Happy New Supplement

In late November my supply of Glucosamine tablets ran dry and I went to the pharmacy to re-supply.

The pills I had been sucking down daily prior to that date were small, sweetened things which I saw as a friend with a wink who made my fish oil tablets slightly more bearable. They were the velvet glove on the iron fist. Supplement candy. So unobtrusive that on the rare occasion they stuck in my throat they would apologise with a burst of vanilla freshness.

On that day when I resupplied my Glucosamine I was feeling regularly frugal. I found the same tablets I'd been supping on previously, and I found for four dollars cheaper another brand of Glucosamine in the same quantity. Four dollars saved across a 400 tablet container. Why, that's a 1c saving daily. Morning wood indeed.

And so on the first morning of my new stash of Glucosamine I opened the vessel to encounter Glucosamine tablets so large they might be used for a game of dominoes. It took me half a litre of water to swallow the first one. My esophagus acted like the recharging station of some off-brand robotic vacuum cleaner, rejecting any idea of coupling. There was a foul tasting battle of verticality. I eventually won, but not with enough ease that I could delay an inspection of the container to check just how many Glucosamine tablets I had left. 399. Which, by my late-Spring calculations meant that I would be finishing the last of these daily, salty biscuits precisely on January first, 2014. If I survived that long without choking. I understood then that my New Years Resolution had been decided for me.

Survive.

And that's when I realised.

Two-thousand-and-thirteen rhymes with Glucosamine.