1. I think it pretty much ended when I retired or maybe earlier when all of a sudden, in 2009, I inexplicably stopped plunging into black holes of overwhelming depression. What ended? Gripping anxiety pain in the pit of my stomach. When I used to be gripped by this anxiety, I usually knew what the source of it was -- money, work, a troublesome student, something I felt deeply insecure about, and other causes.
It's been so long since anxiety pain gripped me that I thought I was finished with it.
But, as ESPN's Lee Corso loves to say: "Not so fast, my friend."
Early Tuesday morning, that anxiety pain returned.
I suppressed the coughing and gagging that used to accompany this sensation and I was baffled by why I felt it again. It was, as far as I could tell, not connected to anything. There must be a phrase in psychology for this experience that includes the word "displaced". Displace malaise? Displaced anxiety?
I don't know.
The good news is that I went back to sleep and when I woke up for good Tuesday morning that gripping anxiety sensation in the pit of my stomach was gone and hasn't returned.
All I was left with were memories of confused, testy, insecure, and frightened times (break ups, academic failures, all kinds of screw ups, money worries, losses, fears of messing up at work) in my life when, sometimes, I lived with that sensation for days -- even weeks -- on end.
But not today. And aside from early this morning, not for a few years.
2. When Ed, Mike, Terry, Jake, and I were at the Wildhorse Resort, Mike handed me a slim book, written and illustrated ostensibly for children entitled, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse written by Charlie Mackesy.
Today I read the book and enjoyed its whimsy and its focus on the beauty of kindness, love, acceptance, and care for others.
The book also transported me back to when I first taught a course called "The Literature of Comedy" (or something like that) and in those early days of teaching it, in the late 1990s, I focused on how the genre of comedy often focused on the idea of homecoming, of having lost or departed from one's home and then returned again; the idea was of home as a spiritual center, a place of shelter, clarity, acceptance, fulfillment, and peace.
The first time I taught the course, on the first day of class we watched The Wizard of Oz.
"There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home."
I texted Mike a thank you for the book and told him I'd be returning it.
In the book's spirit of kindness and generosity, Mike texted me back and said that no, I should keep the book as a gift and do what he'd done: share it with others.
That's my plan.
3. Debbie left school as soon as she could today plagued by a sore throat, cough, and congestion. She arranged for a sub and will stay home Tuesday.
I texted Debbie before she left school and wondered if I could get her or fix her anything.
She requested spicy red curry, emphasizing that she was hungry for onion.
So I went to work, after a quick shopping trip to Yoke's, and combined red curry paste, coconut milk, soy sauce, brown sugar, and fish sauce into a curry sauce and added dice potatoes to it. I brought the sauce to a boil, lowered the heat, and cooked the potatoes.
In the wok, I cooked frozen chicken tenders until they thawed and almost cooked through, removed them, and stir fried vegetables: white onion, red pepper, frozen cauliflower, broccoli, and green beans, and mushrooms. I cut up the nearly cooked through tenders, returned the pieces to a space I cleared in the wok, and cooked them through.
I pushed everything up to the sides of the wok and heated up the lime rice left over from dinner last night and then pushed the rice off the wok's bottom and heated up a single package of Thai wheat noodles.
I poured the red curry sauce into a larger pot and added all the vegetables and the chicken to the sauce and made sure the noodles and the rice were ready to have curry sauce poured over them.
This dinner didn't cure Debbie's illness, but it did draw out of her my favorite word to hear after I've cooked her a meal.
"Perfect."
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