Winter Antidote No. 1
Today is the reason people hate winter. The world has turned depressing shade of gray-brown and the finest tree branches are entirely encased in ice. Christmas trees splay abandoned, curbside, and the precipitation falling from a sky of doom and gloom is what weather forecasters benignly call a “wintery mix”: it’s too wet to be snow, too icy to be rain. Approaching a corner, one plots how to circumnavigate an icy puddle of indeterminate depth the way one strategized during a game of Oregon Trail how to cross a river. Should we ford it? Float? I helped a woman with a heavy stroller cross one such body of water and saved her from what looked like a near nervous breakdown. “You are a Good Samaritan,” she said. Nonsense––you see a lady juggling two kids, an umbrella, pending expletives, and there’s no choice but to help. In weather like this, the choices are stick together or turn against each other.
And so: I dedicate this weather-beaten Tuesday following a heavenly holiday weekend to our resistance of the bleak midwinter. First up, the bath product that is easy on the pocket and with which I am newly obsessed. I took two baths yesterday, not because I was unprecedentedly begrimed, but because this “bath elixir” is so divinely calming. Too often, inexpensive bath products smell like a gagingly artificial bouquets of cloyingly sweet fruits and flowers. Not so here. Something somewhat romantically called Iceland Moss soothes skin and relaxes tired muscles, and a restrained pour of the molasses-thick gel creates rich bubbles with better-than-average staying power. I especially like the amber glass bottle reminiscent of an old school apothecary. All this delight for $9.99 (or less) is a happy find, indeed, slush and snow or no. We need all the help we can get.



































