The most stressful things in life

Everyone "knows" that moving house is stressful. There's a list, which some quote (rather inaccurately, it turns out) of the most stressful events you can experience in your life. According to the list, moving house only ranks as number 30. Renovating a house, though, comes in at number 28. Being pregnant and having a baby rank as numbers 12 & 14 respectively. You can find the ordered list of the most stressful life events here. It makes for rather interesting reading, I thought.

Some people suggest that when calculating your stress score you should consider events during the past 2 years; others recommend only including events from the past year. A score of less than 149 indicates low stress. Medium stress is indicated by a score from 150-299, while severe stress is any score over 300. I was surprised to find that my score (based only on the last year) is 235. If I include events over the past 2 years (i.e. Zoe's death, and moving back to SA), then my score is 417. Hmm.... so either I am very stressed, or I only have a moderate amount of stress. That's rather helpful. Not. Since I'm trying to keep positive, I think I'll go with the lower score.

Of course, the more stressed one is, the more susceptible one is to illness. Thus far, despite Nellie being ill and despite the a significant percentage of the staff being ill, I've managed to remain relatively healthy. Today, though, I caught myself starting to cough. I was rather alarmed but tried to put it down to a mild asthmatic/ allergic reaction to something I ate. By the end of a half day though, I was already exhausted and tiredness is usually my first cold/ flu symptom. Given the number of meetings and decisions I had to make in the afternoon, I'm feeling shattered now. Hopefully I'm just doing too much. Hopefully I'm not actually getting sick.

Before I can hit the sack though, I've set myself the task of packing the baby clothes and Nellie's currently unused clothing. Either that, or give up by 9pm, whichever comes first. But first - tea!!! Tea is the cure-all and perk-me-up I need. Care to join me for a cuppa?