Making Yourself Feel Better: A Tutorial

If ever you should find yourself about to move approximately 10,000 miles away – a unique situation that will undoubtedly involve a lot of tears, cursing, sitting on overstuffed suitcases trying to get them to close and a frantic attempt to drink that last bottle of Veuve in the fridge before the airport car arrives at 4am – take heart: it will get better. You'll cry a bit as you turn off the lights to your empty apartment, and as you speed past the rows of palm trees en route to the airport, and when you step onto the plane. You'll still feel a little sad when the plane touches down in your new home, but the first snowfall of the year will help perk things up a bit. And then you'll sleeeeep for a long time. And then you'll wake up and start taking advantage of America. And that is where things get much, much better.

May I recommend the following?

--A lengthy visit to Barnes & Noble, to visit all the pretty magazines that cost like a third of what they charge for them in Asia. Plus, they have all the obscure ones, like New York Look and Adorn, along with the very very latest US Weekly.

--Copious amounts of MTV. Even without Denise Keller, American MTV is way better than MTV Asia.

--Anthropologie!

--Layering. So much layering. Jeans tucked in boots, chunky sweaters over thin sweaters, huge knitted scarves, elbow-length gloves, lots of belting to reign it all in. Plus: Coats!

{An aside: Did you know that rubber bands (or in our case, Goody elastic hairbands, wrapped around twice) around your ankles will help keep those jeans nicely pulled down and tucked into your boots? Thank you, Google! Now if only the internet could help me with solving severe winter hat head.}

--The aforementioned Sephora. A new bottle of Benetint – so much cheaper than in Singapore – will help take the red from your eyes and put it back in your cheeks.

--Urban Outfitters, where you will get the cutest cap ever for $5.

--CVS, with more shampoo than you can ever imagine.

--Anthropologie!

--The cheese section of Whole Foods. Ommmm… cheese...

--Sticking your face into a big pine tree at the local Christmas tree outlet, a smell even better than coconuts.

--A visit to the Corcoran Gallery, where they are holding an Ansel Adams retrospective and an Annie Leibovitz retrospective and a holiday shopping bazaar of homemade artsy things. It was pure museum heaven, I tell you. (The Leibovitz portrait of Leo at his best/cutest, above, reminds us of a time in our life where we saw Titanic in the movie theatre five times including once in Paris, dubbed in French. We suspect this is why we've scored horribly against everyone else in the Facebook movie compatibility test.)

--Diner food. 'Nuff said.

Next stop: The thrift store. And Target. It is time to start bringing the fash back around here.