Vacation next week. Sooooo much work to do before then, and I feel like a high school senior with spring fever.

Next week I'll be in St. Louis, MO. Looking forward to that. I like the town a lot. I spent the summer between my junior and senior year of college living in a monastery there of English Benedictine monks, and teaching in the high school the monks ran. Teaching was miserable. I was totally unprepared for that. Church History, the Old Testament, and the Gospel of Matthew. My other work that summer was painting lines on tennis courts. Using traffic paint, a foul substance, in the blazing hot sun. The macadam on the tennis courts was so hot that I had to keep moving around because no matter what shoes or boots I wore, the scorching heat would penetrate the soles and my feet would start to burn. I preferred that work to teaching by a long shot. But being in the monastery was wonderful. The silence, the community, the good cooking, the solitude, chanting the offices. That part was pretty sublime. I had this experience of the dissipation of the separation between my conscious and subconscious mind. Everything flowed. I was considering signing up as a novice. I still think that I'll probably spend my twilight years in a monastery. Where better?

So I hope to pay a visit to St. Louis Priory next week (which I believe is now St. Louis Abbey). Too, I'm looking forward to riding motorcycles in the Ozarks, seeing what is considered to be one of the best Fourth of July fireworkes displays in the country, and getting cements at Ted Drewes'. (Wahoo! I found a link for that!) I'll be spending time with a friend of mine from college (Fertile One) and her husband. Fertile One is leaving behind a teaching career to become a massage therapist. That takes courage. And, I'll be staying with a guy who I had corresponded with for years on AOL. He contacted me a while ago and told me that he was coming to NYC for a conference, and I offered to put him up for a weekend. We totally hit it off. His is the motorcycle I'll be riding.

I find myself wanting to own a motorcycle. Of course, I'd have to wait until my dad shuffles off this mortal coil. He would greet that news with alarm and horror and would never sleep again with the worry. What a great way to get anywhere though.

Well, to work.