I am getting older, for time now flies by and months fall off the calendar. I dare not think of what milestones await me around the next corner, but suffice it to say I'd love to find the pause button: I need to catch my breath. The last four months both crawled and flew by, proving that my perception of time is as firm as it has always been, which is to say, tenuous at best. Thanksgiving, Christmas, the New Year, Valentine's Day, and St. Patrick's Day have all come and gone, and not all of them left pleasant memories.

In short, I've been feeling quite sickly all this time. A good portion of it has to do with the upheaval commensurate with a new job. I've gone on at length on my other blog about change, but to sum up, change brings with it a tremendous amount of stress. There is but one other time in my life that I have been as stressed, and that was the year I served as the Interim Pastor. Stress of this magnitude and this duration always makes me sick to my stomach all the time. As you can now well imagine the holiday feasts were no joy to me, but a chore in not embarrassing myself by publicly displaying what was previously in my stomach. To those poor souls who supped with me, this is why I was nowhere near cheerful.

The good news is I think I am finally calming down, and breaking the perpetual cycle of stress (being stressed about being sick causes me to feel sick, which increases the sick feelings, which in turn adds to the stress . . . ). I say that whilst knocking on wood for I'm still not certain I'm decreasing the stress and not increasing it. Time will tell. I have always been one who has had great difficulty in relaxing; I believe I have my father's “disease” of wanting to be busy, only in my case it's far more cerebral and less physical, by which I mean to say I am always pushing myself with projects which tax me mentally.

I do not wish to devote an entire paragraph to this silly bit of worry mongering, but I shan't be forgiven otherwise. The symptoms of my sickness grew so severe, and have been so prolonged (I must here note that it may not be stress, or may not have all been stress) that a doctor's visit was in order. Women and doctors rather delightfully freak out when the words “chest” and “pain” are used in the same sentence. Three large vials of blood were drawn and an EKG was performed and come May I get the utter joy of a stress test all so I can hear the doctor tell me to “relax” and “read a book on stress management”. I find out more about this on Friday, so I'm only anticipating what the doctor will say. Do I feel fine? No. Am I worried or scared of something life threatening? No. Do I worry that I'll have to call in sick? Yes. Do I have any sick time? No. So now we all see why not feeling 100% causes stress, which makes me not feel 100% which. . . . I'm a piece of work.

On to more journalistic things!

Thanksgiving was a blessed time, and probably a rare event this last year. Four Barbers met three Murrays, eight Regers, and one Muir at The Ranch. We had food all the time, some “American” and some Korean. We burned huge piles of leaves. We had the joyful experience of cleaning out a plugged septic line. We took rides around the 800 beautiful acres. And let us not forget that we had many, many great conversations with family and friends. It was a short visit with two long drives, and all was well until the day I had to leave for that was the first day I felt quite unwell (and the following day was the first day on the new job -- not a coincidence I fear).

Christmas was no easy holiday this year, for not only was I still feeling wobbly in the tummy, but we again hosted the festivities for both sides of our families. Apart from Adam everyone was there (though I should note we did call Adam via Skype and chat for quite a while). The house was a bit less crowded than last year, but the stress and tension was higher due in part to me and to poor Berle. While we don't know if we can blame the cleaning of the septic line or not, Berle managed to get a staphylococcus infection over Thanksgiving. As we found out over Christmas there was at least one point were we almost lost him, and at the time Linda did not share this information with us, so it came as a shock, and a blessing that he could celebrate with us. He was still quite tired, and didn't have his usual energy. It was still a good time overall. We all attended a Christmas Eve candlelight service, we ate at least two big meals, I got to watch A Christmas Carroll (with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge) and we got to be with family. It was mightily stressful. I think there are only two people in the entire family (world?) who like the temperature of my house, and I fear, with my already distemperment due to my ailing stomach, this host was a bit put out by the belly aching over my fires.

New Year's Eve was a total let down, followed by an even worse New Year's Day. In short, these two days were the most sick I was during the entire four months. I forced myself to stay up and entertain two good friends (a young married couple) though I fear I was poor company. We went out to a pub for some food, watched a movie, and played a couple of games, and then I went to bed. The next day, one of my six holidays all year, I spent in bed unable to eat anything. Two thousand and seven started out on such a low note it can't help but get better!

Life steadily improves, and I am getting more and more comfortable with my job. I fit in quite well, and have had a ball of a time at my job thus far, as long as I'm not working. The work, is good work, though there is a fair amount of cleaning up after messes I did not make; however, the silver lining here is the boss has given me green lights to fix what I can and rewrite the rest, so I am not hampered in my job at all. Actually, things are looking quite up. I am told we will be hiring a Jr. Programmer in the near future, to work closely with me, which I take to mean will make me the Sr. Programmer. I honestly don't care as long as I can prevent some of the catastrophes I've already seen, and instill some good coding habits.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about my life and my job, and now my health. For now my clock says it's late, but my body disagrees. I'll try to force the later to agree with the former, and I'll probably lose, but such is my life.