From 9:45 to 8:30

Raining mist. Misty rain. Something like that. Finally warm enough to avoid the ice, I drove out at my usual hour to answer phones at the school office, fill out a stack of Kindergarten screening evaluations, administer Junior Strength Tylenol to a ten year-old with a headache, and not get much reading done in my 75 year-old copy of “A Man Named Grant” because it was a little too busy all around.

Sometimes I wrap up my shift at Ditto and realize I wasn’t even really paying attention. Except for the two or three times I burn myself on the clothes steamer. That’ll wake you up.

The Big House was unnaturally silent when Puck and I arrived after 3:30. Quiet enough for me to place a phone call to the printer while Puck was equally unnaturally silent in the other room for the necessary fifteen minute conversation between St. Louis and Naperville, Illinois.

Mom and Carrie-Bri returned from shopping in the middle of Puck’s minor meltdown after failing to answer every single addition/subtraction problem correctly on his page in one minute or less. Sometimes he’s too much of a perfectionist. There were also donut holes and JibJabs. That’s where I left Puck less than two hours later, creating goofy music videos with Carrie on the couch to St. Patrick’s Day themes.

The sun was orange and cooling in the west behind patches of cottonwoods in Forest Park as Rose and I walked the curb to the History Museum for the free archaeological lecture series, which we hadn’t attended in a few years. We were half an hour early so we checked in at the Louisiana Purchase exhibit – breezing through red-wax-sealed treaties under glass and paintings of severe 19th century explorers.

Professor Dan Bahat, former Chief Archaeologist of the City of Jerusalem: “The Golden Gate and the Eastern Gate of the Temple of Jerusalem”. Through a heavy accent, although easily understandable, we gained interesting perspective on ancient events from 7:30-8:30, with a little humor to boot. He even had a gray handlebar mustache, sort of Civil War style.