Chapped lips. I spent the whole day trying to soothe the worst case of chapped lips I’ve had in recent memory.

I wasn’t sure what to do, because I don’t usually get chapped lips, and when I do I’m conveniently close to the teensy little jar of Carmex I keep by my bedside, but not today. Today I was at work all day, and as if that didn’t suck enough all by itself, my chapped lips didn’t start to really hurt until after my mid-morning break when it was too late to run to the pharmacy up the road for some Carmex or even a tube of waxy lip balm.

Luckily, and I use that word very reluctantly, I keep a jar of Vaseline in my desk drawer because my hands are permanently chapped from the beginning of October until the end of April. I dabbed the tip of my pinky in the jar, rubbed it against the palm of my hand to get most of it off, then gingerly swiped my finger just once across my lips. And spent the rest of the morning spitting Vaseline on my computer monitor. Yuck!

Weird thing was, it worked so well I forgot to stop at the pharmacy on my lunchtime walk to pick up something a bit more palatable.

I’m okay now. As soon as I got home I went straight to the bedroom, twirled the screw top off the pot of Carmex and slathered it on with a trowel. The whole world smells vaguely like cold medicine, but in a good way.