Yesterday was a tad anti-climactic. My work year simply ended. Perhaps I should have gone out to lunch with my coworkers to get some kind of closure. Instead, I worked through lunch to get all my final grades together for checkout. Last summer Jes and I had the mission of finding a house and getting moved before the baby came. We had my parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, including a week stay up in Wisconsin. I also had to go to K.C. for a week to get certified in A.P. instruction. I have no plan for my summer, other than to spend lots of time with Elliot and work on our house. Jes will be covering for a vacationing Cody up that Third Degree, so for two weeks I’ll have Elliot by myself during the day.

Anyway, I am sitting here making my to-do list. There is a large column for things that need to get cleaned. We had a party on Sunday for my thirty-fifth birthday, with some twenty plus friends and family, so cleaning up from that has lead into a deeper spring cleaning. We also had Jen, D, Tommy, and Christian down from Kirksville for the holiday weekend. We’re finding that our upstairs works well as a guest chateau; with plenty of space and a full bath, our houseguests can simply retreat into their own space.

== 24 Hour Time Jump==

I did better sleeping in yesterday. I woke up today at 5:15. It’s going to take awhile to get a more normal sleeping pattern. We did quite a bit yesterday, visiting the Illinois family after running a few errands. Later we went and saw part of The Tragedy of Richard the Third in Forest Park (the start for us of the many free outdoors entertainment St. Louis offers). Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were bad, as was the convoluted plot. It was one of those evenings where the idea was better than the execution. It’s a point of credulity for me that Richard can so easily – in a single speech – seduce the wife and daughter of two men slain by him – with her in full knowledge of the same.

On a loosely related note, having just taught Hamlet, I found it interesting how much of the structure and diction of the soliloquies from Richard are repeated in Hamlet. As it’s more of a rough draft for Shakespeare’s later successes, I surmise that the current popularity of The Tudors on Showtime led St. Louis Shakespeare to pick Richard the Third. It was well acted and the set was interesting, it’s just not my favorite play, and not worth the bloodletting from this year’s bumper crop of mosquitoes. Maybe I’ll reread the play today and give Will a chance to woo me sans insectarium.

Jes is off blowing glass today, so junior and I are on our own. We might get out to the Art Museum or some such thing, weather permitting. When there’s just one of us with Elliot it’s fairly impossible to get anything else done (laundry, etc.), but traveling isn’t too bad. My appreciation for the survival skills of single mothers is off the chart, as is my fear of managing more than one of these guys. Whenever I talk to my Californian brother Andy on the phone (he has young twins plus a younger son) the noise in the background is cacophonous. I best get my shower in, as E will be up soon. The Illinois family was teasing me yesterday about my Mr. Mom summer. If I could stay home with E and write I would love it, the hard part would be finding the time to write.