Stress control

Two really interesting posts went up last week, on two very different sites. I think they relate to each other, in that they address issues of coping with the various personal demons that beset us. One post was another of Donna Freedman’s amazing reflections, quite a complex and sophisticated train of thought about accepting responsibility for, placing blame for, and coping with difficult circumstances in your life. The other, a peppery extravaganza at Penelope Trunk’s site, at first felt so off the wall (ah, she’ll know how old I am from that!) that I thought it was a put-on, but then on reading all the way through realized that it’s a deeply felt cri de coeur that comes at many of the matters Donna speaks of, but from a different direction.

Donna, contemplating the difficult passages in her life, suggests that a key part of dealing with one’s own mistakes and with the pain that we did not, after all, bring on ourselves is to recognize what parts of our actions and reactions are really our responsibility and which are not, and then move on from there. This is easier said than done, as anyone who’s lived more than about twenty years recognizes. She observes that many of those “I can’t believe this is happening” moments are consequences of choices we make. We need to acknowledge those choices, examine them closely enough to understand why we make them, and decide what to do about it.

Penelope, in an extended riff on the angst of aging, considers the art of self-acceptance. She passes, entertainingly, through several strategies and finally lands on the idea that one must accept one’s shortcomings, “one narrow arena at a time.”

We’re born, we live, we get old (if we’re lucky), we die, and along the way a helluva lot of stuff happens. Some of it is stuff the strongest person on earth would have a difficult time coping with…and none of us is the strongest person on earth. So how do we cope? As Donna puts it,

How do you accept responsibility or place blame for the less-than-optimal situations in your life? If the conditions are truly out of your control — illness, unpaid child support — then how have you coped and what advice can you offer others?

Well, first off, in the “acceptance” department, I do think you can save your hide by trying to come to a clear-eyed understanding of what is and is not someone else’s doing. My natural inclination is to blame everyone else for everything, and from there to conclude that they have somehow — directly or indirectly — “made” me do things that were not in my interest, that made me miserable, or that were out-and-out disastrous mistakes. Although it’s true there are some things we can’t help, it’s also true that most of the time no one can make us do anything.

Case in point: I stayed with SDXB for years after realizing that the relationship was toxic, that it had done irreparable harm to my life and my son’s, and that I needed to end it. Why? It’s hard to say. Probably the main reason was fear: I had noplace to jump and did not know whether I could get by alone. Nor did I believe I could. Secondarily, I was brought up to be compliant — oddly, considering what a bold bitch I am, I’m seriously submissive. If a person who appears to be in authority (for real or psychological reasons) says to do X, Y, or Z, as often as not I will do X, Y, or Z without talking back and without considering whether I really have to.

My son was in high school when we decided to take him and two of his buddies on a hike up Mt. Rainier. SDXB had said we would camp overnight at a site that overlooked a glacier, and so we started up the mountain assuming that’s what we would do.

It turned out the way was a lot longer than he remembered. We walked and walked and walked and walked and walked — uphill — and still did not come to the campground where he’d stayed on a previous visit. We passed people coming down who were clearly experienced hikers, who remarked on the difficulty of the hike.

Finally, late in the afternoon, we came to the campground. And that was when he told us he had failed to get us a permit  at this place!

Holy sh!t.

So nothing would do but we had to continue on to our next day’s destination, where we could camp. It was late in the day, we were all tired — the boys and I were very tired — and he now announced we would have to do a hike we had planned to do the following day.

We continued uphill. My son was having trouble, and he began to fall behind. When I slowed down to pace my son, SDXB, who had decided HE “had to get these people there,” as though he was totally in charge of what everyone was doing, demanded that I stay with him. Feeling browbeaten, I complied.

My son fell further and further back, and soon he was gone. As in completely out of our sight and hearing, alone on the side of Mt. Rainier as night was falling.

It was dark when we got to the lake. We pitched the tents, and then SDXB turned around and went back down the trail in search of my son. He had no idea where the boy was — the kid could have turned around and gone back down the mountain, he could have wandered off the trail and become lost, he could have fallen.

Eventually, they did show up. I was too tired to be furious then, but there was nothing I could do at the time, anyway.

During the night, it rained. A lot. As in a downpour. In the dark, we had set up the boys’ tent in a low spot. Water seeped through the bottom, and by morning, everything they had — all their clothes, all their gear — was soaking wet.

SDXB proposed to go fishing.

I announced that we were going back — he could stay there if he wanted, but the boys and I were going back down, and if I had to hire a cab to drive us back to Seattle, that is what we would do. Angrily, he conceded.

Now we march downhill at a breakneck pace, far faster than we should be going over some parts of the trail, which had loose scree over various stretches. I say we’re going too fast, but nothing will do but what we have to keep up with our fearless leader.

Not surprisingly, my son slips on the rocks and falls, hard, on his back. He was using a frame backpack, and, to give you an idea of what happened, the metal frame broke from the impact.

Fortunately, he didn’t break any bones. But it was a scary moment.

Things went downhill from there, literally and figuratively. I won’t go into the ensuing fiascos, except to say that during the trip I made up my mind that the relationship was over. At one specific point, I decided that as soon as we got back to Phoenix, I was going to throw SDXB out of my house and have nothing more to do with him.

And here’s where things get even more bizarre: I didn’t.

Some time later, I told this story to a friend of mine, a tough little broad who made her way through life by main force and steely guile, and in describing the events I said, “SDXB made me leave my son behind.”

“No, he didn’t,” she said. “No one can make you do anything. You choose to do things.”

Yeah. Well, it was several more years before I chose to eject SDXB from my home and my life. Even then, he’s still in the offing — not as an item, at least.

It took that long for me to come to terms with the fact that to take anything resembling control of our lives, we have to recognize what we can do, what we will do, what we can’t do, and what we won’t do, and to take responsibility for each of those four things.

Of course, in reality we have no control over our lives. Life is a series of random events, some of which we put into motion and some of which we have nothing to do with. But we can create an illusion of control, if temporarily, by recognizing and, as Donna says, by taking responsibility for what we can do and can’t do, what we will do and won’t do.

Once you become conscious of those parameters — what will you do, what will you refuse to do, what can you do, what is beyond your control — it becomes possible to devise strategies to cope with the problems that arise in life, whether those problems result from your own decisions or whether they’re inflicted on you from without. Over time, I’ve developed a rough outline that I apply when things are headed south:

1. Define the problem. Figure out what really is going on and try to understand it fully.

2. If it’s an extremely stressful or emotional situation, sit down in a quiet place and think through what parts of the problem really matter and what parts don’t matter or are minor enough to be deferred. Most problems have several aspects. Figure out what parts of the predicament you can do something about, and what parts you can’t or won’t do anything about. Then, let go of the things that don’t much matter or that you can’t affect, and address only those matters that you can change.

3. Make a plan.

If something is bearing down on you — the upcoming cancer surgery, for example — prepare, to the extent that you can, so as to minimize grief and extraneous hassles. When I learned the Great Desert University was going to close our office and lay off me and all five of my staff, I took on a side job to pay off all debt, began applying for new full-time work, figured out how to maintain my health coverage, and came to the (difficult!) decision that I would start drawing Social Security early.

If you’re blindsided by unexpected events, as soon as you stop rolling think through what to do first, and then plan out the steps you’ll  take right away and in the near future to recoup.

4. Set a goal (or goals) and make your plan part of a strategy to deal with the problem’s repercussions. Write these things down in the form of a to-do list or a broad strategic plan.

5. Follow through.

These steps apply to many of life’s most troubling problems: money and debt, unruly kids, abusive relationships, unhappy jobs, dieting, bad habits and addictions, all but the most crippling illnesses…you name it.

There’s another aspect to this coping business, one that comes to mind as I reflect on Penelope’s essay. I suppose it has to do with what we choose to do and choose not to do:

We can choose not to buy into the miasma of senseless behavior and thinking our culture lays on us. There’s a lot of that, in any society.

In the West, for example — particularly in the United States — we obsess about youth to the extent that we fear and loathe the simple, unavoidable fact of maturing. We fear aging so much that we loathe the elderly, and we loathe ourselves as we progress through life toward age. Hence those expensive, painful, and time-wasting Botox injections.

As my mother used to say, just because the rest of the sheep jumped off the cliff doesn’t mean you have to.

Humans are given to much stupid stuff. And being social animals, we all want to keep up with the herd, no matter what inanity the herd engages. Sometimes when we do that, we make ourselves unhappy. Indeed, we harm ourselves. It takes us back to the questions of what we can and will do or not do. No one can make us buy into stupid stuff. We can choose to buy into it or not to buy into it.

When it comes to the age phobia, for example, I refuse to buy into it.

I do not dye my hair. I do not have toxins injected under my skin. I do not deny my age. I do not shrink from saying “now that I’m old…” It’s not a crime to reach old age. Au contraire: it’s an accomplishment. I embrace age and all the amazing insights and benefits that come with it. Because I can and I will.

You can refuse to buy into any number of stupid things: abuse, smoking, drinking, drugs, dead-end jobs, dead-end marriages, violent “entertainment,” hate, political correctness, fear, wacky dieting, lies promulgated by political parties, marketing campaigns, suburban living, whatever.

It’s your choice. Take responsibility for it.

LOL! I’d got myself tricked into thinking things were more or less under control again. Of course, things are never under control. But isn’t it nice when the hallucination that you’ve got a grip kicks in, no matter how temporarily?

Both of next fall’s classes are now prepped: the 26-page syllabi written, the calendars updated, the websites rebuilt with assignments posted, grade sheets constructed, and a semester’s worth of canned announcements (we call those “learning modules” 🙄 ) installed and set to go. If I drop dead, the damn things will go online and the students can plod through them.

More to the point, if I have surgery this summer, I should be able to handle the courses from bed or from a chair. If they were face-to-face sections, that would be out of the question. But since they’re online and the endlessly tedious prep work is done, really all I have to do is answer a few emails and get their papers read.

Was feeling pretty good about this — having done all the tedious course prep — until I dropped by the departmental admin’s desk to say hello this ayem and she remarked that the NEW chair must have these documents e-mailed direct to him (there’s a reason you couldn’t have forwarded it to him, my love?). Of course that sets off an alarum, since new guys almost ALWAYS want to define their own empires. I’m concerned that this guy is going to deliver some kind of critique and demand a lot of revisions.

Hope not. But if he does, I may just say g’bye. Enough unpaid labor has been devoted to that chore, and I’m most certainly NOT going to do any part of it over.

I now have an appointment with a Mayo surgeon to get a second opinion about what’s going on in my boob. That’s not until next week. I could go ahead and let St. Joe’s puncture my boob this Friday, or I could call and put it off. Don’t know which looks like more hassle. Since it’s almost certain the Mayo guy will want a biopsy, too (ever heard of a surgeon who didn’t?), I’m inclined to just go ahead and get it over with. Trouble is, I don’t want any procedures done to me unless I’m absolutely, positively sure it’s necessary. I think this probably is, but…that’s different from “positively.”

So. Wasn’t it nice, for those ten or twelve hours, to experience a fleeting sense of order? It’s gone now. But it was good while it lasted.

Stress: it comes and goes. For awhile you’ll think you’ve got it under control. Then for awhile you’ll realize what a benighted idea that was. I feel like I’m in a constant state of siege warfare with the minor daily stresses that make me crazy.

Yesterday was a seemingly interminable case in point.

Up at 5:15. Feed the dogs, medicate the puppy, bolt down a small snack. Just about out of human food: I can’t stand the oversalted, oversugared, artificially flavored and colored gunk served up the restaurant where I’ll soon be headed, and so always eat something at the house so I can avoid having to order breakfast there. With the cupboard nearly bare, that ration was precious scarce. Brush the pool walls while waiting for the puppy to perform outdoors. Throw on some clothes, wrestle the hair into place, lock up the dogs, pack the meeting gear and a file for the second meeting into the car.

At 6:15 a.m., beloved friend calls, a whimper in her voice. She is miserable. She is sick. She is not car-pooling to this morning’s meeting.

At 6:45 a.m., out the door and on the road to Scottsdale for the weekly networking meeting. Miserable traffic, as usual. At least for a change I’d managed to get the car washed, so (o mirabilis!) I could actually see the road through the glare of the morning sun.

Leave that meeting early so as to get to the next meeting with the designer: way to hell and gone across the county, almost up to freaking Anthem! The pup can’t be left locked in her crate until I get back from this thing, so I fly home to let her out for a couple of minutes. Traffic is just a bitch. Every heavy truck, every school bus that stops and blocks east- and west-bound traffic while some kid ambles up its steps, every bus that stops at every goddamn corner, every gotta-get-there-firster, every nitwit yakking on a cell phone gets in front of me. And naturally, every light turns red as I drive up to it.

By 9 a.m., even northbound traffic on the I-17 is hellish.

One amusement Arizona’s homicidal drivers like to indulge is actively blocking cars from entering a freeway lane from an on-ramp.

You understand, I normally hit the freeway at 65 to 70 miles an hour. The Dog Chariot has a six-banger for a reason… At any rate, I’m not letting any grass grow under my tires.

Some ass who’s a good eight car lengths behind me sees me coming. As I reach the end of the on-ramp, he floors it and deliberately tries to cut me off. He succeeds.

The cowboy behind him thinks that’s a great idea, and he tries to cut me off, too! Now I’m on the shoulder and I’m traveling at 70 mph. The six-banger engages with élan, God bless the thing. I damn near graze his front bumper as I cut in front of him. Eff you, ba*tard! And  .|..

So it goes.

I streak into the Starbuck’s coffee shop, where the designer is waiting, just a few minutes late.

Spend an hour or so discussing graphics and page design for the first Fire-Rider novel (and, incidentally, Old Times). The guy is still good, despite all the years that have passed since we first made each other’s acquaintance. I learn a lot about the unreasonableness of Amazon’s CreateSpace folks and realize probably I should hire them to do the page design for the PoD version instead of hiring my own designer for that. This guy will not do page design any more: too ditzy, too annoying, and too frustrating. All he does is illustration and covers.

I’m out of food. Our networking group’s treasurer has handed me a check for something over $200, to cover last week’s guests’ breakfasts, which (because he had to leave early that day) I charged on my corporate credit card. There are no grocery stores to speak of on this side of town, but there’s a Costco on the way home. Really could do without a Costco run, always a crowded hassle, but I figure at least I can pick up some fruit, some avocados, and some cheese, which will tide me over until I can make it to a real grocery.

There’s no off-ramp, that I know of, from the I-17 to Yorkshire, the east-west street that takes you to 27th Avenue that takes you down to the Costco.  So I figure I’ll go west on the 101 to 35th Avenue — there being no exit ramp from the 101 to 27th, either — and then go south a few blocks to Yorkshire and backtrack to 27th; thence south to the Costco.

Well. There’s no exit ramp on the westbound 101 to 35th Avenue, either. Nor is there an exit westbound to 43rd Avenue

Understand: these are major main drags.

I end up having to schlep all the way to fuckin 51st Avenue to get off the goddamn freeway!

Then I have to circle back on the overpass and drive all the way back to 27th to get to the road that goes south to the Costco.

So finally, pissed royally, I drag in there and find myself, as usual, in madding crowds and standing in line, as usual, behind some moron who has to make a special case of himself and hold up the show interminably.

Back on the road:

I need a new plastic bucket for use in applying chemicals to the pool. The old one finally busted, after ten years of steady use, ten years of being left out in the broiling sun. Naturally, Costco does not sell scrub buckets. So I have to find someplace else. There’s a Lowe’s on Thunderbird, which is directly on the way to the credit union, which otherwise is hugely off my beaten path. I figure I’ll run by the CU, deposit the check, then hit the Lowe’s to grab a bucket, then head home to stash the Costco loot, feed the puppy, wring out the puppy again, and then race to my afternoon meeting.

Except… Lo! The damn check is made out to me, not to the S-corp. The CU won’t let me deposit it.

In my frustration, I fail to think (duh!!!) “just cash the thing and then deposit the cash to the S-corp’s account.” Ohhh no. That would make sense, and we can’t have that, can we?

I notice the “pay to” phenomenon after I’ve trudged across Yorkshire to 43rd Avenue, having had a bellyful of freeway travel.

So I decide to opt the CU. And now have to backtrack again (!!), across Thunderbird back to the Lowe’s, which is on the I-17, which is east of 27th Effing Avenue.

Lowe’s does not carry what you’d call a “good” selection of plastic scrub buckets. In fact, what they have are these flimsy little things with wire-like metal handles that attach through a small hole in the plastic. And they hide them, so you have to track down a sales rep (an endangered species at Lowe’s) and ask where they are. I ask if they have anything any better, and point out that after about six uses, the flimsy handle is gonna snap off the cheesy bucket.

He asks what I intend to use it for. I say “heaving water and acid into a swimming pool.” Slack-jawed ooohhhhhhh…. “This is all we have,” says this worthy.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll look at Target.”

The nearest Targets are either all the way to Hell and Gone in Paradise Valley or all the way to Hell and Gone at 19th and Montebello.

I figure to drive home across Thunderbird and down 19th, having had a bellyful of freeway traffic. To avoid the years-long construction project that blocks 19th for several miles south of Dunlap, I’ll trundle down to Hatcher, veer east into a desperate, meth-infested slum (car doors locked!), make my way through the depressing landscape there, and then proceed the rest of the way south on 7th Avenue. You understand: even though this cuts a fair amount of time and frustration off the journey, it takes me miles out of my way.

There’s a Home Depot on Thunderbird just west of the 17. Reminded of that, I think, wonder if they do any better in the bucket department? If so, I could escape a trudge to a Target.

I’m in the middle lane, and so overshoot the intersection into the parking lot. Muscle my way into the fast lane, drive to the next wide spot, pull a U-ie, back-track to the HD, trudge in there, track down another sales rep, and am directed to a shelf full of plastic scrub buckets.

There I find one similar to the deceased: smaller and not as well constructed, but at least it looks like it’ll last for, oh, maybe the better part of a year. With any luck. Decide to buy it, obviating another endless drive to reach a Target.

Home Depot is trying to force people to use its automated self-checkout stands. I hate, loathe, and DESPISE self-checkout!!!!!  Every time I try to use one, I end up all tangled up in it. To make you use them, though, they only have one live human checkout clerk, and they place her AS FAR FROM THE DOOR  AS POSSIBLE. So you have to hike all the way across the huge, annoying, hectic box store to buy one stupid little thing, and then hike all the way back across the store to get out. That’s OK: I need the exercise.

So I’m standing in line, and one of the self-checkout shills asks me if I wouldn’t like to come down and check out my own stupid little bucket. I say, no thank you, every time I try that I end up dorking it up, and trust me, it’s better if I stand in line. She, interestingly, appears to understand whereof I speak.

There’s one, count him, (1) guy in front of me. All he has to buy is a handful of card things that look sort of like paint chips. I figure I’ll be outta there in 30 seconds.

But no.

Whatever these card things are, every single one of them has to be painstakingly and carefully registered and charged up separately. And he has 15 of the damn things.

The cashier, who is decidedly not the sharpest three-penny nail in the hardware bin, s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-w-l-y rings up the card things. I zone out while she goes through this process and the guy and I stand and stand and stand and stand and stand… Then of course the guy has to — oh, yes!!!!! — make an exception of himself and dicker with her endlessly about how to pay for the goddamn things.

By the time I get home, it’s almost 1 p.m.

I’ve been on the road since 6:45. I’ve had no breakfast and no lunch. The puppy has to be fed, wrung out again, and locked back in her crate (gawdlemighty, poor little thing), and I have to meet the client at 2:00 p.m.

And i. want. a. drink!

You know, I want altogether too many drinks. Just reciting all this shit is making me want a drink, and it’s only 11:00 in the morning!

Let pup out, usher her out the back door. Run to the computer. Get Client’s cell; get his e-mail. Call his cell, tell his voicemail I’d like to cancel the meeting scheduled in less than an hour, but if I don’t hear from him by 1:30 I’ll be there. E-mail the same to him.

Feed the pup, wrestle the Costco and HD purchases in the door, put them away.

Check e-mail: no answer.

Wring pup out again, as best as possible (good luck with THAT!), drag a.m. meeting stuff out of the car, file, try to figure out what Honored Client could possibly want to talk about now (i thot we were done!).

Check e-mail one more time preparatory to locking in poor little pup again.

Blessed, brilliant, lovely, angelic Client has found the message and agrees to defer meeting.

Thank you, God. Thank you, Worshiped Client!

Defrost several huge, wild-caught Costco shrimp. Prepare an incredible meal (you should’ve been here!!) of spectacular shrimp sautéed in butter and garlic, doused mightily in fresh Meyer lemon juice and white wine, served over spaghetti dressed with real tomatoes (they have an actual flavor, can you imagine?), fresh basil from the garden, and pine nuts. As long as the bottle of Kim Crawford is open…what the hell! Drink the damn stuff.

By the time I finish lunch/dinner, I am three sheets to the wind and truly regretting being three sheets to the wind. I don’t know how much wine I’ve consumed, because I poured a fair amount of it over the shrimp. All I know is half the bottle is gone, however much I’ve had was more than the maximum two glasses allowed, and this is far from the first time I’ve swilled down more than the allowed max in the middle of the freaking day.

This, I think, is getting to be a habit. And it’s a habit that needs to stop.

Forthwith, despite the number of full sails to the wind, I start to try to figure out what is the deal with the drinking habit and how I can make it stop.

Here’s what I think:

The midday drinking has Five Triggers:

Stress
Fatigue
Frustration
Hunger
Habit

On reflection, it occurs to me that HABIT is a device to deal with the other four issues, which threaten to swamp my little rubber life-raft. Hunger, frustration, and fatigue feed stress, and stress leads to the drinking habit.

FRUSTRATION has two components.

1. Immediate

→ Having to make money doing things that annoy me or that I dislike, such as teaching composition
→ Dealing with bureaucracy
→ Shopping in faceless big-box stores
→ Falling behind with annoyances and hassles and so not keeping up either with those or with things I’d prefer to do
→ Driving from pillar to post, constantly
→ Endless mind-numbing grocery shopping

2. More remote frustrations

Having to spend so much time doing things I dislike or that bore me
→ Teaching composition
→ Dealing with bureaucracy
→ Killing time shopping
→ Cleaning house, a chore that has to be repeated the next day at this time of year; a week later in better times
→ Negotiating crowds
→ Driving, driving driving

Living in L.A. East
→ I hated living in the L.A. area when I was a kid.
→ If I wanted to live in L.A., I’d live in California.

Having so little time to do things I might prefer to do
→ How long have I been trying to finish Chapter 3?

What could be done about these?

Quit teaching altogether

→ Not the best of all possible ideas. Teaching provides the only other steady source of income after Social Security. I can’t afford to quit teaching.

Minimize, in some way, contact with and dealings with bureaucratic hassles

→ Rely more on accountant/bookkeeper to ride herd on expenses and financial statements
→ Find someone who knows how to navigate medical bureaucracy and Medicare hassles

Could I use some or even all of the teaching income to hire out the jobs I hate?

→ At $80/day, the net income from one section would pay a cleaning lady to come in twice a month.
→ This would leave net income from five other sections to relieve other hassles and migraines!

Find ways to minimize driving and transactions in annoying stores

→ Hire cabs or limo service to do some schlepping
→ Have groceries delivered
→ Have most household and personal products delivered through Amazon
→ Find out how much Amazon Prime costs and compare with the cost of gasoline expended on tracking down such goods

Hm. Amazon Prime costs $100 a year. That’s $8.34 a month. I spend about $80 a month on gasoline. There seems to be, as they say, “no comparison.”

The bucket I bought at Home Depot? You can buy it for the exact same price on Amazon.

Almost everything I buy at HD, Costco, Lowe’s, Target, & waypoints could be had from Amazon. If I had Amazon Prime, I could get the stuff shipped to me for free, and that would obviate a lot of driving through a lot of ugly traffic and would minimize the tedious jaunts to mobbed big-box stores and reduce exposure to clueless customer service types.

Most food items could be delivered, for a modest fee, by various grocery stores. That would obviate even more driving and shopping annoyance.

And what about the East L.A. factor?

Every day, every moment, the greater Phoenix Metropolitan area resembles the ugly, tacky, bourgeois greater Los Angeles area more and more. It’s noisy, it’s ugly, it’s dreary, it’s monotonous, it is an unpleasant environment to live in! The crime, the dirt, the smog, the helicopter noise, the airplane noise, the traffic noise, the ticky-tacky, the crassness, the overcrowding, the freeway craziness, the mobs and mobs of people…all of it, hideously reminiscent of the unlovely time I spent in the L.A. area through my high-school years. In a word: yuch!

Should I move? Where on earth would I go? And what guarantee that the place would be any improvement?

Okay. After all those ruminations, I came up with a few proposed strategies:

Potential Solutions: Stress

Amazon Prime: Use it to order junk that now has to be chased down at Target, Walgreen’s, Costco, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardware.

Whole Foods delivers.
AJ’s may deliver.

Once in the past I tried Safeway’s delivery service. Fiasco: because I eat real food and don’t buy much that comes in packages, I have to select my produce and meat carefully. Some high-school bag-boy assigned to throw an order together has no idea how to assess an avocado, a head of lettuce, or a piece of beef. But Whole Foods has nothing but high-quality produce and meat; same is true of AJ’s Fine Foods. I’ve taken to buying most of my groceries in those places anyway. And so…why not pay an extra five bucks to have it delivered?

Find a cleaning lady. Hire her to come twice a month.

Ask Gerardo how much he’d charge to come twice a month. Use the extra time to get him to do yardwork I end up having to do.

Make a conscious decision to short-circuit the drinking habit.

→ Don’t keep liquor or wine in the house.
→ Make iced tea: serve that instead of wine with food.
→ Exercise when stressed: yoga, pool, bicycle, hiking, dog walks.
→ Decide to quit tippling every day.

Et voilà! The fruits of yesterday’s hassles.

This morning I finally finished Chapter 3, BTW.