Now Playing: Psalm 121.

I'm taking a break from beginning to read more Roman history to bring you this news bulletin about the insane happenings in our apartment last night. Rachel and I were quietly minding our own business. Sabbath afternoon, she reading a magazine, me listening to Pastor Donnelly's last sermon about Heaven, sunshine sliding over the floor. Our peaceful musings were rudely interrupted when noises on the stairs outside warned us that a troop of elephants might possibly have decided to try to climb to the third floor. Unbeknownst to us, this herd decided that it was going to bang on our door. Rachel unwittingly opened it, and we were flooded with sleeping bags, pillows, suitcases, purses, textbooks, and Laura, Sarah, and Anna, who turned out not to be elephants after all but very hyper visitors from Stillwater.

They promptly made themselves at home. We sat around and discussed why marijuana is the only substance that won't kill you if you overdose until I looked at the clock and realized that it was time for me to drive to Christ Pres to help with nursery for the evening service. Anna, Sarah, and Laura decided to come along. I had offered to give Eleanor a ride. She blithely plunged into the insanity, she, Anna, and Sarah swapping car trouble stories while The Tank bumped and swayed through the narrow potholed streets. The sunset this evening was glorious, huge swathes of red cloud, like the beaten-down seedheads of summer grass, shimmering against an aquamarine sky.

At Christ Pres, Eleanor and I hurried back to the nursery. Anna led the other three girls to the service. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw them being given a warm welcome. At first Eleanor and I thought we weren't going to have anything to do and settled ourselves down to discuss Christmas break. Were we ever wrong.... We ended up looking after thirteen children from seven to just barely standing. A couple of other girls came to help us. The big room went from being quiet, empty, and orderly to being noisy, crowded, and chaotic. Toys went everywhere. Legos, dollhouse furniture, stuffed animals, board books, action figures. Most of the older children decided that they were all going to be dogs. They ran around and around the tables in the middle of the room on their hands and knees, yapping, barking, begging to be pet and fed, arguing over who was what and whose name went to whom. The very little children had commandeered the chalkboard and dollhouses in one corner. Wee Kara (about 2 years) latched onto me and would leap into my arms every so often with an enormous grin on her face. Eleanor attempted to keep little Augie (short for Augustine), who's just learned to stand, from being trampled by the pack of wild dogs. Oh, we had a lively time of it, particularly when the supply of graham crackers ran out and everyone wanted more.

We worked for an hour-and-a-half. Back on campus, we left Eleanor off at her apartment. Up in our apartment, Rachel had set the table beautifully and was steaming the rice. Laura helped me make curry while Anna worked on the dessert, and Sarah and Rachel stood and talked to us. Classical guitar was playing on Rachel's laptop in the background. I threw all sorts of things into the big saucepan with the curry--carrots, peas, some leftover chicken, cashews, mushrooms, enough that the spices themselves turned out not to be very strong. I used tomato soup, too, for the base--it's creamier and less oily than tomato sauce. The food was ready at about nine o'clock. The reek of the onion was so strong that we had to open a window and prop open the door with Rachel's backpack.

It was a very pleasant meal. The fresh cool air coming in from outside brought the stillness of the night, the noise of a train whistle. Warm light and Rachel's music. The girls were crazy, of course. We talked about school and church. The curry had turned out well. We sat for a long time over the meal, talking. When I finished washing the dishes, we sat down on the sofas, brought out our Psalters, and sang. Psalm 25A, 126A, 68A, 127A, 3A. Between Psalms, Laura, Anna, and Sarah, sitting on the sofa, were absolutely ridiculous. I laughed at the three of them and their silliness until I fully couldn't breathe anymore and was begging them to stop. Our singing after laughing was still full and beautiful, Rachel's voice beside me resounding clearly.

Nicole knocked on the door at about eleven o'clock. Anna was just bringing the brownie-chocolate-chip-and-whipped-frosting concoction out of the refrigerator. Even though Sarah, Laura, and Anna hadn't had any sugar yet, they were still completely crazy. As we sat around the table, eating the dessert, Nicole tried to start a polite conversation with the girls, but her eyes got wider and wider as Laura went off on some ridiculous tangent about how she was seventy-one and dyslexic.... We sat around for an hour or so. After Nicole left, we took turns getting ready for bed. I washed the dishes and asked Sarah about how she's finding the nursing program this term. After Rachel went to bed, I stayed up for awhile with the girls. Anna and I were curled up on the red sofa, each of us with an earbud from her iPod, listening to Coldplay and almost asleep, while Sarah and Laura, lying in their sleeping bags, giggled and talked at a rapid rate about something.... I finally went to my own bed.