Stress is Sneaky

End of Days
16 x 30 Watercolor on Canvas
$1200

One day you are strolling along through your life making plans with your sister for a Maine vacation. Biggest worry is how to find someone to watch your house and your pets while you are away for two weeks. Since I am the house and pet sitter in my neighborhood that is a big enough problem. But then the pandemic hits and trip is cancelled. Problem solved?

That problem at least. Studio is closed down by governor but the pet sitting business is booming. Especially Dog Gone Park play days. But the lockdown from the pandemic presents its own problems, but a new business line - masks. But everyday I worry about my sister who is on the front lines at a Texas hospital. We talk almost every day to relieve her stress. I learn things I did not need to know which add to my stress. News media begins to focus on stress from the pandemic. Having once had a very stressful job I know what to do. I dig out the old journal with my list compiled after my father died.

10 Ways to Cope with Chronic Stress

1. Re-balance work and home - work is now at home so not something to escape to

2. Build in Regular Exercise - gardening and playing with the dogs. Remodeling apartment

3. Eat Well and limit alcohol and stimulants - do not drink alcohol but maybe too much coffee

4. Connect with supportive people - They are as locked in their homes as I am

5. Carve out hobby time - art without a market is all hobby time. I am addicted to fabric

6. Practice meditation, yoga -  I am a chop wood carry water type so again gardening

7. Sleep enough - Not the only person having trouble during Covid doing this

8. Bond with your pet - Thicke and I are past bonding to enmeshed 

9. Take a vacation - See previous mention of cancelled vacation to Maine

10. See a therapist - Means getting out of the house

Then winter comes and the garden is gone. Hobbies are getting obsessive. Southwest Airlines cancels the extended air reservations to Maine. But the apartment is though the remodel and is launched as a vacation rental. It is now work with a very short commute but it is outside my house which is good on a couple levels. Cleaning it becomes my regular exercise. But something I try to escape from at home. 

There are orchids and all my inside plants. And fabric and more fabric. I can watch reruns of streaming favorites while sewing things. My sister and I begin to toy with mini-vacations that do not involve planes or trains or resorts. Camping perhaps half way between. Then the issue of teeth appear when I can again visit a dentist. My sister gets diagnosed with a terminal cancer. It begins to sink in that nothing is going to ever return to normal.

I find I want to erupt with rage anytime someone will not wear a mask, or flaunts not getting vaccinated, or says we will soon return to normal. When you are in the middle of a Stephen King horror story fairytales are just maddening. I am back to being sixteen and my mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, Dad is dealing with his fears and abandonment issues like any military officer man, and I am taking care of my kid sister, and the brother I am increasingly afraid of.

Mother is using me as a therapist, Dad is harping on the fact that my grades matter if I want to get into college. And I worry about who takes care of my sister if I am in college. I am dancing as fast as I can. Or as my brother jokes, "How long can you tread water?"

This morning I wake up at the now normal two in the morning and go down the stairs to make coffee and realize the flat surface syndrome is now epidemic. There is no place to put my new cellphone on where I am sure to find it after breakfast. Laundry and all those hobbies and paperwork not filed and vrbo supplies which need stocked next door are everywhere.

And my sister is gone and nothing will ever be back to normal. If there ever was a normal in my life. And someone really needs to revise that 10 ways to cope with stress list. It is really out of date in this age of Covid-19, 20 and 21.