How Plantar Fasciitis Led to the Discovery of my Favorite Sunday Ritual

#ScotchBathSunday

August 23, 2017
New York, NY

I awake daily with excruciating plantar fasciitis because I was born 40 and my body hates me. So, I went to my unusually funny podiatrist who took one look at my foot, said "Oof." and then wrapped my entire right foot in gauze and athletic tape.
She said "Keep that on for four days," then she narrowed her eyes and growled, "And whatever you do... do not get it wet."

That night I attempted to shower.
It was a nightmare.
I don't have the core strength, nor the flexibility to hang my foot out of the shower and balance on my other foot while trying to bathe. I danced around on my soapy toes like a drunken chimp until I slipped over and bruised my arm. Water dripped down my leg and onto the floor, flooding the bathroom and saturating my bandages.

Shakespeare wrote, in King Henry IV, "Before the game is afoot, thou still let'st slip" I still don't know what it means, but I'm pretty sure he's making fun of me.

Bruised and battered, but not defeated, I gave up on showering. For the rest of the week, every day was...

What in God’s name is #ScotchBathSunday?

Well, apart from it being the name of this weekly paid-only Sunday series, it’s also the one indulgent ritual I started to carve out time to write my comic strip every week since 2017. In the bath. With a scotch. Kind of like Dalton Trumbo, but with comics instead of screenplays.

You don’t bathe in scotch. (Unless you want to.) But the bath is the perfect space for creativity: It’s a small, enclosed, private space with no internet (don’t bring your phone or iPad into the bathroom with you. Kindles are fine. So are candles.) You can read a book, you can write (by hand) anything you’ve been meaning to write, or you can just sit and stare at the tiles. Just don’t nod off. (That’s for doze-bath Wednesdays.)

My landlord, however, frowns upon smoking in the bathroom.

The instructions are quite simple:

1. Pour yourself a bath.

2. Pour yourself a scotch.

3. Do it on Sunday.

4. (Repeat)

Don’t drink scotch? Switch it up with wine!
Don’t drink at all? No problem! Bring in a LaCroix or three— maybe even a Heineken 00. It still works.

Happy Scotchbathing!

This has been the first of the series for #ScotchBathSunday. Feel free to share it with your tub-loving friends if you think they’re like it!