Stress

It's been a pretty stressful week. To cope, I've turned to two tried and true therapies: stress eating and shopping.

I tend to look for chocolate as my feel good food. (Actually chocolate any time is a pleaser. I think it should be considered a food group and moved to the base of the Food Pyramid) Since it's Christmas, the candy house has been well stocked. We went through a bag or two of Hershey Kisses and are now working on M&Ms which are not only extremely portable, can be easily gulped by the handful, and have no wrapper that has to be dealt with.

I hadn't planned on turning to shopping as another coping mechanism, but Fate intervened. Some women shop for clothes or shoes, I tend towards books, DVDs, and electronics. I've been having problems with my cell phone, actually the battery to the phone, not holding a charge for more than one call. As luck would have it, my telephone up and died. I was hoping the phone would limp along until May when the contract would allow me to upgrade the phone. The battery for the phone would cost as much as the telephone did so I wasn't too keen on buying a new battery. I was less keen on getting a new phone and then getting whacked with all sorts of penalties for "breaking the contract"

Here's where Fate stepped in. The telephone company sent me a cheerful email telling me I was eligble for an early upgrade. I don't know whether this was to stimulate the economy, increase telephone company profits or make me feel better, but I rushed to the phone store and bought a beautiful new, sleek, slim Samsung Omnia II touch screen smartphone. A handful of M&Ms and the phone in the palm of my hand just melted away the stress.

That was until I tried syncing the smartphone with my computer. The two devices aren't talking to each other. The instruction booklet just said to plug the phone into the computer USB port and voila! The instruction booklet lied. No problem, I'm back to inhaling M&Ms by the handful and playing with phone.

What coping mechanisms do you use for stress?