Thursday, March 25, 2010

Dirt And Stress

This morning Piglet woke up screaming at 3:30 and apparently thought it would be great fun to go on screaming right up until about five o'clock. She is now peacefully sleeping on the couch for now, but it is time for Teenybop who was also up and down all night to get up for school so I suspect she will soon find a way to wake her sister.

This blog post will therefore probably be very short, but I was feeling so stressed out that I couldn't sleep so I have been reading the archives of two new blogs I found. One is an army wife who leads a busy life with her husband and three kids. The oldest daughter is a teenager, the younger daughter is ADHD and VERY active. She is also VERY imaginative and her antics are hilarious though I'm not sure how hard I'd be laughing if I were living those adventures instead of just reading about them in the quiet of the early morning. The son ... He is adorable. Just simply adorable. But I'm glad I had girls. The other blog is the first blogger's mother, and since she has been very close to her grandchildren geographically until recently, she has had many adventures also, so her blog is very interesting as well.

This morning while I was lost back in 2007 reading these archives, I found a post that was about gardening, and it made me miss growing things so strongly that for just a second I could smell the compost pile at my old garden plot in the Knoxville Community Garden. I miss growing things, I miss watering and weeding, I miss harvesting. I miss putting my hands and my effort into the ground and enjoying the great things that come back up to greet me. I miss the way I felt less stressed after spending the morning on my knees in the dirt. I wish I had some land of my own. I wish I could go back to the Community Garden and start up again with another plot, but for one it's too late to sign up this year, and for two I'm not sure I could be polite if I caught someone stealing the fruits of my labor the way I was polite to my thief last time.

But I do miss gardening. I wonder if there will be a place where I can grow things on the Army post once all the turmoil is finished and my family is reunited and fully in the Army? If we have a house, I don't see why not, or even if we have a duplex I should be able to manage something ... But an apartment? I doubt it, and I definitely hope that Private Ryan's rank and pay grade will get us a house where I can garden. Nothing to do really but wait and see though.

But in the meantime I'm sure missing the way the dirt somehow seemed to wash my stress away back then.