How Not to Panic

The Birthday – Chagall

Particularly after waking up in a hot sweat at midnight when it’s struck you that Friday’s NOT ONLY brain surgery day, it’s your dead husband's birthday. The Amazing Bob woulda been 78 had he survived the slings and arrows of outrageous ARDS  (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) AND the motherfucking double whammy of Hodgkin's AND Mantel Cell lymphatic cancer.  Jen, Oni, me  and TAB would be having a fine meal of takeout Chinese (from Fusion Kitchen MMMMMMM) and a Lemon Delight Cake from Saint Fratelli's (more MMMMMMM).

Hell’s bells, even with TAB no longer able to vote present (unlike that Republi/Fascist in Dem drag, Tulsi Gabbard), there’d still be a celebration of his birthday with Jen, Oni, me and Ten.

So, I was roused from my good slumber by a blindingly ominous foreboding – that it’s bad luck to get ma bean sliced open on TAB’s bday. I was filled with the utterly bizarre and outlandish notion that, once the good anesthesiologist knocked me out, TAB would appear and take me to be with him forever and ever in Cloud Land.

Lovers in Red Sky – Chagall

SHEESH! Mebbe I ought to lay off the fantastical fiction for a bit, eh?

Like ugly Asian babies, valid superstitions don’t exist. At best, any perceived effect of a superstition is you merely psyching yourself out. Think of it as an asshole placebo.
~ Orlando Winters, Stop Being a F***ing Idiot

One way or another, all humans are superstitious. ~ Abhijit Naskar

So, how did I combat this bout of irrational fear?

• Deep breathing exercises.
• Concentrating on the tree limbs swaying in the night breeze outside the window.
• Muscle relaxation gambits.
• Focusing my jangled mind on what’s real and knowable versus the stuff of a wildly imaginative, prone to superstition tête. 
• I pictured my happy place du jour (the Silica lagoon and surrounding lava fields. Duh!)

When those came up all non-startery, I slipped outta the rack and came downstairs to greet my champion. The no-fail, calm-me-down, bring-me-back-from-the-edge-of-reason full service feline. Nurse Princess Coco was happy to hop into my lap for a long session of pats and chin skritching.

Pacified but not at all sleepy-like, I took up my latest read How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason

…Princess Bride meets Princess Leia.
 
Rory Thorne is a princess with thirteen fairy blessings, the most important of which is to see through flattery and platitudes. As the eldest daughter, she always imagined she’d inherit her father’s throne and govern the interplanetary Thorne Consortium. (source)

Yeah, it’s a fairy tale for a post-patriarchal world. The BEST kind! More of these please!

Jyn Erso in Rogue One
Rey in The Force Awakens
Ellen motherfucking Ripley
Sarah stop-the-presses Connor

And of course, Wonder Woman!

You may be wondering “how’s come ya didn’t wake Ten when your panic attack bloomed?” I flat out KNEW that I was being silly – no point in both of us being sleepless in Valhalla.