How to Get Two Problems for the Price of One

Today Gideon had another appointment with the same doctor.  Aha, I said to myself,  I will be sure to call and confirm.  (They don’t make confirmation calls for routine appointments, they say.)  This morning it was cold and snowing, and I was hoping against hope that they’d say, “Nope.  Your appointment is next Friday.”  But no.  The woman said she’d check and then that yes, we had the correct date and time.  (If you’re wondering why Gideon didn’t just go on his own, it’s that we’ve always thought that one of us should be along, too, just to have another set of ears present.)  So we set out, almost sliding through an intersection at a red light.  I was following what the GPS on my phone said was the fastest way, but there is No Way that was true.  Anyway, we got there in time, only to be told that the doctor was in New York and that the appointment had been re-scheduled for next Thursday.  I was assured that I had been called, something I have no record of, but folks, I had made my followup call.  I’m not sure what more I could have done, although from now on I will be sure to talk to the scheduler and not to the receptionist.  I have no idea why whatever record she checked was still showing the original appointment.  I was not a happy camper.  (But no, that’s not me screaming in the picture, and that’s not the scheduler cowering.)

So here’s the thing:  we already had one problem, the botched appointment.  Now we had to turn around and go back home.  We wasted a good hour and a half at least on this whole endeavor.  But I reminded myself not to create a second problem by having a hissy fit.  There was absolutely nothing I or anybody else could do to give me that time back.  So Gideon and I drove along, with me philosophizing about how I wasn’t going to overreact, and we got into this hilarious conversation about . . . capers.  You know, those little sour things that you put in sauces?  (In a burst of serendipity, they also appear in this week’s recipe post on the hospitality blog.)  Gideon hates them.  I was thinking aloud that maybe we could stop at the Trader Joe’s along Colorado Boulevard and get some, as their prices might be better than the ones at King Soopers.  (I have never noticed before what a weird name that is.  Soopers?)  But no, we had already passed it.  So I was trying to explain to Gideon what capers actually are, and he was responding with his usual deadpan humor (in spite of being rousted out of bed much earlier than usual), and I got to laughing so hard that I had tears in my eyes.  There was a second tears-in-the-eyes moment, but I can’t remember now what it was about.  So as I sit here writing this I’m re-living those funny moments in the car and not so much the ones as I was driving along I-70 and thinking, ‘Why on earth did the phone tell me to come this way?’  I sure wouldn’t be so philosophical if we’d gotten into an accident because of the sliding-through-the-intersection moment, but that didn’t happen.

Laura Doyle, the marriage guru whom I quote fairly frequently, makes this point about relationships: your spouse does something you don’t like, which is one problem, and then you react inappropriately, and now, presto!, you have a second problem.  And Gretchen Rubin, whom I ​also quote fairly frequently, says, “Underreact to a problem.”  I grew up with a seriously over-reactive mother, so this has been a hard lesson for me to learn.  But I guess I’m making some progress.  How about you?  What do you do when something happens for which there is no remedy?