So if you remember, I was told on Thursday, December 31 of last year that I needed to brush my teeth for 2 minutes twice daily. That seemed very manageable, plus a great idea for the new year. I was very meticulous about making sure that I was paying attention to all parts of my mouth, and dividing up my mouth into 8 sections — you know top/bottom, right/left, inside/outside — so that all parts got equal time. I found out from several coworkers that you can buy a very special electric toothbrush that will let you know when 30 seconds is up, and you can move onto the next section. I also went to the local home/bath type store, to find that for $179 you can buy an electric toothbrush that you can use with bluetooth if you want to print out reports and graphs etc for your brushing data. That seemed like a crazy amount of money for a toothbrush, plus I don’t need anything else to track in my life. Instead I decided to just keep using my electric toothbrush, and use the second hand of my watch to be sure I was brushing adequately. Turns out that I was brushing too hard — go figure. I ended up with sores in my inner mouth at the gum line, tearing up the skin inside my mouth. Bummer. I wanted to just eat ice cream to make my mouth feel better, but that didn’t seem like a good solution.

So what did I do to Shake It Up on Thursday? I decided that I had better cut back on how I was brushing! Too bad! Here I thought I was doing just great by starting a new habit, and it turns out that I was overly zealous about it. So OK, I had to modify my toothbrushing.

I also decided to wear a different outfit on Thursday. Last week, on Wednesday I wore a new pair of boots to work, and I was told by a fellow worker that I should have done that on a Thursday instead of a Wednesday! So last week I told her that I was shaking things up by doing something different on a Wednesday instead, but that didn’t seem like the right answer to her, so I wore them again this week.

These are not what my boots look like, but they sure are cute!!

We ended the evening by going to a new restaurant, and I ordered something really different — something I had not seem on a menu before. It was a salmon dish, so it wasn’t all that extraordinarily different for me, but it was prepared totally differently. Turned out to be a really yummy choice.

Did you do something different to Shake Up your routine this past week? Let us know!

🙂