A Bout of PGSD

This past week I was extremely grumpy at work, so it was excellent timing that it was just a four-day week. I was also suffering from PGSD—Post Grilling Stress Disorder—which became more acute as the Fourth approached. As always in these parts, Independence Day actually commenced the evening of July 2, when explosions began to rock the Mission nonstop, leading one to wonder where ordinary citizens get so much ordnance.

I had no idea if we were done with grilling around here or not, and when I saw the back yard filling with party furniture this past week, I feared the worst, but realized that my anxiety was partly for a positive reason: Normally I would have talked to the building manager about Tom’s and my lousy experience six or so weeks ago, when it was so hot and we had to leave the building entirely to escape the heat and smoke. The downside of that would have been more acrimony, but the upside would have been that I would have known whether grilling was a thing of the past or not.

Since I never discussed it with her, our relationship didn’t get any worse, but I was also left to wonder if the day would come when she would grill again, and seeing obvious party preparations underway sent me into a tizzy.

My mother and Tom are sick of hearing about this. I can almost hear Tom’s eyes rolling over the phone, and my mother may possibly have said, “You’ve been meditating for 20 years! Why can’t you cope with this?”

She suggested I could go see my mental health professional, Deborah. I said that I would not be doing that, as Deborah has finally raised her rates, and there is nothing on this earth I would spend $100 to discuss. “But don’t you need psychiatric help?” asked my mother, managing to sound innocently helpful.

Well, perhaps so, and perhaps discussing grilling—that is, having someone listen while I discuss grilling—actually is worth $100, so I called Deborah and said that I would like to come in that very day at 9 a.m., 4 p.m., or 5 p.m., and not at any other time, and soon she called and said that someone had canceled for 4 p.m

The upshot was that I decided that if grilling occurred on the Fourth of July, which is kind of Grilling Day, so be it, but I would address it afterwards and try to make sure it was the last time, and that it wouldn’t be worth it try to stop it once it was underway, but that it would be perfectly reasonable (in my view, if not the building manager’s) to ask her not to let the charcoal burn for hours and hours, as she has in the past, because I didn’t really want to be walking around the Mission at midnight having my fingers blown off by some teenager’s firecracker while I waited to be able to go home.

When I got home after seeing Deborah, which was the day before July 4, I was perplexed but pleased to see that the party stuff was gone from the back yard, and that there was no evidence of grilling; i.e., my place didn’t reek of smoke. I called Tom and inquired, “Did the building manager perchance have people over today?” “Yes,” said Tom, “She had a ladies’ luncheon.”

I was tremendously relieved—honestly, I felt as relieved as if my doctor had said, “I accidentally confused your test results with someone else’s—you don’t have cancer, after all”—and decided to celebrate by inviting myself along on a bike ride Tom had planned for the Fourth of July. He is going on a five-week bike tour of the Continental Divide with one of his buddies, and has acquired a bike trailer for the trip. He wanted to ride with the trailer attached, including on dirt roads, to see how it handled before embarking on the trip, which was wise.

So yesterday we rode across the bridge to Sausalito, where we had lunch, and then to Marin Headlands, to do some trail riding. I saw a family of quail, three regular-sized ones and two little-bitty ones, and a coyote walked up within six feet of Tom. He was wounded, with a bloody patch on his side. He wasn’t aggressive or anything like that. He just sort of strolled up near Tom, and then strolled away.

I felt exhausted two blocks into our ride, but fantastic after five hours. I worked up a good sweat, and told Tom we should do this once a month. He liked that idea. He was often half a mile or a mile ahead of me, and when I finally caught up to him, I’d seize the brief opportunity to yell, “Don’t clog the roadway!” “OK,” he would answer, agreeable as always.

One of the days I was very grumpy this past week, I ran into Tom in the hallway of our apartment building and warned him first thing that I was in a bad mood. Later, when I was in a good mood again, I called him up and said, “Why so grumpy? Lighten up.” “OK,” he said.

When we got home from our bike ride yesterday, after a final stop at Mitchell’s Ice Cream, the back yard was deserted. So: no grilling, even for this most grillingest of holidays, and I am now ready to conclude that the Fume Wars may be satisfactorily concluded. Also, the building manager got some practice at entertaining people in the back yard with no grilling, which is good.