The last couple of years have handed me chaos and dumpster fires in spades. You can check with my nearly worn-out Couch Lady to confirm—she's written a doctor's note to the universe on my behalf that reads, "Enough already."
She even signed it.
The universe disregarded this note, wadded it up, and handed it back.
May 2025 completely derailed me. This will likely result in another diagnosis if I'm not careful. Something about the "window of tolerance." This particular window has slammed shut on my psyche at least five times in the last three weeks. Imagine slamming a physical window down on your fingertips, but instead of fingertips, it slams on your neurons.
To top it off, or because of it, I'm having difficulty with the writing side of life. My willpower is waning, and my mind is heavy. This thing that brings me joy and outlet and stress release is out of reach most days. I do a little here and there to let Little Miss Muse know I've not abandoned her—I'd never do that. But I'm on a crisis hiatus with the fiction word production—again.
We had an amazing trip to the California coast in late April (which produced bountiful blog fodder, but alas, I can't quite tap into that form of humor—at least not yet).
My plan for May was to release a new title and get going on the third novel in my YA trilogy. Had a self-inflicted deadline with external motivation in place and everything. Things were happening…
May's plan for May was entirely different. I do wish it had heeded Couch Lady's note.
My mom's demise and passing fueled a complicated grieving process already underway due to multiple prior losses.
With this fresh crisis wave, I've landed firmly in the rage stage, punctuated by episodes of sheer exhaustion and a surely-this-can't-be-real dissociation where I watch myself complete tasks, but nothing feels… solid.
And now comes the estate. The third one in eight months.
This estate requires a team of various professionals who have minimal office hours, given the fact that it's summer vacation time and "off-season."
Some days it feels like the folks I need to speak with have joined a specialized Witness Protection program and will be unavailable until the universe sorts itself out.
And we all know the universe has little interest in sorting things according to human wishes or timelines. Or doctor's notes.
On these days of phone tag and shattering windows of tolerance, I hit decision overwhelm.
I was coming home from Mom's house on a particularly hard day and realized my SUV was on fumes. I pulled up to the nearest gas station, manned the nozzle, and realized I, too, was on fumes. Past it, actually.
I headed inside to grab something, anything, that I didn't have to cook.
Found the potato salad.
The mere sight of the tiny tub of cold, red-skinned goo made my mouth water.
Granted, I could have stumbled upon a hot dog rotisserie with wrinkled-up meat tubes and may have had the same reaction because hunger was hunger and the brain was dead.
But I found the potato salad first.
I drove the rest of the way home, sat in the front yard under the shade tree with my little dish of creamy spuds and a plastic fork. And cried.
And ate potato salad.
And I felt better.
This has become a thing now.
The internal dialog goes something like this (once in a while, it's said out loud all ragey-like):
“Oh, it is absolutely a gas station potato salad day.”
Not homemade (because I can’t cook).
Not deli-fresh (because that requires a trip to town in the opposite direction).
Gas. Station. Potato. Salad. The culinary equivalent of “You know what? I have no more craps to give. I need cold mayo and regret in a plastic tub, and I need it now.”
Tears optional.
It’s the meal for when my soul is too tired to chew through anything more ambitious. Or make a decision. Or heat up frozen pizza.
Am I thriving? No.
Am I fed? Technically, yes.
I’m okay with this.
I’ve decided gas station potato salad is how champions refuel during emotional guerrilla warfare.
Next time, I may add a wrinkled-up meat tube to the meal. Go full throttle toward the chaos, plastic fork in one hand, a wrinkled-up doctor’s note that begs the universe “Enough already” in the other.
