Dem changes

“What’s it gonna be this year?” I asked myself as 2019 began. I never expect change: any changes are usually slight.
As one who survived a stroke 25 years ago — it was caused by a heart-defect long ago repaired —I try to bring order into my life.
My food intake is scheduled up the waazoo. I like it that way. Things are predictable. (Madness avoided.)
Take salmon for example. Years ago my wife and I made salmon-loaf every Wednesday. When canned pink salmon became hard-to-get, we switched to wild-caught salmon fillets.
That lasted even after my wife died, but then packaged wild-caught salmon fillets became hard-to-get, so I switched to wild-caught salmon patties — which I came to prefer. (Those patties also became Thursday.)
A few weeks ago my aquacise instructor and I discussed water intake. She leads my aquatic balance-training class in the Canandaigua YMCA’s swimming-pool.
“So what do you suggest?” I asked.
“Vitaminwater™,” she said. She cuts it half-water, half Vitaminwater, and I wasn’t aware it was a brand.
I looked for it at my supermarket, but not as a brand. Then I noticed my cleaning-lady had “Vitaminwater.” It’s a brand. I looked again, and found it. But numerous flavors were available, all with varying vitamins. Plus a zero-calories variant, which I wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. (Can you say “Aspartame?”)
All non-zero variants have a small amount of sugar, but not as much as soda-pop. Now I was looking at labels. The idea was to get off coffee, or more precisely the caffeine therein. I was making a pitcher of coffee every day, three or four cups, then drinking that all day. That was my water source.
Then two weeks ago I started to get a cold. For Valentine’s Day that aquacise instructor gave all in her class a small baggie containing a single packet of Emergen-C®.
Years ago I switched from sugary desserts to fresh fruit-in-season. I’d eat an entire grapefruit or orange for dessert. With all that vitamin-C I never was getting sick.
Emergen-C is 1,000 mg of vitamin-C. Perhaps I could fight off my flu-symptoms with that extra 1,000 mg of vitamin-C.
It worked! 75 years I’ve been on this planet, and never before have I skonked a cold. I went through an entire 10-packet box of Emergen-C in two days.
So now the coffee I made four days ago sits. I can’t drink it. I prefer Vitaminwater spiked with Emergen-C, warmed about the same as coffee. And I cut the Vitaminwater two water to one Vitaminwater.
That switch away from coffee is change number-one for 2019. It’s also extreme.
What do I do with two sacks of specialty coffee? I’m a child of Depression parents: “You better eat them brussels sprouts; children are starving in China!”

• My wife died of cancer April 17th, 2012.