I’ve been laid low with a stomach bug, dear reader, hence the paucity of posts this week. I’m feeling as if everything’s gone to pot lately –  my blog, my belly, the garden, the housework…

At first I was convinced that the collywobbles were related to a lemon cake I baked last weekend. I hadn’t cooked anything for a while and by Sunday afternoon I was pretty sure that I’d managed to poison myself. But my partner and our friends, with whom I shared the cake, didn’t suffer at all. They even enjoyed it.

Life hasn’t exactly been quiet around here lately. In fact, we’ve reached a couple of milestones (better than kidney stones I suppose) over the last few days: a new second-hand car that will reliably take us further afield on more challenging roads, and the signing of a new tenancy lease, the first during our nine years here.

So now I’m thinking that the real cause of my bellyache was the fretful exchange of a large chunk of savings in return for a hunk of metal, of which we’ve yet to take delivery. We’re hoping it’ll be spared from hail storms, forecast this weekend, as it awaits us in the dealer’s yard. (Why do cheques still take a week to clear when electronic funds transfer is so prevalent?)

Or maybe it was about the finite nature of our tenancy lease and our having to make decisions about where we’ll live once the year is up.

In a futile attempt to make up lost savings, I embarked dizzily on too many projects. That can’t have helped.

Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast,
or of one thing too exclusively. – Voltaire.

I think my gut is telling me to slow down, to breath deeply and relax. We live in the country, after all, a supposedly stress-free zone. I’ve read that you can choose not to feel stressed. Like everything, I guess it depends on the circumstances. I plan to give it a try.

On this damp and misty day, I’m hoping that a gentle meander among the trees will inform my choice, leading my thinking, and my gut, to a less frenzied place.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my yoghurt.