It’s been a big week in my house.
It’s been an exciting week as I emerge from the poison into the normal. Normal life means I get to be part of the mass of humanity, rather than the dramatic star.
In the broader world, there were interesting days on the calendar. Here’s the list
March 14th
March 15th
March 17th
March 14th as we write it here in America 3-14. That’s the first three digits of pi, that number we use to figure out the circumference and area of circles. Out town is a college town, and so we often have a pi day celebration.
On thursday the 14th Chris did an errand downtown and reported: “There was a line around the corner at the pizza place downtown,”
Oh Yeah! Pi (or pie..or pizza pie) day.
With this reminder, my coupon king husband found that more than one pizza place had coupons to celebrate. The excitement has spread from the math department to the marketing department.
So we got a pizza with a free personal pizza that Veronica got to take to school the next day. Pizza for days!
Importantly, Pizza leftover to the next day: March 15th.
That day in march known to the ancient romans as the ides of march. And to the slightly less ancient Elizabethan English audience of Shakespeare’s play Julius Ceasar, when they heard a creepy street oracle tell Julius “Beware the ides of March!” they understood.
They knew that he knew what the oracle meant:
March 15th
What J. Caesar didn’t know and Shakespeare was foreshadowing was that his BEST FRIEND was gonna murder him that day.
Et tu, Brute?
Even you, Brutus?
Tragic betrayal that echoes down the centuries.
My husband said
“We should have a Ceasar salad.”
We hear them in my household still, but the echoes are getting fainter.
Ceasar salad would go well with Pizza. I went down to trader joes to get a salad kit.
The women at the checkout asked me how my day was going.
“It’s the ides of March. I had to get a ceasar salad,” I said with a smile.
Her face crinkled up “what?”
Ahh. The echoes had not reached her ears.
I told her a bit of the story—Shakespeare, Roman calendars, betrayals.
She was listened, nodding, and hearing this new information. I ended with
“..and don’t listen to street oracles.”
She replied “That’s so interesting. And true! That happened to me—there was a street oracle in San Francisco this one time…”
But there was another customer waiting his turn and I wasn’t able to hear about the San Francisco street oracle.
And this takes me to Sunday: St Patrick’s day. The activity of this day is my daughter’s karate tournament. Not very irish.
Then again, she’s competing as a green belt.