cashews and dates

My body is really handing me the bill now for those three plus years of getting through acute crisis mode stress all the time. I knew it was coming. I suppose it could be worse. First garlic, in the fall, then wheat at christmas (how cruel! Stuffing, lebkuchen, my maple tahini shortbread), and now onions, suddenly, dramatically, about three weeks ago. Just after I had bought a 50lb bag at a great price. I've beend digging up and handing out my leeks, and I'll market and sell the five varieties of garlic currently growing in the garden. Don't know what I'll do with the frozen broths and soups in the freezer, nor what I'll do when it comes to making broths and soups again in the next cool season. Or what I'll eat when I travel anywhere again. I've been living off cashews and dates, white rice with some egg and fish thrown in. There's a locked spot in my lower thoracic spine, all my shoes crease and break open on the left toe box, my legs and feet ache in the evening, my right shoulder catches painfully when I load it. I'm definitely mourning the loss of my husband's healing massages. He could always put me right, almost immediately. Felix may need botox again, even though it's just been three months and last time it was nine. He's been unable to push poo out consistently. We are booked in for two weeks from now, but I fear he won't make it that long. As in keeping me up at night fear, waking up with butterflies in my tummy and a pounding abdominal pulse fear. I'm remembering how fast he declined the last time, in New Zealand. And there, the hospital wasn't 6 hours away, it was one. And they had him in OR within two hours of arriving, whereas I somehow don't think that would be the case here. He's been chewing obsessively on coat and shirt collars, and consequently on a sensory chew toy necklace. Linked to stress, they say, or dysfunctional pelvic floor muscles. It started in NZ, I remember. I'm getting neighbour travis to dig a grave in the front field with his tractor. Easier to fill it in myself than dig it myself. Despite the painkiller, old 21 is not well. By evening time his face is puckered up in pain and his legs wobbly and shaking. He got cast in a mud hole two days ago and the ewes told me about it. It was evening and I was in the garden, felix already asleep in bed. The girls were galloping around acting silly, but always back and forth between me and the far side of hamish's shed. Often Clarice was lying upright on the ground, chewing her cud, which is more an afternoon activity not twilight. And it was in a strange spot. It took me a while to register all this, I was trying out some beautiful English shears I had scored at a garage sale and cleaned up. I finally noticed too that there was one sheep missing, two black and one white. I went on a search and the three ewes walked with me, looking at me expectantly and there was 21, like a white sponge in a black hole, hot from thrashing and soaked through on one side, terrified. His legs didn't work at first, but I limped him along to even ground. The next morning he was terrified of everything, including the black cat picking her way to us through the garden. I wonder if a bear had been around the day before.