It has now been six months since I quit my job as the chef instructor of a junior-senior high school’s Culinary Arts program. This is not the longest time that I have ever been unemployed as an adult. During the mid-80’s, I took a year off to pursue my Master’s degree. Following the turn of the century, I took another year off to earn an Associate’s in Culinary Arts.

I am now pursuing certification as a special education teacher with an endorsement for autism. Aside from being older than I was when I pursued degrees in Curriculum and Instruction and Culinary Arts, what’s noticeably different between now and then is that I appear to be developing issues with agoraphobia.

When I was in graduate school and later in culinary school, I attended classes in-person. This kept me appropriately socialized because it forced me to be out and about in the world. At school I interacted with my instructors and other students in a way that is simply not possible with asynchronous on-line instruction. Asynchronous instruction does not require a student to be on-line at any set time so long as all assignments are submitted within the posted time frames. This means that there are no virtual classes to attend where one might have the opportunity to interact with others.

Insofar as all of my current classes are asynchronous through Nevada State University, my opportunities for in-person social interaction have been limited to a bi-monthly visit to a supermarket where I have limited interaction with the checkout cashier. I have also been seeing a therapist during weekly zoom call sessions.

Far from depressing me, this social isolation has been absolutely wonderful. Since I am by nature, a reclusive introvert, I am always most relaxed when I am at home, alone with only my cats for company.

Unfortunately, since I am not currently working and am taking all classes on-line, I have begun falling out of the practice of interacting with others. The stress that I have always felt whenever I have to interact with others has significantly increased to the point where once pleasurable activities like shopping for groceries has become challenging due to my growing development of agoraphobia. The Oxford dictionary defines agoraphobia as being the “fear of entering open or crowded places, of leaving one’s home, or being in places from which escape is difficult.”

In my case, I have found that the longer I am away from other people, the less I feel like interacting with anyone in-person. This has in turn led to a negatively reinforcing cycle, where the more I avoid having to interact with others, the harder it has become for me to even want to do so.

Since I am endlessly curious about my autism, I decided to let things play out to see what would happen. Whereas I had previously gone grocery shopping twice a month, I decided to give myself permission to use what a therapist would term as avoidance behavior in not going to the supermarket.

Over a period of nearly four weeks in not going to the supermarket, the following events occurred in my home.

When my stock of 5 two liter bottles of Coke Zero ran out, I replaced the soda with Crystal Light’s raspberry lemonade. When that supply ran out, I began drinking iced water.

One of my favorite snacks has been rockit apples (and yes, they’re spelled with an “i”). These are miniature apples that are about 1/3rd to 1/4th the size of other apples. Not only are they incredibly sweet but they’re so small that one may eat the core, though the seeds remain inedible. When my supply of rockit apples ran out, I switched to microwaveable popcorn. I also made rice pudding. Shortly before using up the last bag of the popcorn, I ordered three boxes of Reese’s Pieces cereal through Amazon. I also began munching on lightly salted peanuts and almonds which were also purchased through Amazon.

When I ran out of the lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and buns that I needed to make the cheeseburgers that I eat every Friday, I made Sloppy Joes on toast which I enjoyed with the last of my seasoned fries. After having run out of ground beef, sliced bread, ketchup, mustard, and frozen fries, I broke out the frozen foods I had stored in my 2nd freezer. These foods included White Castle Sliders which I enjoyed with tater tots. There was also a Tombstone Pizza Supreme, a Stouffer’s lasagna, potstickers, hotdogs, burritos, and a several Marie Callender brand pot pies.

The dry goods pantry was well stocked with boxed macaroni and cheese, powered milk, rice, beans, and lentils, canned oysters, sardines, mackerel, tuna, and a variety of ramen noodles. Although I had plenty of food to last for several more weeks, towards the middle of the 4th week, I found that I was down to my last 10 lb. bag of kibble (dried cat food). I was also running low on twenty pound bags of kitty litter.

Although my cats had an ample supply of canned food, I was short on the supplemental protein that I like to add to their daily moist dinner. Since cats are obligate carnivores who need meat in their diet, I have been supplementing their canned food with sliced turkey breast luncheon meat and either poached unseasoned beef, pork, or fish (usually pollock, tilapia fillets, or catfish).

Part of the challenge of being a “cat Dad” is the need to balance their nutritional needs against their willingness to eat whatever I provide. While Blue Buffalo canned food has a higher nutritional quality rating than Fancy Feast, for some reason my cats seem to prefer Fancy Feast. I think they like the gravy. They also seem to like the pate provided I don’t serve it every day.

By controlling half of their daily moist food with poached meats, slivers of dried ahi tuna, and only a tiny bit of turkey luncheon meat (due to my concerns about sodium), I can better control the quality of what they eat. My cats in turn have become good eaters and will usually eat everything I give them, unlike many years ago when the entirety of their daily moist food came out of a can.

The above picture was created by the AI artist at Starryai.com.

Since I was completely out of fresh food and needed kitty litter and supplemental nutrients for the cats, I metaphorically gritted my teeth and went grocery shopping on Thursday even though it felt vaguely wrong to be shopping on a Thursday as opposed to a Monday or a Friday. As a result of my former Culinary Arts schedule, over the previous 15 years, Mondays and Fridays have been the times when I have gone grocery shopping.

When I thought about putting off this shopping trip until Friday, I noticed an involuntary relaxation at the thought of not having to go anywhere for another 24 hours. I realized at this point that any further delay in shopping would have been completely illogical. Doing so would have also shortchanged my cats for their Thursday dinner, limiting their meal to only canned food. In the end, I overcame my agoraphobia because of my cats.

It felt odd to dress in trousers and a shirt with shoes and socks instead of wearing my customary PJs and a bathrobe with bedroom slippers. When I shaved for the first time in several weeks, I couldn’t help but notice that there were new wrinkles around my eyes and that my salt and pepper hair had more salt than pepper.

When I cracked the front door open at 9:30 AM, I half expected my neighbors to come pouring out of their homes just to point and stare at me.

“Who’s that?”

“I think that’s our neighbor.”

“I thought that house was vacant because the owner had died.”

“Nah, he didn’t die. He quit his teaching job. The kids broke him.”

“Poor guy! HEY GERTRUDE, GOOD NEWS! Our neighbor isn’t dead, he’s just broken!”

(sigh)

Needless to say, my fear over what might have happened never materialized. Given the time, all of my neighbors would have been at work.

It felt odd to be outside. The familiar scent of home that includes hundreds of made from scratch candles (samples of which are pictured below) had been replaced with fresh air that felt slightly cold. The sun warmed my skin and a light breeze kissed my hair.

Since it had been nearly a month since I last drove my car, prior to getting into the vehicle, I did a safety inspection to confirm that the tires were still inflated. When I got into the car and turned the key in the ignition, the engine turned over without a problem. As my dashboard came to life, a monitor cautioned me that the air pressure in the tires was low. Although the average tire pressure for my vehicle should have been 37.5 P, the monitor showed that the tires were down to 22-25 P.

Since I didn’t feel like diverting to a gas station to inflate the tires prior to spending an hour in a roundtrip drive to Smart and Final which arguably has some of the lowest food prices in the area, I drove to The Market which was just five minutes away. The Market is Laughlin’s only supermarket, although with only 7,000 square feet of space, it’s much smaller than the average Safeway (46,000 square feet) or a Walmart Supercenter (182,000 square feet). For that matter, The Market was even smaller than a Dollar General which averages 7,400 square feet.

Given that it was 9:30 AM on a Thursday morning, most of the customers were senior citizens who were using shopping baskets instead of shopping carts. Although it scarcely seems possible, the prices looked to have gone up for everything compared to the last time I had gone shopping nearly 4 weeks earlier.

Large tomatoes were now $2.00 each. Bananas were .89 cents per pound. A head of cauliflower was $4.99. I chose to pass on purchasing any of these products.

“Everything is so expensive,” sighed an older woman who had stopped beside me to glumly regard the price of cauliflower.

I nodded in response.

Since most customers were using baskets, the only aisle that was open was the express line at aisle one where the cashier also sold alcohol and cigarettes upon request. Given how my shopping cart was half full, I let two people with baskets cut in front of me. When two more people with baskets stepped behind me and pointedly looked at my cart, I ruefully apologized.

“This was the only aisle that was open. I already let two people in front of me. If I were to keep letting people in front of me, I might never have the opportunity to check out.”

The woman who was standing behind me was the same person who had commented about the high price of cauliflower.

“Don’t worry about it,” she smiled.

“I’m retired,” observed the gentleman who was standing behind her. “It’s not as though I have anywhere else to be.”

The checker looked up just in time to see three more people getting into line. To her credit, she got on the store’s intercom to call for register assistance. When the man who opened aisle 2 waved me over to his register, nobody else followed me.

“Thank you for having opened this register,” I said.

“Glad to be of of help,” smiled the employee.

As I unloaded the cart and watched the tally on the register go up higher and hire, I belatedly realized that I really should have gone to Smart and Final. My grocery bill at the The Market was just over $168. Had I gone to Smart and Final, my grocery bill would have been an estimated 27% lower. I will have to keep this in mind during my next shopping trip particularly since I have only partially replenished my 2nd freezer with food stuffs that I used up over the past two weeks.

After returning home, I rewarded myself by producing a Chinese dish of slow roasted Hoisin pork (pictured below). The meat took three hours to roast but was entirely worth it. I particularly liked how the brown sugar and molasses in the sauce partially caramelized during the last hour of baking. This gave the outside of the meat a slight crunch that contrasted nicely with the moist juicy interior. The final product was served on top of a bed of steamed white rice prior to being sprinkled with sesame seeds and chopped green onions.

Prior to roasting the pork, I used a serrated knife to remove a portion to poach for my cats. After poaching and cooling the pork, the meat was diced, stored in a plastic box with a tight fitting lid, and was then refrigerated.

Although I had toyed with the idea of making a cheeseburger with fries for my dinner instead of the hoisin roasted pork, the fact that this was a Thursday and not a Friday gave me pause. Having metaphorically pushed the envelope by shopping on a Thursday instead of a Friday, I saw no need to continue “walking on the wild side”.

It was enough to know that I still retain the ability to suppress my autistic need to be alone and to overcome my agoraphobia if I need to. This is not to say that I enjoyed the experience of being out and about. The outing was mildly stressful but not anywhere near close to having been completely debilitating.

As I know from Reddit, there are a great many adults on the autistic spectrum who have burned out and quit their jobs due to issues with work related anxiety and stress. One of the cautionary tales that I have learned from this site is that far too many people with ASD who didn’t have a backup plan wound up exhausting their savings and became homeless and destitute as a result.

I take confidence in knowing that I still retain control of myself and that I will not allow agoraphobia and social anxiety to dictate what I can and cannot do. To quote the poet, Robert Frost, “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

I must remain functional so that I might again resume teaching after having earned a special education teaching certificate with an endorsement for autism. My cats and I are accustomed to having food on the table and a roof over our heads. It would not do to completely lose my ability to mask because the consequences of not being able to support myself would be completely unthinkable.

If nothing else, I must take care of myself so that I may continue caring for my feline companions.

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