Prenatal vitamins are good for nail and hair growth.I don’t know what is in the suckers but they really helped me.Beware, they give some people gas in which case no one will come close enough to see the short nails anyway.

I Have The Opposite Problem — Mine Grow Too Fast

Thanks for the tip!Pre-natal vitamins were far and away the most suggested solution for weak nails.Other suggestions appear below; those I received more than once get a leetle star:

Take a regular multivitamin
Sally Hansen’s Triple Strength
Sally Hansen’s Beyond Protein Nail Strengthener
Sally Hansen’s Nail Growth Miracle
Get more protein in your diet
Lavender
Nail Envy by OPI*
Nail Optimizer by OPI
Gel nails
Give it up and invest in acrylics*
Mystic Nails
Get a silk wrap
Get a French manicure
Cod liver oil capsules
Just keep them short and polish them in a dark color*
Drinking a concoction of gelatin and water
Have your thyroid checked*
ProStrong
Nailtiques Formula 2*
Broadway Nails Glue-on Nail Kit
Silicea, or another silica supplement
Massage with almond oil*
Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream
Dr. LeWinn’s Private Formula Revitanail
Hair, Skin & Nails vitamins*
Folic acid supplements
Biotin supplements*

Dear Sars,

My husband and I are friends with a couple, Stacy and Roger. We see them
socially one or twice a week. They have been together for about five years.
Stacy is very attractive, though significantly overweight. (She buys an
extra plane ticket when she travels, et cetera.) She is a successful attorney, and
very well-off. About six months ago, Roger moved in to Stacy’s house, and
everyone, especially Stacy, thought a proposal was imminent.

Two weeks ago,
Roger told my husband that he had hoped to propose to Stacy on Christmas
Day, but only if she has reached her goal weight. Stacy has no idea about
any of this, she thinks he has been putting her off for financial reasons.
While she’s not happy with her weight, she’s not actively trying to lose
it, she is busy with work and social commitments, and it’s a low priority
for her. She is incredibly attractive regardless of her weight, and is
whip-smart and funny.Roger told my husband he is disgusted by her and
embarrassed to be seen with her (he did not mention any health concerns) and
couldn’t propose to her if she still looks like she does now. When my
husband asked why he was still with her if he’s that grossed out he said,
“I have nowhere else to live.”

I am worried that my dear friend will end up losing weight, marrying this
guy, and then what? She gains weight again and they get a divorce? Or
she’ll hang out for five more years, waiting for him to pop the question.
Telling her what my husband told me is out of the question, I made a firm
commitment not to betray his confidence. But I feel some kind of obligation
to prevent her from marrying Roger, or at least make sure she’s going in
with her eyes open. He’s not exactly a great catch, he’s considerably
older, not attractive, a mooch, a racist, a bossy know-it-all, and he
drinks too much. When I thought he really loved my friend, I looked past
all that because she loves him, and she’s happy.

Should I continue to look
the other way, or is there a way to help her out? I believe that I would
want to know the truth if I were in her shoes, but I fear that I have poor
perspective, as my ex-husband used my own weight gain as justification for
infidelity. Where do I draw the line between helping a friend and minding
my own business?

Speak up or butt out?

I’m a little confused — you said you wouldn’t betray whose confidence, Roger’s or your husband’s?Because it’s one thing if your husband doesn’t want his cover blown, but I don’t know that you owe Roger anything.

Regardless, I think you have to put yourself in Stacy’s shoes and ask yourself whether you would want to know this.And if it’s your husband’s secret you’re keeping and not Roger’s, I think you have to make it clear to him that you’ll sit on it for a while, and see how the situation develops, for his sake — but that she’s your friend, and Roger’s using her and making a fool of her.

I’m not trying to bag on your husband, but his motivations here may be more about what’s comfortable for him — he doesn’t want to deal with the drama if Stacy finds out what Roger said to him.And I understand that instinct, but the bottom line is that Stacy thinks she’s in a real relationship, and she isn’t.If Roger isn’t attracted to her at her current weight, well, okay.We can’t help what we like and don’t like.But if the stated goal on both their parts is to get married, he should be able to speak to her about that somehow, not act like she’s 1) too fragile to hear the truth and 2) not worth treating with respect and forthrightness because she’s fat.

Ideally, one of you puts this to Roger, sugar-free, and strongly suggests that if he can’t speak frankly to Stacy about his issues, one of you will do it for him — and then do it.We don’t live in an ideal world, of course; you’ll have to see if there’s some way around these promises of secrecy that don’t get you in dutch with your husband.

I was in an analog of your situation once, and it sucks, I know.I wound up telling, and my then-boyfriend was not happy about it, but I thought my friend should have the information we had — I thought, in her position, I’d want to know.It worked itself out, but at the time, it was just an impossible sitch, so I just went with my gut (if you’ll pardon the expression).Follow your instincts.

Dear Sars,

I have a problem that I don’t know how to share with the other people in my life because it makes me feel like I must be some kind of crazy and I don’t want them to look at me the way I’ve begun to look at myself.

About a month ago, my best friend from college sent me an email that basically said that I was a bad friend and had treated her very poorly.She claimed that she’s been mad at me for a year, and that I “hurt” her (she was not more specific than that and I have no idea what she is talking about).She also said some hurtful things about how she almost didn’t “want to bother” coming to my wedding last summer, which I never knew — she was a bridesmaid of mine.I immediately apologized and asked if we could talk things out sometime, but she hasn’t responded to me since then.

We live in different states and looking back at our friendship, she’s always been one of those people who is very self-involved.She responded to news about my engagement and wedding by saying “no one will ever love/marry me” until I felt guilty for being happy, and she only really pays attention to me when things aren’t going well for her in her local life.I guess I point that out because I know now that I’m better off without someone who would choose to handle this situation in the most dramatic and childish way possible, instead of coming to me like an adult (we are both 25).I’ve been sad about it but for the most part optimistic.The thing is, I think that all the stress over this situation has led to my real problem.

A week ago I found a profile on Friendster of one of my old high school friends.This girl and I were very close, until rumors and high school drama/gossip got between us.She ended the friendship believing I had done some awful things and at the time I was just pissed that she wrongly assumed I had actually done them.I hadn’t even thought about this girl at all since high school, but ever since I found her profile I can’t stop thinking about how much I want her to know that I wasn’t the awful person that she thought I was.I can’t even believe that I thought about it at all, but at this point it’s almost all I think about.I just want so badly for her to hear my side of the story…the story that happened SEVEN years ago!I know she probably doesn’t care, I just can’t help but feel as though it would make me feel better to get the truth out — seeing as how the only person who ever heard my side of it was my husband (he was my boyfriend at the time).

Okay before you say it, I know that this is probably some sort of ex-best-friend transference and I know that I just have to forget about high school girl the way I’m forgetting about college girl.But in my head, I just can’t.I don’t know how to forget about it.So my question is, is there any way that telling her my side of this high school drama isn’t the most psychotic thing ever?And also, if it really is the most psychotic thing ever, how do I go about getting over this friendship that I thought I had gotten over seven years ago?

Thanks for listening,
Feeling Crazy

It is very difficult to get to that zen point with your own sense of self where you don’t particularly care about this kind of thing.People believe what they want to believe, and you can’t really control it and shouldn’t spend too much time or emotional energy trying.But it’s easy to say those things, and much harder to feel them, to really believe them instead of just knowing kind of abstractly that they’re true.

So, give yourself a break first and foremost, because knowing that people are shit-talking you using inaccurate information is extremely frustrating.

But take a look at your frustration, too, because: who gives a crap?Why does she still give a crap?It was high school, and most of us left those grudges in the road sometime during our freshman year of college, because they just didn’t matter anymore — even if you were the ostensible “victim” in a situation, it’s like, that was another life, so just learn something from it and move on.In other words, put it in perspective: you call yourself “psychotic” for wanting to set the record straight, but who’s really the nutball here — you, or the girl who’s still picking a scab from the ’90s?

Who’s really the nutball here — you, or a woman who would stand up in your wedding while evidently hating your guts, who would then tell you that, and who won’t discuss it further?

I think that, at least in part, you’re worried that the reactions of these women to you says something about you.You’re afraid, deep down, that they’re right — that you’re a scabrous bitch and shitty friend.And of course they’re not (I…assume; if you’re horribly toxic, keep it to yourself, it ruins my flow), but you see a trend and it makes you anxious.

And there is a trend, in fact — your tendency to gravitate towards self-obsessed, neurotic women as friends, and to then let their behavior define who you are for you.”Getting over” a friendship break-up takes time, just as a romantic one does, but I think you can help yourself to feel better about things by taking a look at the friends from your past that aren’t friends anymore, at what happened between you and at what those friends have in common with each other.

And don’t go back to her Friendster page.

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