The tiny sniffles that The Fella and I both developed this week have blossomed into full-blown winter colds, giving me a chance to consider the little things that I believe (with a breezy disregard for rational thought) to have actual curative powers:

- hot soup, especially scalding-hot broth with chiles
- ginger ale and its blustery cousin, ginger beer
- buttered toast cut into triangular quarters
- anything eaten in bed from a tray
- NPR, especially “This American Life”
- curling up on the sofa with a fluffy blanket
- rosemary oil
- uncomfortably hot baths
- ghost stories