Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Watching Too Many "Pasta Grannies" on YouTube

And I've been watching a couple of other pasta makers on the web. So decided it was again time to make pasta from scratch.

I used one egg for every100gm of all purpose flour. Made a six-egg batch. Which produced about 60 ravioli and about 3/4 lb of tagliatelle (or a reasonable facsimile from the "scraps" after making ravioli).

The ravioli went into the freezer and we had the tagliatelle for dinner with a fresh tomato sauce from my San Marzano and Roma tomatoes from the garden.

Can't take a lot of photos while doing this...but here are a few:






Friday, August 21, 2020

I Just Can't Help It: I Needed A Laugh (AT the Expense Of 45)

I guess there's been criticism about Joe Biden reading from a teleprompter. Of course these critics conveniently forget about 45's many blunders.

But we haven't forgotten.

This one makes me laugh out loud, something I really needed to do today:


And there's this:

And let's not forget Yo Semite and Thighland.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

An Excerpt From "Did YouEver See A Horse Go By? A Coming Out Memoir"

/13/ Real Therapy

DR. IRVING FRANKEL TURNED out to be a slim, slightly balding, older gentleman with a warm smile, a calming demeanor, and a Ph.D., thankfully not a psychiatrist.

Dr. Frankel would stick with me for the long haul. He wouldn’t talk about his daughter’s algebra exam. He wouldn’t tell me that I was straight or gay or that I couldn’t possibly be homosexual. He wouldn’t suggest that I figure things out for myself. He wouldn’t tell me to masturbate more frequently or find a woman to date. He wouldn’t want to go to the beach with me.

Dr. Frankel would listen and talk and listen some more. Dr. Frankel would laugh. Dr. Frankel would let me suffer.

At times, therapy with Irving Frankel was like being tethered to an infinitely long piece of rope. I would wander aimlessly, lost in my thoughts amid psychic mazes, while he let out more slack. Sometimes it was frightening. That slack in the rope made me anxious and afraid that I would not find my way back unless Dr. Frankel reeled me in.

I would grope through my memories and feelings looking for words but often not verbalizing what was going on in my head, wondering if he still had hold of his end of the rope. I had to trust that he did and that he would pull me back if need be.

Often the wise doctor would remain silent, deliberately, it seemed, allowing my anxiety to grow, until my random thoughts could crystallize into words, fragments of a sentence, a complete thought. The lifeline gave me the freedom to explore and a way to get back, but I persisted in remaining inert, stuck, resisting any action or change that might threaten my safe but unsatisfying emotional balancing act.

I saw Irving about once a week for nearly four years, but, remarkably, I remember only a few conversations between us. Certainly my homosexuality was the main issue for me: how I got that way and, more importantly, how not to be what I was or, godforbid, how to be what I was. I still wasn’t sure which. ...

At some point during our first year of therapy, I discovered Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story in Barnes and Noble’s gay and lesbian section. It was the first gay novel I ever read; and while I could relate to it on some level, it was not a story that even remotely reflected my experience. When I finished it I gave it to Irving and asked him to read it.

It wasn’t exactly my life, but I think I wanted him to know that there were others. “See, soul searching, like me,” I said.

It was also a gesture of trust, an attempt to broach the subject of my sexuality again, perhaps at a deeper level than before. When I asked about the book some weeks later, he had it on the side table next to his chair.

“I did read some of it,” he confessed. “But, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t get very far.” He did not elaborate but handed the book to me.

With the book in my hands, I left on one of my mental excursions and Dr. Frankel let out the rope freely.

After some long minutes of silence, Irving said, “You seem far away. What’s going on?”

When I get terribly anxious, words will inevitably fail me. So does rational expression. Thoughts, feelings, anxiety spill over into irrational behavior or symbolic acting out...

So, when asked what I was thinking, I took A Boy’s Own Story with the picture of a melancholy-looking homosexual boy on the cover that Dr. Frankel had just handed to me. I looked at the book as if it were another dread disease and I tore the paperback in two, down the binding; and then tore pages out and tore the pages in half and the halves into pieces.

... I was crying, “That’s not me. It’s not me, it can’t be me!” Tears flowed down my cheeks and I repeated, “it’s not me…it’s not me.” I gasped for breath and sobbed from deep in my gut.

When my outburst subsided I got down on the floor, picked up the torn pages of Edmund White’s life, and threw them into the wastebasket.

I can’t remember if Dr. Frankel and I exchanged any words. I’m sure he said something kind to acknowledge the intimacy of the moment and, indicating that our time was up, said gently, “I’ll see you next week.”

We continued to meet through the spring and into the summer. Dr. Frankel’s therapy must have been imperceptibly chipping away at my resistance.

CURED - Trailer

As I described in my memoir, I went through therapists like Kleenex. Fortunately I didn't have electroshock or other draconian "treatments" to cure me. But now, at 72, I consider myself, if not fully cured, nicely aged.

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