It's All About Balance

Index

24.May.2005

They say that the older you get, the more you realize what you don’t know. I’d have to agree with them, whoever ‘they’ are. It’s recently come to my attention that living a healthy lifestyle requires math skills and a darn good calculator. I wasn’t aware of this fact before now.

Yesterday morning I got up and took the dog for a walk. To counteract this healthy behavior, I came home and ate a poptart. Ok, it was two poptarts.

It’s all about balance.

This morning I did the whole walking thing again but I’m out of pop tarts so I’m going to have to bake some cookies. Again, balance is essential. Although I’m concerned that the calories I burn making the cookies will negate the eating of the cookies. I’ll have to do some calculations to find out just how many chocolate chip cookies I’ll have to eat to keep my system in check.

Let’s see, 8 times the square root of a cup of lard, plus the number of mixer rotations, divided by the coefficient of the gross national product of Kuala Lampur. Ten. I’ll have to eat ten cookies to make this come out right. And to think I never thought math would be relevant in the real world.

Then of course I’ll need an ice-cold glass of milk to drink while I’m munching on the cookies. One cookie to…oh, say half a glass of milk. If the cookies outlast the milk I’ll need to refill the glass. One time I ate an entire box of cereal this way because there was either milk or cereal left over and that caused me anxiety so I had to keep putting in more milk or more cereal until finally there was no more cereal. I had achieved balance.

Don’t laugh. You know you’ve done that before.

Back to my calculations. 10 cookies should go with five glasses of milk but that means I’ll be lifting my hand to my mouth in that classic workout routine favored by housewives with too much time on their hands. This is going to be a tricky calculation.

Ten cookies times three hand-to-mouth maneuvers divided by the weight of the fingernail polish applied to my nails, plus one wedding ring equals the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing. No wonder dieting is so frustrating! You need a degree in mathematics to succeed.

I’m hungry again. I wonder how many cookies I can eat to counteract the typing I’ve just done? Lets see, 1, 096 characters with spaces (always count the spaces because pushing down on the space bar is a seriously underrepresented source of calorie burn in the dieting world) times fifteen chocolate chips per cookie, divided by the number of mastications by my mandible divided by the algorithms of deep space telemetry for Venus.

Five. I come up with five. Is that what you got? No? Are you sure? Check again. I’m ok if you got a higher number than I did, but if you came out with a lower number of cookies then I think I can say with some degree of certainty that you simply don’t understand the equation.

It’s all about balance, remember? Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Woof. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to calculate how many calories are burned as my eyes (times two!) move from left to right reading the words on this page. I’m sure there are a couple more cookies in that for me.

Index

editor's note: due to stoopid people who can't behave in public (ie, spammers) we have had to turn off the comment feature on our older columns. We'll try waiting a while and then turning it back on to see if they get bored and go away. In the mean time, we will manually add any REAL comments if you email them to us. The link is below.

Pamela - I'm a DEVOTEE of your brand of math, but I will have to substitute Snickerdoodles for the Chocolate Chip cookies [I'm an abberant personality: I don't like chocolate] and I'm sure that I will be entitled to a few more cookies to counteract the lack of chocolate. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Will your formula still work? Let's see........ one snkdl equals one-third of a chocolate... THAT'S where that dozen cookies and the quart of milk went! Lou
Lou Lyman
FL USA -

In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful Dear Pam: Oh, could I relate to this one. Which finishes first, the cookie or the milk, or in my case, the tea or the biscuit, is to me, a far more important question that which came first, the chicken or the egg! You didn't mention how many calories you use wiping down the keyboard after you finish a bowl of popcorn. I only wish, though, that all this weight loss thing were only a problem of math. Sigh. I am great at math, but HORRIBLE at, keeping the balance just a little more on the side of what is used instead of what I use. thanks for injecting some humor into this frustrating of all subjects. And, now, if you please pass the popcorn, I have work to do. In peace Zaynab
Zaynab Jalai
Iran -

Now that is the kind of math I like! Oh, and I totally got a higher number than you. ; )'
Jenny Walechka
Puyallup, WA USA -

Pam... Is this the kind of math they put on those standardized tests?? If yes, then I don't understand why more *girls* don't score better than they say we do! Surely if all math was put in the context of milk and cookies the world would be a better place... Heck, milk and cookie not just for math but for poli-sci too! Think of all the thwarted filabusters, etc on Capitol Hilll if they offered milk and cookies!! This was a charming one... and I am sure we can ALL relate to it.... Keep 'em coming, you witty and wise woman! Hugs Lee
Lee Ambrose
USA -

BWAHAHAHAHA!!! You've been to see Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, haven't you? Bistromatics at it's best! I laughed SOOOO hard! Now, how many cookies to make up for all the laughter?
Jeri Lynn
Shoreline, WA USA -

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