Stress is optional, or how to be happy; oh, and I'm on vacation

As I left work an hour or two after I would have liked to, and then, again, as I got into my car to run an errand for a friend who's in Africa finalizing her adoption, I caught myself starting to get stressed out and pointed out to myself that the stress was optional. Sure, I had an early flight the following morning and I hadn't packed, and I had a number of my own errands that I just couldn't fit in over the weekend and that I needed to take care of before I left. And I was almost out of gas, and so was my car. But I shrugged off the stress because I didn't need it.

I shrugged off any stress that tried to creep in as the first half of the errand took two or three times as long as I thought it would, and again as my phone froze just as I was leaving the first stop to get to the second. Mercifully, a long light just before the ramp to 395 gave me a chance to take out the battery, restart the phone, and get the GPS going again before I had to move. I did not, for a second, feel put upon; I only felt that it was a privilege to be in a position to help this friend, especially to do what she was doing. And this was not an engineered perspective; it was genuinely how I felt.

I made it from point A to point B, and then home, without running out of gas. I packed, watered the plants, and tied up a bunch of loose ends around the house. I crashed completely exhausted but ready to go. I have a few more to tie up before the bathtub-refinishing guy gets here, which will be minutes before I'll need to leave for the airport. And then I'm on vacation.