Highly Sensitive People

Ds2 helped me with hoof trims this morning. It was humid, but felt cool and breezy at 7am. It went SOOOO smoothly and again I thank God for the help from my ds.

Yesterday when I separated the kids from their mothers, I only separated buckling kids. Today was the first day for three wethers (neutered males) to be away from their dams all day long. Two are almost four months old, and the other is 3 months old. It is common to wean males (unless you have determined they are "sire" material) at 8 weeks of age, so these boys were on their moms fairly long. The remaining little buckling is 8 weeks old and we banded him today. I had also planned to wean him, but it is a bit uncomfortable for the little boys to be banded so I didn't want to wean him and band him in the same day.

I milked this afternoon. I got nearly one half gallon. It doesn't seem like I'm going to need to milk twice a day though, because the girls aren't giving *that* much milk in the afternoon. I am probably going to milk twice a day for one week and see how it goes, then cut down gradually next weekend and only milk once a day. If it weren't so hot in the afternoon, I'd consider cutting out the morning milking and only do it in the afternoon.

The does are showing signs of being deficient in copper, so I will begin supplementing copper tomorrow. That could cause low milk production.

I found my book quite by accident, the one I mentioned that I was wanting to reread The Highly Sensitive Person : How To Thrive When The World Overwhelms You by Elaine N. Aron. I have found some things that are helping me to feel okay about myself. I'm not just a big whiner and complainer, and I'm probably tired so much because I *am* a highly sensitive person and I just have a lot going on. I gotta remember this!!!

Ms. Aron lists a few things to help the HSP recognize that having this trait does make one special:

• Better at spotting errors and avoiding making errors
• Highly conscientious
• Able to concentrate deeply ( But we do best without distractions)
• Especially good at tasks requiring vigilance, accuracy, speed and detection of minor differences
• Able to process material to deeper levels of what psychologists call "semantic memory"
• Often thinking about our own thinking
• Able to learn without being aware we have learned
• Deeply affected by other people's moods and emotions

Wow. I have all those.

And here is another thing that was helpful:

"Sometimes people with our trait are said to be less happy or less capable of happiness. Of course, we can seem unhappy and moody, at least to non-HSPs, because we spend so much time thinking about things like the meaning of life and death and how complicated everything is - not black-and-white thoughts at all. Since most non-HSPs do not seem to enjoy thinking about such things, they assume we must be unhappy doing all that pondering. And we certainly don't get any happier having them tell us we are unhappy (by their definition of happy) and that we are a problem for them because we seem unhappy. All those accusations could make anyone unhappy."

So see, I'm just not a whiner -- I tell myself. It's okay, I can rant and rave all I want. It's my blog. ;-)

I'm also rereading Eat Fat, Lose Fat. I want to get back into eating this way, maybe take it a step further this time.

Ds2 made killer cinnamon rolls today. Oh they were SOOOOO delicious. Just what I need... he told me be prepared to eat two or three... they were so sweet, there's no way I could eat more than one. He told me the frosting recipe called for 6 cups powdered sugar, but he cut it down to 2 cups and it's perfectly sweet.


Until next time.