Sweat the little stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself.

You have to admit that most of the time, Elly stresses over non-events. There isn't a year that's gone by that doesn't feature a Sunday strip that has her bellowing at the pets. The main reason, of course, is that she's been around animals all her life and still hasn't the vaguest notion how they really behave, only how she wants them to. That lack of real understanding feeds into a characteristic habit of her mind: her freaking out in the face of minor inconveniences. Her warped perspective on the world causes her to view piddly crap that you and I would shrug off and deal with as an all-hands-on-deck, twelve-alarm crisis. Since she's looking at life through a microscope, it should come as no surprise that she cannot handle really BIG problems all that well. The need to, say, padlock a gate or fire an employee who's stealing from her AND threatening her child is simply too large and overwhelming for her to deal with so she slaps on a plastic grin, crosses her fingers and hopes for the best. Given that Mom lives in a fog of her own making, it's no wonder that Mike, Liz and April can't handle conflict well.