Anyone’s Milkshake Will Do
Today I said I wanted comfort food, and I meant something very specific. I wasn’t talking about takeout or anything quick. I meant the meal I’ve been making for what feels like forever. Chicken, biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes. The kind of meal that doesn’t just fill you up, it resets something. It only works if I make it myself. That’s part of it. The process, the familiarity, the way my hands know what to do without thinking.
I’ve been making it long enough that it predates a lot of other things I learned to cook. It came before the more complicated recipes, before I cared about technique or presentation. This one is just mine. It’s the meal I turn to when I need everything to feel okay again. In a sit down, eat too much, let it carry me all the way into a food coma kind of way. It’s comfort that asks something of me and gives something back.
But today I didn’t have it in me to make it. I knew exactly what I wanted, and I couldn’t do the thing that makes it real. The website with the details about the VRP was down for hours after they announced it, which didn’t help. I filled in the gaps by reading whatever I could find, piecing together what I thought was happening. By the time the site finally came back, I already knew enough, and I was already worn down. The day blurred around the edges after that.
The girls wanted to go thrifting. I wanted to go with them. I wanted that version of the afternoon where we’re out together, wandering, finding things we don’t need. But even that felt like more than I could manage. More than the house could manage. I kept coming back to the couch, to the animals, to the idea of just staying still. Today felt like a series of almosts. Almost going out. Almost cooking. Almost doing the things that usually make me feel like myself again.
So I let it the day be what it wanted to be. My family did too. They know I’m going to be up and down, and not always for reasons that make sense in the moment. We all are right now. There’s a lot changing, even if we don’t have all worked out yet. So we made space for that. We stayed close, without asking too much of each other. And when it came time to pick something that might help, we landed somewhere simpler. Milkshakes. Because they’re easy. Because they don’t ask anything in return. Because on a day like today, anyone’s milkshake will do.
And somewhere in that, I realized that not all comfort works the same way. Some of it asks something from me. It needs time, energy, a willingness to participate in making it real. And some of it is just there, waiting, asking nothing in return. Today wasn’t a day for the first kind. Today was a day for what was reachable. A milkshake. A quiet couch. A nap that felt like a win.
Author’s note
Part of my comfort today was doing a little bit of research for a new project and building out a simple plan. It helped ground me.
I didn’t have the energy for everything, but I had enough for that. Enough to follow an idea, enough to sketch what I want to explore next. It felt like another version of the same pattern in this piece. Not the full thing I might do on a different day, but still something real.