Amazon's Three Day Waiting Period

 Picture it, an idle Monday evening, I am reading through Just Tell Me What to Eat! and starting to plan out what a healthy diet for steady weight loss is going to be. I am looking at breakfast options surprised at my carbohydrate choices and very pleased to see that Raisin Bran is an option. The catch is the recommended serving of Raisin Bran for breakfast is 1 cup of cereal with a 1/2 cup of skim milk. This is far from the brobdingnagian super bowls of cereal that I would like to have of a morning. 

My thoughts stray to portion control.  I figure a cup of Raisin Bran is about the size of my upturned, cupped hand. I will find out later that I am not far from wrong, but my thoughts are not on that now. I am thinking about portioning out my Raisin Bran of a morning. I want this to be scientific. When I start my diet I want to be fully compliant. I want to have a plan. I want to have measures. I want a new measuring cups!

This is the danger of modern shopping convenience at its finest. I find myself browsing through stainless steel measuring cups, glass measuring cups, and diagonal read measuring cups by OXO within a few keystrokes on my phone. My diet book is resting on my desk mostly forgotten for several minutes as I window shop Amazon. Thankfully, none of the measuring cups are more appealing than the $20 or $30 per set that I would drop on them. I did not quite make a resolution to stop buying things on impulse, but I am trying to generally stop doing that. 

Nothing goes into my shopping cart. I get back into reading the book. For lunch I can have a half sandwich with 1 ounce of lean ham, turkey, or chicken. I can top my half sandwich with  mustard, or light mayo. I am also allowed to stack my half sammie up with all the cucumber, lettuce, tomato (blech, no!), and other veggies I would like. I am thinking about how I can make sure my spinach doesn't have E.Colili as a secret surprise when I trip on the idea of measuring 1 ounce of  lean ham. 

There are 16 ounces in a pound. I am confident of that fact. Now, if my pound of ham came conveniently sliced in 16 equal pieces I wouldn't have to measure anything.  I am contemplating which measurement on a slicer likely yields up a 1 ounce portion and how much experimentation I am going to have to do with a very tolerant deli worker before I remember that I have a postage scale that neatly measures ounces. I can zero the scale with a piece of wax paper on an measure out a 2 ounce portion pretty easily. 

I make myself a full sandwich. I cut said sandwich in half. I store half for the next day's lunch. Problem solved. Wait. How can I keep half a sandwich fresh in the fridge without the bread getting all soggy and gross. I can obviously skip the mustard until right before I eat the thing, but who wants to eat a soggy or crusty day old half sandwich? Clearly, I need to consider storage containers. I am back to thumbing through Amazon before you can say ziploc baggie. 

I eventually find my way back to Just Tell Me What to Eat! and read through my first suggested supper. It is a fettuccini alfredo dish with broccoli (I have developed a taste for it) and shrimp (not happening.) I do not partake of seafood. I do not like the smell. I do not like the taste. I have an aversion to shellfish in particular. This will prove to be a problem. The book is based on a healthy Mediterranean diet. Fish features prominently. I read about the benefits of eating fish, fatty acids, heart and brain health, and try to imagine myself giving it a try. I actually gag. I feel sidelined because other than the fish this diet plan seems pretty doable. 

An hour or two worth of internet searches worth of research later I have a different outlook. It basically comes down to substituting other lean proteins. Read that as I am going to be eating a fair amount of chicken with these dishes. To further complicate matters the Mediterranean diet also includes quite a few nuts. I am very allergic. I thumb idly through Amazon browsing other diet book options, but I am not ready to abandon Just Tell Me What To Eat! just yet. There are 80 recipes and lots of very smart science in the book. My own tastes and genetic weaknesses should not prevent me from making use of quite a lot of the learning there. Also, this is the prep stage before kicking my plans into place. Even if I devour (ha ha) the book and opt to go a different direction I can still have quite a few beneficial takeaways that should help me be more healthy. 

More importantly, the solution to my nutritional woes is unlikely to be found in spending more money online. Sure, I could dedicate a few measuring cups of which there are already several in my kitchen to the cause. I could buy myself a food scale. Those things might help keep me interested and invested in the process, but they aren't necessary. Given the rates that diets fail for most people it probably would be wasted money. The scale might even become a mocking reminder of my failure that I would see in shame as I ate my next stuffed crust pepperoni pizza. Who needs that?

I win points with myself for self control and not making unnecessary purchases just because it is easy to do so. I am also pretty pleased that I didn't set myself a trap of needing a whole bunch of artifacts before getting into planning the start of this thing. In many ways I do not want to be over prepared and build in excuses and easy outs to fail. Cereal, half sandwiches, and pasta are all pretty doable with my current gear. 

What I noticed though is how much of a hold that online shopping in general and Amazon specifically has on my brain. In the 11 days of 2022 I have only made one impulse purchase. I bought myself a stainless steel Jorgmandur bracelet. Is there anything more unnecessary or frivolous? Yes, there absolutely is. Let's talk about Unfathomable, Descent Legends of the Dark, and the new version of HeroQuest I bought last year. That is at least $250 worth of board games which I lack the friends to play with. Let's not talk about the stacks of Magic cards and Dungeons and Dragons books I bought in 2021 which have gathered dust since I bought them. At least the bracelet has already made me happy for a few minutes that I have worn it. What? Jewelry can make a man feel pretty too! Don't you judge me. 

Having recently returned to enjoying Archery, I got out my bows and crossbow. I had to make a couple of value purchases mostly in the form of arrows and bolts. Ammunition is so important to the whole archery experience. Now that I have had a few practice sessions I am putting the majority of my arrows on target. 

I have much less practice with the crossbow. In fact, it took me putting three bolts (not true exactly, I shot the same one three times and fetched it after each near miss) down range to realize that my crossbow is missing its front sighting post. I have no clue how I am going to get the front post. I have no clue how it came off the crossbow, but I am not going to let that stop me. That is a later problem which will probably involve an archery shop professional offering to sell me a slightly better crossbow for much more money than I am willing to spin. To my credit, I haven't searched for crossbow sights on Amazon just yet. 

Besides, I do have a set of optics for the crossbow that I had removed. I am an iron sights kind of girl (also a seperate accounts kind of girl... do not know why that sounds better than boy but it does and I am secure), but after a dozen well grouped bolts on target without a front sight I am willing to believe that I could get even better results with the "scope." That had me thinking about sighting the scope in and how to get on target. 

I found myself on Amazon exploring a variety of cheap, Chinese-made arrowhead laser attachments. Most of them have lousy reviews. Still, being able to screw a laser into the end of a bolt and line that up with my optic sights could make for great accuracy. Even if I sighted it in at 15 yards for pinpoint accuracy and had to play with longer shots, it would be a worthwhile investment. Also most of them are brass cased. I am such a sucker for metals. 

Dad came in to chat  and found me contemplating lasers. He disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a variable diameter bore laser. He suggested it would rest in the channel of the crossbow well enough to allow me to sight in. I was skeptical and with a few seconds thought I pulled out a bolt which I had fired and it had lost two fletchings along with the arrowhead and shaft threads. I don't know what possessed me to keep a hollow bolt tube with a single fletching, but I was glad I did. The bore laser had a fitting that gripped the bolt well. 

I shut down Amazon and my laser search. I had my sighting solution. Now I just needed to figure out a stable sighting bench. I chastised myself for not investing more in my target and throwing range last year. Sure, I would likely have built the benches at an intermediate pistol range, but that would work great for initial sighting on the crossbow and I would have a set area to work on my Archery. 

I didn't chide myself too long before getting distracted in conversation with Dad. There are still too many unanswered questions in his mind about his wreck. He is planning to take the ride again and figures he wrecked somewhere right around the point where his odometer stopped reading. That would be 302 miles from the Weigels near the house. He knows the route he rode so he should be able to get pretty darn close to the wreck site by recreating the ride. I mostly hope he doesn't recreate the wreck. I understand wanting answers though. You cannot buy those on Amazon. 

Later that evening I found myself back on Amazon doing some window shopping for a sling for my crossbow. I don't ever see myself hunting. Still, getting a bow, a quiver of arrows, a quiver of bolts, and a crossbow out to my range is a lot to juggle. I found a sling I liked and dropped it in my cart. I thought about it for a second and tossed in a second one in colors that would match my new 410. 

That is where I paused. Could I use the slings? Sure. Did I really need them? No. My .410 Mossberg is wonderful and I enjoy shooting it, but at the moment I only have about 50 rounds worth of shot for it. It isn't as if I am going to be carrying it back and forth to the range. At minimum I could wait on the sling for it. 

I dropped them both in my save for later cart. I don't have any rifle slings laying about the house, but there also isn't any desperate need in getting one. I have more than enough stuff to keep me entertained. The likely outcome of ordering the sling for the crossbow is immediate regret followed by a small thrill opening it up and installing it. Then I will likely forget about it unless I am carrying the crossbow any distance or if it happens to impact the way I shoot. The sling on my muzzleloader certainly does. 

I have some vague things I would like to spend money on over the next year or two. I want to be set up to camp and go on some adventures. I want to fix up and expand the homestead including that shooting range, an axe throwing range, and a couple of horseshoe pits. I want a truck. I want a slightly stronger bow. I am never going to do any of those things if I keep myself spending $15 here and $40 there on things I do not need. 

That is where my new three day waiting period comes into play. When I really need something and have truly thought through the purchase, I will just make an order. When I want something, but there isn't a true need for it (which is most things at this point in my life) then it has to sit in the holding cell of the cart for three calendar days before I commit to buy it. Looking back on so many impulse buys of the recent past, I really think this would have saved me a bunch of money. I have an impulse buy problem. I need the cooling off period to let my more rational and frugal brain to kick in. 

The fun part of that is none of this is Amazon or any other online seller's fault. Caveat Emptor has been a thing for a few thousand years. Getting upset with these "evil empires" for making shopping so easy and fun is silly. I am the idiot who is addicted to the little endorphin rush from pressing Buy It Now. 

Breaking that cycle is an act of avoidance, systems of managing my behavior (3 day waiting period, baby!), and a bit of will power. I am successfully limiting my grocery shopping by doing it all online and not getting exposed to all those great sales in person. If I can figure out a way to stop falling in love with amazing deals on Steam and stockpiling a ton of video games I might reach some of my more worthwhile goals.