Last year I never even bought a calendar. This year I did, a Monet, and I'm loving it. I realized I had a perfect spot to hang it, on the kitchen door by the sink. For the past three weeks I have been forcing myself to drink water (not just guzzle coffee) by marking each cup drank on the calendar. I tried this a long time ago with tally marks. Boring. Gave it up. This time I was hit on the head with, draw something new everyday. Fun! Today it is 2-D numbers 1-8 (yesterday was 2-D stars, day before that was spheres, day before that was doughnuts). I can be detail crazy and do well to find advantages to that--tiny doodles excite me. Rediscovering my all-time favorite pen last year and stocking up on it (thanks, Target) is a major piece of this too.

This is saving me in some big way, I know it is. Without it I'd go days without drinking water, which is so stupid, THEY say. So far I've had almost no headaches and my bowel is, for the first time since infancy, easygoing (Oxford's antonym of, to, for (?) irritable). I was developing a social phobia of too often having to excuse myself so I could run home to have an attack on my own toilet, and feared leaving the house because of it. You can laugh or whatever. I really didn't want to be known as that girl. With water, I am "going" healthy and predictably.

(I've had headaches and stomach "issues" since I can remember. My mom took me to the eye doctor twice, growing up, and I was told I strain my 20/20 eyes too much. I had a lower GI to see what the diarrhea was all about, when I was 12, and they found nothing).

Water. Simple wins again.