Swelling, Dieting And A New Rule

101 uses for hemorrhoid cream. A woman’s lot in life is that her body must endure the worst. From puberty to pregnancy to menopause, our bodies bloat and retract, heat up and cool down, and cramp in pain. Sometimes, our body parts become so sensitive we don’t want to be touched at all.

It’s a tough road, I’m telling you. And I haven’t even reached the second stage yet — pregnancy.

My beautiful young co-worker Melissa has, however. She’s on baby No. 2 — a little girl, yet to be named, due in September.

Now that she’s in her eighth month of pregnancy and she’s still at work, Melissa waddles around the office and we all “oooohhh” and “ahhhhh” and pat her tummy.

This pregnancy, she says, is much different from her first one. One of these differences came to a head the other day. When I walked past Melissa’s desk, I noticed she was typing with one hand while her other hand was sticking straight up in the air.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“No,” she pouted. “My wedding ring is stuck.”

Poor Melissa’s finger had puffed up (thanks to baby water weight) to the point where it was impossible to wiggle her finger out of her ring.

“I noticed it was getting tighter, but I never take off my ring, even to sleep,” she explained. Now, Melissa was past the point of no return. Her finger was so swollen that her wedding ring was cutting into the skin, leaving a painful indentation at the base of her finger.

Melissa had been looking up possible cures online. On one website she read that Windex might help. She tried that at home with no luck. She also tried soaking her finger in ice water, drenching it in baby oil and was now at her wits’ end. As I walked past her desk, she was trying yet another remedy: hemorrhoid cream.

Yes, it’s not just for hemorrhoids and reducing puffy circles around your eyes. Melissa had the cream slathered all over her ring finger and was also holding her hand up in the air, hoping to diminish the swelling. She had to have her hand up in the air a good 15 minutes, the computer website said.

Our co-worker Steve kept joking, “Will someone answer her question already?”

Though the humor eased Melissa’s frustration, in the end, while the cream did reduce the swelling, it wasn’t enough. She was forced to have the ring cut off her finger. Ahhh … the price of motherhood.

A burning desire for a hot dog. Speaking of a woman’s body … As I’ve gotten older, I have tried to maintain the figure I had as a 21-year-old.

Yeah, right. This has become an increasingly difficult task, considering a slowing metabolism, long hours working, and the required “naps” I need to make it to the gym in my old age.

Just kidding about that last one. But really, it has become a miniobsession of mine to make it back to my early 20s shape.

Because I have a little problem with restraint (as in, I can’t restrain myself from eating the cookies that keep mysteriously appearing on my cubicle ledge) I decided I’d try a “diet.”

This was my first attempt at any kind of diet with a name, and the reason I tried it was because a couple of my friends had also tried it as well. This particular regimen required two days of “fasting” to “cleanse” the body, followed by five more days of 400-calorie lunches and two meal supplement shakes a day. And then two more days of fasting at the end. As “snacks” you’re allowed six, what they call wafers, a day. These are chocolate-flavored circles about the size of a SweetTart that taste a bit like chalk. Mmmm…

Good grief, I’ve never missed food so much. About 10 hours into my first fasting day, the grass outside the MidWeek office started to look tasty. My diet “snacks” even started to taste good. Other things that never usually appeal to me started to look consumable, such as the new Taco Bell Crunch Wrap Supreme. Sebastian also mistakenly tuned in to a hot dog eating contest on TV, and I promise, I’ve never wanted to eat a hot dog so bad in my whole life. And I hate hot dogs!

The lesson I learned from my venture into diet land was this: I love food too much to punish myself by not eating what I want when I want it. That being said, there’s also no diet that can take the place of eating healthy and getting regular exercise. Gym, here I come … right after my nap.

An addendum to the rule. In MidWeek’s July 13 issue, I wrote about the new “Just 10 Minutes” rule. This rule states that if a man can devote just 10 minutes of listening time to his wife or girlfriend when she walks in the door at the end of her workday, she’ll feel special and cared for and will be happy for the rest of the evening.

I really think this rule can work, and I stand by my statements asserting such. However, it has come to my attention that there are a couple of clarifications to the Just 10 Minutes rule.

No. 1, your woman actually has to want to talk. There are some women who need 10 minutes of “down time” instead at the end of the day.

No. 2, the woman in this scenario, if she is the talking type, needs to know when to stop talking. If your man is giving you his undivided attention for 10 minutes, be kind to him as well, and keep your chatting to the allotted time. A couple of readers wrote me that they were afraid to open the flood gates and grant their gregarious females even 10 minutes because, they likely wouldn’t stop talking for an hour.

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