My mind on stress

So I'm trying to drink my tea, and I am surrounded by little dogs with big eyes, staring at me, wagging their tails hopefully.

I don't know what they want.

I fed them. I offered to let them out; they skittered away. But then they came right back, them and their big eyes and cheerfully hopeful tails.

Who knew little dogs could fill you with such a sense of pressure and incompetence?

They probably know that their box of puppy treats is empty. It is a very sad thing.

I need to go to the store. Besides puppy treats, I need to buy refreshments for the reception that will follow David's Junior Saxophone Recital this coming Sunday evening.

The hardest thing about this = not knowing numbers. Anywhere from twelve to fifty people might come to listen to David play. How do I buy for such an amorphous audience?

Even if I did have a number, I wouldn't know how much to buy. For instance, I can make a very large tray of fresh vegetables and dip, and my family of six will easily polish it off in the course of an evening. However, I am 100% certain that if I made nine such trays for this event, they would not be consumed, not even close, even if 50 people showed up in the end.

It drives me crazy how polish (as in, "Why don't men pah-lish their shoes anymore these days?") and Polish (as in, "These Poe-lish sausages are delicious,") have exactly the same spelling.