January on Shutting Down

Due to a nail in my car tire and an increasing workload, my weekend stay in San Diego turned into a 4-day stay.

I wore my Somnadent every night.  I feel like I get a lot more oxygen, but I'm still getting used to having weird pressure points on my canines.  The boyfriend says that the snoring is now nothing more than a purring kitten.  This is why I like him.  He has tact.

I took the vitamins I had every day.  When I got to my apartment tonight my other OrthoMolecular vitamins had arrived in the mail, so I will get to have the full wammy yet again.

Moving is getting seriously "real."  I need to be out of my apartment at the end of Febuary and I am traveling 12 days for work plus whatever trips back and forth to San Diego I need to make to get my goods transported.  I'm making real progress, but all the work travel was a bit of a *SURPRISE* so I feel very overwhelmed.

This brings me to Febuary's goals.  The Somnadent, a 22 ounce bottle of water and no snooze button.  They aren't hercules goals, but it's going to be a tough month just with life.

Meet the Somnadent: A February Habit Early

Last year while at the dental office getting my molars x-rayed, my slightly nerdy-cute dentist Dr. M popped in to come shoot the geek breeze with me.  Dr. M is cute in that boyish Alex P. Keaton way that makes you want to sit  all night with him in a late night coffee shop talking about everything from brain surgery to serious deep confessions.  If your college experience was anything like mine you may have even spent many a night having deep provoking conversations and soft, willowy never-fufilled crushes with various Dr. M's.

Dr. M's pretty, hipsta' young assistant also has a giant puppy-dog, totally understandable crush on Dr. M.  Whenever I start having brainaic conversations with Dr. M I can feel eyes of death on my neck.  It's not that she doesn't view me as a totally pleasant person, she just doesn't want the competition.

Of course, in my 30 plus years on this earth I've found that the Dr. M's of the world end up with pretty, impeccably educated, graceful, classy girls with names like Marilyn or Audrey, who have good hair, a nice cashmere collection and a closeted but resilient naughty streak.

Of course, Dr. M has a fiancé and I imagine together they have a variety of nice matching cashmere sweaters, a secret closet of school girl costumes and really I wish them well because the Dr. M's of the world deserve such loveliness.

Anyway, Dr. M mentioned to me that he had some new dental toys and asked if I was interested in playing with them…  For free.

So that night I took home a sleep monitor that used adhesive to stick to my forehead.  It talks you through some exercises, you go to sleep and take it back to the doctor the next day.

Though I didn't have apnea, I did snore like a mother trucker(I'm sure that's the clinical language) and he thought the Somnadent(a retainer that juts your chin forward could help).  The snoring was so bad that I woke myself up several times with the rattle of my own snoring.  Yup, I'm definitely a cashmere girl for sure.

While I didn't disagree with any of it the out of pocket expense(I think $1500 with the likelihood that insurance wouldn't cover it) was a little too rich for my blood.  I also lived alone and was only possibly rattling the ears of my creepy neighbor who lives in guesthouse behind my apartment.  I was kinda okay with that.

The year progressed and I ended up being healthier than planned for and I had a chunk of change in my   flexible spending account by the end of the year.  I also by the years end had a lovely boyfriend who can sleep through my snoring most of the time, but it makes me feel guilty that he might be losing his beauty sleep on account of my gargantuan, ginormous tonsils.

 Dr. M negotiated the cost with me and emptied out the piggy bank of my flexible spending account.  

I fitted the device at initial settings yesterday and slept surprisingly well.  My throat was a little dry(it props your mouth open a bit) and my jaw a little sore from holding an underbite all night but I did some serious dreaming and woke up feeling pretty refreshed.

I am in LA this week so my boyfriend has yet to witness what impact it has at it's minimally calibrated length.  Dr. M also told me that my throat is likely inflamed from all the trauma it has been through from snoring MY-ENTIRE-LIFE and as that heals it may also reduce snoring.

 So my next pretty little habit is to wear it every night of February.  There are some adjustments that he has to make slowly initally to increase the underbite.  After that, I can make the adjustments myself.

 Technically I should start the habit on Feb 1st.  But given that I'm only in LA for one more month, I need to start sooner to get his adjustments made.

I'll report back later after the weekend on what the boyfriend says of my sexy new contraption, but for the time being the deeper sleep is a good thing.

Call me classy.

5 Vitamins A Day

Great news!  For what it's worth most of the tummy trouble from my vitamins have subsided and I just feel really good with more energy!

I'm taking a few vitamins hand-selected by doctor from Ortho Molecular.  

For a pretty little change taking vitamins has been an important, though maybe not wildly blog-worthy practice.

The first Saturday of my new habit I was driving to San Diego with a carload of stuff to my new abode when I realized I had *forgotten* to take them.  I took a pitstop near Carlsbad, bought a coffee at a gas station and was fishing though my fuscia luggage to find the pills.

In the 20 days of this change I've missed two days.  1 was the first of January(I just forgot) and the other was last week when I had an all day meeting that ran from 8:00am to 10:00pm and I forgot again.

For the rules of "Pretty Little Changes," I'm considering any month with 85% or above compliance a win.  In practicality that means for a daily challenge I miss 3 or fewer days ;-)

Today I ran out of vitamins in my little organizer and when I went to refill I saw I was woefully low on one of the pills.  I immediately ordered a few more bottles from Amazon, but there may be a few days gap.

I won't count this as a failure of THIS habit(It's a failure of pre-planning for sure).  I'm taking the pills I can and taking the others as soon as they arrive.

Y! Inbox InboxZero

I thought it might be interesting to see a log of my progress on bringing Y! to InboxZero.

1/10/2014 63,207
1/11/2014 59,645
1/19/2014 27,434
1/21/2015 15,073

Some things to note.  The Web UI in Yahoo is flaky and unstable for large deletions.

1. I found going to Y! Classic allowed for me to delete 100 emails at a time and is what I owe to the progress I made.

I made inbox zero!

My work email is finally to Zero.  It started out in November with an ungodly multi-multi thousand number of messages.  Just now I hit zero.  This picture is not my mailbox(too private), but it's more or less what my mailbox looks like now.

Of course, I still have the cluster bombs of my 3 personal email boxes to deal with(those will likely be set to another month).  But this months goal was to prepare for Inbox Zero on my work box.

GOAL ACHIEVED.

Note: For my Y! Mailbox I have 64,000 unread emails alone.  That is a monster task.

5 Vitamins A Day

It is now January 10th of the new year.

I have successfully managed to take my vitamins for the past 9 days(I somehow forgot to take them on new years).

I realize that when I take the vitamins consistently I have more energy but also some minor gastro distress at day 5-6.  This is usually when I back off assuming the levels are too high and then forget to come back consistently.

This time I'll try to stick with it for a few more weeks(until the end of January) and see if the gastro side effects disappear.  If not, I'll call the doctor and recalibrate.

In past times I just felt like a failure for not complying.  Now I see that I stop complying due to minor side effects.  It's not all illogical, bad person, scatterbrained behavior, but it stems from a reason.  So really pushing this habit has been a good thing, because I see the pattern.

Unexpected Pro Tip

With my new position I found myself much in need of a new wardrobe.  I made a massive scores in post  Christmas sales.  I found a closet of clothes that make me roughly appear to be a slghtly conservative, respectable adult.

The best bargin was a $30.00 pair of Cole Haan Mary Janes.  Cole Haan's run $200.00 retail and can often be found sub $100.00 at places like DSW shoes and 6pm.com.  They have cushy nike insoles and classy outsoles.

And given my propensity to foot faucets I feel like I should wear shoe liners to avoid rapidly turning my pretty kicks into biological weapons.

Socks like Hue do the trick nicely.  They are lightweight cute and and hide under shoes.  But even the best shoe liners slip off my heel.  Sure the fancier ones with silicon backs help a little.  But its still a slidey annoying nightmare.  

While complaining to my bf he mentioned that barefoot runners use adhesive soles I might try.  I couldn't actually find what he meant and I also imagined that the adhesive soles were more sturdy foot protectors than absorbent wicking sockies.

I tried using double stick tape and 3M strips(I know, not a great idea) and both failed quickly and I had the heel of my socks wadded under my arches.

Then I remembered something..  Last year my planter fasciitis was acting up and I used some physical therapist grade spray skin adhesive to help give the tape wraps extra wham.

I sprayed it over my heel(it freezes like a mother, so be warned) and my sockies clung all day and peeled off at the end of the day.   A score!

My sockies are black and the stickum left a slight cast of black fuzz on my foot at the end of the day.  

The only downside for me is that I travel a lot and the smallest can is 4 ounces.  TSA allows no more than 3 ounces on carryon.  It seems an acceptable risk(the worst is it gets taken) and I usually have at least one checked bag.

Otherwise I can proudly say I have socks on my heels!

The Goal

Rather than have the *GIANT* new years resolution of doom, I thought I would try something new and break it down into 36 micro resolutions. 

My thought is that for most people what makes for happiness is a constellation of things.  Sunday brunch is wonderful because it's relaxed, usually has good coffee and typically comes with friends and/or family.  It's not just about the flapjacks.  I'm doing this experiment to see if life is the same way.

January's Micro Goals
1. Vitamins:
I take my regular medicine with the dutiful dedication of a saint.  But my doctor wants me to take a fistful of herbs and vitamins.  I'm less than superb about it.  Between being busy, not enjoying choking down the soft pack pills(more bioavailable) and forgetting...  I've been bad.  I'd like to finally just make it a habit.

2. Zero inbox preparation:
Before I can really do inbox zero(which all the execs I know try to do), I have to have a zero-ed inbox.  So this is a long process of sorting, filing and deleting.  I'm currently down from 3400 emails to 1500.

3. Game Plan for Move
Did I mention that in two short months I'm moving 100+ miles to settle in with my super awesome beau?  It's a complicated move because I'm trying to do the move myself, get rid of a lot of stuff and try my hand at Craigslist.  Here is a picture from my first attempt at an ad I put on last night. 

Turns out everyone and their mother is selling Ikea Poang chairs.  And my asking price of $60.00 is about standard for the market.  As such, nobody has sent me an email.  I just lowered the price to $40.00 and am hoping the best.  The Poang chair is clearly a requirement for anyone appointing their pad in Ikea.