It’s Election Day Eve, tomorrow (hopefully) the next four years of this country’s political future will be decided, and I’m sitting here freaking out about cockroaches in my apartment.
It all started this evening when I got home from work expecting a nice, quiet two hours of watching bad TV and cooking pasta with mozzarella cheese and broccoli. I was multitasking: chopping veggies, boiling water for pasta, and juggling my cell phone on a call to my gynecologist’s office to get a prescription renewed at the last minute. Just as I finally reached a receptionist, a baby cockroach scurried across the countertop, past my broccoli, under the counter. I gasped and my first though was, Can I take care of this roach and talk to the doctor at the same time? Because I really don’t want to have to call them back. Realizing this was, in fact, ridiculous, I hung up the phone, trapped the little bugger under a small Tupperware container while I reached into the cabinet to get the “green” roach killer spray. Nary a thought about not killing the poor guy, I lifted the Tupperware and sprayed him with the minty-smelling stuff til he met his maker. After disposing of the body I called the doctor’s office back, went on a cleaning rampage, finished my cooking, wolfed down my sad pasta, and hopped on a downtown bus to the ID Project where we had a discussion about anxiety.
Whew.
I often tend to worry about little things that are easier to control, like obsessively cleaning my apartment to prevent cockroaches, perhaps displacing a little bit (a lot of) anxiety I have over big things, such as a really f**king important election, which will maybe (definitely) impact my life in a much more salient way than a couple of bugs ever will. But it’s so much easier and more satisfying to spend time dwelling on things that you feel like you can fix.