What a here and there day. The kids, all three of them, were baptised today, except E. and K. both had colds and E. needed a nap and only wanted to stand next to the baptismal font. So he threw a lot of fits when his desire to walk around (or to stand) were thwarted, and generally made it so nobody could actually hear what the deacon said. The new parents of the sweet 6 week old baby who was being baptised at the same time looked a little overwhelmed by all the noise that my child was producing. Then again, the sweet little baby had older cousins (one of whom plastered his entire face with smiley stickers afterwards), so maybe the parents had had glimpses of toddler behavior before. It also happened that the sweet little baby's grandma was a romance author, who'd just turned in her third manuscript for Leisure. So we commiserated a bit about wait times and declining book sales, and she told me that the patron saint of writers was St. Francis de *Sales*, har har har, which was also sort of ironically appropriate. Now I will have to look him up.

Before the baptism G. and I went to church, and to the grocery store for a cake, and to Target for hose, because a black hole ate the pants I was going to wear. I put a hole in the hose as soon as I put them on, which is why I also had no hose, because that always happens to me.

Well, that and it takes a grand occasion to get me out of my jeans.

Anyway.

G. also had a First Reconciliation meeting this afternoon, but Andy took him to that because I had to put E. down for his nap. After he went to sleep, K. came downstairs and said she wanted to have her "TV Time", as if she hadn't been having it for most of the weekend because she's been sick. But I obliged with the Sleeping Beauty DVD (the 4th time in two days) and sat down on the chair with a notebook and a stack of printer paper to keep her company, because I was going to write, see, either more on "Evergreen" or else I was going to fool around with that pipedream I have, of working on a year's journal of our homeschooling for publication. Except what I really did was draw a picture of our fireplace. In moss-green Sharpie. And the perspective was all weird, and it turned out as the Great Leaning Fireplace, with one crooked side. Then I decided I really wasn't going to write anything, so I folded some laundry and started another load, and Andy and G. came home and I moaned about how we've been eating so much junk all week, so then I decided I would make chili for dinner.

Made the chili, did more laundry, listened to a Steve Earle CD, thought about all the pieces I have that I could possibly revise and/or transmogrify into novellas (because they're currently pieces of novels), got a brief twinge of an idea for an historical fantasy set in the Civil War, ate dinner, called my mom, did still more laundry, ate some cake while looking over a new cookbook, read to Andy from an old Mothering article by Nancy Wallace while E. sat on my lap and smeared cake all over himself and Andy did dishes, picked up and vacuumed the living room, thought about practicing my violin, and now here I am, writing this long and boring blog entry, all in the name of pro-crast-i-na-tion.

I have no idea where "Evergreen" is going. I thought I did, once, but now -- no.

So, in the spirit of the evening, I will close with a meme I've seen in a couple people's blogs, and it is called "Favorite Lines of works in progress." (I have clearly been listening to too much Junie B. Jones when I start constructing sentences like that.) Not that I have too much "in progress" (regardless of the title of my blog), but anyway, here's one of my favorite lines from "Evergreen", such as it is:

EVERGREEN : His heart drums hard, so hard it ought to be a shape beneath his T-shirt, like a cartoon heart, a drawing about to tear in two.