The past couple of days have been rough.

When the stress gets to me I am usually sick with it. It’s like a blinding headache that sets up shop in my eye sockets, opens its tools, and puts as much pressure on that delicate bone and thin skin as it can. It spreads into my head from front to back, and somehow this weight settles like pooling lead at the back of my skull. By then it has made me nauseous and my apologies to all who are anywhere near me when I feel this way.

Gauging by my mood I always see this day coming. Signs showed up Wednesday when I snuck to a different, less visible desk tucked into a quiet corner at work. Approaching the nice, dark room without anyone else in sight, I overheard a one-sided conversation. Peering into my sanctuary I found a coworker on the phone.

Panic. Now where do I go?

Plopping down in a chair near other friends in the office I wondered, what now? I am near tears, I tell them, which I was. I am stress saturated. No more stress can pass through this mind and body so I am feeling the hit like a raw nerve like the dentist is drilling for China like everything is huge and loud and forcing me into a claustrophobic corner. I wait and my stomach hurts. A magnet is in there pulling my head toward the floor and my eyelids are gummy and want to stay shut. Out in the sun I go momentarily blind and the needles of sharp pain rush in through the eyeball to worm around the moist nooks and crannies of my brain. It’s not long, I know, before that sluggish weight stabbing into the back of my skull returns the jolt of pain, whacking it hysterically like some stupid kid playing ping pong.

Later, with my hiding place to myself again I called mom. Mid-chat someone dashed past me and snarled, we can hear you, ya know!

How thoughtful. I hope you trip.

So here I am bothering myself, Jerry at home, my coworkers in the office, and probably everyone else on earth. On my mind is on Lily and her enzyme powder and the tons of cash it will cost meal after meal after day after week after year. Oh well!

I wonder how big she’ll be when she is back to normal. From 43 pounds and counting.