This photo shows a wooden table, on which are set the following items: POP! SpongeBob SquarePants as a vinyl figure collectible in rainbow translucent colors. He's making the "Imagination" sign over his head with a rainbow between his two hands. There's a package of travel-sized Kleenex right in front of him, and on top is a Band-Aid in its wrapper.

Survival Toolkit for When Everything’s an Emergency

This photo shows a wooden table, on which are set the following items: POP! SpongeBob SquarePants as a vinyl figure collectible in rainbow translucent colors. He's making the "Imagination" sign over his head with a rainbow between his two hands. There's a package of travel-sized Kleenex right in front of him, and on top is a Band-Aid in its wrapper.

Fleshy faced robots, with the capability of smiling at you, could one day soon press their faces upon the window and look inside your house. I discovered this face-ripping fact this morning after casually typing “weird news” into a search, and now I can’t stop thinking about these freaky bots, but NOT in a “cool, I’d totally write a story about this” way. More like: “I need an emergency kit of sorts to protect me from the horror that now lives inside my head.”

Anxiety toolkits actually do exist—they’re a thing. And I’m here for them. You basically put together items related to sound, touch, taste, smell, and sight—all to help ground you, so that you can concentrate on pleasant things instead of well, most everything that sounds, feels, tastes, smells, and looks unpleasant—and there is a LOT of that going around right now. A LOT.

In any case, I’m busy gathering weighted blankets, candy, some kind of nice-smelling lotion, and pictures of Fiji. For sound, I can use whatever’s on my computer at the time because usually really bad things happen to me when I’m on my computer—like emails.

But I also like playing a little game with myself called “wrong answers only.” What WOULDN’T I put into an anxiety toolkit? Here we go:

–Snakes. In other “weird news,” some poor guy in Australia had to call the Reptile Relocation Sydney unit to remove what he originally thought were six venomous snakes in his yard. It actually turned out to be more than 100—29 of which materialized inside the collection bag as newborn baby snakes. In other words, snakes were giving birth INSIDE the collection bag as they were being collected.

–Whatever the gunk was that Nate and I found behind the refrigerator. The smell haunts me in my dreams.

–Almost any of the dresses on this link here. My top choices: 1) Usually, I would put pizza in my anxiety toolkit, but this pizza dress looks sinister, for some reason. The pepperoni-topped train feels particularly volcanic and aggressive. 2) The one that looks like the wind took hold of the dress, flipped it up over the model’s head, and exposed everything underneath. That HAS happened to me before, but I wouldn’t describe the feeling I was feeling as “fashionable.”

–Needles. Acupuncture is supposed to work on nerves/anxiety, but I just don’t think I’d be able to sit still long enough to let anyone put needles in me for “relaxation.” In nature, needle-pronged animals are things to stay away from. It’s a natural instinct to run, I think.

–A ten-hour ASMR loop of cats coughing up hairballs.

—Circus peanut candies covered in earwax. I don’t know why or how that could possibly happen, but if it did, I wouldn’t want it.

Aaannndddd, just now: Alex discovered that the vent right over my head/computer desk is coming loose from the ceiling. Guess now’s a good time to add a bunch of random spare parts I’ve found around the house to my mental health kit.

Your Turn: What do you do to keep calm and carry on?

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Published by ckennedy

Author of the DIY blog: Fixin' Leaks and Leeks. Paper/Rock Writing Consultation, Sole Proprietor.

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