and protect us from all anxiety

One of my favorite lines in the whole Mass occurs around the time of the consecration when the priest says "and protect us from all anxiety." It's an unusual line in that it's not overtly religious in the sense of save us from the fires of hell and that sort of thing, hell theology itself causes anxiety and for me the thing right now is this free-floating anxiety out there. Had a pretty good blast of Ole Man Winter day after Christmas and so folks hit the food stores before in droves, pounded the area delis pretty hard and so that's the thing with anxiety, it's hard to define but in your head when mixed with a healthy dose of imagination it takes on distorted dimensions. Now I'm sure a few people actually needed food but I think in many people's minds they had visions of being homebound for a week slowly starving to death. Never quite got this but anyway I was scheduled to work the night shift yesterday but after a couple hours shoveling out my car made what I thought was a very educated decision on my part to just call work and tell 'em I'm not coming in. The plow came through very late in the day as I live on one of those side roads on top of a hill and the tipping point for me was that in my neighborhood it's very hard to find a space at night in such situations and so the co-mgr. picks up the phone and you always get this, it's like from a playbook or something -- Me: "There are too many problems in my neighborhood (yada yada)..." Him (tooting his own horn): "We all have problems but I made it in" but I remained firm and he hung up. Bears mentioning he's a self-described Republican and I'm telling you your average Republican is not good on labor issues, is not on the side of the worker which is why we need a kind of fusion politics these days, recognize the shortcomings of whatever political side we fall down on and combine the best ideas from both although I do realize this deviates from the enemies' camp approach and is problematic for many who seem to revel in a kind of political trench warfare. Dad became sick right before Christmas so nobody was gonna visit there, kids might get sick and so all things considered it was definitely one of those off-center holidays. Talked to my best bud last night and we really don't critique each other about how we may fall short in the friendship department, that ain't true blue and he deals with the same shit at his job and so we rapped about that. It takes too much energy to hate but I'm telling you civil service people have it good, too many flakes falling from the sky and they just head on home, no conservative boss trying to lay a guilt trip on you either. I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, never was and if you're gonna do something no better time like the Present and so while most people vow to lose weight after the Holidays been there done that and no I didn't lose those last nine pounds all in one week, got close and decided to round it off and today I'm at that ideal weight I've talked about but that's probably because I shoveled so much of the white stuff yesterday. Truth be told I know this correction guard and he used to be a husky guy until I went to a party one day and barely recognized him, thought he had the cancer or something but he simply decided to lose the pounds although imo it's better in his line of work the way he was. OK so last post before the New Year's and let's stop causing each other anxiety, Life's too short anyway. Adopt an animal, chill back and if someone gets offended because you refuse to marry your job that's their problem. Me? my main thing today is trying to find a use for anchovies:)