Slowing down.

Slowing down is probably one of the most difficult instructions for me to follow. My lovely Sam keeps telling me to slow down, the doctor has told me to slow down, my family tells me to slow down. Slow down and please don't take anything else on.

Why is it that I have to stay so busy all the time to feel content? I look at my life the way it is at the moment and I'm imploding. I have so much to do but I don't have the healthy body needed to do it all. I puff when I walk from the house to the car. I feed the animals and I just need a sit down. They all call out to me, my horses whinnying and my little pig squealing with excitement, I haven't seen the goats for two day but Sam has and says they're fine. My body aches and I wonder if this feeling will ever go away? Somewhere in the depths of my practical self I know that I am just being dramatic and I'll be over this flu and getting on with things in no time but I do get down when I'm feeling this way.

I have had a week off work. I have had a week of basic interaction with my pet family and I miss them like crazy. In my mind I have let them all down and I feel awful.

This morning and many others started at about 6.50am which is when my body is naturally waking right now, in a bit of a jumble because the days are getting longer. So, with my body clock tweaked into this odd pattern I lay in bed and try to doze but instead I think. The rain pelts down on the roof, I think of the guttering that I have been meaning to install on the back of the house and then I think of the bathroom roof that needs sweeping of rimu branches. I think of having to brave the weather to feed the animals. I need to go out to buy more chook food and fill my car with petrol. Then the call of nature gets my out of bed, I take the dog out and as I'm clipping him up to his zippy line, all the while I'm thinking, thinking, thinking, I put my boot on a muddy patch of clay and slip in an award winning fashion, my right thigh's pajama leg soaking up the morning's torrential rain, it soaks into my underwear now and my shoulder. I attempt to get up, this is easier said than done. I flail on my back like a turtle the wrong way up, the dog stares at me, no doubt wondering what I'm up to. I still need to answer the call of nature and I'm now in fear of either bursting into tears and pissing myself or laughing out loud and pissing myself. So, I roll onto my hands and knees into the muddy path, my palms now covered in kanuka leaves and clay and march down to the dunny. So, that's how my day started and how my thinking abruptly stopped. Now, I'm really awake and any chance of going back to bed is lost. I switch the heater on so I don't catch my death of cold....oh wait, I'm half way there already. What the heck, at least I'll have a warm room should my death of cold be caught.

There's a goat shoulder roast thawing on the bench that needs to be cooked today, my kitchen is a shambles due to the worlds longest renovation.

I go out, feeding little pig before I do and saying hello to everyone. I pick up all the supplies and come home and feed everyone. My conscience feels better for knowing they all have full tummies. I retreat to the house to feed my own and put on the roast. I pick some fresh herbs for the roast vegetables and a sprig of rosemary for the meat.

This goat meat is the only meat I'm eating at the moment. Although I don't like'labels' I'm survive on a pescatarian diet most of the time, this means that basically the only flesh I eat is seafood mainly because I have been gathering shellfish and fishing since I was a child, the whole day would be dedicated to catching dinner and if I can kill it I deserve to eat it, that' my theory. However in this instance the theory of waste-not, want-not came into effect. When a representative from the large corporation next door called me to warn me of the hunters scouring the area for the purpose of goat control I immediately asked what they would do with the carcases. I obtained the hunter's phone number and asked if I could have one of the goats and he very kindly obliged with not one but two pygmy goat carcases that had been gutted and were minus heads and tails. Sam skinned and butchered them and we were left with an astonishing amount of meat which went into the deep freeze. So far we've had it roasted, curried, in pies and in the slow cooker. My favourite method so far is in the slow cooker which creates a melting tenderness that is delicious. I love goats as pets and I love seeing them in the wild but they need to be controlled and I would much rather this control method than the one that they were using when I first moved here which was poison. It was horrible, every day the smell of rotting goat carcases would fill your nostrils, every day they would be in various stages of decay. The banks of the stream were littered with them, it was heartbreaking. I would much rather the skill of a hunter with a silenced rifle shooting dead these little creatures before they even know what is going on than a slow and lonely death by poison.

I couldn't imagine having an animal here and not forming a bond with it, and then once I've bonded with it I certainly couldn't destroy its trust by killing it. That is just my opinion and I'm not that enthusiastic about meat these days but one day I may see things in a different light.