I Can Always Change My Mind Later If This Doesn’t Work Out

I’ve made my decision, by the way.

As much fun as it might be to develop some new vices, I don’t really have the time to spare for that right now, so I’ve concluded I’m better off reducing my stressors.

I’ll Get Back To You On What I Decide

After last week I have come to the conclusion that I either need to reduce the stressors in my life, or to develop a taste for a couple of new vices.

My First Draft Was MUCH Longer

Rather than risk getting preachy about it, let me just say that sometimes the trick is to cycle among your stress-relieving vices so you don’t get too hooked on any one of them.

I’m Leaning Toward “Not”

I was mostly joking, of course, when on Friday I inquired about the existence of post-traumatic home reconstruction disorder.

Having had the weekend to observe myself though, I’m reconsidering if I was really joking or not.

And, No, I Hadn’t Been Drinking, So It Wasn’t That

We all have our own ways of dealing with stress, and the other night as I made a rare appearance at a large social gathering, I rediscovered one of mine.

“We need to go soon,” I told L’s Mother as I discretely pulled her aside.  “I’m getting funnier and running out of people it’s safe to be funny with.”

The Weird Part Is They USED To Be The Same Thing For Me

This week I learned that tension and stress, while related, are actually separate things.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and deal with this headache . . . but at least I’m not stressed about it.

Everybody Else Got To Say Something Witty This Week; I Just Wanted To Be Included

Today while coming back from the hardware store, I was muttering darkly under my breath at the traffic congestion in the parking lot while L’s Mother was patiently explaining to him that the letter “t” in “depot” was silent.  “You’re not supposed to pronounce the ‘t’ at all,” she corrected.

“If you say so,” I said amiably, “I’ll be glad when all these ‘idios’ are out of my way then.”

It’s A Strange Coping Mechanism, But It IS A Coping Mechanism

As I implied most recently yesterday, the stress level due to illness in this household is . . . high right now.  When people don’t feel well they tend to be less pleasant to be around, and there are lots of different ways different people deal with that situation.

One of the ways I find myself dealing with it is when I catch myself singing something (to put it politely) “odd” to myself.  What follows is an actual example from yesterday as I was looking for some tzatziki:

The tzatziki’s nice.
It is made from mice,
Who are fed a diet . . . exclusively of rice.
They’re inspected daily to ensure they’re free of lice.
The tzatziki’s nice!

Gang Aft Agly Indeed (Part Two)

But, unfortunately, my three-word plan for a “relaxing day off” became shorted to a two-word plan of “day off” before I even reached noon, and by nightfall, despite everyone’s best efforts, it barely qualified as an unqualified(1) “day,” much less a “day off.”

Some days are just like that.(2)

******

(1) Because the qualifiers are all words that were once categorized as “unprintable.”

(2)  Yes, I was originally planning to complain more, but it started to taint my today, so I stopped.  Some things it just doesn’t help to dwell on.  Moving on . . .

Gang Aft Agly Indeed (Part One)

Regarding yesterday:

Recently I realized . . . hmmm . . . let me scratch out “realized,” replace it with “stopped pretending,” and start again.

Recently I stopped pretending that my stress level was anything less than worrisome.  I mean I’ve known this for a while now, but I kept dismissing it as “just something that comes along with parenthood.”  It wasn’t until I started organizing my schedule a bit more by color coding the importance of given tasks with a simple green-yellow-red level of critical importance that I noticed something that brought it all home for me.

There were no green “Everything in this category is fine” tasks on my list, everything on my list was some shade of yellow or red, and those colors only deepened as the list grew longer day by day.  As things stood, not only was I looking at a “no win” situation, I could no longer deny that I had been in a “no win” situation for some time now.

Obviously a change was in order.

But first I decided I needed a break from the stress, and that a relaxing day off would do me enough good to easily balance out ignoring my failing and flailing schedule for one day, allowing me to come back fresh to start making the necessary changes to get out of my “no win” spiral.

And I like to think it would have to . . .