The general background level of grumpiness has been gradually building all morning. It began with a mediocre night, resulting in very sore eyes (my achilles…heel??) with lots of pins and needles. Then the heat and humidity started settling in (gotta love Sydney weather), which reminded me to sort the failed AC in the youngest’s room. First, I rechecked it, only to find she’s pointlessly had it on all night, window open, blowing nothing but my savings. Yay. Then I raised the repair shop, who said they’ve been trying to reach me for days (I’ve seen nothing), and now they have no slots till the new year! Still, they talked me through a compressor reset, which did nothing but allow the cat to escape and thus put me at risk of even more disapproval of the strata management. Yay.

So, I then tried for a small win to avoid a complete mood spiral. Put out the recycling. What could go wrong? Well, maybe if some clever child had decided to recycle a soft drink can, along with most of its contents. Mess everywhere. Upstairs, the same youngest did her unique trick of slamming her door for the second time, thus waking the hungover eldest for the second time. Meanwhile, too, my operating system upgrade was throwing up all sorts of issues, although I suspect my mood was exasperating it all.

So I’ve done the mature thing, and run away to here, the university library. It’s fighting me too with some dodgy wifi, but I am soldiering on, if only to avoid a murder charge if anyone crosses my path.

Maybe maturity is awareness of these things as they pull apart your good mood, trampling it into the dirt. But awareness is all well and good, but how to handle it? Maybe, we should quietly declare a stress mark out of 100, and follow a system when certain trigger levels are reached. I did some deep breathing this morning, and it really does help, if only to stop me ploughing on and making any situation worse. Perhaps I should do that at all stress levels divisible by 10 (such an engineer).

Zee would, I think, propose a tea break for all levels divisible by 20. And she’s probably right, if only to (again) make one refrain from doing stupidly rushed fixes for issues. She would also suggest that tea is consumed with a view of nature, to make a subliminal suggestion that our silly human issues are indeed just that.

The dodgy wifi here has finally settled, so I think my stress level has now reduced to 40%.

Deep breathing and a cup of tea, coming up.

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