September: The Monthly Fluent

Hello, hello everyone! The weather is officially getting colder here in Denver and it's time for another Monthly Fluent!

Watching: After cancelling Hulu this week (and right when I wanted to watch Love Thy Nader too) I decided to re-dedicated myself to HBO/Max/HBO Max/Whatever it's called now, and started watching The Sex Lives of College Girls for the first time! I know I'm late to the game (honestly I think the title deterred me from watching/made me feel creepy?) but the show is amazing. And you know me, I love shows with 4 main female characters in it (a la Sex and the City, Pretty Little Liars...) so as you watch the show you get to think of who you're most like (fwiw, I relate to Bela and Kimberly the most so far!)

Changing: Sleeping naked. I have been a 'sleep naked' person for almost a decade now, but when I was recently 'optimizing' my daily routine I realized that I stay in bed in the morning a lot longer because I'm putting off the first task of the day: getting out of bed (brrr, so cold) and putting clothes on. So this week I've gone to sleep wearing pajamas that could double as 'work from home loungewear' and it does make getting out of bed in the morning much easier.

Eating: Aussie Bites!! They have these at Costco, Walmart, etc, they're these little bites packed with seeds and raisins and oats, but also butter so they aren't one of the 'healthy bites' out there that taste like ass. These are so delicious, great when you want something small to eat before your morning coffee, and also loaded with Omega-3s which is normally a hard thing for me to work into my diet.

Raving about: Z biotics!! My god!! Have you guys used these before? They are expensive (a 3 pack is $36) but you take one before you start drinking and they allege that you won't have a hangover. I put it to the test last weekend when my friend and I saw Tate McRae and had no joke like...10 drinks throughout the night. The next morning we woke up without a hangover and went for a hike. So I've been the prophet of Z Biotics ever since. I just hope they one day are sold in bulk at Costco so they're cheaper, but as someone who has hangovers wreck an entire day for me, this was amazing.

Hacking: Work time blocks paired with wellness and vanity. I swallowed the hard pill recently that since I work from home, I spend most of my time in my home office. And there's a lot of work tasks I don't want to do, and a lot of 'vanity' things I "never have time for". Why not combine? I now schedule chunks of responding to emails for 20 minutes as I have my red light therapy mask on, or doing a face mask as I spend 20 minutes on my finances, painting my toenails and letting them dry as I edit an episode or doing research for an episode as the foot massager runs under my desk. It's a fun way to give yourself a little dopamine hit before you start on a task you're not excited for - and the added bonus is that you only have to work for as long as it takes your toes to dry/face mask to dry/etc.

Let me know what you've been using / drinking / wearing / learning about in September!