Happy Wednesday!
Maybe TMI, but the heels of my palms have been so dry lately. Please give me all of you hand lotion recommendations. As a note, I do not like the texture of a balm. My partner often has some Working Hands around and using it just gives me the willies.
Today’s edition of Wednesday Links is just a big focus on feel good stories. I invite you to share some more in the comments!
Next week, we’ll be running Best Of content, so there won’t be a Links post.
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In under a week, drag queen Pattie Gonia raised a million dollars for charity by hiking in full drag. I highly recommended following her on socials.
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The Washington Post profiled Bryan Reisberg, who takes shelter dogs out on NYC adventures to help them get adopted. There are some very cute dog photos in the article, though the piece may be paywalled.
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Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is…SLOP!
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Tess sent in this link! Jill & Jackets on YouTube has launched a Menopausal Book Club.
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
I generally use Vaseline Intensive Care Hydra Healthy Hand Lotion. It’s inexpensive, comes in a pink bottle, and soaks into your skin quickly – which is great, because I also detest the heavy lotion/balm texture. Gives me the ick.
Alternatively, a friend of mine makes homemade body butter from a variety of oils (olive oil, coconut oil, etc) and lovely scents – my current favorite is mango – and I find that it works best for when my hands are drier than usual. Putting it on at night, so it has a few hours to soak in without me washing constantly, seems to be most effective.
I like Watkins Lavender hand cream w/shea butter. It smells great, absorbs quickly so you can get back to swiping your screen, and it’s quite soothing. I’m not familiar with balms, so I’m not sure if this would have the qualities you dislike. Some of their other scents have been green tea, lemon, coconut, and my fave, grapefruit, which was sadly a limited release. Sigh.
This really belongs under Kick Ass Women, but Ilona Andrews posted a great article on Judy-Lynn Del Rey, namesake of the Del Rey publishing imprint the other day. https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/the-remarkable-life-of-judy-lynn-del-rey/
Dr. Bronner’s lavender lotion or Trader Joe’s rose hand cream, very rich and smells lovely. And trying to remember to hydrate…
I like using Gold Bond Healing hand cream that contains aloe.
I tend to get good results even if I only use a little. The absorbtion is quick and there isn’t a greasy feeling or residue. And little to no noticeable fragrance.
I am not a fragrance fan at all-so some of my favorites are Vanicream, which I feel is very light but works well. I just started using Gold Bond Age Renew Crepe Corrector Hand cream, and I love it. Just this year my skin has become very crepey so I thought I’d give it a try. Not sure if it’s helping with that, but it is very nice and absorbs super quickly. I live in an extreme cold climate, and since using these I haven’t had the cracks around my fingernails that are so painful.
If your hands are really dry one one effective thing is before you get into bed slather on your chosen cream using more than will rub in easily then cover with water proof gloves, nitrile or vinyl are pretty hypoallergenic. It’s fiddly and messy to do on your own although shouldn’t be too awkward if you only need to do the heel of your palm. It also feels odd, but you’ll wake up to find the cream absorbed. A friend who had really bad eczema used to do this when it got so bad the skin at all her finger joints started cracking and the method was very effective. And honestly? It’s an incentive to keep using the cream over the day so you don’t have to resort to it!
I use Aveeno Eczema Therapy — it helps with my psoriasis, and keeps my hands in good shape without feeling greasy.
A reporter from the DC Theater Arts newsletter attended the recent Kennedy Center honors. My favorite quote from her review is
“But what really got my hackles up on the [red] carpet was Richard Grenell, the former US Ambassador to Germany and Acting Director of National Intelligence, whom Trump appointed to lead the Kennedy Center in February 2025. Grenell has a reputation for being nearly as bombastic as his boss, and he did not disappoint on the red carpet….Per Grenell, “One of the reasons that arts institutions are dying is because you have programming that is too fringe, and you’re not being responsible with the money. Corporations don’t want to fund an all-lesbian cast of ‘Othello.’ …Am I the only one who came away from this diatribe thinking, “Well, now I really want to see Lesbian Othello!?”
I work with clay which dries your skin out like crazy so I wind up with a lot of cracking and bleeding if I am not diligent. I have a lot a lot of hand creams, but alas the heavier balm ones do more. It’s an incentive to me to stay on top of moisturizing, lest, as @Jazzlet says, the gloves come out. Eucerin has a lighter pump bottle lotion in addition to their tub o cream, and while it’s not as effective or long lasting, if things aren’t too bad it’ll do the job and it doesn’t have that punishing balm feeling. Also, cooking oils like canola and olive don’t exactly feel great but absorb quickly, at least, so I will sometimes bake something with an oily dough, or where you oil your hands to work with it. Possibly obvious to everyone but me, but my best advice is to get serious about using gloves when washing dishes – whenever I neglect that step my cuticles are bleeding in no time.
Artemis Hand Cream from Lori’s Soap Market in Branson. They do online sales. Non-greasy. Olive Oil based. Not scented. I can’t stand heavy scents or sticky, greasy lotion. Love this stuff. My daily lotion I also use on my hands and body is good ole CeraVe Daily Moisturizing Lotion. I can use it on face, body hands whatever. again, unscented and not greasy. Happy hunting!
Second Vanicream. The cream is thicker and works faster than the lotion, but both will do. Eucerin advanced repair is for eczema, but helps either way if skin cracks.
Derm says lotions/creams prevent moisture loss more than restore it. So most important to use your lotion/cream whenever you won’t be washing hands for a while (like before bed) or within 3 mins after showering (like derms rec for eczema). Also, it’s possible *your skin* has preferences. What works for one of us in my family doesn’t work for the other.
https://tweefontein.bigcartel.com/product/all-purpose-healing-salve
this is my all purpose salve for super dry skin everywhere. I’ve swabbed a little on a cotton swab and gently dabbed it in my kid’s nostrils when he’s had a nose bleed and the bleed has stopped. I love this farm’s products. they’re in upstate ny.
I use Gold Bond Crepe Corrector or Healing Hand Creams, but my favorite is CeraVe Moisturizing Cream. It’s unscented, and is the best I’ve found. It is pricey, but is available at drugstores/grocery stores and is available in a travel sized tube or large sized tubs/pump tubs.
I started using Cetaphil moisturizing cream after burning my legs with hot soup. I also think taking 5 minutes 3 times a day to smooth it on and work it in helps.
I second the wish for a stage production of lesbian Othello.
That reminds me of a news story that’s already a few weeks old, but I repeat it here in case you haven’t heared it:
Shortly after Taylor Swift’s music video “Ophelia” debuted, the museum Wiesbaden in Germany registered a much-higher-than-usual number of visitors to their Art Noveau collection. Turns out that the beginning of the video bears a striking resemblance to a previously rather unknown painting in the museum, and once a fan figured this out, the painting went viral, so to speak. Here is an article:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/oct/16/taylor-swift-fans-german-museum-fate-of-ophelia-painting
What I love about this is that the museum ran with it. They rehung the painting in a place with a lot of space around it (it was previosly housed in a rather narrow hall) so it could be more easily accessed, offered lectures about the painting specifically geared to Swifties, organized a Taylor-Swift-themed scavenger hunt through the museum and much more. And it’s still going on: The guided tours offered in January are already sold out.
https://museum-wiesbaden.de/en/ophelia2