swings and roundabouts - a modicum of payback

Yesterday, the weather proved too enticing to resist so, having acquired a few more plants for the garden in the morning, I overcame my natural caution regarding over-exertion and created an additional (mini-)border as well as some plantings in pre-cleared areas of the extant ones. This task was left until later in the afternoon when the earlier heat had subsided a little. Once the plantings were completed we retreated to the house to relax.

Mid-evening the doorbell rang as some children had spotted a hedgehog under Helen's car, and they didn't want it to be accidentally run over. The hedgehog in question had meantime moved across to some decaying leaves in a corner of our pebbled forecourt,seeking shelter; to ensure that it didn't dash out onto the road, I picked up the hedgehog and took it to shelter in the undergrowth at the wilder end of the garden. The creature remained on the spot where I placed it for a few minutes before scurrying off, much to my relief, into deeper cover.

Although extremely / achingly exhausted before retiring to the bedchamber, sleep proved very difficult to come by - discomfortingly patchy at best, with erratically random bouts of acute nightsweats as a keynote. By mid-day (today) my whole being was a patchwork of nausea inducing aches and pains, abdominal, glandular and muscular. Abdominally, in terms of discomfort and activity, it seemed as if mild diverticulitis and IBS had conspired to optimize my sense of dis-ease.
 
Today has, of necessity, been a time of great idleness chez nous as I have little desire to exacerbate the situation.

Thermostatic Quirks and Simple Pleasures

Quite when it happened, I don’t remember; all that I know is that for a number of recent years my body thermostat, though somewhat erratic, tended to play up in such a way that night-sweats, and even passive day-time cool room sitting sweats, have tended to dominate my life experience. The ambient temperature bore little, if any relationship, to my body heat and subsequent seepage of saline solution from pores all around my body, limbs and head.




It has come as something of a surprise, in more recent weeks, as the realization dawned that I’ve started feeling the “cold” to an apparently greater degree than others around me. It seems as if the thermostat has swung from one extreme to the other and, as a result, I no longer (if ever) have any realistic awareness of the ambient temperature. It’s actually quite a positive experience to be rid of the “night-sweats” but, not so the cold shudders experienced when sat in what I would have considered a comfortably heated environment. On the “up” side it suggests that I’m unlikely to suffer from hypothermia but, the “down” side is that we’re definitely going to be confronted with higher energy bills this fall and winter.




Is it possible that this thermostatic change could relate to my having doubled up on my ppi intake; could a reduction in the production of stomach acids serve to reduce my perceived body temperature. Of course, this “cooling down” also coincides with my most recent sustained period of refraining from smoking but, in normal circumstances (with the supposed deleterious effect of smoking on ones circulatory system) one would have anticipated the opposite result.




I could so easily produce pointlessly circular arguments at this point so, a change of topic is called for. And the subject today is …. SIMPLE PLEASURES!




In fact, simple pleasures, in spite of my regular moans, are a dominant feature of my life; I feel truly blessed with an ability, at times, to simply be still and bask in the wonderful phenomena of breathing. I look out of the window and observe the goldfinches, blue, great and coal tits, dunnocks, collared doves, jackdaws, house sparrows, all successfully scavenging for food, both from our feeders and natures natural bounty. I frequently feel quite overawed by the sheer variety of life forms that have evolved on this amazing planet.




Of an evening, as my beloved works on her laptop, whether for service preparation or updating her weblog, sat opposite me in the living room, I find myself quite simply lost in adoration, contemplation, care and concern for her well-being. Just to see her smile, watch her sing along with ‘Songs Of Praise’, even animatedly reading whatever novel or short story currently engages her attention, I just want to reach out and hold her, hug and squeeze her!




These simple things, a source of warm glowing pleasure, simultaneously serve to reinforce a sense of responsibility to look after and protect that / those for which / whom one cares.