Stress bottleneck.

This Sunday is my Hubby`s 50th birthday. So on Saturday we`re having a party.

It`s at the rugby clubhouse and it`s going to be a pretty simple affair...food, disco/country dancing, bar open till twelve-thirty. Lots of families/solos invited, lots of kids coming, should be fun.

Or will it? I have no idea who`s coming or not. Hubby and I drew up a rough list of folk to ask. Mine was smaller and of them, I do know who`s coming. I have no idea of whether some of the folk Hubby has asked are coming or not. He can`t remember some of whom he`s asked and whether they said they were coming. We did have printed invites....but most folk didn`t get them, and certainly there`s been very little use made of the formal RSVP requested.

Not to worry, I thought, and made a rough guess at the catering and bar figure, added on ten percent and worked from that. Catering? Yeah, of course I subcontracted it, to the very highly thought of local ladies who do most of the rugby club catering! The rugby club sure as heck isn`t going to run out of beer, that`s for sure.

But of course I`m still worried, to the point where my underlying anxiety is costing me sleep. Too casual, that`s my thought. What if all these people think it`s only an invite for a quick pint at the club and don`t turn up? I have this vision of about twenty people trying to consume a giant buffet....and then at other times, I have this alternative thought of half of Musselburgh turning up and stripping the plates to crumbs in seconds. Of a few guests rattling around in the vast function room.....or the bar manageress asking half of the guests to leave because they`re contravening the fire regulations.

Stupid? Rationally, yes. But it hits me straight in one of my depression triggers in that I have no control over this thing now. I hate feeling responsible for all these people enjoying themself, y`know? Never mind that I know 80% of them really well, know their children, know their houses, have gone on holidays with some of them. These are friends. This makes it worse....

To add to the general feeing of awfulness, Hubby has now announced he wished we hadn`t bothered and me being stressed out about it is taking away "what little pleasure he was going to get from it". I should have told him no, that I would find it too difficult to have a party. Well, some weeks ago I told him just this. Somehow we are still having a party. Hmmmm.....does this say more about me than him, do you think?

It`s frightening to find out how close recurrent depression is, sometimes. You think you`re doing fine, then something happens and you realise that no, you`re not fine, it`s just that there weren`t any of your stress triggers happening at that point in time. You`re fine when things are fine, you fall apart at the first signs of stress, or so it seems. Yes, I`m a lot better than I was two years ago when I finally stopped struggling and went to the doc for the happy drugs, but I`m not half the woman I was back in the old days before Robbie got ill, I was seven years younger and a lot of other bad things hadn`t happened. I`m just exhausted....no mental reserves at all. And when something as (realistically) minorly stressful like the party comes along, my anxiety rating goes sky high because I just can`t deal with it. But I don`t want to go back on the anti-Ds. Not after the four month horror of coming off them, oh no.

It`s at times like this I`m very glad I don`t drink...or at least, don`t drink more than the odd social glass of wine at a meal. Chocolate though....can you OD on chocolate? Should I buy a chocolate fountain to take with me and sit next to it all night?

Oh well, I`m of the opinion that whatever happens, Sunday morning it will be all over. And I have an allotment committee meeting at 10am Sunday so I`ll have to leave the birthday boy alone with a no doubt monsterous hangover and the kids, hehe.

Oh, and on the knitting front I thought I`d better go and do something other than more chocolate to cheer myself up agsin, so went up to my LYS and pigged out on Colinette instead. I bought six skeins of Giotto in the Banwy colourway, plus a pattern book. Stashalong? Oops...oh well, the rules do say that you get one shopping day a month, the money I used was some of the proceeds of my destash on Ebay last moth....and lets face it, this was an emergency, no?

I`ll let you all know how the party goes. There may even be pictures.....