Buckets O' Stress

Well, it's been kind of tense around my house lately, largely because my honey has spent the last three months on the jury for a creepy serial killer accused of five murders.

I must say, I ran out of jokes and quick subject changes when it all came down Tuesday with the death sentence. Not much one can do but console. A little TLC. I ignored all the crabbiness and just tried to be there for my honey.

This has been a life sentence for the jurors in stress.. they've had sleepless nights, nightmares from the up-close, color corpse photos and the extremely annoying defendant, acting as his own attorney, who couldn't speak above a whisper or phrase a question right. The judge and prosecutor had to help him out a lot.

So I came home from the office last night to see my honey lying in bed, snuggled in a blanket, with a headache, a backache and an incredibly irritable mood. No, no massage. No warm bath. No ice cream. No. Leave me alone.

Here I am, a massage therapist who can pretty much deal with anyone's barrel of stress, and I get ordered out of the room.

Around 11:30 that night, honey finally appeared, and decompressed by telling me how frustrating it had been to be a juror, to listen to all the testimony, to see the families, the testimony of two girls who survived.

"I know we did the right thing."

Sometimes the right thing sucks, and there's not much one can do about it.

I told honey that civic duty now being over for the next decade, we should now turn to the future and never think about Mr. Creepy again.

This is going to be hard.