March, man. March is brutal. For one thing: the weather. Last year at this time it was temperate and beautiful. Sandals were worn. Skirts.

This year? Rain and more rain, with high temperatures barely cracking 50 degrees.

So maybe I can blame the weather for the fact that I am totally lagging on my second Health Month.

Don’t let the points fool you: I’ve healed myself twice (and Not So was kind enough to heal me once as well) so technically I should be barely scraping by at around 5 points.

Surprisingly, it’s the little things that are catching me out – flossing, for example. Some nights it’s just too much, you know? Cooking dinner four nights a week – well, some weeks we’re doing a lot more takeout than others, is all I’m saying. (It’s a good thing I don’t have a ‘clean the house’ rule, too. Seriously.)

I’m not as motivated this month as I was last month and it shows. Shockingly, being sick for three weeks (and then having a sick kid) kind of takes it out of you! Not to mention the fact that we’re doing a huge lifestyle restructure, which is good – very good – but not unstressful.

There are a few things lurking on the plus side, though. Sugar, for example. Sticking to the three-days-a-week rule this month? A breeze.

And since I’ve been forcing myself to floss (almost) every night, my gums have been a lot happier. It’s like every dentist I’ve ever had knew what they were talking about! Crazy.

Maybe the trick is to not load up on rules. Incremental changes are the way to go. I’ll keep that in mind for next month, when I – oh, who am I kidding? I’m going to do what I always do: vastly over-estimate the amount of time and motivation I possess and then feel horrid when I don’t accomplish everything on my list.

Join me next month! It’ll be like a slow-mo train wreck. You know you want to.

Sooo-o, I managed to make it through February. Barely. Let’s take a look back, shall we?

I managed to follow my paltry two rules meticulously until the last three days of the last week. Screw it, I thought. I’m stressed and cranky and having a breakdown or whatever.* I can do better next month. So I had dessert. Two days worth of dessert.

But a weird thing happened: after two days of sugar, I didn’t want any more.

Which is so not a thing I ever thought I’d say.

Anyway, the stats:

You see that dip there at the end? That was me, stuffing my face with ice cream sandwiches and my first Snickers bar in a month. (And the climb on the very last day was me nursing a wicked sugar hangover.)

But! Despite falling off the wagon for the last couple of days, I still got my badge:

Isn’t it pretty and shiny?

I’m playing again this month; you can follow along here. Sign up for next month while you’re there! You can even be on my team. Maybe.

*What.

The entire concept behind Health Month is pretty excellent: make changes to your patterns and habits by making it into a game. You get to set rules and then win points every day for following them. You earn fruit, and if your Life Points get too low, you can replenish them (or someone else’s) by using your fruit. And then at the end of the month, if you’ve followed all your rules, you get a FourSquare badge.

I probably don’t have to tell you how intensely I covet the FourSquare badge.

Health Month was created by Buster Benson, the same guy behind the fantastic 750 Words, a site that encourages daily writing by creating challenges and giving badges as rewards. Health Month is a similar setup, only with lots more options. You can totally customize your goals – anything from “Sleep More” to “Exercise Daily” to “Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup.” There’s even a wheel you can spin to add to the random aspect: sometimes you get extra points, but occasionally you lose points. It’s all part of the fun!

Since I’m just starting out, this month’s rules are pretty basic: take a multivitamin every day (easy) and only allow myself added sugar 3 days per week (…not so easy). The idea is to make incremental changes rather than major lifestyle overhauls.

And, two weeks in, it seems to be working. Despite the fact that I crave cake like no one’s business, I am kicking ass at Health Month.

That said, next month I plan to really bump it up. It should be pretty fun to watch, so if you have any interest in making any changes to your habits or diet or whatever, you should sign up for next month too! Make sure you add me as a friend so we can keep track of each other’s progress, or throw fruit at each other, or whatever.

My WakeMate came in the mail yesterday.* What is a WakeMate, you ask? Well. It’s this thing, you see, and you wear it while you sleep, and in the morning you can see exactly how restful your sleep actually was. Also it keeps track of your sleep patterns and the idea is that it can tailor your wake-up time to your sleep cycle so you wake up feeling all chipper and refreshed.

Also, it’s very stylish and I think I will wear it during the day as an accessory.

(I kid.)

I was super excited to try it out since I wake up every morning feeling like I got run over by a truck. Sleep is supposed to be restful, right? I mean, I’m not a morning person under the best of circumstances, but between Not So’s insomnia and the kid leaping into bed with me every morning to snuggle (have I mentioned just how many elbows and knees he has?) I feel like I’m trying to sleep on an amusement park ride.

Anyway, so. I’ve tried tracking my sleep using things like YawnLog, but it’s hard to be objective about things like sleep. I’m pretty sure, for example, that the nights when I’m like I totally didn’t sleep AT ALL I probably did sleep, some. Maybe.

But the WakeMate will answer the question once and for all.

(Have I mentioned how much I love gadgets?)

I set up the app on my iPhone, which was pretty easy.

There was a certain amount of turning things on and off (and having to go to a specific page on the WakeMate site for instructions, since the little card that came with the device was somewhat exceptionally vague – probably because there are different instructions for each gadget you can sync it with) but once I got it all charged up and discovered on my phone’s Bluetooth I was ready to go.

Then I just had to, you know, sleep.

Here’s where I’d start talking about how my night went, but it would be a lot easier for you to just, you know, look at the chart:

Yes. In fact, I slept like crap. Sure, I was in bed for 8 hours and change, but it took me 23 minutes to fall asleep! And I woke up 24 times in the night! No wonder I feel like a zombie.

The device itself was remarkably unobtrusive. I barely noticed the wristband while I slept and there were no incidents of me yanking it off and throwing it across the room (which was a thing that happened to my retainer in high school, about which I apparently harbored extreme ill will).

I can’t wait to find out how I do tonight.

*Do I seriously have to mention every time I post about a product that I don’t do sponsored posts? Seriously. People do not give me things. And if they did, trust me, I would state that upfront.

Usually my New Year’s resolutions are sort of cribbed together at the last minute and comprised of various levels of wishful thinking. Not this year! This year, I’m taking All The Reasons 2010 Sucked (TM) and using them as a base for some make-my-life-better resolutions. Not unlike a roux. A roux of suck.

Life-related:

1. I will write for two hours every weekday.

2. I will EXERCISE. (Yes I know, this is on my list every year.) Not So got me a 5-class gift certificate to Barre 3, my absolute favorite exercise studio anywhere ever, which means I totally don’t have any excuse to slack. At least for a little while.

3. I will set up a budget and stick to it. 2010 (Which Sucked (TM)) was the year we went into crazy debt when business dried up, and though it would have sucked any way you slice it, having some backup in the form of savings would have kept me slightly more sane for the duration. I think. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe money problems will ALWAYS make me into a crazy person. Clearly the only solution is to become disgustingly wealthy.

Work-related:

1. No more friends as clients. Friends + work = not mixy. (This is not to say I don’t become friends with my clients. I love that! But the other way around is just a recipe for doom.)

2. No more working for the weekend. Loverboy may have rocked the red leather pants*, but I vow to save weekends for other things, like sleeping and hanging out with my husband and my kid. And crocheting, which I did way too little of in 2010.

3. No more working on the cheap. I read somewhere that designers should do projects for full price or for free – never at a discount. Initially I scoffed, but now I’m kind of thinking that article was onto something. I’ve got sort of a half-baked plan to set aside a certain number of hours for pro-bono stuff that maybe I’ll offer to worthy causes or something. Something.

4. I will hire some sort of accounting/bookkeeping/numbers person to deal with the stuff I don’t know how to deal with, i.e. anything related to taxes. DONE! Look at that, it’s barely the new year and I’ve already checked something off. Woot!

*Yes. I totally just made an early-80s Loverboy reference that no one under 30 will get. I AM OFFICIALLY OLD.

Yeah, so that whole ‘ulcer’ thing? Not so much. Gastro Doc and his Snaking Cameras of Doom went in and found…nothing. A perfect set of innards, with nary a blemish. A week later the blood work came back with the all-clear as well.

So, um…good?

I mean, good, obviously, but you know what would be better? If I didn’t still hurt so goddamn much. Seriously, figure out a) why I’m in so much pain every couple of weeks and b) how to make that not happen anymore, and I will be in a really fucking good mood. I promise.

(Actually I’m in a pretty good mood currently…but still.)

Probably the most difficult part of this whole ulcer thing – aside from the OW, of course – is the fact that I can’t have sugar.

Well, I CAN have sugar, technically – the doctor didn’t say anything about avoiding it except in a sort of roundabout way – but sugar gives me headaches, and I can’t take Advil anymore, so no headaches = good, yeah? (I can’t tell if treats make the ulcer worse, since currently anything I eat kind of makes it hurt.)

But as you all may be aware, I am a sugar addict. I just had to cancel my plans to join a group of friends tonight because we were all meeting for dessert at this fabulous dessert restaurant; I took one look at the menu and went I can’t be around this stuff without having something. Which…is good, right? Progress? Kind of like a newly-enwagoned alcoholic bowing out of an evening at the bar?

I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that the gastro doc (with whom I still need to make an appointment, gack) will give me antibiotics and then this whole thing will be done. And I can celebrate with dessert.