Some people get worried when I don’t post, so here you go.

The problem with a regular diet of powerful anti-inflammatory medications is that you don’t know what to do when you get a simple, ordinary headache. Both Jen and I have throbbing heads today, for unrelated reasons. She took ibuprofen. What am I supposed to take that would work where naproxen doesn’t?

As Jen mentioned in her blog, the car’s lights went screwy on us a bit more than a week ago: when the headlights were on, the brake lights — two of them, anyway — stayed on permanently. A bit disconcerting when driving at night, hence the pullover by Gatineau’s finest. Not the first time we’d had such trouble: we haven’t been able to use the headlights and the cruise control at the same time for months. Took the into the Mazda dealership in Hull last Wednesday to get it fixed, and, much to my relief, the bill was under $50.

In the meantime, however, I was stressing out over it. I imagined a much stiffer bill than what it turned out to be, and as a result I procrastinated calling the dealer. On the day I was meaning to do it — a week ago yesterday — I got an awful lot of work done. I was avoiding. Jen finally broke the logjam and booked it herself, and from there on it was smooth sailing.

If this means that I have a tendency to procrastinate tasks that are difficult to cope with, even to the point where I’m afraid to ask after the cost, then I am my mother’s son. This situation reminded me of my mother’s dishwasher, which broke down during my childhood. She went a decade without getting it fixed; in the end, when it came time to sell the house, a $40 repair got it back in operation. I think she imagined that it would be much more expensive, and therefore was something she couldn’t cope with; as a result, the dishes piled up and the ants made themselves welcome. I must make sure I don’t recapitulate that behaviour.