I’d like to put forth January for worst month of the year. February requires you to trudge through only 28 or so frigid days, with the promise of spring on the other side. December had parties and procrastination and excuses to suspend conventions like meals per day (third dinner) and portion size (a cocktail fit for Ina Garten). In January, you’re staring down 31 bleak days, the legal limit, with no hope of things turning around any time soon.
Ideally, I’d like to see January wiped off the calendar, but one must endure it. Over the years, from my berth in the Northeast, I’ve developed a survival guide to ensure I make it to Valentine’s Day.
Start with your hands, which I trust look terrible by this point. I categorize hand creams in progressive levels, similar to the DEFCON model of military readiness. We begin with Level 3: an everyday variety from the likes of Jergens or Lubriderm, moisturizing yet light enough to be swiftly absorbed into the hands, so you can apply it and then leave your home.
Then again, how many times are you actually leaving your home in January? Proceed to Level 2, where you have options: a neon green tub called O’Keeffe’s Working Hands, or a slightly darker green tube called Weleda Skin Food. The names signal we’re getting serious. They’re heavy enough to take some time to sink in, but not so incapacitating as to prevent you from scrolling fantasy flights to Miami.
The pinnacle, Level 1, can be applied only right before bed, or any time you get that January feeling of “It would take an actual DEFCON 1 situation [imminent or current nuclear war] to get me to leave this spot on my couch.” That’s the occasion for Eucerin Original Healing Cream, spackle for the skin. Apply to your hands, your elbows, probably not your feet — they’re simply too far gone. Wear socks until spring.
Do not move until the thick white goop recedes into your sad winter skin. It could be days. A joke about Go-Gurt from an old Ellen DeGeneres special comes to mind. “Was there a big mobility problem with yogurt before?” she asks, then mimes picking up the phone and receiving an invitation from a friend. Moments later, spirits falling, she remembers she’s just opened a traditional yogurt that must be eaten with a spoon. Having committed to the complex task at hand, she obviously can’t make the date.
Eucerin Original Healing Cream is the yogurt-with-a-spoon of January. As Ms. DeGeneres says, you’re in for the night. Apply when your skin is very dry, or when you have a social event you want an excuse to bail on.
The next part of my survival guide is medically ill advised, but I’ll tell you about it anyway. It starts with a space heater recommended by a trusted website, which worked well, except for the part when it shot out sparks in my kid’s room. Or did it? I willed myself to forget the maybe sparking — so chilly in there! — until my husband plugged it in one day, smelled the singe and observed the cord melting. Then all the lights in the house went out.
I imagine the blown circuit was for the best. While he trod down to our basement, I did the cost-benefit analysis: warmth versus risk of death. I came out somewhere in the middle. Now I use our other space heater only when I’m alone and in my office, so the danger is confined to me. My husband and children will live on, and they’ll be chillier for it.
Space heaters are conventional, though. My greatest achievement, while it lasted, was my heating pad. It felt so innovative — how many people use a heating pad for daily warmth, comfort and, if I’m being honest, some degree of companionship? I researched and ordered and returned until I found what I was looking for: a medical-grade device that probably shouldn’t be legal in the United States. This thing gets hot, especially if you remove the outer covering to reveal the inner layer emblazoned with a warning that says in all caps, “Never use pad without cover in place.” I ignored this.
I mainly wrapped the delicious heating pad around my hands. Four Januarys ago, I developed a condition called chilblains, which is when your fingers basically cease to function in response to cold. It’s grim. Your digits feel like ice. They swell, then split. Then things get really gross. My husband thought I must have accidentally shut my hand in a door. The dermatologist told me it was chronic.
But he didn’t know about the power of my 75-watt heating pad. I carried that thing around the house. When it started acting a little wonky I bought two more as an insurance policy, bracing for the inevitable day it would be banned domestically. My skin condition was in remission for two winters. I was sure I’d bested it.
I’m not sure why this January has done me in already. Was it our new puppy, who requires me to wrest off my mittens and face the elements approximately 800 times a day as we try, and fail, to house train her? Was it karma for flagrantly removing the heating pad’s outer cover?
Whatever the reason, the cold and swelling returned to my fingers. I ramped up use of my heating pad in turn. Simultaneously, I began to develop a spiderweb-like rash on my thighs. It lit up red in the shower. I connected the rash to the fact that the heating pad sits squarely on my lap while I’m treating my fingers, but I didn’t really care — until my husband, a physician, informed me I might be doing permanent damage.
It seemed I had given myself a new condition, the evocatively named toasted-skin syndrome. A different dermatologist (on Instagram this time) told me it was forever.
I unplugged the heating pad but couldn’t stop eyeing it. My fingers were so cold. I started to feel that there were only bad choices: Heat away the chilblains and give myself toasted-skin syndrome, or leave my fingers to wilt and preserve my milky thighs.
I made it two days before plugging the heating pad back in, cursing myself for throwing out the protective cover years ago.
A while back, the cartoonist Roz Chast drew a New Yorker cover that represents a January calendar. Each day contains a typical seasonal entry. “Lose keys in snow.” “Slip on ice.” “Still January.” (That last one’s on Jan. 3.)
Jan. 31 resembles a giant yellow sun, flagged with stars, labeled “Last day of January!” I framed the cover for my office, where the space heater’s still chugging.