Stress in Paradise
When I first saw it I was sure I found paradise. I was wrong.
I moved out to farm country a while ago. I love the views of crops that vary each year and mountains in the distance. The peace and serenity here truly felt like paradise to me.
Okay, this is not my ideal dream situation. That would be a mountain lake with evergreens and mountains completing my view.
But the evergreen country view is farther away from town than I want to live right now. So I figured farmland was a pretty good second choice.
On the surface it is. But when I take a truthful look I find something, many things actually, that really disturb me.
When you don’t want to see the truth you can do great job of hiding it from yourself. Well, I did anyway.
It took me many months to realize that my health has declined sharply in the short time since I moved out here. I kept attributing the cause to other reasons that are definitely true. But the real stressors driving my health issues are all stress. And that happened because of the facts of living in the country, farm country, to be specific.
I didn’t think much about mice in the house when I had a cat. He would catch the mice that rarely showed up. At least I think they rarely came into the house. Now that I know they need a space the size of your index finger to get in I am not so sure mice indoors happened since my cat transitioned to the next plane.
When I saw mice running around it freaked me out. I had no idea where they were depositing their droppings. I didn’t know if they were getting into or on my counters or places I kept my food, dishes. etc.
Mice are not clean and I am health fanatic. Hey even if you are not a health nut you don’t want mice in your food area or in your house, for that matter!
While trying to find their hiding place I discovered they had destroyed lots of very important property.A� They eat through anything! Unreal!
Some very precious material had been destroyed. Not to mention the horribly awful mess they left in all my things. Yikes. Talk about disgusting.
Do you think all that attention to mice and their habits in my house caused me stress? Understatement. I didn’t even realize I was losing sleep over it. I was afraid of finding dead mice and (which often happened) inside and outside.
But it wasn’t just the mice stressing me out.
I live in the country with farmland neighboring me. The farmer sprays his fields. I have no clue how much of that spray wafts over onto my yard – and my garden.
The other day it hit me that my water supply comes from a well. No way does the spray, the pesticide and herbicide, not get into the ground water and therefore into my water.
Okay. I use special water systems for everything–except washing dishes and watering my garden.A� Oh great, chemical water feeding the crops I grow to eat myself.
But that is not all. The sprays work to keep the pests out of the crops. I know because they came over to my house. And many are so small they come right in through the screens.
Until I gave in and hired a pest control company I went to sleep at night and awakened every morning to the site of tiny black dots moving across my ceiling. If I ever opened the window overhead–different black dots filled my pillow–so I guess they got into my hair too. Shutter!
Yuck!
What I finally faced is this location and house is not paradise for me – and it is time for me to leave farm country and restore my peace of mind – and health.