So I consider myself rather efficient in keeping healthy. I try to eat right, exercise (maybe too much). Sometimes I have issues sleeping, but it always seems to be "enough" when I get it. Over the years I've adopted too many feminine beauty regimens to register myself on the male side of the gender spectrum.

However, over the past few weeks I've had some issues with my hands. Right now I have a job where I'm constantly washing my hands, and it has left some of my knuckles dry and cracked. The backs of my hands were mildly red. Sometimes they felt bad enough to where I didn't even feel like typing on a keyboard (writing). I was doing everything possible to take care of them; lotions, using less stringent soaps, etc. This just left me in a constant struggle of merely keeping on top of it, but never ahead of it.

Then my girlfriend got me to do something that I had balked at ever since we met each other. A few times a week she puts cocoa butter lotion (Vaseline) on her hands/feet, then covers them with cotton gloves/socks, right before bed. She's been doing it since I knew her in high school. I always thought it was kind of silly, even being the girly type of person I am. The way she explained the "science" behind it always seemed like overkill to me, as she put on lotion several times a day anyway. And I thought wearing gloves to bed was kind of weird.

Despite my thinking on the subject, I finally gave in. Last Friday night I tried her supposed magical cure. I used the same lotion, borrowed a pair of her gloves (yes I have small hands), and went to bed. The next morning, most of the redness was gone from my hands, and only one knuckle looked cracked. After the I-told-you-so's from her, and the regular morning routine, I actually felt good enough to sit down and write some. In fact, my hands felt so good that I tried the routine the whole weekend.

To my surprise, come Monday morning, my hands felt like silk. I didn't even want to go to work this past week, for fear that my hands would revert to the way they were before. Indeed, they did get dry again by Monday night. So I tried the regimen again, and Tuesday morning my hands were back to silky smooth. I decided to keep it up, and alternated days, even with my girlfriend suggesting to me that it was okay to do it every night. Truthfully, I felt a little strange doing it more than her as it was, so I refrained from doing it every night.

In the end, as of Friday night, I'm now hooked on this new regimen. I even started doing the same thing to my feet Friday, and they (like my hands) feel amazing now. Now I actually have a(nother) bedtime activity to share with my girlfriend. It totally worked for me, and I thought I'd share it here. Maybe it'll help someone else, or maybe I'm way behind the curve on it. Either way, color me one surprised silly gurl.