Holiday stress can wear you down even before the holidays begin
I didn’t realize I was slumped in my car with my tongue hanging out until the man in the truck next to me rushed over to help.
“Are you OK, ma’am? Should I call an ambulance?”
“I’m suffering from pre-holiday exhaustion,” I told him.
Since arriving at the store 15 minutes earlier, I had returned to my car twice to retrieve items I’d forgotten. Those items included my shopping list and my cellphone – both of which should have been in my purse.
“Thank you for checking on me,” I said. “But I’m OK … well, as OK as I can be.”
The man looked me up and down to make sure I wasn’t delirious. Then he chuckled and walked back to his truck.
It was the weekend before Thanksgiving. Two weeks earlier, I had broken my toe on a ladder in our garage. For the last several hours, I had been hobbling around doing early Christmas shopping. My toe was throbbing. My head was aching. And I still had to buy some potatoes.
Not white potatoes. Sweet potatoes.
Yet another reason for my pre-holiday stress.
“I’ll make the mashed potatoes,” I’d told my sister-in-law, Aurelia (not her real name), who was hosting our family for Thanksgiving.
“That’ll be great!” she said.
Well, it would have been great, except another sister-in-law, Henrietta (also not her real name), wanted to make them.
In a battle that will hence be called The Potato Wars of 2023, two middle-aged women duked it out for the right to boil, peel and mash.
It was small potatoes in the scheme of things. I say this because because I lost.
I switched gears and opted to make a sweet potato casserole instead – the ingredients for which were scrawled on the grocery list I’d forgotten in my car.
That’s where I was when the Good Samaritan checked on me. Plopped down like a bag of Idahos.
“I swear it’s not even December yet and I’m already losing it,” I told my husband.
“A case could be made you lost it a long time ago,” he said and smiled.
Let the holidays begin.
