The Cycle of Life

One of the things I learned in vet school is that everything has a life cycle. Some things are pretty simple (egg, fetus, puppy, dog, really really old dog, ancient blind arthritic dog, and eventually back around to puppy maybe someday), and other things are fairly complicated (tapeworm egg ingested by flea, flea ingested by cat, tapeworm hatches in cat, tapeworm eggs come out the other end of the cat and disgust the owners, etc).

Even inanimate things can have a life cycle. Let's take exercise equipment, for example:

1) Determination: yeah, that's the easy part. You look at your gut and you realize that it isn't going to go away on its own. Sure, you could exercise without equipment (or even with the stuff you already own), but maybe the new stationary bike/elliptical/nordic ski track/etc. will make it more fun, which is important because we all agree that exercise sucks.

2) Acquisition: let's face it, most people get their exercise equipment second-hand, because there are so many people looking to get rid of it, either because they need to make space for the next item, or because it reminds them of the broken exercise vows, and it's easier to get rid of the reminder than it is to exercise.

3) Work out: This is the shortest part of the life cycle.

4) Dust gathering: This is almost always the longest part of the life cycle.

5) Relinquishment: This is the acquisition phase for someone else. If you're lucky, you have a friend or relative that is looking for that particular item you own, and you can claim that you can loan it to them "just for a while". Then you can conveniently forget about it for at least six months. If you aren't lucky, you may have to post it on Craig's list, which is the ultimate shame.

After that you are free to try again.

So, yeah, my parents were in town this weekend and I temporarily unloaded the exercise bike on my brother so that my mom could use it. She was worried that I would need it, but, you know, I still have the elliptical...