dopey new year

I'm chock full o'hyoscyamine which means I'll ring in the new year sleepy, oh so sleepy. I've been meaning to post my resolution before now but didn't get around to it. Right now A____'s out visiting a friend, to return in a while with chinese food (which means more drugs for me but mmmm....beef on a stick!) so this seems like as good a time as any for a new year's post, scattered and doped as I may be.

As I mentioned last year, I am keeping my resolutions very simple these days. Cut and dry. No grand "going to change my luck" or emotionally grow shit. No, because things go bad - they invariably do (that's not cynicism, things invariably go right too but we notice the bad so much more) - and then I get all superstitious about having brought the bad on myself. Then I feel stupid for feeling superstitious like that. Then I feel neurotic. Then I go and blog about it and it's like neurotic at 11.

So my resolution this year is to drink more water. Or, well, fluid which doesn't dehydrate me.

The resolution is in fact related to how I will spend this new year's eve since while most of the meds I take on any given day have a dehydrating effect, the hyoscyamine is right up there as the worst culprit of the bunch. I can't just blame the drugs though. Even since my much younger adulthood, I've always been one of those people who doesn't drink enough water. I have historically drank far too much coffee - a friend and I could go through two pots of dark roast, then have double espresso drinks in the evening and end the night over bottomless cups at the Fleetwood Diner. Although I have stopped that, these days I drink what is probably a somewhat rather unhealthy volume of coffee tempered with the occasional ginger ale - a concession to realizing I don't feel well anymore when I'm on a continuous caffeine drip regimen. Talking over cigarettes and drinking coffee might seem to be the perfect setting for the counter culture existence, but it loses its romance when you find that some post 30 body shut down means coffee past 3 PM makes you super cranky, tweaked, and not even remotely conversational.

Trying to find out how much fluid one should get a day, however, has not turned out to be as simple as I thought it should be. It seems there's more than one approach to determining an ideal fluid intake. Moreover, the entire issue of fluid intake recommendations apparently is a contested issue. What's a medication dehydrated, intestinally malabsorbing, coffee swilling woman to do? Ask my doctor I suppose. No appointments in the near future, but when I see her next I'll certainly ask. In the meantime, I think I'll go with the conservative "replacement approach" to my resolution.

As for getting something other than just a high hydration level at the cost of rock bottom sodium levels (yes, I know my sodium level...chalk it up under "neurotic" if you just can't imagine haltingly walking a few yards in my orthopedic gimp-girl shoes) I suppose there's always gatorade ("It's got electrolytes!"). I started typing it as "gagorade", which sums up my sentiments on the beverage nicely. Nah. I just can't do it. More water is about the best I'm going to get until there is a tastier option. I'll leave the electrolytes to bananas oh and the tons of salt I now feel free to dump on my food.

Ok well that's it for tonight. I'm pooped. Gonna go lie on the couch and read.

Happy New Year!