Does it HAVE to be this difficult?

People seem to be going out of their way to make my life more difficult than it needs to be.

I have to take my wife in next week for some dental surgery. Not a big problem (for me). I simply take the day off work, get up early, pack her and our daughter in the car and drive her to the appointment. Then I can spend a couple of hours shopping or whatever with my daughter and then go pick the wife up when she's done, right? Wrong. The dentist wants someone to BE THERE THE ENTIRE TIME! What? Why? Who knows. All they'll say is that they need someone to be there.

OK. Minor adjustment. Now I'll just have to sit in the waiting room with my daughter for a couple of hours. Nope. Sorry. They don't allow children in the waiting area. WHAT? Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?

OK. So now what do I do? Drop Dee off at one of those pay (through the nose) by the hour day care places? Find a friend that can baby sit starting at SIX IN THE FREAKIN MORNING? What we end up having to do is this:

I'm taking Mom to the appointment and dropping her off. A friend (a very good friend, mind you) is going to meet us there and stay in the waiting room for several hours until she is released and then drive her home.

OK. So that's all settled. Right? Hope so.

Next Saga:

I go online thinking there's got to be a place that I can enter in some information and some goals and have someone (or some program) suggest a workout and diet regimen complete down to the gnat's ass.

I found such a program at menshealth.com. It's very comprehensive, it asks you lots of questions establishes your goals, then spits out a workout routine and a diet and even gives you a place to track your progress. Great! Exactly what I was looking for. The diet part will also generate a shopping list for you so you can stock up on the stuff you need.

So I created the shopping list for next week and started looking through it. I begin to see entries like this.

• 1/2 medium apple
• 1/2 medium orange
• 3/4 cup grapes
• ...

Now remember this is for an entire week. There's tons of entries like this. The program seems to go to great effort to not duplicate any meals. As a result you need to buy a a lot of different items in small quantities. Not the most efficient way to shop!

Then I see this item on the shopping list:

• 8 oz Broiled Shark Fillets

SHARK? Where the hell am I supposed to buy shark? OK, yeah, I can go all the way across town and probably find it at Central Market, but I'm pretty sure they don't carry it at the local Kroger's where I normally shop.

But there's hope for both of these situations. There's a feature that'll let you select any meal and replace it. No problem, right? I just consolidate the meals. I don't mind having the same breakfast 3 days in the week. I can consolidate the menu and have less variety and a more efficient shopping list. Right? Wrong.

I started with that shark entry. I click on "replace meal" and it comes up with another screen where it's supposed to give you a list of alternate menu choices that'll fit your diet. How many alternate choices do you think it came up with? If you said ZERO, you win a cookie.

Now, understand... shark wasn't the only thing on the dinner menu. There are plenty of other items. However, the program apparently is trying to target a specific fat/protein/carb ratio and shark steaks were the only thing that would fit into that schedule.

I DID manage to get around it though. It has the option on that page to "Never see this menu selection again" which I checked. However, it stays on the menu until you regenerate it. Unfortunately I don't see any way to just regenerate the menu. So I had to tell it I was switching to a different diet plan (it offers like 4 different diets) and then switch back to the one I wanted. THEN it regenerate the diet without the shark steaks!

It really shouldn't be this difficult.