Day 21 Think Outside The Pint

Some days I fell like Ursula, the sea witch from Disney's Little Mermaid. Fat, ruthless, half woman, half octopus. Did you know her character was modeled after Divine, a drag performer?
I'm not a six tentacled, slimy villianess, but there are moments when I'm simultaneously juggling something in all my tentacles...
Tentacle 1: On phone with bank haggling about an overdraft
Tentacle 2: Wiping up spilled orange juice
Tentacle 3: Hoisting a split grocery bag unto the counter
Tentacle 4: Signing a kids failed geography quiz
Tentacle 5: Pouring Iams into the dog dish
Tentacle 6: Browning grease-splattering ground beef....
I can get purple and ugly and I have on occasion eaten little shrimps from a platter.
It's at those moments when frustration is high that a simple task, like emptying the dishwasher can overwhelm and send me into a tailspin. It's then I mindlessly reach for my tension reliever. Ice cream. Prozac Almond Chip, drug of choice. Most of us have vices we employ to medicate ourselves temporarily; Virginia Slims, bourbon, on line spending, whatever. Mine had always been ice cream. Slow churned, hand churned or french potted.
When I'm in a pressure cooker state of mind, the cold from a pint of ice cream melts off the steam inside, soothing frazzled nerves. Sometimes I eat it in a desperate frenzy, not even waiting for it to soften. I truly enjoy it when I am shoving it in, barely tasting it. At times like that the point isn't about pleasure or enjoyment. It's about numbing. I experience a strange euphoria after, being totally and wonderfully out of control, mixed with a sense of comfort and then, inevitably, disgust.
Today could have been one of those ice cream- inducing- stupors- followed- by- self loathing- kind of days. But it wasn't. As neurons were fraying, I didn't turn to the freezer with spoon in hand, poised to scoop. I calmly grabbed my walking shoes and headed out the door. I walked it off. One step at a time. When I made the final turn past the barking Rottweiler, I barely remembered what I was wound tight about. Each time my shoe slapped the pavement, a bit of stress seemed to poof out of my body into the air. By the time my front door was in view, I felt a true sense of calm that hadn't come mockingly from a quart of Mocha Chocolate Chip. It came from within.
The mollusk monster know as stress, retreats, with her tail between her tentacles, to her dark hole beside the cauldron.