Stress Management

I’m not managing my stress well lately and, boyhowdy, I’ve got a whole shit-ton or three of it.

I’ve fallen off the wagon with my usual tools. Mainly, diet and exercise.

No, I’ve not begun taking all my meals at Cheesecake Factory nor have I become a booze guzzling fish but there’s def been a french fry or 50 who’ve snuck under the radar and I maybe, OK, yes certainly, indulged in a martini or two.

Exercise has always been helpful in the War on Stress but, with all that’s been going on over the last couple of weeks, I’ve only triked a couple of times. I need to do that and a host of stretching exercises every single damn day.

Yes, yes, yezzzzz, I will get back on track but there are other ways to cope as well. Such as this—sitting in a dark movie theater with a big bag of popcorn (UNbuttered because, c’mon, there’s only so decadent I can be—rilly), watching some big Hollywood action, adventure.

Joe in 3-D!!!

Yesterday, my buddy Joe and I went to the cinema down in Braintree where every single viewing room has captioning AND the seats are all giant, soft, reclining, womb like things. Cozy doesn’t even begin to convey how awesome this is. What did we see? Avengers: Age of Ultron. Sadly but unsurprisingly, I nodded off in the first half but the second had all the escapism I could’ve wanted. Given that Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel, Firefly and more fame. Duh) wrote the damn thing, I wished that I could’ve paid more heed to the captions. With so many awesome explosions and superheroes getting there freak on, I mostly just watched. Who can read captions when Iron Man is about to go up against Ultron?

Today I’ll head back over to the multiplex with Jen and Oni. We’re gonna see Mad Max: Fury Road.

Hilariously and predictably, there’s been much agony, whining, gnashing of teeth and various pixel abuses from the Men’s Rights brigades. It seems this time Max is a chick. Ooh, the burn!

In his usual fabulous and mega brill manner, Tbogg has this covered:

Clarey is calling for a boycott (mancott?) of the film lest Hollywood get some wacky idea that studio audiences are willing to accept a strong female lead in an action film — and shut up about Ripley in the Alien films, just shut up. So you can expect lots of empty seats at Fury Road viewings this weekend — three seats for every pair of bros who take a manly and stoic pass, when you include the empty seat they leave between themselves because sitting next to each other at the movies is, y’know…

That's just a snippet. Hit the link for more excellence.

Back to stress management though—what else can I do? Some random help site suggested that, on top of diet and exercise, I should:

• Accept that you cannot control everything.
• Maintain a positive attitude. 
• Talk to someone

Yes, yes,  yezzzz all well and good BUT:
* I don’t need to control everything but how’s ‘bout I should be able to make The Amazing Bob feel ALLLLLLLLL better through simple application of ice cream and cake. That totes SHOULD be the way things work, don’t ya think?
* I’d talk to my shrink but she’s now on a little, unplanned sabbatical—back in three or four months. Get a substitute, you say? Oh please, I’ve been seeing Janice for a thousand and one half years. Mega amounts of trust, comfort and just, flat out ease in communication has been built during that millennium. I’m not gonna just plug in some other shrinky dink. They’re not like interchangeable Lego blocks. Ya know?
* Maintain a positive attitude. //snort// Please, mon ami, have you read the news lately?

So then, I’ll do what I can. Get back on the daily workout horse, paint more, go to MORE movies. Maybe The Age of Adaline next weekend?