4 days off / by Christina Rosalie

have made all the difference. It always stuns me when I realize how entirely a lack of sleep and stress affect my life. How I feel completely altered, weaker, fragile at the center like a soft-boiled egg with days-on-end of stress and poor sleep; and then after a few days of extra naps and time spent in good company (family and friends, both) and suddenly I feel different. Whole. Laughter rises up easily and often like finches on the early summer wind. I remember how much I love making love in the afternoon with windows open for a nap, after. Family time suddenly feels precious and sustaining, not debilitating the way it can feel when I've given everything already and the dishes still need to be done.

This weekend has been full of frisbee tossing, and cutting grass. Renting a tiller to cut soil for our new garden. Listening to night rain, and having our hair tossed by afternoon winds. Getting the box ready for new chicks (coming this Thursday!) and taking Bean and his two-wheel bike + training wheels to the playground bikepath. Watching him fly by, all grins. Making pasta al dente with fresh red sauce and sausages, salad with new mustard greens and fresh corn off the cob. And writing: good solid pages of fiction. I cannot wait for summer.

Two weeks of school left (back tomorrow) and then off to the writing workshop with Pam Houston (! I know, I can't believe it either!) A week to myself on the coast writing and soaking up other writers, and then the wide swath of summer streatching out ahead, humid and lush, to linger, to sweat, to write, to grow a garden.

I have plans: many rows of corn, mounds for squash and pumpkins (DH's favorite), strawberries, peas and lettuce, green beans on poles making an archway for Bean to hid beneath, sunflowers, potatos, radishes, carrots, tall tomatos bursting in the sun. I know so little about gardening really, though I've always coaxed a patch of vegitables out of some corner of our urban yards. Now, it's nearly a quarter acer of soil we've set out to till. I've never composted, but want to learn. So much to be patient about--the eager part of me wants it all now: the tall rows of sweetcorn. The scarlet runner beans and holyhocks along the fence. The chickens feathered and scratching underfoot as we picnic outdoors like we did at lunch today.

I forget when I'm stressed to that teary weak point of nothing, how much I love to just ramble. To post about the cluttered mosaic of our days as a family. To make sketches in my flora notebook, or linger by the window watching the humming birds that are nesting in our lilac trees. And I miss all of you. Over the span of time I've had this blog, so many people have become bits of what make me whole, remind me of what I want, keep me inspired. What are you up to?

Tell me: five things you did today. :)