The Perfect and the Good

"If we shadows have offended, 

Think but this, and all is mended.." 

-William Shakespeare

Wednesday was Earth Day. I hugged not a single tree on this day. Planted no trees or even a shrubbery. I was not posting photos of myself caressing a flower or loving nature on instagram. You see, I was preparing for a somewhat more obscure observance, but one I was pretty excited about.

Yesterday was National Talk Like Shakespeare Day. What? You haven't heard of this holiday? For shame. I hadn't either, until last week when I was looking on the National Day Calendar for any excuse to celebrate. My children are growing up too fast. They will literally be out of my house in six years. I want to pack these last years with as many family memories as I can conjure up. I'd love to have a party everyday. I know this is unreasonable, but we can at least celebrate Shakespeare this day. 

I had one week to pull off this small event. It would be a surprise. This one was mostly for Sabrina since her love of Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, borders on the obsessive these days. I put about $300.00 worth of stuff in my Amazon cart, then narrowed it down significantly. I went against my normal reasoning and paid for shipping to ensure that the items would get here on time. What I saved at Amazon, I spent most feverishly at Hobby Lobby. There was a plethora of gorgeous brown toned ribbons, and I believe I placed a roll of everyone in my cart.

I had visions of grandeur as I concocted this little idea in my head. There would be hand stamped cards at every place setting with clever Shakespeare quotes. There would be a jar of quotes to pick from during dinner. There would be scones and homemade raspberry honey butter, and lemon shortbread cookies, coated in powdered sugar, and fresh squeezed lemonade. Par for the course, I woke up with a massive headache yesterday morning, and spent a good deal of the morning trying to get rid of it. My ideas were too grandiose for the time allotted. For once, I decided not to allow the perfect to get in the way of the good. The kids had no idea what my vision was. They had no idea there was a vision. They would walk through the door thrilled with any sort of a celebration, even one without handcrafted place cards or homemade shortbread cookies. So I did my meager best and figured it would be good enough.

I was excited that Mr. Shakespeare's bust arrived in the mail on time. He was my favorite. The children walked through the door and, much to my joy, they were surprised and delighted. Slightly puzzled at first "Happy National Talk Like Shakespeare Day?" But they quickly embraced the holiday with as much fervor as they do Christmas and now insist that we celebrate this day every year.

This mug, covered in Shakespeare insults, was supposed to be holding a darling bag of homemade lemon cookies. Instead, it was harboring a bag of sour gummy worms. Seems more fitting for a mug of insults, don't you think?

There's that lover of Shakespeare whom I adore so much!

It was time for our authentic Elizabethan dinner, or at least my sad attempt at an authentic Elizabethan dinner.

An authentically roasted medieval bird, a.k.a a Sam's Club rotisserie chicken, garlic rosemary fingerling potatoes, which were homemade and were delicious, and some carrots. No scones. The fresh squeezed lemonade looks strangely similar to a bottle of Simply Made, but let's not split hairs.

Neil cut the bird, we turned on our collection of Old English Melodies, the collection we had purchased from our favorite restaurant Ye Lion's Den before it went out of business, may it rest in peace. And we feasted while listening to Greensleeves and Scarborough Fair.

Nestled in with the silverware were Shakespearean bookmarks for the kids and band-aids decorated with Shakespearean insults. You know, for when you want to add insult to injury. The kids began to read their favorite insults from off their mugs. They found the perfect break-up line, "I do desire we may be better strangers."

Among our other favorite insults: "highly fed and lowly taught"
                                  "quintessence of dust"
                                   "not so much brain as ear wax"

Oh man, Shakespeare was a genius. There was no time to clean up. The high school was putting on A Midsummer's Night Dream, and we had to hurry if we were going to get seats. It was a delightful production. They even used one of our favorite insults. If you're really ticked off at someone, just call them "a canker blossom". Spencer fell in love with the play and insists on performing this one someday. 

It ended up being a great evening despite the lack of scones and homemade lemonade. Jonah thanked me five times for the evening, Sabrina insisted that it was the best night ever, and Spencer mentioned this morning on the way to school, "Last night was fun". I think it was a night even the bard would have approved of.