Drink a Lot of Water Goal

The competitor: Water.

The goal: drink 64 oz. of it. Every. Freakin'. Day. For 30 freakin' days in a row.

The hopeful outcome: this whole healthy living stuff people are talking about...

The initial thoughts: I like water. I like to swim in it, shower in it*, occasionally drink some of it. I keep hearing that I should be drinking something like 8 times the amount that I normally drink, though. You would think this goal shouldn't be very daunting, but it is. I am not exaggerating when I say I sometimes go days without drinking any liquids except coffee and beer. Well, and sometimes pee-saturated pool water, but not on purpose.

* As Keene pointed out, this is not true. I don't like showering in it.  I don't like showering at all and grumble whenever I have to do it.

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Day 1:
This went really well. I was excited about my new goal. I have a 64 oz jug that I plan to fill up every morning and finish by nighttime. All during the day, I didn't have to walk allllll the way upstairs to get a glass of water. That is usually my first obstacle to water-drinking. Yes, I really am that lazy sometimes. So, all day, I drank from the jug instead. I peed about four times during the day. Is that normal? I mean, is that how often a normal water-drinking person pees? How do you find the time for it? I peed like six times throughout the night. I think the toilet must have been confused: "Kelli, are you drinking more beer than usual? But it's a Monday?" No, toilet, just water. Really.

Day 2:
This is a bit more slow-going. It's 10:30 am and I've only had, um, 4 ounces. I already have to pee again. I don't like this. I took a picture to show how I feel about this jug at the moment.

I started feeling nauseous in the afternoon, so I went to Starbucks to soothe my water-logged stomach.  By the time I left the office, the water was totally warm. But I drank it anyways because I'm hard-core like that and because I didn't think to put ice in it.  By 9pm, I chugged the rest so I could just be done with it already.  Goals are exhausting.  And having colorless pee is freaking me out.

Day 3:

Another slow day on the waterfront. I drank maybe half of it before leaving work. I arrived home, gathered up some toys to take to Kayden's dad's house, then rushed out the door.  And forgot my water jug.  Now, you may ask, "Why couldn't I just drink the remaining 32 ounces while at the restaurant that night?"  Because it doesn't work that way. Without the jug to remind me to drink water, I just couldn't psyche myself up to drink it.  Keene seems to be intrigued by this. He said, "Why not just refill a smaller bottle several times? Then you would always have cold water." Because. That's all. I would forget to refill it.  "Why not put more ice in it before heading home from work?"  Because I don't want to drink more than I have to.  I've purposely dumbed down this goal because anything more just wouldn't work.  Kind of sad, isn't it?

In any event, I resumed the drinking when I got home at 9:30. By 11:30, time was running out and I still had about 20 ounces left to drink.  I chugged it.  I felt like I might puke (though it would undoubtedly be completely colorless and tasteless).  But I finished it before midnight.  Which is important because drinking water after midnight might turn me into a gremlin.  (Easy there, '80s-movie-nerd, I know that's not accurate.)

And on the last side note, I woke up this morning and peed for like two minutes straight.  That was pretty cool, though horribly inconvenient.

Day 5:

I know, I skipped a day of updating but I really did finish the 64 oz in time.  But more importantly, today was so goddamn hot and I was outside from 8:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. that I drank 128 ounces.  Seriously.  No, seriously.  Twice the amount that I've had to forcibly, uh, force down my throat every other day this week.  So, based on that, I could probably skip tomorrow's exhausting water-drinking, but I won't.  Besides, I will be outside again all day tomorrow and will probably unwittingly drink just as much as today.  I expect by Monday, I'll resemble the little girl from The Ring where water just oozes out of her.  I suspect her pee is also pretty colorless by now.

Day 9:

I'm starting to think Keene is trying to keep me and the water jug apart.  Every day, he tries to find weaknesses in my water-drinking goal.  "Can I have some of your water?"  No, you cannot! This is my goal water jug!  Back off!  "I don't think you really need a full 64 oz. of water every day, since you sit in a dark, cold basement all day..."  Yes, I do!  If I want to be healthy, I can't keep relying on the dark, cold basement excuse.  "Why don't you put some ice in there?"  Because then I'd have to drink 65 ounces! "Why not dump the rest out and refill it with fresh water in the afternoon?"  Because I don't know why!  Just leave me alone!

Day 15:
Did you ever have to carry an egg-baby in middle school?  The idea was to have young teenagers "care for" an inanimate object in order to teach responsibility (and hopefully steer them away from sex altogether). If you went to a good school, you may have even gotten a doll that cries incessantly.  At my junior high, we got 10-pound sacks of flour. No, that's not accurate: we had to buy 10-pound sacks of flour.  At first, the novelty of the siftable baby was exciting: we drew faces on the bags, gave them names, set them on our desks in each class.  But within a week, the babies were back to being boring old sacks.  They wound up in backpacks and lockers all day.  Some were probably mixed with egg-babies in order to bake a cake.  As for my bag of flour, it became the main star in a hallway soccer match, resulting in its powdery guts dusted all over the walls and floor.

It should come as no surprise then that I became a teen mother.  Clearly the lesson was lost on me.  It probably is a surprise that my real-life kid has lasted this long with no severe injuries.

Oh yeah, the moral of the story is that novelties become boring fairly quickly.  Such as my 10-pound water jug.  While I had fun with it for the first week, now I'm just bored by it.  The water makes me feel bloated. I have actually gained three pounds over the last week and I'm certain it is because my guts have become waterlogged.  It's exhausting maintaining this drinking schedule.  I wake up nearly every morning at 5:30 with the desperate need to pee.  On the weekends, I forget about the jug altogether until around 4:00 p.m. when I begin chugging it in order to catch up.

Nevertheless, I've managed to finish the 64 ounces every day and I'm halfway done with this goal. So, hooray and all that.

Crash and burn:
I ruined my streak by going camping.  Around Day 20-ish, I went camping in the middle of the bear-infested woods.  I was distracted for much of the evening with driving, turning around, finding the campsite, then setting it up.  Around 11:30, I learned I still had about 16 ounces to go.  However, the outhouse was probably 100 feet away and 16 ounces would definitely make me have to pee twice.  Keep in mind: bear-infested woods, middle of the night.  I chose life.

As soon as I got home, I vowed to get right back on track with the water.  But then a vacation happened.  I forgot my water jug, but on the first day, I drank more than enough water anyways.  However, on the second day, I actually replaced all 64 ounces of water with beer.  After that, there was no hope of keeping up my goal all week.

So, now that I'm back, reunited with my water jug, I'm starting over with Round Two.