I'm sure you're saying my subject is so last month. A New Year's thing which after all is almost a month and a half in the past already. Well, for procrastinators like me, Feb. 11th is still within striking distance of the New Year. Actually I turned over some of these new leaves right around the first and I'm just now writing about them. I mean, I had to wait long enough to see if some of these changes would actually stick.
Now, I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions. In fact I'm not sure I ever have. This year is probably the closest I've ever come to it. I always took very seriously the verse in the Bible that says something like it being better not to vow a vow, than to vow one and not to pay. I always was strong on holding to the better way of doing things.
And to be honest about it, real super-disciplined people make me kind of nervous. They have their lives all planned out just like clockwork. Then if something unexpected happens it's like throwing a wrench in the gears. Me and my kind, we expect the unexpected. The Super-D's can be slaves to their goals and schedules. Me and my kind, we're flexible. If the wind blows hard out of the west, we try to find something worthwhile to do going east. Plus we take time to enjoy listening to the birds and tucking in a lovely sunset.
Sometimes it's almost hilarious being around these people. I ought to know as I married one. Just a day or two before Mary's surgery she was bemoaning the fact to me that she didn't have everything done that she wanted to do before being laid up for awhile. I asked her (completely in jest) if there was a drawer somewhere that needed cleaning out yet. She said that actually the pencil and pen drawer was "on her list" and she hadn't got that done. I didn't know whether to laugh uproariously or like the publican, beat on my chest and say "God be merciful to me."
All that aside, along about the middle of December I made the decision to make some changes in a few areas related to diet. One being not drinking so many sodas. Now my love affair with soft drinks goes back many years. It took very little in the way of a celebration to bring on the sodas and the ice cream and the chips. I mean something as simple as mowing the church grass was plenty good cause. Not to mention our big annual campout down on the bluff overlooking the swimming hole on Seneca creek. Back then they came in the 16 oz. glass bottles and we called them "drinks". Or in the local southern venacular "dranks". As in "Hits so hot taday ah thank ah maght stop by the stowa and geht mey a drank". We started calling them "sodas" after we started going to school with the blacks when the schools desegregated the year I went to the eight grade. Now yall yankees and midwesterners call it "pop", I realize, but we would never stoop to that level here in civilized country..
But I'm getting sidetracked...... A year or two ago I did decide to cut back and only have my Dr. Pepper on special occasions, let's say like lunch. But that still adds up to somewhere around one a day, depending on how many lunches you have. I do have a strong affinity to lunch and am quite a big fan of it. In fact, my one and only wise saying that is original with me mentions it. It goes like this, "When in doubt, eat lunch." It's been something that has served me well over my whole career.
And the chips. I've rarely met a chip that I didn't get along famously with. About the only ones I would bypass are maybe the salt and vinegar and the jalapeno flavored ones. So what I'm saying is that every day in my lunch I had my Dr. Pepper and my chips. And it was starting to bother me, this craving I had for Dr. Pepper and not to mention the empty calories.
So my decision was (and I mention this to Mary, seeing as she usually packs my lunch) to exchange the soda for grape juice and instead of the chips, eat a salad. I told her a week or two in advance, so she would be sure to have the stuff on hand when the first of the year came around. I don't think she really believed I would do it. What is it about these disciplined types; they seem to doubt that me and my type can actually take ahold on something when the time seems right??
So how's it going?? Great! I imagined several weeks of painful withdrawal. Now, I haven't gone so far as being a complete soda teetotaler. I still drink one on "special occasions", like eating out or a good pizza supper. But really it's going well. I did take notice that if you put enough dressing on the salad to make it slide nicely you get enough calories to almost make up for the chips that you did without. I've always been a ranch dressing man; it was the first dressing I ever tried. I liked it so I never tried anything else. Mary showed me that light catalina has about a third the calories of ranch so I've been using that.
Which brings me to my next problem. What am I to do with my newly developing catalina craving???
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