And sometimes the thinks line up and make an arrow

and make you think that the direction you are thinking isn't so totally crazy.

Today, I went to the vet's office for the bag of Very Expensive Dry food that I mix with chicken breasts cooked in the slow cooker for the High Maintenance Dog.

I swear, I was gone all of 35 minutes.

While I was gone, the owner of the company went to talk to the head construction guy, and found him slumped against the wall, barely responsive. Much drama (which I missed, so I will not try to replay it third-hand) ensued. By the time I got back, a mere 35 minutes later, a fire truck and ambulance was in front of our building, and my boss (the owner of the company) was in the driveway, waiting while one of our team was loaded into the ambulance, so he could go to the hospital with him. Construction guy was pasty gray, eyes half-shut, and grunting responses to EMS. Boss paused for 30 seconds to tell me he'd update us later. And they were off. It was some sort of heart-related thing, but the severity of it was not determined when I left after 5.

At last report, head of construction was still resisting the idea that anything was wrong, despite an abnormal EKG (and looking gray as cheap cat litter, weak, sweating, chest pain....) and was giving the hospital staff shit. He was FINE. Really.

So, I don't know how the story ended today. Did he give them so much shit they let him leave? It could happen. You can't subdue and administer medical care to a lucid person refusing it. But this led me to further thinking.

Stress management? We all talk about it, and how important it is, but what does it mean in real life? How do you DO it, when you are in a job with so much pressure? I don't mean facing an angry customer, but a huge job with many, many moving parts, with many thousands of dollars in sunk costs in a multi-million dollar project that has to come out of the ground, or else, on a small team of really smart and overworked people. If you are really good at what you do and passionate about making it work, how do you do the "Oh, take care of yourself, manage your stress," in real life? I don't know. I do know this is hardly the first time an ambulance has been called to one of my places of employment to haul somebody away, and one of those times, it was me. I don't want it to be me again.