call me sham-wow

…because I hold water just about as well.Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous spring day in Minnesota, with a high of 64¬∞. Dan and I decided to take our puppy and ourselves on a walk around the neighborhood, along with every other dog owner in a 3 mile radius, apparently. Pearl made many friends along the way. About halfway into the walk I realized that my shoes were hurting quite a bit, which is odd, because these flats definitely fall under the ‘pretty good for walking and shoppping’ category of shoes that I own. This is where some ask, ‘why would you own a category of shoes that isn’t good for walking?!‘ and to them I say: because ‘cute’ has absolutely no correlative relationship to ‘functional’. Continuing on the walk, I started to get pretty uncomfortable. Come to think of it, each entire foot hurt, not just the shoe-rubbing parts.We finally returned home where I gratefully de-shoed and found – to my horror- that my feet were absolutely, undeniably, elephantastically HUGE. Not just that, but my whole pedial region was HUGE. The best description I can give is that it looked like my calves just kept going straight down, then made a 90¬∞ turn at the floor, extended another 6 inches or so, and terminated in a few now-under-sized toes. It was ridiculous.All this swollen foot business had me thinking – how much longer will my engagement ring fit? ::tug on ring:: Ring doesn’t budge. ::tug on ring harder:: Nothing. This leads to that panicky pit-of-my-stomach feeling as my mind floods with the stories I heard just this weekend of women who had to get their rings cut off because they swelled up so rapidly (I told you they rattled off every pregnancy horror story they could think of). I run for the dish soap, hand ice bath, and butter. It takes a little while, but the ring is eventually freed from my formerly-size-4 finger, resulting in much relief and increased blood flow. My finger thanks me, and I scowl at it in contempt.Today I am porting a size 6.5 band on my left hand ring finger (that I used to wear on my middle finger) so as to not appear young, pregnant, and unmarried. I already have concerns that people see me and think I’m some sort of child bride; a woman on the retreat was in utter shock to discover that I am in fact 23 years old, not 18.The solution to the foot problem is a little less clear cut. I flipped an (empty) trashcan upside down under my desk and have my feet elevated to almost knee level for the day, which was fun to explain to the CEO of my company when he swung by my cubicle to say hello this morning. Also, I found that the swelling had not subsided enough this morning for most of my work shoes to fit comfortably, so flip-flops it was. Thankfully, I work in a casual office, but the rest of the building is not as casual, and I felt a little strange in the elevator this morning in my jeans and flip-flops with a man in a suit and tie – who wasn’t wearing a stitch of green, by the way, but I resisted the urge to pinch.