Or That You're An Invincible Secret Agent From Mars!

Since yesterday was Earth Day, doesn't it stand to reason today would be Mars Day? (Earth being the third planet of our solar system, Mars being the fourth, etc. At least it's the one we visit and speculate about the most.) Ok, my daffy moment aside, I was rejoicing that Easter break for my kids came to an end and today they are in school, where they've been out since Thursday. And this was somewhat the dialogue when inviting Jeffrey to come down for the day, per my morning Facebook status:

 

 

Jeffrey at the top of the stairs after I started counting down from 30, fifteen minutes after I had turned on the light: "You didn't say get up and come down."

(I thought after nearly two years of this getting up for school thing -- though today IS his first day back after a six-day Easter break -- he'd have this down.)

Still, I try to be a benevolent despot

The “benevolent despot” line is from an episode of M*A*S*H and it was cool Jeffrey asked me about it. Also some stuff at home my son's choosing to read with me lately – he may be the only kid in his school right now who has any idea who General Pershing IS or know that the first man who wore a top hat caused a riot (tip: you only need three people to legally qualify as a riot) by his appearance or that Renaissance artists scribbled their names on Roman emperor Nero's Golden House fifteen centuries later or that a king (more accurately, the king's body) exploded as he was already dead from intestinal pressure and a hot sun bearing down in England – William the Conqueror, I'm serious!

And I had to count which president of the United States Harry Truman – who was also a haberdasher, like the man wearing the top hat in the previous paragraph – was because Jeffrey asked me this morning, “What number was he?” (He's thirty-third.) After coming off swimming yesterday at our local Grand Hotel with other kids – and it was so quiet there, with Grandma and Margaret watching them, I'm used to crowds at the Grand! – I met Martha and the kids in Bethany Lutheran's basement for Jeffrey's Cub Scout pack meeting and then we left to pick up a few groceries. Martha's also taking two meds right now for her right eye which she can only keep half-open, please pray for that to heal.

Today is William Shakespeare's quadquicentennial (at least, that seems what we'd call his four hundred fiftieth birthday or anniversary, following form and meter). Even THAT's open to interpretation – was the author of Hamlet, “the Scottish play”, and Romeo and Juliet baptized the day he was born or not? The baptismal certificate's dated three days later, April 26, 1564. Four hundred fifty, incidentally, also appears in the Bible at least once (tip: If you're not where something you hear is found, go with the Bible or Shakespeare.), designating the amount of time the Israelites spent in Egypt followed by forty years in the wilderness and ten years spent conquering Canaan, per Paul's recounting in Acts 13:20.

Of course, I could have just made up the “q” word as well – but you'll never know will you? I can only hope to aspire to words and phrases and works of my own becoming near-household words in four and a half centuries. Maybe. If we ever get a visitor from 2464 I'll ask. Which reminds me of a goal I've set for myself just this morning, and I need your help to hold me to it. By the second of July – that's seventy days from now, so ten weeks – I want to have both “Rivalry” and “Victory” finished AND available to read. The events of the books take place twelve years apart and I'm finally getting one standout character, my young friend Dormouse, making sense!

This is gonna be SOOOOOOO good, David