The news that isn’t fit to print, but I am anyway

“Betsy, you’re waddling,” I was told last night as I walked into a restaurant for a friend’s baby shower. (The friend, btw, was not in attendance because she was at the hospital in labor. We celebrated in her absence.)

So it’s as I feared.

This is what I’ve become. Picture the waddle.

The sprained muscle I mentioned in my last post has only gotten worse, and the other side of my body is getting thrown off to compensate, thereby exasperating my pregnant-lady walk. At seven months, I should not have the pregnant-lady walk!

Not to mention the pain. I decided it was time to take action by rubbing cream on the affected area, you know, my “lower back.”

Oooh, the cooling sensation. Not bad. Why didn’t I do this sooner?

Wait? What’s happening now? Why is it burning? My gosh my as—er… lower back is on fire! How did a cream that started out cool turn my backside into a bunsen burner?!

Oh. Okay. It’s going away now. Cool again. Ahh…

And now we’re back to the pain.

All that remained of this experiment was the tingliness between the fingers that applied the cream and that nasty, pasty peppermint smell.

Also, last night I lost sleep thinking how, with the three-hour time change working against me, my being a severe night owl, and my inability to sleep in strange places, plus the excitement/nerves of what will be happening the next morning, there’s a good chance I won’t get any sleep.

Then I comforted myself thinking, “Well, if Jack Bauer can do it.”