Passing the stress test....

When we were looking for a place to live after T. was declared 100 percent disabled by his VA doctors, there was a lot of stress.  We were leaving familiar and striking out into the wild blue yonder without a parachute.  Or something very like that, anyway.  Once we decided the location and then  found a house - I decided I needed something to relieve all that stress of moving, leaving family and friends and moving so far away.  I settled on a little keychain  dangler shaped like an elongated egg.  It was white.  There was a small plastic latch that let the top flip up to reveal the scene inside the egg.  It was a farmyard scene with plastic green grass, a small  fence and two black and white cows.  One was large and the other small.  Mother and calf.  Whenever the lid was opened, the larger cow would move slightly back and forth to mimic eating.  Small gears would grind and at last the mother cow would come to a stop and the cycle was complete.  I would close the lid and open it again, time after time.  The little bucolic scene recalled to me the  peaceful country side we would be living in and the slower pace of life we could expect.  I could almost feel the muscles unknotting in my neck and shoulders as I let the little keychain toy unwind.  I played with it a lot.  The clasp finally snapped and I couldn't close the lid any more.  I sealed it with a rubber band so it wouldn't get broken.  When I slipped the band off the egg, the little cows would work their tiny magic and I'd consciously relax and feel less harried with the demands on our lives.

The other day, I was coming up Rough Way and spotted a scene of cows eating near the roadway.  Big cows.  Little ones.  One of the big cows was eating.  That's when I realized - I hadn't played with my little keychain in a while - probably because I have the real thing living just across the road and - for the most part, those neck and shoulder muscles of mine have come unclenched while we were been making this little piece of the state into our home.  I still miss friends and family but I do enjoy watching the squirrels run in the grass and butterflies dancing on the breeze.  I enjoy the slight change of seasons - the trees shed leaves and at night you can see stars through the lacy structure of the underlying limbs.  We might even get snow in our area.  It has happened before and could again.  There have been flurries.  I'm sure I've seen them.  And if there are flurries, isn't that a grand excuse to call out of work?  I never learned how to drive in snow.