At this time in my massage therapy career, I think I have got the whole stress thing down.
Then something pops up that tells me: HA! Yes, HA! A very karmic and cosmic and pulse-wave HA!
My family and i have been living in a hotel for nearly a month following flooding at my home. A simple toilet clog and my house was drenched with watery pooh. Men in white mooon suits put big hair dryers in every room, and me, the dog and my 90-year-old mother-in-law were off to the land of free hot breakfasts. Oh, did I mention that hunnybuns went to the emergency room? In all the rush for towels, my dear one fell and snapped a thumb ligament.
All together, we are very lucky. Lucky insurance is covering almost everything, lucky the damage was mostly to floors and drywall, lucky hunnybun’s injury was not worse. We are sleeping in nice beds. I don’t have to wash my massage sheets by banging them on a wet rock. During this I have found the stress meter running into the red zone. Yes, that stress meter, the scale I thought I had zenned my way through emerging on the other side a massage therapist for all seasons. I have managed to get to the office and clear my head before sessions, but with a new respect for abrupt chaotic change.
One of my regular clients is also a stress expert. A tax-time CPA and stock market man. He knows what it is like to let the car inch along a half-mile line for the late-open post office on April 15. Those fun moments in the life of a tax guy have diminished now that one can file electronically, but the neck knots are souvenirs. I had to call him to change his appointment time. (Did you know that all the flooring stores close Nt 5? And cabinet stores are all closed on Mondays? I found out.)
We gotta get you out of the hotel, he said. Thanks for understanding and letting me change your appointment, I said. No problem, he said. Trust me I know how bad stress can get. I used to have a small office at the house. I didn’t use it much but occassionaly especially at tax time. I was working 18-hour days one year because I took on too much. I was at the house and getting ready to go to the office when I could not find my wallet. I looked everywhere. It took hours and I went through everything, the car, the house, the office, and no wallet. Finally I had to cancel all my cards and make an appointment for a new ID. I was so upset.
Next day I go into the home office right after my wife was in there getting something and I see the wallet sitting there right in the middle of the desk. I’m like, you just put the wallet there, right? She says no, and I can’t believe it. I’m like you are playing a joke, right? And she starts to get mad at me and says she didn’t go near the desk. The wallet must have been sitting there in plain sight the whole time I was looking for it and I couldn’t see it.
Well, I got stressed out too, I said. This week I convinced a cabinet guy to open the door of his closed shop so I could pick out a vanity. I took hunnybuns for outpatient surgery and played nurse. Do you know you cannot tie shoes with one hand? Or open jars, shower, or fold laundry, or get the leash on the dog?
The kicker is I went over to the house to get the mail after work one evening. I spent 30 minutes trying to squeeze through stacked furniture to get to the mailbox key hung in the kitchen until I gave up and went back to the hotel. Frustration!
Next day we’re having coffee and hunnybuns looks at my car keys and holds them up. What are these?
When we left from the flood I must have put the mailbox keys on my car key chain and forgot. I am so use to having everything in its place i didn’t even check my car keys. Hiding in plain sight!
Stress really can do bad things to your brain….HA!
