Times are bad right now. Fires, cold, tragedies everywhere.
I look for things to make me feel better.
Lots of folks on social media are telling about how comforting it is to make chicken soup. They list their recipes, which involve a chicken or chicken bones, water, and vegetables. I have tried making chicken soup so many times, even substituting chicken broth for the water, and my soup is always virtually tasteless.
What about making chili? My husband hates my chili; he says it’s too loose. Other comfort foods are roast chicken (mine is either undercooked or too dry), macaroni and cheese (WAY too much trouble with the roux and grating all that cheese), spaghetti and meatballs, which I do well with Rao’s and Trader Joe’s chicken meatballs–but my husband is sick and tired of it. Sick and tired.
Bypassing the comfort food, people recommend staying busy. I have tried that, and this week I touched up the dings in my baseboards, got on a ladder and used Dawn Power Spray to clean the big grease spot above the stove. I Swiffed every damn surface in the house. I binge watched 20 episodes of 48 Hours. This was Monday. Tuesday dawned and I couldn’t come up with anything, and I realized that I should have spaced out the busy things.
Books. Read the books. I made a bad choice and checked out a book about men in the trenches during WWI, and that made me feel worse. Cheerful books seem hard to come by, and for heaven’s sake, I checked out A Little Life, which nearly killed me. The man on the cover should have been a hint, but the title sounded so innocuous…
I like to imagine that during tough times, people sit by the fire with cups of tea, chatting or playing cards. They wear shawls over their shoulders, eat lavender lozenges, and remain calm. I don’t love tea, we live in this apartment with no fireplace, and my husband strongly dislikes games. I do have a shawl. Lavender tastes like cough medicine in my opinion. My husband has never been one to sit down to a nice chat. So there you are. Just me and my shawl.
Here is what I have found to be effective. I go to bed early, ask my cat Hattie to join me, and we scroll Instagram for pictures of Taylor and Travis. This works for me and thousands of women all over the globe.
