things about which i'm not blogging (a list)

• stress-induced eyebrow twitching--it's like hiccups for your eye
• graduate school--doing homework is just as unpleasant as I remembered, but I might be secretly good at this whole library school business
• at least three interesting and blog-worthy recent craft projects
• my internet-crush on Pinterest which led to the aforementioned recent craftiness
• staving off illness through sheer force of will--because I certainly haven't been taking good enough care of myself to have had only the tiniest brush with that cold
• Harry Potter haikus--the most recent addition to my "things I wish I hadn't quit" blogging list
• work insanity (because if I let myself start, I'll never stop)
• 6 a.m. womens' bible study at PV--because I love Jesus enough to iron my clothes at night and wake up before dawn
• getting to see my moma all the time (or every two weeks) and it still not being enough
• manufactured drama that might have made you laugh

and a brief list of things about which I shall blog (or die trying):

• a Holy Grail-style quest to find the best burger in Central Arkansas starring many of your favorite blog characters (and CST#1BF)

39 days

Forty days is a biblically significant amount of time. Thirty-nine days is nothing special.  At the time of this typing, I am somewhere between thirty-nine and forty days away from the opening of the Main Library's Teen Center.  Today I feel so overwhelmed by it, it might as well be a flood or a fast or some other horrendous-sounding f word. (No, not that f word, people.)

When I get busy at work, I like to make lists.  It wastes time I could be spending getting actual work accomplished, but then when I do get around to the work, I get to mark things off.  There is nothing satisfying in this life like marking things off a list.  It's triple satisfying in Sharpie.  When I make my Teen-Center-opening lists, they are deceptively simple.  The word interviews, for instance.  Just ten little letters comprising one brief list-item that represents at least fourteen separate meetings with fourteen qualified individuals.  When my list says "pack up desk," it can't completely convey the labor-intensive misery of going through all the accumulated junk that is drawn by some unforeseen yet powerful force to my little north-facing cube, but I am determined to rid myself of the unnecessary when I make the move.

I can't even bring myself to put "say goodbye to the Michael Jackson mime" on my list because I'm not sure I've got the strength to face it.  As much as I'm looking forward to a certain office upstairs, I know there's nothing out that south-facing window that can compare to the glory of my splash of river-view, the bustle of the River Market, and good ol' Michael Jackson mime.  I think I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.

There have been some truly awesome moments in my list-making.  Like the email I got just after I crossed off "select gaming equipment needed" telling me that my budget was nearly double what I'd spent so far.  I must admit we're going to have a ridiculously nice gaming set-up.

And even when the list additions have been tedious and exhausting and downright daunting, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the fact that they're all so much mine is heady stuff.  My decisions, my preferences, my opinions that carry weight, my mistakes to make.  I can't take all the credit, and you should all regularly remind my gigantic ego to dial it back, but the being-in-charge-ness is pretty dang exciting.  Exciting and overwhelming and filling-up my life enough that I finally had to break down and really blog about work, something I declared long ago would be a sign of the end times.

Oh, well.  It's been nice knowing you.  Hoping for rainbows at the end of my forty days.

oh bless my heart

The Southern sayin' backstory:
I know the overriding characteristic of my writing here is sophistication, so this may come as a surprise to friends of the blog, but I come from a rural background.  I grew up living eight miles outside of a town of roughly 1700 people.  We had one county school, and I graduated in a class of about fifty-two.  Not only is my hometown as podunk as they come, I come from an ancestry that is a mixture of Kentucky hill people and Tennessee dirt farmers.  Because education has been a fairly high priority in my family for two or three generations now, I can largely pass for a mostly normal, non-hick person.  Much of the time I'm even allowed to forget about this ridiculously country accent I have.  But every so often, I find myself in a situation that can only be summed up in the dialect of my youth; some quaint, down home saying comes out of my mouth, and I embrace my true self.  Today is one of those days:


oh bless my heart


I know this should actually be "bless his/her heart" or "bless your heart," but what will follow is a story of how I am the sad and pathetic entity requiring all the heart-blessing.  Perhaps, imaginary reader, you're unfamiliar with this expression, so you don't yet grasp just how deserving of your sympathy I should be.  There are two common usages:  Primarily bless (appropriate third-person possessive pronoun) heart is Southern-girl code for "that poor, unfortunate soul . . . let me use my seeming concern to gossip about problems faced and dramas encountered in the life of said individual."  Southern girls could make an Olympic sport out of gossip, but their momas raised them better than to do it overtly--avoiding tackiness being a required course at SEC schools.  So bless whomever's heart is the magic word, the get out of tacky-gossip-jail free card.  For the record the malicious spirit is optional.  Sometimes Southern girl gossip isn't as bad as I'm making it sound . . . I think.  Bless your heart is a slightly different thing . . . when you're blessing someone's heart to his/her face, it's not gossip, but it's still a mild put-down in the vein of "oh you poor, dumb thing."  It's that sort of condescending sympathy of which I am in need today.


I normally don't leave work at midday.  Even if I don't bring my lunch, I eat at one of the many fine downtown dining establishments.  Because I have to park in a parking deck more than half a block away, it's just sort of inconvenient (and for most of the year uncomfortably hot or cold), but sometimes I have to deal with the inconvenience.  The problem with leaving at midday is that I typically don't pack up all my stuff if I'm not leaving for the day, so it's not altogether uncommon for me to arrive at my car and realize that I've left my keys in their designated pocket of my bag which is sitting under my desk.  I always feel beyond stupid when this happens, and as luck would have it, I am almost always caught walking in circles to retrieve them by someone who's only too happy to give me crap about it.  So when that happened to me this afternoon as I was trying to leave, it was scarcely noteworthy.  Sure I wasted ten minutes round trip due to my own frustrating stupidity, but it certainly wasn't breaking news.


Lucky for you and blog fodder, my key drama continued.  Tonight at closing, we had a couple of underagers who were waiting for a ride, so I ended up waiting with a couple of my security buddies for the parents to arrive, so it was already 8:15ish when we hiked over to the parking deck.  Just as the elevator was nearing the third floor, I began to dig fruitlessly through the key pocket and the rest of my bag for my keys.  Marquis, the best security guard in the history of security guards, walked me back over to the library to get the forgotten keys.  I foraged through the upper strata of my desk with no luck.  I retraced all the steps I made in our department after my return.  By this point, I was not only moderately frantic but also painfully aware that I was keeping my pal Marquis from going home thanks to my ridiculous inability to keep track of my possessions.  So I gave up.  I called in the cavalry, and when allegedly helpful roommate Jess screened me in my hour of need, my superhero of a brother came to my rescue to pick me up.  Lots of cuss words ensued (mine, not Shane's--he was nothing but pleasant and patient).  I got home for the first time at nine, and rather than follow the original plan of getting copies made of Jess's house keys (which was likely impossible at that time of night), I finally confirmed that the extra key that's been hanging out at our house for the past fifteen months does indeed unlock the knob of the kitchen door, so I can enter and leave my house at will.  My run of improved luck held when I realized that I hadn't yet lost the spare key (and extra clicker) to my car.  So a penitent Jess took me to liberate my car from the parking deck, and after a quick stop back at the house to pick up my wallet (because of course, I'd left that at home), I tracked down some dinner and made it home before ten, but not by much.


So bless my heart . . .


It did sort of end up better than it began, and I've calmed down considerably about how my life will play out if I don't find them, but I was deserving of the most sincerely contemptuous bless your hearts ever just a few hours ago.  Lucky for me, Jess isn't a real Southern girl, so I didn't actually have to endure any.

17 reasons why i haven't blogged lately (in random order)

1.  I spent exactly thirty minutes at my desk today.  Granted I came to work an hour late and took a longer-than-normal lunch.  but I also left somewhere between fifteen and forty-five minutes late.  I didn't work the public service desk at all.  I'm not saying I usually blog at work, but I do type out quick ideas as I have them sometimes, and I typically take all my "breaks" and lunch at my desk which gives me time to work on my informative and entertaining posts.  And if I work the public service desk at a slow time, I do sometimes indulge in more personal internet pursuits (a category into which blogging falls) while I'm waiting around on someone to assist.

2.  I ate lunch today with Peeps Monica and Martha and the tweeps.  It was a thousand times better than lunch at my desk with the internet.  I was having way too good a time to blog--plus I spent a decent fraction of the meal baby juggling with Martha, and I can't feed myself, hold babies and blog all at once.  I'm no super woman.  P.S. My storytime wooing of the tweeps has not yet won them over to adoration of me, but I shall not be daunted.

3.  Often lately I've been eating lunch and taking breaks in our staff lounge (despite what I said to the contrary in the previous two excuses).  My library friend Philip gave up going out to lunch for Lent, so he's been bringing his lunch, and I've been bringing my lunch almost daily since the beginning of the year, so we've been eating together upstairs more.  Sometimes Bob comes too.  We bring our handwork (they're both knitting hats at the moment) and work on our various projects.

4.  It's spring break round these parts, and we're doing alliterative programs for school kids every day this week.  On Movie Monday, I passed out popcorn and showed How to Train Your Dragon to fifty-one library friends.  On Tie-Dye Tuesday, I calmly dealt with fifty-three library friends and the rainbow-hued carnage they left on the tables, floor, and my hands.  Today on Wii Wednesday I played and supervised and refereed twenty-two library friends through multiple games for three hours.  These unexpected well-attended pursuits have pushed me much closer to exhaustion than I should be, and while that's embarrassing, the fact remains that sitting down and stringing clever words together just wasn't in me (still isn't, but here you go anyway).

5.  As I previously mentioned I've been working on balance and moderation in my personal interests and pursuits, so at home I've been reading and cooking and keeping all the dishes washed and watching tv as a family with Jess, and I've been trying to spend less time glued to my laptop.  Providing intellectually stimulating blog fodder is the unintended casualty of moderation--though those unfinished home projects as yet remain unfinished.

6.  I mentioned in #3 that I'm bringing my handwork to lounge lunches and breaks with Philip and Bob, but I haven't told you about what I'm doing.  I'm actually working on a post all about it, so I'm not going to tell you until that's ready, but my steady work on this undisclosed craft project has given me something to do with my hands besides typing out blogs for you, and I am really excited about showing you someday.

7.  I had an interesting and busy weekend.  Our church is doing some painting and cleaning at an elementary school while they're out on spring break, and I went to help clean and tape for the paint crews on Saturday.  One of the areas we painted was the cafeteria where they had to work around a mural depicting Carson-Dellosa kiddos following the posted cafeteria rules.  It was a mostly really cute except that it was unfinished.  I thought it a shame that our freshening and sprucing would still be overshadowed by the half-finished people (that weren't on our list of approved fixes).  I asked if I could come back the next day and finish them, so our man in charge called someone from the school, and I got permission to do it.  I went back on Sunday to finish the job and recruited some help, and we almost got it done.  My sidekicks completed the mural on Monday while I was at work slinging popcorn for the movie-goers.  Jess went and took pictures, and it turned out beautifully. 

8.  I would have liked to be able to blog about the successful selection of a winning NCAA tournament bracket, but alas, my hopes have been dashed for another year.  I'm currently tied for last place in a pool of ten friends and family members.  It shouldn't surprise me any longer that I'm terrible at these picks, but it's always disheartening.  All of my Final Four teams are still in the running, so although I still have a higher-than-some points potential, I've missed many, many significant picks.  I suspect that this week's games will drive the final nail in my bracket's coffin.  It doesn't help that cousin, scholar, theologian and #1 blog fan, who admitted to making mostly arbitrary picks is in first place.

9.  Laziness.

10.  A lack of task commitment.

11.  A stronger than normal tendency to ramble senselessly.  Seriously, every time I try to post something lately, it turns into a torrent of messy words, and I abandon the effort.

12.  A short attention span.

13.  An almost unreasonable desire to do nothing but eat Dove truffle eggs.  Until Saturday I hadn't found them at a store this Easter candy season, but now I know that Walgreens has them, and the desire to purchase and consume them is a constant presence in my life.  In the spirit of balance and moderation (not to mention my healthy-eating choices), I'm trying to keep this from becoming an obsession, but it's a near thing.

14.  Time seems to be passing at a fairly high rate these days.  I don't mean to let days (or weeks) go by between posts, but somehow even when I have ideas at the ready for my next posts, days pass in a blur with no writing to show for it.  I'm sure this is just one more sign of my increasing age.  It goes nicely with my flights of nostalgia, the giant gray streak in my hair, and my geriatric tendency to be set in my ways.

15.  I've been spending more time talking to Jess.  She's nice, but sometimes I get too busy or cranky or in my head to talk to her.  That's being a loser-y sort of friend, and I'm working on that.  I like talking to her when I'm not being too much of a jerk to do so.

16.  A sense of guilt that because of the increasingly significant time elapsing between posts, I need to bring my A-game for the imaginary readers lurking here, desperately hoping for some new communication from me.  When all I can produce is pointless drivel (for instance:  more than a dozen lame and needy excuses for my lack of posts), I have a difficult time allowing myself to post such substandard fare . . . usually (though obviously not tonight).

17.  I have become overwhelmed with my clear  and unhealthy dependence on the adverb.  What if I use more than my allotment of adverbs while blogging, and I'm forced to go on without them?  It boggles the mind and cripples my productivity.  Please reassure me that this is not my fate, faithful readers.  For my sake, for the sake of the blog, for all of us. 

some craftiness of late

Last week I had to come up with an after-school craft idea.  We'd just had a fairly substantial snow fall that some frigid temperatures kept around for much longer than we normally experience, so snow was on the brain.  A quick Google of snowflake paper crafts yielded a spectacularly lovely, deceptively simple project that was extremely well-received. 

Nice, huh?  I'm not going to show you the process, but if you want to make this stunning project, here's where I learned it.

The snowflakes became wildly popular around the library.  That happens here fairly often.  We get quite enamored of various crafty things from time to time.  A few weeks ago we got a new book in with loads of tubey crafts.  We've been making tubular crafts with empty toilet paper rolls for ages, but there were several fresh ideas in the book about which we were quite excited.  Then one day, Lisa realized that all of the columns throughout the library were giant tubeys waiting to happen, so we talked about how exciting it would be to do that.  Sometimes we hype ourselves up about things like that and then we don't have the time or inclination to make them happen, so I wasn't completely certain it would happen.  Pardon my skepticism.

Fast forward to today, imaginary readers, when we arrived at work just ahead of more forecasted snow.  Lisa declared it a snow day and decided that we were going to make that first giant tubey dream come true by building a snowman.  She put Susan to work making more of the 3D snowflakes, and we started planning our attack.  The column (which got painted this particularly violent shade of yellow this summer during our part of the remodel) started out like this:

After some measuring and wrapping we had our base up.

Next we added this:

And then this:

times seven or eight, which made this:

You're feeling it now, aren't ya?

Next came his scarf.  Yes, that is real fleece.  No flimsy, flappy paper scarf for our snowman.
The hat brim was my first true test.  After a fair amount of measuring and equations and fashioning a compass out of a pencil and yarn, I achieved moderate success.

The band and flower cover up some of the less attractive bits of construction and give him a jaunty flair.  Right?

Next came his arms . . .

 . . . and mittens . . .

. . . and buttons.  Because what self-respecting snowman doesn't have buttons?

And then he was complete--and precious I might add.

And then to make his winter wonderland complete, we added the snowflakes:

Couldn't you just die from the cuteness?

And this is what he looks like to the itty-bitties who'll come up and pat him and rip his arms and buttons off in the next few weeks.  It'll take a slightly taller kid to take care of the nose, but I feel fairly confident that it'll come off a few times too.  The good news is the dedicated craftsmanship that went into the project should insure that anything that is ripped off will not actually tear away the "snow" underneath.

For the record, it did snow for the middle part of the day, going from early mist/rain/sleet to great, fat, gorgeous flakes to dense flurries of tiny flakes.  But in the downtown area it just never stuck and my hopes of getting to close early (like the city offices and schools and everywhere else) melted along with all those snowflakes.  Such is life, I suppose. 

At least I have a long-lasting, all-weather snowman to show for it.

the vacation diary: days ten through seventeen

Yes, I'm really still doing this.  I need to finish something in my life, and here's where I've taken my stand.  Judge away.  I have taken the liberty of combining the last eight days of vacation because honestly I remember very little at this point.

Highlights:

Day 10:  Most of my nearest and dearest departed for their homes on Labor Day.  Ring got to travel back with Michelle's crew instead of her own and spent a night at Nana's without her parents--the first time she's done that.  Pinkie and Thumb (and Susan) looked sad and uncertain about it all as they drove away without her, but I think it worked out fine (or if it didn't, no one mentioned it to me).  We did a bit more family hanging out on Monday and shared our Christmas cabin research with some of the aunts and cousins, where it was met with excitement.  After the last car had rolled out heading towards Kentucky, I headed home to become a vacation slug once more.  I'm pretty sure the Gilmore Girls were heavily involved.

Day 11:  It's all a blur of tv and internet and living in a cave of laziness, which means it was a successful day. 

Day 12:  I resolved on facebook to do at least one useful thing on Wednesday, but it took a while to get there with my standard morning of sleep, tv, and internet.  Jess was home on Wednesday, but she went somewhere in the afternoon.  I forget where.  I was messing around on facebook and saw that Lisa had posted a photo of the first carpet tiles going down in our department, and I got really excited to see it in person.  I had some holds to pick up anyway, so I went to the library.  I got to see the progress being made on the renovation, and I ended up working for about an hour and a half.  I had also forgotten to fill in my vacation on my timesheet, so it was handy that I had the impulse to go in.  By the time I wrapped things up at work, I had to book it home to pick up Jess to head to church.  That felt like a normal Wednesday.  I continued work on the little baby hat while at church.  Jess had heard at work that Tropical Smoothie was having some sort of special that week in the evenings, so we went there and discovered that the special was in the afternoons, but I enjoyed our time there, nonetheless. 

Day 13:  The night before I made a plan with Jess to go to lunch and then to paint pottery.  Then I overslept because obeying alarms is for people who have to work.  We eventually made it to lunch--and missed any lunch crowd we might have encountered, if I'd gotten up on time--at Senor Tequila.  When we got to Firefly, Jess decided she would just watch me paint instead of painting herself.  I was working on a project that will eventually be a gift for a person who might read this, so I won't say more than that for now.  We didn't really have much of a deadline, but Jess was meeting some folks to go to a boxing class at 6:15, so we just needed to be home in time for her to change and drive back across the river.  Unfortunately, our late start combined with the fact that I'm the slowest pottery painter in the world meant that I really had to hustle at the end, and then various unfortunate traffic patterns around the greater Little Rock area almost made her late again, but she made it eventually.

Day 14:  I don't recall anything that happened early in the day on Friday, but the main event was my triumphant return to the movies.  I hadn't been to see a movie in the theater in forever.  I seriously can't remember the last time, but I'm decently certain it was in 2009.  Rob, Smon, Hailsey, and I went to see The Switch, and it turned out to be pretty good thing.  We had sort of stopped going to the movies for a while because it seemed like we were only seeing really bad ones, so it was kind of special for us all to see one that we didn't hate.  Jason Bateman redeemed himself with Robyn, who was still carrying a grudge from The Ex.  I'm glad they made up because I love Jason Bateman.  We laughed and had a good time and felt delighted that our good movie drought was over.  Everyone came over to my messy house afterward to talk about teaching school and lazy vacations and stuff.

Day 15:  Jess worked most of the day, so I did even less than normal.  At some point either on Thursday or Saturday I watched The Ugly Truth, which I had checked out from the library.  It was okay, I guess.  Nothing to write home about certainly.  I know there was a situation (because it's recorded on facebook) where I was having to choose between hunger and laziness.  I resolved it by venturing out into the world for some drive-through fast food.  I was also hankering something sweet and needed to to buy a birthday card.  I ended up going to Walgreens.  After some aimless wandering from cookies to candy to Halloween candy and back again, I decided that what I really wanted was s'mores, so I gathered up the materials for that.  Buying graham crackers at Walgreens is the least economical decision I made during the whole vacation.

Day 16:  Laziness was put on hold so that I could get to church way early, keep nursery, and teach four-year-olds again.  I fell in love with a beautiful little toddler named Christian, who really wanted his mother but settled for snuggling with me and occasionally crying gorgeous tears.  When I got to Bible class, I discovered that Christian's mother was the lead teacher who'd been out of town the first week.  While I was sitting in the floor with my four-year-olds, telling/reading the story of David and Goliath, I noticed that my back started hurting in a weird spot.  By the time class was over, it was getting difficult to ignore.  By the time we ate lunch at Cracker Barrel, I was in serious need of a bed.  I spent the afternoon alternating between the bed and couch in search of a comfortable position.  Shane had finally given me Gilmore Girls season 6, so I had some distraction from the pain.  I decided to forgo two car rides and an hour in a pew, and after trying every possible position in the floor, I found a relative amount of ease in the recliner.  Eventually I staggered to bed and slept uncomfortably.

Day 17:  Monday was meant to have been my first day back at work, but when I woke up, my back still hated me--though perhaps less than it hated me on Sunday.  I decided to give it one more day of resting to see if it would shape up.  Plus our department was closed for one final day on Monday to put things back in place after the great carpet upheaval.  I might have been able to handle sitting calmly at a desk in a comfortable chair, but I knew my back had no business pushing carts or lifting stacks of books, and I knew if I was mixed up in all that work stuff, I'd do something stupid.  So I stayed at home.  But since the laziness was sanctioned by my sore back, I felt even less guilt about my slug-like tendencies than I did when I was actually on vacation, which is why I finished season 6 of the Gilmore Girls in just over 24 hours and still got a full night's sleep.  At this point in the vacation, there was no more food left in the house--and cooking wasn't high on my list of priorities anyway, so I think I ordered pizza Monday night while Jess was at work.

And on Tuesday, I faced the music and went back to work--with a mostly pain-free back.  I still don't know what was up with that.  I'd like to be able to tell you that I went back to work rested and energized and eager to dive back into satisfying and important work.  But mostly I showed up and survived and started counting down the days to the next vacation.  I know you are too, imaginary readers.

Food consumed:  Aunt Donna made sloppy joes on Monday.  I hadn't tried one in years, as they have always been high on the list of things I don't eat, but I decided to give them another chance--since the reintroduction of sweet potatoes went so well last year, I've known that my taste buds had changed.  I actually enjoyed it, so the official list of foods I hate is down to just three, I think:  fish and cowboy beans and grits.  Actually there are probably more things on the list, but those are the three that I always remember.  At home during the week, I ate leftover spaghetti and leftover brownies and leftover pineapple cheese dip.  I'm pretty sure chips and salsa and pepperonis and crackers were consumed.  I might have eaten ice cream, and I think I made grilled cheese a time or two.  I can't remember what the name of the smoothie was that I had on Wednesday, but it definitely had orange and pineapple and strawberry and maybe banana.  I also had a sandwich there, but I don't remember what kind.  I had my usual fajita nachos with no beans at Senor Tequila and discovered that their fruit punch can't compare to Mexico Chiquito's.  Friday we ate at Great Wraps before the movie, where I reunited with the best curly fries in the world.  We also ate movie popcorn, which is a rare treat for me.  That night I went to Walgreens, I had a hamburger from Hardee's and microwaved s'mores, which were just what I wanted.  At Cracker Barrel on Day 16, they brought me green beans instead of cabbage, and the cabbage was important enough that I had to have it too, so I ended up with an extra vegetable to go along with my chicken tenderloins, so I ate a bunch and still got to take home chicken, green beans, cabbage, hash brown casserole, and biscuits, but I think I ate all the carrots the first go round.  Extra leftovers came in handy during the back drama.  For the second time, I had a spinach, bacon, alfredo pizza from Dominos, and it was a delight.  Please do not consider this an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.

Bright spots:
Day 10:  family time
Day 11:  Gilmore Girls
Day 12:  smoothie
Day 13:  pottery painting
Day 14:  Robyn, Smonica, Hailey (who hasn't earned her place in the middle, even in a list)
Day 15:  s'mores
Day 16:  sweet, pretty little babies who snuggle
Day 17:  Gilmore Girls

Thus ended the chronicle of the least interesting vacation ever taken.  You're welcome.

the vacation diary: day three

I'm not going to lie.  I've been lazier than I was on Monday.  Lazy is my one truly fine-tuned skill, and if I'd turned on the lazy full-force, I would have spent so much unconscious that I couldn't have fully wallowed in the vacation-y goodness of a lazy Monday.  But as you'll read in too much detail in a moment, laziness was the theme of the day.

Day 3 stats:

Wake-up time:  9:15ish  Method:  naturally  General mood:  surprised to find myself awake and mostly alert

Agenda:  The morning hours were wasted on the internet (writing the day 2 diary post, so it wasn't all a waste, right?) and watching bits of sitcom reruns on BET with Jess.  Apparently, I'm allowed to watch BET these days.  I also finished Gilmore Girls season 4, which ends with one of the best and one of the worst moments ever.  I can remember watching this one live and being in agony to have to wait months to see how it all played out.  I won't have to wait as long this time, but Shane does have season 5 right now.  He's promised me that he'll be done by Wednesday, so perhaps I can handle it.  It's actually been long enough since I've seen the series that I can't remember exactly what comes next, so that'll be a nice surprise later.

By the time I had finished GG, Jess had gone to work, so I had to entertain myself.  I watched 300 and saw a whole other side of Gerard Butler--literally and figuratively.  There was more internet-ing, but absolutely nothing productive occurred.  I remembered to check my work email to see what had gone on in my absence.  That's when I learned that the carpet that was supposed to be here still hasn't come in.  So instead of being closed this week while the carpet is replaced, they decided to reopen until next week when the carpet really might be in.  I am experiencing survivor's guilt over not being at work this week because it's crazy there, but I keep telling myself that I've earned the time off.  I put a few movies and books on hold, so when they come in, I may stop by for a little while to see how things are going first hand.

For dinner, I made a fairly giant batch of spaghetti and watched three or four episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadephia, which I'd never seen before.  It was funny enough.  I think The Daily Show & Colbert Report were reruns, but they were recent, and I hadn't seen them before, so I stayed tuned in for those.  By the time Jess got home Tosh.0 was on.  We have a secret fascination with Daniel Tosh.  I was going to go watch a movie in my room while Jess caught up on some stuff she had DVRed, but we ended up watching the DVRed Emmys instead.  There were some interesting and funny moments, and I was heartbroken by the tribute to all the folks who died this year. 

I did fall asleep with my computer in my lap last night (it was exhausting writing the first sentence of this post since that's all I managed before I fell asleep).

Food consumed:  I had chocolate covered pretzels for breakfast.  I never got around to lunch because I didn't realize when it was lunch-time, but I had plenty of spaghetti.  So I didn't live up to my no-eating promise, but we all knew I wasn't going to.

Bright spot:  It'll prove just how sad my life is, but it was probably when Luke kissed Lorelai.  It's a great moment.

Bedtime:  It was around 1:30 when I fell asleep with the laptop.  I woke up again at 3 and realized that I had fallen asleep that way. 

I'm starting to regret this vacation diary idea since now I have posted proof of just how worthless I am and plan to be for next week or more.  It will get more interesting this weekend when there are cute kiddos and lots of food and birthday celebrations.  So stay tuned for that.

the vacation diary: day one

Been missing me?

I'd like to be able to tell you about what's been keeping me from you, my faithful imaginary readers, but I've made a solemn vow not to talk about work, so sorry.

But I started my longest vacation in seven years today.  And I'm going to log the exciting events of the whole vacation for you here.  You're welcome.

Day 1 stats:
Wake-up time:  10:00 a.m.  Method:  alarm  General mood:  relishing that lazy vacation feeling and giddy that the internet at home is fixed after abandoning me for ten long, agonizing days

Agenda:  Item one this morning was some interneting.  After making sure that my world still made sense and wishing Shane an official facebook birthday, I ate some breakfast and watched an episode of The Nanny.  I'm not exactly proud of that, but you're getting the unvarnished reality of my life here.  If it helps, I didn't set out to watch The Nanny.  Jess was watching a show on the DVR, and when she turned it off, that's what was on.

After a shower, a purposeful decision not to iron clothes, and a fruitful hunt for my mp3 player and a fruitless one for the cord to plug it in so I could get rid of the Christmas music, I headed in to work.  I know that going to work seems to fly in the face of being on vacation, but we're hip-deep in a renovation process, that at this stage requires us to pack up everything in our work room.  My deadline to have my desk cleaned out and packed was Friday before leaving on vacation, and I can say with a clear conscience that I met the deadline, but some of the common areas were still in quite a state, and I was in quite a state worrying about when or how or if they'd get sorted out.  So I went and spent a few hours sorting.

At some point in the day I realized I didn't have my phone, but I've finally memorized Shane's phone number for just these sort of no-phone emergencies, so I could still call him to arrange traveling plans.  We drove to the Beeb for Robyn's birthday dinner, which was as delightful as you might expect.  To be clear, today is Shane's birthday, and Rob's is tomorrow, so we celebrated them both a bit.  Small children were adorable, food was amazing, as usual, and my family is quite, quite nice.  Good stuff, and definitely first day of vacation worthy.

Once I got home, I used four episodes of Gilmore Girls season 4 to distract me as I typed this up.  So officially it's day 2 of vacation as I'm wrapping up here, but I'm going to consider it a success.

Food consumed:  Breakfast was a pudding cup.  I ate a leftover sugar cookie so that we could throw the box away while I was cleaning up at work (and somehow skipped lunch for the 2nd day in a row).  MacMac fed us tater tot casserole, green beans, and corn.  Alicia brought frog eye salad--something I can't explain but is phenomenal in the extreme.  We had banana pudding for Robyn and mandarin orange cake for Shane.  They were both spectacular.  I drank a large amount of tea.

Bright spot:  My sweet Grams telling me about the ironing she has done this week and telling me that she'd love me whether I made her a cake or not.

Bedtime:  It's 1:32 as I type this sentence, and I'll be finished in a moment.  The proofing and posting will take a few minutes, and I'm not exactly sure how much is left in "The Reigning Lorelai," the episode I'm watching now.  So I'm going to estimate 1:56 exactly, a bit late for someone who has to get up in less than five hours, but I'm on vacation.  I can take naps.

haikus

From the workplace:

Too busy with talk,

TV and cooking but no work

Quack-a-teria

 Am I just touchy

Or is the world full of punks?

Stop being needy.

Construction sounds like

building eating itself. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!

It's a library.

Playing on Webkinz

It's for a program, honest.

Makes me love my job.

Cutest kids ever

pass by the desk but parents . . .

They make me crazy.

blogligations

Sometimes I like to talk about the history of my blog like it's been around forever.  But mostly I realize that I'm just some upstart who hasn't been doing anything for very long and who doesn't do anything with enough consistency to talk about the history of this blog.  So if I stumble into talking that kind of nonsense, please ignore me.  You probably already were.

So in my vast blogging experience, I've learned that the process of starting and maintaining a blog is not as simple as registering a blogger account and spouting off a few opinions (later I'm going to devote a paragraph or seven to the whole "opinion" thing).  For me, the decision to blog is primarily very personal.  I need an outlet.  I've got lots of thoughts in my head.  Better out than in, I (and Shrek) always say.  I have this tendency to narrate my life, probably because I'm a fiction reader, and when things around me are moving slowly, I edit the previously narrated bits.  And it's not just straight narration, which is not the sort of thing that would carry over into a blog anyway . . . It's exposition about thoughts I'm having or experiences or memories.  Long before I started posting here, I was writing something in my head.  I can't believe I just admitted that.  Freak flag:  check.

So a lot of the stuff that goes on here is really just for me--to get it out of my head or to give me a place for some true editing of all these words.  That's why I have so many drafts of posts that never actually show up for public consumption.  Some things don't pan out, but so far, I'm keeping them in case they grow up to be something better later.  But if all I was looking for was an outlet, I could keep a journal.  That does appeal to me in some ways because I love physically writing things.  Add a mild handwriting obsession to the crazy that is me.  And journaling vs. blogging would give me more freedom to let out all my thoughts.  Because no matter how real I keep it or how transparent I claim to be, this blog o'mine is far from the unvarnished truth.  There's a ton of censoring that goes into everyday communication, and that's true of what goes on here as well.  Quite a lot is going unsaid because it's better or safer or something.  And really, no one would want to read me unfiltered.  Potentially, I can see that an open forum for my every rant isn't necessarily what's best for me anyway.  Better out than in, yes, but often better to not give anger and negativity such a foothold that a rant is necessary.

Clearly, I've made my point that I'm neurotic and self-centered, so before this turns into a love song to Ellen, let me tell you that blogging is also about you, imaginary reader.  Because I didn't choose to keep a journal . . . I chose to write to you.  Now I'll be honest and tell you that part of that is conceit, assuming that anything I want to say is worth reading to other people, and part of it is the voyeuristic nature of society.  But having an audience, imaginary or otherwise, takes blogging out of my head.  I have someone to consider, which streamlines my rambling occasionally and directs my thoughts often.  I'm writing for me, but I want you to be here too.  And I want to do something that will bring you back.  My Google Analytics addiction is proof enough that I care that you're here and what you're doing here.

The point I'm belaboring here is that blogging is a thumbs-up kind of experience for me.  I get to write, and I feel like I'm providing an occasional amusing diversion to the teeming masses.  Go me(at)!  But (and you know there was a but coming, right?) sometimes the pressure of blogging is really more than I bargained for.  Stupid, self-inflicted pressure, but pretty real, nonetheless.  Yesterday I realized that I'd only done ten posts in March, and a couple of those were short little duds anyway.  I felt guilty about that.  I haven't done a project 4:4 post all month (primarily because I haven't read my dailies all month).  I can't decide if I should feel more guilty about being so behind on the Bible or the fact that my behind-ness deprives my loyal fans here of some blog-fodder.  I'm not reading books and continuing the "year in books" series, but I've already expressed enough guilt over that.  And my slow trickle of other ideas is fairly dry.  I'm feeling like a failure.  Whoever had three and a half months in the pool should collect.  I'm not saying that this is the end of the opinions.  But at this point, it's feeling much more like an obligation than a joy.  And that stinks for all of us.

And since I mentioned "opinions" again, let me tell you that I hate the name of this blog.  Why did I pick it?  It sounds like I'm some know-it-all jerk who's going to choose a topic that doesn't really concern me in the real world and tell you all what to think about it.  Well, I am a know-it-all jerk, but I tend to stay away from hot topics or telling people what to think about things that matter.  On the other hand, I do have a lot of opinions and ideas and rules about silly stuff, things that don't matter, and I feel like this blog is chock-full of those ridiculous opinions.  So maybe it's appropriate. 

Any direction that this post had was lost long ago.  Apologies, imaginary readers.  Let me sum up for those still searching through the mire of my thoughts for a point:  today blogging gives me a frowny face.  But I have hope in my own narcissism, and so should you. 

*****Uncertain blog author's dilemma:  Should I have called this post "blobligations" instead of "blogligations."  Is it even clear what I'm trying to say?  I want to be cool and confident enough to let it stand and have you get it or feel inadequate because you don't get it, but my inadequacies rule the day.*****

an open letter to library patrons

Dear library patrons:

I don't say this often enough, but I love you.  It may not always seem so, but seriously, you're special and awesome--and you validate my existence on a regular basis.  Want to hear more?

I love that you pay taxes.  I know you don't have much choice in that part, but the fact remains that you make the wheels go round.  If you didn't pay your property taxes and vote to approve increases in our cut of them from time to time, there wouldn't be much of a library.  And the fact that you vote in our favor more often than not says something about your awesomeness.  Thanks for being a part of this process, for your ungrudging financial support of the concept and the reality of a library system.

I love that you use the library.  Your participation--visiting the library, checking out materials, attending programs, using the on-site resources like computers and newspapers--drives the machine.  It doesn't matter if we have green buildings or the newest book releases or state-of-the-art technologies or dynamic programming unless you're there to use it.  When you use the library, we take notice and keep count and use that information to give you more of what you like and want and need, whether that means purchasing new materials, redesigning space, hiring staff, or funding programs.  So when you come to the library, you're improving us and shaping the library to be a real part of the community.  Thanks for making us relevant.

I love the variety you bring to my job.  Each of you who use the library have your own agenda--your own needs and preferences--that determine what you require from the library and from the staff.  I love that doing my job means that I can help people find books that they will enjoy, that I can show people how to find information that they need, that I can entertain and teach through programs.  If you were all the same or needed the same things from me, the monotony of my job would swallow me whole. Thanks for being different and for allowing me to come to know your differences. 

I love that you're invested in what we do.  For most of you, the library is not just a business that you frequent to receive a product or a service.  Maybe it's because you know you're paying for this, but library patrons want to talk about the library, about our books, about our programs, about the way we do things, and I love that you take that interest in us.  Regular library patrons establish relationships with us whether you realize it or not, and I'm grateful that by and large, those relationships are positive and pleasant and mutually beneficial.  Connecting and interacting with you is the best part of what I do.  Thanks for caring.

I love that you bring your kids to the library.  You're not just modeling literacy (though that's important enough by itself) but you're also creating a new generation of library users, who will pay taxes and use our resources and be invested in the library for years to come.  That's the important and far-reaching consequence of bringing your kids to the library, but I also love the immediate result:  your kids are fun and cute and curious and eager, and I like seeing them and the energy they bring when they come to the library.  I love watching them grow up.  And I love knowing that they at least sometimes get something from being at the library that they couldn't have gotten at school or home.  Thanks for sharing them with us.

I love that you follow the rules even when they seem arbitrary and complicate your life.  I love that you check out books and return them, mostly on time.  I love that you pay your fines.  I love that you use our hold system.  And I love that most of you understand that the rules are in place for a reason, and that we, as staff, are following them and asking you to do the same because it's required of us, not because we enjoy torturing patrons.  Thanks for being good sports.

And I know that just because I love you for all of those reasons (and probably a few more), the feeling is not always mutual.  And I know that the blame for that usually lies with me.  Bearing that in mind, I'd like to offer you an apology.

I'm sorry that I have to enforce the rules.  Even if I disagree with them, there are certain policies that I have to follow.  Yes, I'm probably on your side, and my goal is to say yes as often as I can, but some lines I cannot cross.  I'm sorry for the times that those situations put us on opposing sides.

I'm sorry that I'm a grump.  If I have to get up and go to a job every morning, this is the job I want.  I think it's the best thing I could be doing.  I love it.  But I have bad days.  I come to work tired or under the weather or worried about things.  I get frustrated.  I get lazy.  I get bored.  And much more often than I should, I allow that to affect how we interact.  I'm impatient or short with you.  I don't warmly engage you.  I don't smile.  I'm sorry for those times that I let my attitude negatively affect our time together.

I'm sorry that I let a few unpleasant patrons set the tone for everyone.  More often than it should, library staff areas are full of complaints and stories of the bad patrons, those that don't accept the rules or who take out their frustration on staff members.  Those patrons are a minority, but we're human and flawed and tend to focus on those negative few rather than the majority of you, who are so capable of inspiring our most positive emotions.  You deserve so much better.  I'm sorry for those times when I'm guilty of painting you all with the same brush.

I'm sorry that every staff member you encounter at the library doesn't love you the way I love you.  I'll admit it--there are some duds out there.  They frustrate me because they can't seem to appreciate the awesomeness of you.  And their grumpiness and frustration and lack of communication with you make my job harder, besides making library visits unpleasant for you.  I try to stay positive and enjoy our time together, but I know that not all of us do.  I'm sorry we don't appreciate our jobs and our patrons more.


In short, library patrons, feel the love.  Accept my apologies.  Forgive my flaws.  Library patrons, let's be friends.

Your library lady and number one fan,
Ellen