May I recommend
A warm bath.
This is a controversial one, because many of my friends (and my daughter) liken taking a bath to roiling around in hot, greasy water infused with your own dead skin cells and day filth.
I do think we’ve become hyper fixated on uber-hygiene… Until very recently we all slumped around in our seldom-washed pinafores and bloomers, covered in ringworm and fleas, while hacking our tuberculosis on one another. Trust me, you’ll get plenty clean in a bath.
My love of baths can be traced to childhood.
Growing up in a drafty, creaky farm house that was mostly insulated by Victorian broadsheets and mouse turds, winter was a chilly time. What is more, our house had zero water pressure, so a hot shower was actually a thin trickle spat down upon you by an uncaring shower head. Also, in a family of seven, the water that did eke its way through the faucet was often lukewarm at best.
The solution was a bath. There I could take my permanently chilled toes, icy fingertips and frozen ear tips and feel warm, supported and warm (did I mention warm?).
Not only do you warm up in a bath, but you can also loll. The modern world does not give one enough opportunities to loll. Maybe after a particularly heavy Thanksgiving dinner or a magically-errand-free Saturday morning one might have occasion to sink into a sofa or melt back into the sheets, but most of the time, one is expected to be upright and productive. The shower is the epitome of this efficient use of time… Water on, lather up, scrub, scrub — all while STANDING UP.
The bath says no to efficiency! No to antiseptic cleanliness! No to using leg, back and core muscles!
Instead, sink into a warm inviting pool of water, laced with epsom salts, brimming with perfumed bubbles and surrounded by candles! Rest your head on a bath pillow, and your mug of tea or glass of wine on a little wooden shelf thing that goes across the tub. Read your book! Look at your phone! Thumb through an ancient issue of O Magazine and discover what desk organizers O couldn’t live without in 2014! You need this information!
Feel your muscles relax, your stress melt away, and yes maybe a few dead skin cells slough off and float past you. Who cares! The world is a filthy, cruel and cold (and I mean, actually cold as well as metaphorically cold… that’s clear, right?) place. The bathtub is your warm, safe, warm (did I mention warm?) haven from it all.
Bath or shower? Sound off in the comments!
Article Roundup!
Why do we buy into the cult of overwork?
It’s time we acknowledge that older sisters are the backbone of society
Who was the mysterious woman buried in a pet cemetery
Invisible Ink: Inside the CIA’s Creative Writing Class
Artists on 20 ways to be be more creative
45 years ago, one kids’ book taught a generation to make bad decisions
My Life Cleanse: One Month in LA’s Cult of Betterness
Strangely Dramatic Reactions to Mundane Changes at Work
Book Stuff + Course stuff (!)
Critique Course
I’m thinking of offering a free webinar on the power and joy of Critique Groups, as well as how joining one can kickstart your writing, improve all your skills and give you the staying power to keep at it, even when you’re feeling discouraged.
Would anyone be interested in this? Let me know in the comments or send me an email… amytectorwrites@gmail.com
Three Book Giveaway!
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** So sorry my vast international readership, but due to postage reasons at my publishers, this contest is only open to residents of the U.S.A. **
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January 24- January 26th
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Honor the Dead
Eek - my publisher made a Tiktok for me. My daughter filmed the video and wants it known that she strongly objected to my leg warmers.
Buy my books!
TikTok
Woman who used to be a dancer
Why weekends feel different
The best of Sister Michael
Having lived in the Netherlands, can attest to this
Snoop narrating Planet Earth
The soft animal of your body
The pebbles are fighting again
I’m struggering
What’s the next question?
I literally gasped at one of these
How American stories sound to non-Americans
A reframe
I love this man
Oh, this made me nostalgic and sad
Okay, this also made me cry
I am very invested in this content. I want to find owls!
Oh my goodness!
This is a good plate
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Lol I made a mistake in comment it should have said 8 boys and 4 girls plus the parents.
I don't like baths. Growing up in a household with 14 people. 8 kids and 2 adults and no inside working bathroom until i was in grade 7. Our weekly bath consisted of a huge wash tub in the middle of the kitchen floor and many of us using the same water with warm water from stove ocassionally added.