Plenty- in this house where I’ve learned over the years that so much of dealing with depression is putting one foot in front of the other, making supper, digging down into your real (as opposed to your fantasy) relationships.
I also need to say here that I’ve been taking a minimal amount of generic Paxil for about 16 years now. It helps with my OCD (oh, God, those letters are in the wrong order!) but it doesn’t do much for my baseline sadness. It does, however, help a little with my constant anger. When I’ve stopped taking it, I’ve realized pretty quickly that I’m mad about something all the time (as opposed to only part of the time!)
A lot of people, including me, believe that when I’m heedlessly swallowing food, any food, just a lot of food, I’m swallowing, rather than expressing, anger. I’ve always felt, though, that expressing all my anger would leave a scorched earth behind.
So sometimes I eat, sometimes I rant, sometimes I’m funny. Luckily for me, no one’s ever paid me enough for me to have an expensive drug or alcohol problem (only cigarettes, which I could not afford today either). Luckily, it’s easy for me to get only the attention I ask for. Luckily, I’m not famous with millions of bucks dependent on my showing up to work sober.
I hate that these high-profile depressives can’t “get well” and be splendid examples for all the rest of us. But the really icky thing with depression is that you don’t get well. You get better and then you feel hopeless and then you get better and so it goes. The circle of life for many of us.
Maybe to a whole lot of us who are paying attention to things like children being slaughtered in the mid-East. When I see a 4-year-old little boy (we have a grandson exactly his age) setting off across the Syrian desert alone in search of his family, I can’t shake it off for days unless I stay busy. Busy doing things like weeding until I’m so hot I must have a cool shower and drink a lot of water.
The first shrink I saw (in college) told my mother I had an overactive imagination, that was “all.” That’s enough to think sometimes it would be easier to not live than to live.
Not what I’m thinking today, but what Robin Williams must have been. I made a souffle for supper. It took hours because I used fresh corn, and Stoic the Vast is fairly psychotic about corn silks in his food. Now that it’s cooling on the stove, all pouffy and golden, I feel better and I’m going outside with the hummingbirds and hornets.
You can make souffle with canned corn. I made half this recipe using 15 ounces fresh corn I stripped and grated (for the liquid) from 11 ears. The baking time in a 1-quart souffle dish was almost the same — just under 40 minutes. (And a last note: I can’t add photos just now to blog posts. Computer doctor needed.)
Kraft Recipes corn souffle
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, reduced-fat, softened
1 15-1/4-ounce can whole kernel corn, rinsed and drained
1 14.75-ounce can cream-style corn
1 8.5-ounce box corn muffin mix
2 eggs
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
Heat oven to 350°. Blend butter and cream cheese. Add corn(s), muffin mix, eggs and green onions; mix well. Pour into 2-quart casserole sprayed with cooking spray; top with Cheddar. Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Sixteen 1/2-cup servings, 190 calories each.
youcanteaticecreamintheshower 
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