When the Cold Comes...

I once lived in a doll factory. The first two floors were devoted to the production of dolls and the top two floors were renovated into huge loft spaces. It was in a cheerless part of town, what they refer to as an industrial park. The cold seemed colder and the shadows seemed longer. One of my then five roommates and I devised a way to combat the cold – hot chocolate.

It may not seem like anything new or special, but it was just what we needed to lift our spirits in those cold winter months. We had all the fixings: marshmallows, chocolate and other flavored liqueurs, and a wide array of mugs to chose from. The best part was that we would get all bundled up (it was expensive to heat the entire loft), make the hot chocolate, and sit around and talk for awhile. The other roommates would be holed up in their rooms or doing other things, but we would sit and talk for hours while we sipped our hot chocolate and fought away the winter blues.

Tonight I was a little blue. The quiet seemed a little too quiet – the cold a little too cold. Instead of moping about, I revived an old tradition. I used the mug painted by Gina Chalfant of White Swan Illuminations. She gave me this mug with Count Dracula painted on it at the Pittsburgh show on Halloween. I used a blend of chocolates recently unearthed from the move and dropped a marshmallow in from Whimsy and Spice (not shown). It's a small pleasure, but an important one when the cold comes.