No strokes, please, large or small ...

Hell has frozen over, and it's a frosty shade of pink. I actually managed to make it an entire week in a state of relative calm. I didn't think about the B word, I didn't stress about writing, I didn't stress (much) about work ... it was good. The title of this post, though, is something one of my friends said to me last night when my nice anti-stress resolve started to crack and I said I think I'm about to have a stroke. But she told me that I'm not allowed to, and since she's my mentor, I tend to listen to her.

May has traditionally been a good month for me, so I will admit that I came into the month with what could be some subconscious unrealistic expectations. I graduated from college, got engaged, started working at The Times, got pregnant the first time ... all in May. So I think it's probably in my best interests to try and continue my state of zen.

I actually have had a pretty good week, if you don't count being pulled into other people's drama and being on day two of an 11-day workweek. I won the March headline contest at work (winning entry: "Kick back, relax, chew some cud," about cows sleeping on water beds on an Ohio farm and therefore producing more milk; seriously, when does the word cud ever get into the newspaper, let alone win an award?!), got some serious retail therapy (I seriously need to stop buying clothes for work because all I have is nice stuff now and three sad pairs of khakis to wear on the weekend) and I found out that Coldstone makes fat-free ice cream (the brownie, caramel sauce and pecans, not so much fat free).

I also managed to finish two stories in one week, and to my total shock, I am immensely happy with the result. Arbor Day and Cinco De Mayo -- two vastly underrated holidays. Now, if I could only finish G&L15 ... I think the reason I have stalled out goes back to my state of calm: writing the fights is really, really hard, especially when you aren't feeling very angsty yourself. And between Lynn's temper and George's self-righteousness, it gets pretty nasty.

A pall has been cast over the newsroom, and it's pretty evident. The departures of three of our desk editors -- including a 24-year veteran and the editor who handled pretty much every big series in the last six years --hit our department pretty hard, and even though the newshole isn't as large as it was when I started in 2004, it's still kind of daunting to think about how many people we're down from back then. Sadly, it's almost second nature to me at this point, given that I have never worked during a time when there wasn't turmoil in the business. After all, I technically was supposed to lose my job back in 2004 during the last round of layoffs.

However, I think the fact that we are going through these struggles to begin with shows that the paper is serious about its commitment to journalism and its gatekeeper role, and isn't willing to just throw in the towel when times get tough. The Blethens very well could have sold the paper to Hearst at any time in the last several years, or merely said that it's too much and closed us down. But they didn't.

During the farewell celebration for the Metro people on Friday, one of the senior editors who left spoke, and his words really touched me. He spoke about a story he did several years ago about breast-cancer screenings (back when they weren't an everyday thing), and that some time after the story ran, a woman called or wrote in to say that she saw the story, got screened and found out that she had cancer. But they were able to treat it because it was detected early enough. "If we're able to help one person," he said, his voice cracking, "we've done our jobs."

I think that's all any of us can ask for -- at the end of the day, to be able to say that we did our jobs, and that we helped one person -- even if it's just ourselves.

And that, most definitely, is a reason to be zen.