1.12.25
Hello to the New Year! Well, we are nearly a fortnight into it I know, but something tells me this year is going to zoom by just as quickly as the last one did and that is a tad daunting to think about. I am sure each and every one of you, if you are over the ripe old age of forty that is, will harken back to days gone by when it seemed as if a year took an age to pass! Not so now my friends! 365 days from one end of a year to the other seems to pass in a blink or two of an eye, gone before we know it.
Maybe it is due in part to changes in one’s life. As we physically slow down, time seems to correspondingly speed up! Ah ha! Maybe that’s the answer to this conundrum! I have certainly slowed down over the past couple of years and time sure is passing faster than ever. I still get up well before dawn each morning, but whereas one would find me outside starting a day’s work by 6 o’clock of a morning, one now finds me sitting by the fire having another cup of tea instead. Of course, when the daily milking of Heidi begins – she had her calf by the way – I shall be out there doing that early morning chore at the usual time. However, the urgency to get other jobs done, such as repairing the fence brought down by elk a few weeks ago or digging up the thistles as they pop their heads above the ground during this mild weather we are having, find me saying to myself, “Oh, there’s plenty of time to get that done.” My spirit is willing, but my energy has waned.
How frustrating that is to me! Someone who was always known for being on the go, akin to the Energizer Bunny on the telly, now finds herself struggling to fill the milk cow’s feeder with hay of a morning without having to sit down to catch her breath. The mere act of walking from the house to Darrell’s workshop makes my heart pound in my chest and my head swim. Something is not right; this is not me at all! Now I am not meaning to complain and am definitely not looking for sympathy as there are so many folks out there much worse off than me! It is just rather hard to accept that something has or is happening inside you that is impacting your life. I want to discover what it is and by gosh, get it fixed! Not sounding a tad impatient, am I?
Part of me wishes I were not such an enigma to the cardiology department at The Heart & Lung Center in Bend. To them, I apparently seem too healthy to fit the bill of a person having heart issues, despite having symptoms that are, to me at least, near debilitating because my heart has decided to do the rhumba in my chest all day long! They look at my past cardiac tests from early last year and see a heart that was incredibly healthy. “Surely she must be exaggerating how she feels” is what I know was going through the young PA chap’s mind as I tried to emphasize how my energy level has changed. This coming week I shall have a nuclear stress test which hopefully will shed some light, one way or another, on how happy or grumpy my heart is. I will be delighted if I ace the test again as I have in the past, even if it means we must look elsewhere to discover where my energy has wandered off to.
Drat! It sounds like I am doing a lot of complaining here! I don’t really mean to you know; I have been through worse. Maybe it is because I am a fixer. I like to fix things, to make things right and better. Not so much a perfectionist by any means, just someone who likes to straighten that crooked picture on the wall or the wonky t-post in the fence line. I want to fix what is going on inside me or at least have the expectation others will give me guidance on how to fix it! Be patient I tell myself; this is happening for reason that voice inside me whispers. “I’m trying!” I answer back.
This past year was a challenging one to put it mildly. A year I do not wish to repeat. However, we are entering a New Year, the path ahead as yet untrodden. Will it be smooth or will it be rocky? No one knows, but isn’t that part of the excitement about starting down a road untraveled? It stretches before us, inviting and a wee bit intimidating at the same time, but that is okay, I will not be travelling alone. Darrell and I might stand for a moment wondering, then hand in hand we will begin the journey, confident that whatever may lie ahead we will successfully navigate it together.
