Works for Me Wednesday: Chilling Out

 

No doubt about it: my boyfriend is pretty wonderful. He’s funny; he’s wicked handsome; if I feel like I need a cuddle he’ll pick me up and carry me around the house for awhile. Yesterday, honest to God, he painted the bathroom and roasted a turkey before I got home from work. One time he took me to a Hanson concert. I am not complaining.

Still, we’ve been together long enough–six and a half years–for me to have figured out that there are going to be some moments where I absolutely am not going to win. I’m not going to convince him to help me start a compost bin on the back porch. I’m not going to get him to stop leaving empty Pepsi cans in random spots all over the apartment, like a trail of bread crumbs. And I’m not going to be able to coax him into a good mood when we are sitting in the car on the Mass Pike on the day before Thanksgiving stuck in gridlock that hasn’t moved in forty-five minutes.

Like we will be tomorrow afternoon.

For a long time, that made me crazy. As the traffic slowed, I’d speed up my chatter, trying to distract him. I’d ply him with junk food. I’d turn up the Christmas music on the stereo (can’t imagine why that one didn’t work) or start compulsively listing everything we had to look forward to over the next few days. At long last, stressed out and deflated by his sulking and muttered swears and general refusal to crack a smile even when I told the joke about the duck in the bar with the grapes, I’d lose my temper: “It’s the HOLIDAYS! Can you just please be nice for five seconds?”

Finally, he laid it out for me. “Hey. All that stuff you do when you don’t want me to be annoyed anymore? It just makes me annoyed-er.”

Well then.

And so it finally dawned on me: He’s a boy. When there’s traffic, he gets cranky. Whatever. It’s not permanent. Nobody’s dying. It’s such small potatoes, it’s totally out of my control, and there’s no reason why it should ruin either of our days.

Tomorrow, when we’re cruising down the highway and see those telltale red brake lights ahead of us, I’ll do my best not to cringe. Instead, I’ll pull my coffee out of the cupholder, kick off my sneakers, and settle in for the ride.

And that works for me.

 

Hey! The kitchendoor will be closed until Friday, for celebratin’. Like my art history professor in college said upon finishing his lecture the day before Thanksgiving: “We’re done. Go eat dead birds.”