I have been thinking over the past couple days about something Karen Andreola, a homeschooling author, said in one of her articles I read a couple of months ago. I can't remember the name of the essay and I'll have to paraphrase the quote, but basically she said that every day children should have something to do, something to think about, and someone (or something) to love. I started thinking about this quote because yesterday afternoon, in spite of the fact that my dear husband had been out of town for two days and Kate had been running a fever for three and I was worn out from doing chores and keeping kids busy inside while it rained, I told myself to take fifteen minutes to sit down and write a poem. I got a fabulous amount of stuff done yesterday -- cleaned a bathroom, the kitchen, picked up a couple of rooms, wrote a poem and got the IHIP for our homeschooling written up -- and my mood, of course, lifted correspondingly. (It helped, of course, that I did not feel like puking the entire day.)

It was the poem that did it, of course. "Something to do, something to think about, and someone to love" are just as applicable to adults as they are to children, even if adults think they always have something -- too much -- to do. That "something to do" should probably be qualified, the way Andreola does in her essay, as something meaningful to do, not just busywork, which is what a lot of adult work amounts to. Laundry, dishwashing, scrubbing toilets... all those things need to be done, and I feel better for doing them. They're all meaningful in their own way, too, I guess, because if I didn't do them, my family would suffer. But they don't really feel like accomplishments in the sense that they aren't really that fulfilling. Housework is just staving off entropy. Writing a poem, building a shed, knitting a sweater, making something new out what was once nothing, or at least matter without form... Maybe those things, those acts of creation, are so fulfilling, so meaningful, because they don't just stave off entropy, they thumb our collective human nose at it. To create something -- art, a garden, a quilt -- is to bring new life into the world.

Today I worked on revising Evergreen. I don't know why I've been putting it off, because it wasn't as bad as I'd thought it was. I don't think I cut the 2 or 3000 words from it that would bring it down to short story length, but thanks to Mike and Charlie, I think I came close. I'll make another pass through tomorrow, since tonight I have to run out to the grocery store to beat back the entropy at work in our refrigerator. (I've made lunch and dinner the past few days -- not that I had a choice with Kate sick and Andy out of town -- so maybe I'm starting to ease into my second trimester now.) But I think I have had a good go at my three tasks for the day -- having accomplished something meaningful, in addition to the chores I perform for the good of my family; having bought a new magazine to read for something to think about; and having my kids and my husband all together again (and Katie without fever, finally) to love.

I feel like I have taken a deep breath and started to climb the big hill.