eating several servings of stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie results in a massive problem for my intestines. 

               Enough said.

               There’s never a good time for you to lose power, water, or electricity, but Thanksgiving is really not a good time.  Our furnace decided two nights before Thanksgiving that this was the perfect time to have the motherboard (whatever that is) begin to melt.  Being a holiday week, the heating company was quick to come out, assess the problem, and assure us it could be resolved…in 6 days.

               So we spent Thanksgiving weekend with cheerful fires, space heaters, and blankets on our laps.  It wasn’t bad, actually, but my takeaway was that it would have been better a week earlier.  Or later.  Or not at all.

               The annual Thanksgiving Day parade used to be more fun to watch.  Sure, it’s possible that’s because I was younger, but I don’t think so.  There are more balloons, more bands, and it’s longer, so it should be amazing. 

               But the coverage (much like, in my opinion, other events) seemed to focus more on the announcers and their antics and the “celebrities” than on the performances, bands, and actual floats in the parade.  And seriously, Santa should be the crowning star of this parade, not Cher (and I like Cher, it just didn’t seem like she should get more coverage than St. Nick).

               My last takeaway is that we should recognize the strengths of all generations.  The youngers certainly exceed us in their knowledge and use of technology.  They can use Instagram, Facebook, Tick-tock, and Flip-Flop and that is great, especially when we need help with setting up our remote, restoring a deleted phone message, or using our computers.  But don’t let them diss us!

               We can do math in our heads, make change without a calculator, write in cursive, and read actual maps.  We have much for which to give thanks!

               Lately, I have heard a lot of people bemoan that customer service isn’t what it used to be.  I try very hard to notice the helpers and the courteous people whom I encounter in my day.  There are a lot!  Honestly.

               That said, I’ve had a trio of less-than-polite encounters with people who are dependent upon me (and customers like me) for their paychecks.  So I’m puzzled when these people don’t have, at the least, manners when they interact with folks.

               First up comes my local grocery store.  For reasons that surpass understanding, they have put the “pick-up” entry to the left of the customer entry and the pick-up staging is on the right just as we enter.  Yesterday morning I took a cart from the rack and entered the store.  Thankfully, I was looking ahead and not at my list or rummaging in my purse for a pen, because an employee pulling a large cart of groceries barreled out of the staging area and past me.  Had I not stopped, he would have plowed right into me.  He didn’t say “excuse me” or even look in my direction. 

               Let me add that this isn’t the first time this has happened.  I’m used to watching for wild drivers on the road, I guess now I have to watch for wild drivers in the store as well.  But given that I’m the paying customer, I sort of thought that the employees might think my safety was a tad important.

               Then I got home to find my husband in our yard talking with one of the three men who were digging up said lawn.  Apparently, our county commissioners and township trustees hired a company to install fiber optic lines throughout the county so “rural folks” can have internet. 

               The trouble is – and there’s a lot of it – we already have internet.  We’re the only people on our road and we didn’t want the 300 yards of lawn and field dug up.  We weren’t informed of this in advance.  When we asked the field supervisor (who turned out to be the president and CEO of the company) if they could stop, said person said, in a snarky tone, “We have a permit.”  When asked who issued the permit, he said “I don’t know.”

               When asked if we could contact someone about this, he said, “Sure, call my attorney.”  My husband said, “Okay, who’s that?” and the president and CEO said, “I don’t know.”

               One thing he knows now is that he will never, ever get our money for this service.  Even though it’s cheaper than our current provider.  Because if this is his idea of customer service?  Well, you get it.

               And finally, we went today to our church for our weekly stint at serving breakfast to folks.  It’s a “grab-and-go” kind of breakfast, so we stand in the door way, fill orders, and chat with people.  It’s really a great mission and we’re delighted to be part of it.  The folks who get the food are pleasant and appreciative.

               This isn’t a new program.  Our church has been doing it for years, and it’s right downtown, so city government officials know about it.  But city officials approved the digging up of our streets and sidewalks with jackhammers and apparently couldn’t schedule this work to stop for a half hour every morning.

               We spoke with the diggers and they were very nice and told us when they saw someone walk up, they would halt the screeching noise and dust-producing digging. 

               But they didn’t.  So we had to stand, yelling at people to get their orders and trying to protect the food from the dust. 

               I grew up hearing “the customer is always right.”  It seems the current motto is “caveat emptor.”