How to Cure a Hangover in ___ Easy Steps

So this morning I am a bit hungover, which is neither fashionable nor sexy, unless of course you are Lindsey Lohan, and then it's just fine. Don't change, Lindsey! We love your nasty coke-addled ways! Anyway, I have a bit of a hangover, which is totally my fault. I am a very, very stupid drinker, but while I am doing it, I think I'm being very smart/responsible. Take last night for instance. I went to my friend Lisa's party (more on that later), and I drank her delicious white wine sangria and ate myself into a rather Bacchian revelry. However, knowing that I had to drive home, and I was in my husband's car, and thus should not abandon it beside the Oakland street where I had parked it in order to take a cab, I stopped my drinking at a responsible time, opting to stuff my face with chocolate cake and cold carne asada instead. I made it home ok, which was a minor miracle, and then proceeded to be an idiot. See, when I got home, I was sneezing because of a mixture of smoke and cat hair inhalation, so I had to take a Claritin, and sometimes Claritin makes me giddy, so I decided to wash it down with beer. Lots of beer. So I basically stayed up, watching Hogan Knows Best and drinking by myself, until I just passed out/fell asleep. If that doesn't sound like a premise for a bad episode of Intervention, I don't know what does. So anyway, all things aside, I'm feeling gross today.

Or rather, I was feeling gross until I enacted my awesome hangover cure that I am going to write about here, and that will almost certainly make me a millionaire before nightfall! Below are the steps I used to make myself feel like a functioning member of society.

1. If you are hungover, endeavor to get up before everyone else in your family so that you can prepare yourself and look sorta alive before they get up. It's for the children, you see. This is relatively easy for me, as Matt and I are raising a couple of vampires whose skin sizzles if they manage to get out of bed before 10:30. My son, Sam, is especially prone to this. If you get up before everyone else does, you have the house to yourself for a little while, and you can operate with the blessed silence that so eludes a mother of two. Plus, the first thing you hear in the morning doesn't have to be "Why does Mommy smell like feet?" and the first thing you smell doesn't have to be urine soaked pajama cotton.

2. Get yourself to the bathroom. You stink, and your hair looks like shit. Congratulations. You now know what Kevin Federline woke up to for two years. Don't you think he should get a bit more money for his time and suffering? Run a bath, and put in two capfuls of Boots Mediterranean Bergamot Orange & Olive Bath Cream (I thought this would be a great spot for a link or a picture, but Target doesn't sell this online. It's now time for me to write my Congressman about this injustice). This stuff is awesome. First off, it smells really nice, but in a fresh, herby way, not a way that is going to make you revisit the mounds of carne asada you had the night before. It also makes bubbles. Bubbles make you clean. Even if your entire body is covered in cocaine and feces, and you look like a teenage prostitute from an old episode of Law and Order, this will make you clean. You will emerge smelling fresh, and this uplifts your mood. So instead of wishing that the entire Hogan family would be wiped out in a catastrophic, Miami bound tsunami, you will only consider them mildly annoying. See how that works?

3. Prepare two important items: a cold, wet wash cloth for your head, and a stack of magazines. The wash cloth helps with the ensuing headache, plus, if you're like me and run your bath water at near boiling temperatures, it will cool you down. For magazines, I like Real Simple because it is wholesome and the pictures are pretty. It kind of eases me back into my nice, debauchery free life. However, if you're still feeling a bit dirty, you have to have Cosmo. And you know you have an old copy somewhere. Everyone does.

4. Get in the tub, and soak until you get pruney. Watch the nastiness go down the drain. Stay where you are. If worse comes to worst and you have to puke, you're closer to the toilet in the bath than you are anywhere else.

5. Get out and dry off. Coat yourself in some kind of body butter. Again, this is just about bringing yourself back to life. Try to pick one that is the opposite of whatever you drank the night before. For example, since I drank about half of Lisa's pitcher of white wine sangria, a fruity, light beverage, I coated myself in The Body Shop's Coconut Body Butter, a rich, softening cream. This distanced me from my night-time activities, and made me smell good.

6. Put on something comfortable and wholesome looking. You'll feel better if no one is asking you about the night before. Put that out of their minds. I am wearing yoga pants with a white lace trimmed Banana Republic t-shirt. It's so sweet! I could be Little Bo Peep who lost her sheep while drinking with the boy shepherds!

Ok, that's all I can think of, and that's all I've actually done today. I still feel a bit crappy, but it could be worse. I could look like Linda Hogan. No matter how drunk I am, that woman just gets uglier and uglier.

And if you were at the party last night and managed to make it here after Lisa drunkenly advised everyone to go to "Morgan's blog called Cult of the Black Hole," congratulations. You're obviously very dedicated to reading crap. Also, you have too much time on your hands. Want to come over here and clean my living room? It's nasty, and I've got some Guitar Hero to deal with.

Finally, thanks to Allie at My Wardrobe Today (if that link doesn't work, just try to overlook it. I'm hungover. Don't judge.) who linked me to her wonderful site. I get a ton of inspiration from Allie, so to be linked there is a huge honor. When I read her comment this morning, I seriously got all choked up. Again, I'm hungover. Don't judge.