Layers All Day - One to Nothin'

Have you guys ever heard of Raynaud’s disease? No? Well, I hadn’t either until a few short months ago. A day that now seems long, long ago because I drank wine in a bikini all day while floating on a giant blow up boat, and now I’m sitting inside my apartment watching my breath come out of my mouth as steam.

The sun was hot, but the water most certainly was not. Northern California doesn’t quite get that the whole point of having beautiful bodies of water everywhere is to be able to swim, splash and enjoy them. Nope, instead everywhere you dip your toes into freezes you down to your core. So on this fateful day, I was comfortably numb from the waist down before climbing onto the raft where a friend of mine so kindly pointed out the odd color of my feet. She diagnosed me with Raynaud’s after I explained that I spend all of the cold months with toes that feel like rocks in my shoes. She may not be a doctor, but according to the Internet, it’s where your arteries restrict blood circulation to your extremities resulting in the feeling of numbness and a white/yellow appearance. Yep, sounds about right.

The Internet also lovingly informed me that there is no cure except to not get cold. I guess I was kind of onto something by living in Florida for the first 23 years of my life, but now I need a strategy. There’s not much I can do when it comes to summer days on an ice cold lake, but when your heater breaks and your dog only wants to lay across your torso, you have to rely on layers.

Layering out here is essential, not because it actually gets cold (I mean when the thermometer goes under 60 INSIDE, I am cold, but not compared to places where it truly gets cold), but because it gets considerably less cold as the day goes by. When I wake up to a frozen tundra of an apartment and walk a mile in the sun to a train packed with candescent bodies, my toes are still frozen but the rest of me is sweaty.

Then, after the time change, it’s practically midnight by the time I leave the office and cross the bridge to get back home in the dead of winter. Which means my apartment is once again an igloo, which is why I emphatically said, “YAAAS” when Cuddl Duds offered to send me warm, cozy layers in stretchy materials. That’s where the leggings and two long sleeve tees worn in these photos came from, and I am into it.

They’re perfect for wearing under a grandpa sweater and beanie or paired with a leather jacket and ridiculously bright lipstick–but probably most importantly, they’re perfect for cuddling up on the couch and watching “Stranger Things.”

Check ’em out in action in this awkward montage below.

Sooo how much do you people who live in actual winter wonderlands hate me rn?

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