If I Ran the Universe...

The End

2011-07-03T13:33:00.003-05:00

Well, as you can clearly tell, I don't have much to say here at this blog anymore. Since my job has censored me and I'm not allowed to talk about that anymore, I find myself truly struggling for post-worthy inspiration. I could tell you all about my crazy adventures, like for instance I'm leaving today to spend 8 days in the Boundary Waters, hoping for moose, wolf and loon spottings, as well as my first adult fishing experience, which needs to go well because we don't want to starve. Or I could tell you about my lame attempt at farming my own food. Or any of the other silliness that comprises my existence. However, these things are beter relegated to Facebook statuses and not posts on a blog I don't even feel connected with anymore.

If you'd like to hook up with me through Facebook, send me an email and we can do that. Otherwise, I'd like to say thank you to all my loyal readers for years and years and years of support and shared frustration.

I know this post is a poor excuse for a closing, but it's the epitome of my ambivalance toward the whole matter these days. Perhaps one day I'll revive it. Perhaps I'll begin writing somewhere else. Or perhaps it's a completed chapter in my life.

I love you all and thank you again for all the ways you made me feel like part of a bigger community of understanding, shared misery, and mostly a common interest in sarcasm and poking fun at the things that threaten to make us nuts. Without the warped sense of humor I think we all have in varying degrees, life would be so much heavier, so much less fun, and the insanity we all deal with everyday would begin to overtake us. So keep it up, don't stop laughing, find humor where it seems there isn't any, know you're not alone, and don't let the Black Holes get you down too much.

If I don't hear from you, have a wonderful life, thanks for joining me on this wild ride, and I wish for you all the best in the world.

Peace.

The Name Game

2011-03-04T17:39:00.004-06:00

Sometimes working in the reference department has its downfalls, such as I no longer know all my patrons' names.

However, we have come up with some odd nicknames for our patrons in the absence of knowing their actual names, or in the apathy of wanting to use them.

Some of our patrons' nicknames are as follows:

Booktalker (he talks to the books, among other things)

Train Scanner (he takes Briana's train and he likes to scan his own card when checking items out, whether you're ready for him to do so or not)

Worse Than Betty (seriously, RUN!)

Pajama Lady (the days when she wears flannels and slippers are good, but often it's a low-cut nightgown and slippers... gag)

Best Buy Guy (wants us to be Best Buy for him)

Creepy Craigslist Guy (CL troll, watch out)

80s Hair Lady (frizzy, crispy, crunchy perm, THICK black eyeliner, and makes Tammy Faye look au naturale)

Slacker (tall, anorexic-looking blonde guy with an ill-fitting and dingy wardrobe)

Slacker's Mom (his mom, duh)

The B.O. Lady (you smell her before you see her)

Handyman (uses his hands in his lap while surfing porn)

Tin Foil Hat Guy (now banned, was totally off his meds)

Serial Killer (odd, lumbering, special guy who leers and frightens people)

These are some of our regulars. Do you make up names for your patrons/customers too?

Mushing

2011-02-28T16:30:00.003-06:00

I'm back! I'm sore! And I have dogsledded!

Read about it here on my travel blog.

Bits 'N Pieces

2011-02-22T13:28:00.004-06:00

Me: Do you ever listen to "Lovelines" on the radio?

Bro: No, I didn’t know that was still on the air.

Me: Yeah, Adam isn’t on it anymore, but the guy Mike who is on now is pretty funny. Not like Adam, but good in his own way. I love when they play Stinky Pinky.

Bro: Do I want to know what that is?

Me: It’s a long story, hard to explain, but it’s not what you think. It’s a game of clues and rhyming words, and it’s great when callers have true Stinky Pinkies, but so many of them just don’t get the concept of rhyming, or their clues are so ridiculous you can’t really play. ANYWAY, I bring it up because it’s re-reinforcing my love of Dr. Drew.

Bro: Oh?

Me: Yeah, he’s brilliant. How is it he can diagnose the most disturbing problems over the phone with little or no information to go on?

Bro: Like he knows what herpes sounds like?

Me: Hahahaha, no I mean someone will call up and say he has a girlfriend who farts during sex, and Drew will know that the caller is an alcoholic because his mother was an alcoholic.

Bro: Really?

Me: It’s amazing. It’s like a game. Girl calls up and says she has a papercut on her nipple and Drew pulls shit out of thin air: ‘Molested by an uncle, in the basement, with a candlestick holder,’ and she’ll go, ‘Whoa, how did you know that?’ It’s kinda spooky.

Bro: [laughing] Did you just turn that into the game Clue? The uncle? In the basement? With a canclestick holder? Did you just say that? Because that’s really disturbing.

Me: [cracking up] Yeah, but that’s what he does! He rocks. I love listening to him.

Bro: [between laughs] You’ve ruined Clue for me. Thanks.

Me: All the credit goes to Dr. Drew.

* * *

Marina: Boys’ clothes are more comfortable than girls’ clothes.

Me: How so? Like, boys’ clothes are bigger and therefore more comfy, or they’re made differently, like out of more comfy fabrics.

Marina: Both, I think. You know what sucks? When you have a boyfriend and he lets you wear his sweater and you get it all comffed in, then you break up and have to give it back.

Me: Did you just say, ‘comffed in’?

Marina: [defiantly] Yeah.

Me: That’s as good as ‘mistope’. Or the fact that you can’t math.

She smiled. Her brilliance is wasted on our job.

* * *

Ann and I are going dogsledding this weekend, and we are beside ourselves with anticipation. We leave on Friday, but last Friday we had the following conversation via text, and then on FB.

Ann: A week from today, know what we’ll be doing?

Me: Driving.

Ann: Maybe singing?

Me: Maybe, but not me.

And I later posted on FB a question about where to get decent coloring books these days. How can Ann and I repeat our Minneapolis weekend of drunken debauchery without decent coloring books?

Friend: Body paint would work.

Me: No. She's a children's librarian. She'd paint me to look like a Muppet. I shudder to think which one. ;) For example, I got a text today that said, "A week from today, know what we'll be doing?" I responded, "Driving." She wrote back, "Maybe singing?" What she means is not singing freedom-loving, rocking, melodic road songs that make you roll down your windows, belt it out, and maybe flash a passing semi. She means storytime songs about gumdrops and lemondrops and rainbows and puppies. I feel the need to preserve that, and not corrupt it. And I make fun of her storytime songs, but she's a breath of fresh air sometimes and she keeps my other foot out of the gutter.

Ann: I am shocked that you do not consider songs about rainbows, gumdrops, lemondrops and puppies to be "freedom-loving, rocking, melodic road songs." How can you not want to roll down your window and belt out such inspiring and uplifting tunes? I bet the truckers have all been flashed before, but how many have been treated to a stirring rendition of, "If all the raindrops were lemondrops and gumdrops oh what a rain it would be!" And my current muppet favorite is Kermit on account of my new hat so I would try to paint you into a Kermit! Then we could sing, "Rainbow Connection."

Me: Ann, if I heard "Rainbow Connection" once in the last 25 years and remembered any of the lyrics, I might actually sing along to that one.

Ann: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSFLZ-MzIhM

Me: Okay, but then we have to sing the censored Count von Count song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Wd-Q3F8KM!!

The subject has been dropped. We are now discussing restaurants.

And for the record, I checked Borders, Toys R Us, various grocery stores, Walmart and Target, with the best selection at Target, but hardly brag-worthy. Something is amiss when the “Coloring Books” section is full of sticker books and activity books, but no coloring in them!

* * *

Why is it that seminars/webinars that people put together for libraries are all so lame? Do they think we are googly-eyed morons easily amused by dumb activities and irrelevant information that fills time? If it's a 2-hour webinar about Going Green and the first HALF is spent exploring how much greener we were in ancient times when mankind hunted with arrowheads made of stone. Seriously?! Are librarians that nerdy that we need an hour on ancient civilizations and how we can learn from them to be more forward-thinking? Maybe my attention span is ridiculously short, or maybe we need to get a damn TED speaker occasionally. Dear Dog, it's like being on a library committee! Just. Shoot me.

How's the Weather?

2011-01-20T11:55:00.000-06:00

(We're just going to pretend like the last 5 weeks of my life didn't happen at all, mmmkay? Thanks to everyone for your comments of support.)

Yesterday I was sitting at the reference desk and a middle-aged man and his teenage son walked up to me. The father asked for books on getting your GED, so I walked him over, showed him what we had, pointed out the newer copies, explained some have CDs, and he seemed polite and grateful for the help.

A few minutes later he walked by me with his son and thanked me again. As they were leaving, he did another walk-by and said, "I was going to ask you if you were cold, but it's pretty warm in here."

I cocked my head and said, "Yeah, I'm comfortable. Why? Is it too warm to you?" I noted he had on his heavy, winter coat and thought maybe that explained it.

He said, "No, it's fine." He smiled and walked away.

It still didn't dawn on me what he meant.

I got up from the desk to use the washroom, and when I was done and went to the sink to wash my hands, I saw a startling pair of erect nipples in my reflection. Instinctively, I tried to poke them in and mumbled something about it not being the right time or place and they needed to go away. However, my hands were still wet from washing them and then I had two big wet spots on my top. Of course. Some days I really shouldn't be allowed out without a caretaker.

That's when it hit me. The comment made by that seemingly polite, grateful father was about my smuggled raisins (thanks Leelu, I'm spreading the joy that is that phrase), and suddenly I wanted to go back out and find that guy so I could punch him square in head.

First of all, what kind of man walks up to a woman he doesn't even know and makes a comment like that?

Second, to do that with your teenage son in tow is even worse, so whatever body part or animal you deemed him to be in the first question, downgrade it further to an even lower version.

When I asked someone last night if he would do that, and under what circumstances, he said on a really bad day (though I'm not sure if he meant "bad" as if he were having a shitty day, or feeling particularly naughty) he could say something about her having on her high-beams, which made me laugh.

He then asked what I'd do if someone had said that to me instead.

Good question. I think high-beams is somewhat comical, and while I probably would've been more apt to laugh that one off, I'd still be offended deep down that a stranger would cross that line with me.

He agreed and said that's probably a borderline sexual harassment issue.

As I've said numerous times before, I think most sexual harassment issues are ridiculous and not something you take to a boss and file a complaint about, but I understood how someone might be really bent out of shape about this particular type of comment.

Now, if a friend or coworker had said it, I'd have had no problem with it. Why is that? It was the fact that he was a total stranger that bugged me so much.

Is that the oddest part of all?

Sorry For the Absence

2010-12-17T11:39:00.002-06:00

Am lost. Am destroyed. Cannot write. Cannot sleep. Cannot eat. Have lost too much this year and can just barely breathe.

Am trying to keep breathing.

Am trying to survive.

This has been the absolute worst year of my life.

Trying to fight my way out of this. Trying to fake it 'til I make it. Trying to find a ray of hope in all the despair.

Want to fix so many things I messed up, but it's impossible. Don't like myself at all right now.

Will return when I get a grip. Humble apologies.

Bite Me

2010-12-01T01:56:00.001-06:00

While hanging out with a friend last night, we watched his two dogs wrestling on the floor. They’d been going at it for an hour, and try as we might to comprehend the premise of the game they were playing, it seemed to just be about biting one another, taking turns. He dubbed the game Bite Me.

Mimicking what sounded like his dog’s human voice would be, he said, “I’m gonna bite your face.”

I giggled.

He continued, “I’m gonna bite your ear.”

And onward, “I’m gonna bite your leg. I’m gonna bite your tail.”

I said, “That sounds like a blues song.”

So, he started playing his guitar in a bluesy way.

Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “I’m gonna bite your butt.”

Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “Chomp-chomp. Chomp-chomp.”

Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “I’m gonna bite your butt.”

Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “Chomp-chomp. Chomp-chomp.”

Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “I bit your butt.”

Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “And I’m gon’ do it again.”

Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “Chomp-chomp. Chomp-chomp.”

Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “I’m gonna bite your butt.”

I was in hysterics.

Today he called the library to find out how late we were open, punched an extension thinking he’d get me, and he thought the woman who answered was me. But she wasn’t.

He said to her, “Chomp-chomp. Chomp-chomp. I’m gonna bite your butt.”

She later told me that her thought was, well, clearly that’s not a call for me, so she transferred it to Arms at the security extension.

My friend thought she hung up on him and realized it wasn’t me who answered the phone.

I got an unexplained text saying, “Oops, that wasn’t you.” He later came in and told me what happened, so I went looking for the person who answered the phone and after a hearty laugh, explained the song and the dogs play fighting on the floor. It seemed to amuse her, but maybe she was just a little bit disappointed that a strange man hadn’t called to let her know he wanted to bite her butt.

Cropping

2010-11-02T13:04:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I was teaching a patron how to use photo editing software and I'd just finished illustrating the way to crop a picture, by drawing a box around the area to keep and clicking to crop to the selection.

She very innocently looked at me and asked, "So, where does the rest of the photo go when you crop it?"

I blinked. I waited for her to rephrase the question. She continued looking at me in awe. She meant exactly what she said.

I said, "To heaven," and then I laughed to let her know I was joking, because she believed me for a moment.

When I later related the story to my coworkers, one said, "It goes to Milwaukee."

Another countered that no, when you get rid of it and don't want it, "It goes to Detroit."

Finally, my favorite answer came from another coworker who reacted to the first two responses by saying, "No way! It's a crop. It goes to Iowa."

Thus, I have my answer for next time.

Costumes

2010-10-27T18:05:00.001-05:00

We have a coworker who has been having a lot of fun with the Halloween costumes this week.

Monday she came in and wore a sticker that said, "Hello, my name is Mary" and her hair was sticking in the air. I thought momentarily that she was Mary from Something About Mary, but if you knew this woman you would think twice, like I did, and profess to have no idea what the costume meant. My first instinct was right, much to my shock.

Yesterday she came in with Smarties candies pinned all over her pants. She was a smarty-pants.

Today she had the word "book" on her face, with B and O on one cheek and O and K on the other. I looked at her and my initial idea was, this girl is a total book-head, but that was dumb so clearly not the costume.

She was getting frustrated and said, "Where is it?!"

I said, "Uh, you have book on your face."

She stomped her feet and said, "Say it the other way now!"

"OH, Facebook!"

That one was tough, in my opinion.

So, I followed Christi out to the desk today to see if she could get the costume.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Christi?

Christi looked at her and said a couple hmms, then finally stated, with no humor at all, "Oh, I get it: B.O. So you have B.O. and you're O.K. with it."

I had to sit on the floor I was laughing so hard.

Patron Questions

2010-10-16T19:54:00.001-05:00

Patron: You know your nametag is upside down.

Me: Yeah, that’s so I can read it. How else will I know who I am?

Patron (looking at his own embroidered name on his uniform): My name is right side up.

Me: That’s too bad. How are you supposed to remember your name that way?

Patron: You’re right. I should get them to change it.

He tried to pronounce his name backward and we laughed.

I took the nametag off and put it in my pocket. I was done with the nametag, which was clearly far too complicated for my simple mind.

Me: I can’t believe I’ve been out here for hours and hours and no one told me my name was upside down. Ah, well, I don’t want anyone to know my name anyway.

Patron: I know your name.

Me: Well you’re special.

Patron: Heeee.

Patron: So, how long have you been a librarian?

Me: Well, I’ve worked here 18 years, but I’ve only been a librarian for about the last 3 years.

Patron: And you’re the naughty librarian, eh?

Me (in mock horror): ME!? Who told you about me?

Patron: Oh, no one had to tell me. I can see it in your smile. I knew it right away – yep, naughty librarian.

Damn, my cover’s blown.

Patron: Don’t you guys have a Halloween section?

Me: What kind of Halloween stuff are you looking for?

Patron: Good ol’ fashioned Halloween stuff.

Me: Oh, that kind. No. Sorry. You’re too late. We’re already prepping for Christmas now. We’re like the stores, you know? And I’m not talking about Christmas this year. We’re working on Christmas for 2011. You’re already over a year behind for Christmas, and for Halloween this year – pshaw! You should’ve seen us in April of 2009. What’s the matter with you?

Patron: I guess I just didn’t realize…

Me: Well, now you do.

Patron: Funny girl. That’s why I come to you with all my questions. And why isn’t there anything for grownups for Halloween anymore?

Me: Sure there is. Halloween stuff falls into two categories these days: little kid stuff and slutty stuff. The sluttier, the better. Costumes give women the opportunity to be total whores and just bat their eyelashes and say, “But it’s just a costume. I’m not really this slutty.” Uh-huh. So, are you looking for the slutty Halloween section?

Patron: OHMYGOD, you’re right! Costumes are getting sluttier!

Me: I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before.

Patron: Actually, I’m looking for CDs with spooky sound effects. Where would those be?

Me: Slutty spooky sound effects?

Patron: Uh, no, probably not.

Me: Kids stuff. See how it works?

Patron: Oh man, I think you just ruined Halloween for me.

Me: DUDE, it’s the sluttiest season there is. Enjoy it!

Patron (laughing): You’re right! Tits and ass everywhere! What’s not to love?!

Patron: I need some information on clarinets. The parts of them. You can look that up, but I have to go to the washroom, so I’ll be right back.

Me: You better.

He looked at me for a moment as if he didn’t understand those two simple words I just uttered and then realized I was joking and made a very lame attempt at a forced laugh.

I looked at Marina.

Me: He’s scared of me now. Bwahahaha! Score! I bet he doesn’t come back.

Marina: He may not.

He did. We spent the next half hour cracking jokes, and he taught me about why they prefer Beechler mouthpieces in Mexico.

I guess I didn’t scare him – threatening him made him feel more at ease.

My patrons are weird.

When they’re weird in a good way and we bond, I just love my patrons.

Steep and Thorny Way

2010-10-13T00:41:00.002-05:00

Today, my friend Eric informed me that he was telling his brother about me, how much weight I’d lost and how I’d done it, what a huge feat it was, etc. I was incredulous.

He said to me, “You have to be so proud of yourself for doing that! That’s HUGE! Just getting to the point where you have the mindset to get going is HUGE. The rest, 90 pounds, that’s amazing! You have to be proud of that!”

No. I’m not. Not really. And I’ll tell you why.

Throughout the years, I’ve read all kinds of stories by people who lost a lot of weight, how it changed their lives, how they’ll never go back to what they were, and how if they can do it, you can do it too!

Gag.

Fuck that shit. Those lying ho-bags left out the biggest, baddest, meanest little factoid in the whole damn story: it’s horrible!

Where they get their little happy pills, I don’t know, because I’m bitter. I’m angry. I’m not digging any of this. It’s a monster of a lifestyle change, it’s expensive, and it’s painful.

Why does no one mention how painful it is?

It’s like childbirth and raising a newborn. People want to talk about the rainbows, unicorns and gumdrops being pregnant was, and godliness of giving birth to this perfect, angelic being who can do no wrong.

SHUT. UP.

Your body is invaded by an alien and you lose control of everything. Then that thing forces itself out in such a way that you have to be cut or torn to accommodate it, and then it becomes this leech on your body, not allowing you to sleep, not allowing you to have a life, and not allowing you any peace. And that’s if you’re lucky. Some people, and I’ve fwatched them go through this, develop hideous abscesses in their nipples and must have surgery because they chose to breastfeed, and others had permanent problems with arthritis, migraines, depression, and hormone imbalances. Pregnancy can forever mess up your gums, your hair, your health! And that angelic baby who can do no wrong, don’t even get me started on the massive amounts of exhaustive care and attention s/he requires. I have seen moms in a cloud of sleep-deprived insanity, and though they cannot recall their actions after they have collapsed in a coma-like stupor for a few hours, I know what I see of them in these states and they are not well. They say and do things that no drug on earth could elicit from them, and if they’re good people, they deny it later out of sheer atrocity over the idea that they could do such things. Sometimes it’s better to not tell them what they did. Those stories of drunken debauchery you have on your friends cannot compare with the dirt that baby-induced sleep-deprivation can cause. And that, my friends, is the painful truth that people don’t talk much about.

Just like with weight loss.

I did not lose 90 pounds gracefully. I fought it tooth and nail, whined, bitched, cussed, screamed and threw tantrums regularly.

Coaches at my gym can attest to the fact that I refuse to join any kind of supportive team/game going on because I don’t have enough faith in myself to accomplish any goals and don’t want anyone keeping close track of me. I’m a non-joiner. I barely speak to anyone at the gym. I grunt, sweat, pout, grumble, and have been known to curse out a machine or kick it. There is very little socializing going on, and if there is, it’s only with the coaches and not the others working out. Screw them. They’re on their own. It’s every woman for herself in there as far as I’m concerned, and I really do not want anyone to be my friend because my sole purpose being there is misery and ass-kicking. You want to help me? Bitch me out before I start my workout and that will help me. You wanna derail me? Pat me on the back and tell me how wonderful I look in my new thrift store clothes because I can’t afford regular store wardrobes every couple months. I hate getting sweaty. I hate getting up early. And most of all, I hate how hard it is. FUCK! I hate working out! There simply is no dignity involved!

So, now I ride a bike. This also means I eat an inordinate amount of bugs, sweat profusely in strange places, have sores in even stranger places, and lug around a bicycle everywhere I go. A bicycle, by the way, requires almost as much care as a baby, which, if I’d known that before I bought it, I’d be taking swimming lessons right now instead. I gave up the filthy gravel trails in my county and have shifted west to the paved luxuries of my neighboring bikers. Yet, no matter where I bike in this flat state I live in, it seems there are hills and moraines so large that they cause my quads to burn as if acid were churning through my legs and my lungs shrink up to raisins. Hills are my enemy.

It’s relative, too. Now the gym isn’t quite so miserable because at least I consider that we’re on flat land. The food sacrifices aren’t quite so severe either, because I didn’t have to bike uphill with a headwind to get fed. Anything that occurs on flat terrain now, no matter how unhappy it makes me, can always be made worse by being on a bike going uphill.

The bitter irony is that when you get good at one hill, you feel the need to go farther down that trail to the next section you’ve yet to explore, and lo and behold, there is a bigger hill. There is always a bigger hill. So true in every way. And I hate it.

I fight the hills. I grind my teeth, I gasp for air, I push my legs, I count the feet I have left until I reach the top, and I just about cry. Crying requires energy to be diverted from the muscles ascending a hill, so it’s simply not possible or I would do it every time. Swearing, too. If you’re nearby, you can often hear me gasp out a very desperate “Motherfucker!” as I crest, but only as I crest because talking requires expulsion of air, and I usually have none to spare, so no swearing until I’ve hit the top. And then the floodgates open up.

I do confess, I also can be heard giggling at the garter snakes, tee-hee-ing at the ground squirrels, and ooh-ing at the hawks as I ride. If you see me violently swerve, it’s most often to avoid the glorious grasshoppers that look just like dead leaves until you get up close, or to go around what looked like a stick, but is really a fuzzy little caterpillar. Sometimes I want to recite applicable Eric Carle books to them as I pass.

But I digress. This isn’t about the cutesy moments. This is about the overwhelmingly angry moments.

Last week I fell off the wagon completely. I abandoned my high-protein, low-carb diet and went on a Culver’s Concrete Mixer binge. (Chocolate ice cream with toppings of peanut butter and peanut butter cups, thank you very much!) It was an awful week. One I may never completely recover from emotionally, but one I need to fight my way out of now, so I had to break up with Culver’s and get back in the saddle, literally. I put on 5 pounds last week, and when I reported this to Eric (who has become my coach), he insisted I hadn’t eaten that many calories in one week and was simply retaining water. I disagreed and insisted I was retaining ice cream.

Two days of riding and I realized I wasn’t doing myself any favors because I was riding my route faster and shaving off more time with each run, which actually reduces the number of calories burned over time, so I had to lengthen my route. By adding another couple miles, I’m riding deeper into a wooded area of the trail that I’ve never been to before. That’s what sucks about weight loss. Just when you get a handle on things, adjust to the level of hell you’ve committed yourself to and you tolerate it okay, it stops working and you have to add more torture on top.

Today I met my arch enemy. It’s a hill. But it’s not just any hill. It’s a hill that I could not ascend.

THAT. BUGS ME.

Going up it, I was down to my very lowest gear, still barely able to turn the pedals, and at one point I had only the strength to hold the pedals from going backward. This toppled the bike from lack of movement, and I found myself quickly dismounting in order not to take a huge fall into the woods. So, I fell off my bike trying to get up this hill that completely immobilized me. It was a bitter defeat and I turned around and rode back to my car 7 miles away. I then drove to my usual restaurant, where I ordered a gigantic slice of pizza and ate only the topping (okay, I had a little crust, but not much), and I pouted the entire time. I whined. I texted Eric, who had recommended this part of the trail, and asked if he was trying to kill me. He insisted he could not recall such a treacherous hill on this part of the trail. That made me angry. Not only had I been beaten by this hill, but evidently it wasn’t even memorable to anyone else as a tough hill to climb. I stabbed at my pizza until it was a saucy mess and decided to go at the wretched hill again today.

The second time around, that hill was just as bad, but I made it a little farther up, with a lot less grace. Instead of freezing and trying not to go backward, I wobbled all over the path, steering into the teeter of the bike going too slow to stay upright, and after swerving all over and off the path, I realized that if I wasn’t leaning all the way forward onto the handlebars, the bike did a wheelie due to the extreme incline of the path. Okay, that did it! This was a bitch of a hill! If I had to lean to keep from falling backward off my bike, it was steep. I stopped and walked the rest of the way up. From the top, it didn’t look so bad. From below, it was like a wall. Yet, there were signs that you were supposed to dismount and walk your bike down the hill because of the speed you would build riding, on a path that was not only dark and wooded, but twisty and turny, so you could easily end up in a pond, or plowing down a hapless walker. (Damn pedestrians.) Clearly, this was not a hill to be taken lightly. As if to emphasize this was the fact that I was hyperventilating. I cannot recall a time I was gasping so hard for air. This hill kicked my ass!

And as I was thinking this, a very capable-looking rider began ascending the hill, growling and grimacing, huffing and puffing, barely able to move his legs at all. He made it!

As he got to the top I said, between gasps of my own, “I hate this hill!”

He shouted back, “THIS HILL SUCKS!”

I loved him in that moment. Comrade. Even though he made it all the way up, we were of like minds: we hated it!

So, I am not a happy, proud member of the lost-alotta-weight community. I fucking hate it. It hurts. It sucks. It beats the crap out of me. I yell. I swear. I fight it every step of the way. And sometimes, something terrible happens in my life and I submerge myself in vats of ice cream, only to have to fight harder to get out of that rut as well. I don’t even know if I’d recommend it, it’s that brutal. It completely sucks.

But if you have the fight in you and you’re up for the challenge, it’s the fight of your life, and it never gets boring.

Larger Than Life

2010-10-05T00:08:00.003-05:00

I had a friend named Jeff.

He came to work at my library about 8 years ago, but we didn’t really start talking much until the end of 2003, when a rogue board member decided to bully the other trustees into making a new rule restricting R-rated movies to patrons who were 17 or older. During a staff meeting where we were informed of the board’s decision to ignore our objections, I took a stand and said that I was both a patron of our library and a staff member, and as a patron I would do what I had to do to fight it, even if it put my job in jeopardy. Little did I know, I was sitting next to someone who would turn out to be the greatest champion of free speech I ever met. The bond was instant.

Our friendship blossomed when we discovered how many things we had in common: atheism, book-love, liberalism, and many more. When my father was diagnosed with cancer in early 2004, Jeff was a quintessential member of the small support group I leaned on regularly. I’m sure I couldn’t have gotten through that without him. The day my father died, I drove home from the hospital in the very early hours of the morning, showered, redressed, and drove over to the library, where I stood outside the back door until he arrived at 8:45. When I told him what happened, he hugged me for a long time and then asked me if I’d driven all the way over at this fragile time just to stand around waiting to see him. Of course I had, but suddenly I was embarrassed about how much I relied on him to make me feel better. At a time when everyone was saying the stupidest things to me about my dad’s death, when strangers were trying to foist upon me their religious beliefs without regard to my own beliefs, and when I was desperate for some peace, I knew only Jeff would understand. I told him no, I was restless and had gone to the library to arrange for time off. He hugged me harder. He didn’t want to think of me standing alone outside the library in this state waiting for him to arrive. He never knew I did just that.

I work in a library like many others, full of colorful characters. Easily, the most colorful character was Jeff. I could live to be 100 and never meet anyone with more passion and love of life than he had. He spoke many languages, including Spanish, Portugese and Chinese, and adored other cultures and people. He championed many causes, celebrated diversity, and became an ordained minister so that he could marry people. The only times I ever saw him angry were when there were occasions when he was witness to discrimination, or when someone tried to say that food in Chicago was better than anything in Iowa. The man loved Iowa. Born, raised, and educated there, he had a marrow-deep aversion to anything compared to Iowa. His intellect was impressive, even in a library environment, and though he didn’t often work the reference desk, if ever there was an obscure fragment of information I needed (for myself or someone else), he was my go-to person. He was married to a woman I never got to know, though I wish I had, and never had children, though I think his worship of his cats was probably greater than any proud parent I’ve ever encountered. Jeff had a heart so big it was overwhelming. I often didn’t know what to do with all the compliments he bestowed upon me, but if you knew him, you’d know he meant every one. If he cared about you, it was 200%, never less. And the only time you ever saw him less than ecstatic to see you was when he was very sick, and then he was only somewhat muted, but always enthusiastic. Jeff made everyone feel good.

As the head of our Technical Services Department, he was in a role he seemed born to play: king of cataloging. Like many catalogers, his focus on details was exquisite, and if you dared to ask a question, he would tell you the answer down to the DNA that the answer was made of. He was precise. He told me many times that his mentor advised him that if someone asks him what time it is, not to tell them how to build a watch. While Jeff found this amusing and self-defining, I think we all (including Jeff) knew that we were going to get the watch instructions anyway. But it was okay. Because it was Jeff. And his heart was always in the right place.

Jeff was not just lovable, but he was loved tremendously by so many people, and he loved back tremendously. There was never a doubt in my mind that he was my friend and he loved me. I hope he knew the feeling was mutual. A few years ago he had a car accident, and during the chest X-ray the technician told him he had the largest ribcage he’d ever seen. This was merely confirmation that his heart was so big, only the largest ribs could contain it.

Walking into a room where Jeff was, if you said hello, how are you, he would reply, without fail, “Great, now that you’re here!” If I didn’t say hello first, he would announce my presence to anyone nearby by shouting, “LOOK! It’s the lovely and talented Nikki! Isn’t that great? Nikki is here!” Sometimes he simply would say, “Hello, beautiful,” and it was never sleazy -- it was true to him. I wish I could see myself through his eyes. He said these things to all the women on staff, but because he said them all with sincerity and flamboyance, no one ever felt it was anything other than complimentary. We ate it up, squirmed under the spotlight, and ultimately felt good.

Jeff loved food, passionately. He loved a good debate, passionately. He loved the people in his life, passionately. His laugh could be heard at a distance, and no matter the situation, he could always find a way to make it funny. Though he hated meetings at work, passionately, none were without his hilarious participation to resurrect them with life. There are very few photos of him at our library where he wasn’t making a silly face. Tonight Ann shared a story of when he worked with her mother in a very strict and unfriendly environment. If things got too quiet and serious, he’d fly a paper airplane stocked with glitter over the cubicles, crop-dusting his coworkers with sparkles. Jeff made everything better.

Over the weekend, Jeff suffered a series of strokes and died.

The enormity of this statement is still unacceptable.

If I hadn’t seen him in the hospital bed myself, I might not believe it at all. There was simply too much life in him to lose it all. He was too young. He was too strong. He was, and is still, a presence that made the world a better place. It simply does not make any sense at all.

Losing him is devastating. Knowing him was a gift.

I had a friend named Jeff. And I was honored that he considered me a friend, too.

Because It's Worthy

2010-09-24T02:13:00.006-05:00

Far be it from me to promote anything on FB and anything to do with Oprah, but here I am because dammit, it needs to be done.

Oprah, Libraries Need You! was set up by Marilyn Johnson, beloved author and friend of mine, with the hopes that Oprah will do something to draw attention to the sad state of public libraries and the potential losses they will continue to suffer if something isn't done. Why Oprah? Well, if you work in a public library, you know how much power this woman has, not just with the public and Oprah's Book Club, but the media and political world. She spends so much time promoting books, education, literacy, etc., but she's been unusually silent about the problems libraries are facing today. One can only wonder why. Thus, library champion Marilyn Johnson started a FB page hoping to attract a crowd and the attention of those who might help.

If you're a FB person and you're a library-lover, please consider joining as well.

Here's a New One

2010-09-19T14:59:00.003-05:00

Girl comes up to the desk and says, "Can you help me at the computer? I need to get into my gmail account and print something."

I say sure and ask what she's struggling with.

She answers, "I know how to get there on my phone. I use the internet on the cell phone all the time, email, all that stuff, but I don't know how to use the computer to get to gmail."

She had no idea how to use the address bar and found the keyboard confusing.

Wow. Are computers obsolete already? Are handhelds the only way young people compute now? Or was she just *special*?

I'm Back!

2010-09-18T21:31:00.003-05:00

I've published a post on my Travel Blog about the trip if you're interested.

Otherwise, it should be back to life as usual.

While I was gone, Marina sent me an email saying that she just had to tell someone what she saw because she was utterly grossed out. The Creepy Craigslist Guy was apparently wearing at T-shirt that read, "It's not going to lick itself." Today she elaborated that it made her throw up a little bit. People as creepy as him should not be allowed to wear suggestive clothes like that. It should be a law.

Man, I do not miss these encounters when I'm on vacation. At all.

Pieces-Parts

2010-09-01T16:41:00.001-05:00

Two weeks ago I got the “okay” from my internist to start a low-carb, high-protein diet when my own low-cal, low-fat diet had stalled for 6 months. I’d maxed out at 81 pounds lost, which sounds like I should be done, but I’m not goddammit. She ran a battery of tests to make sure it was simply a plateau and not something more serious causing stagnation in the weight loss (we also had a short argument about how much more I had to lose, me insisting on a lot more and her insisting on not that much), and suggested I try South Beach instead of Atkin’s simply because it was much easier to maintain. Well, those were the magic words, but not the ones she imagined. Knowing that Atkins was more hardcore and harder to maintain, that’s the one I chose. Also, instead of limiting myself to 20g of carbs per day, I deprived myself extra and hovered around 5g. On top of that, I switched out a meal for protein shakes, too.

People, when you ride your bike 10 – 20 miles per day and work out at the gym, and restrict your calories to 1,000 - 1,500 per day while eating only protein, something unbelievable happens to your muscles. They grow. Like fast. Like really fast. But when you’re burning more than you’re taking in, that seems to go straight to bulking up the muscles that propel you and you have little to live on, so you get tired. Like really tired. And those big new muscles start to ache like you’re coming down with the flu. And the combination of losing too much water and not consuming enough calories turn you into a zombie with dry skin, dry eyes, and a pasty mouth. Not fun. So, I now eat more carbs. More of everything, actually.

Marina, who is trying an all-carb diet, has been horrified with my lack of carbs and the volume of eggs I’m forced to eat. It doesn’t help that I have been prone to burst into tears when I see someone eat a banana in my proximity, and another coworker brought in bagels yesterday, which caused me to wail and moan in the agony of my depravation. I shut myself up by eating some cheese curds and organic pepperoni. (Didn’t know such a creature existed, did you!?)

Marina’s biggest beef (ahem) with my no-carb existence is that I cannot have bread. In her world, no bread would simply mean life wasn’t worth living.

She said with consternation, “Bread and I are very best friends. And I don’t give up on my friends like that!”

And so we forge on with our opposite diets, and she sympathetically listens to me bemoan how much I’d love to have a really hot guy roll around in some liquid chocolate so I could sprinkle him with raisins and Rice Krispies and then lick him clean. Or the detailed descriptions of my favorite cake: chocolate with buttercream and strawberry filling. Or just the random tantrum where I fling myself upon my desk dramatically and whine, “Bananas…” Her diet doesn’t cause her so much pain, and this, I fear, is what my doctor was warning me about.

However, in addition to developing these extraordinary muscles in places I just used to have a firm collection of subcutaneous fat, I’m dropping pounds. Whew. It’s always good when you make a huge sacrifice and it pays off rather than it just costs.

* * *

I had a patron ask me today if we have reading glasses we lend out.

* * *

Hissy fits are the absolute worst when they come from middle-aged men. I don’t know why. I’ll take a hissy fit from anyone else, but a whining middle-aged man who can’t figure out some of life’s simplest tasks will cause my patience to evaporate and my self-control to shudder under the pressure of my frustration.

He was computer literate, seemingly. He managed to get himself a reservation and log into the computer without any instruction from me, though he’d never done it before. But about 10 minutes later he came up to me having his hissy fit and I very nearly chucked a box of Kleenex at him.

“I can’t get online! It opens up on your website, and when I type an address in the address bar, there’s no Go button to click and I can’t go anywhere!”

These words were spoken drawn out, in whines, and he stomped his foot for emphasis when he uttered “anywhere”. If his lip had quivered, I would’ve just decked him.

I suggested he hit Enter after typing the address.

“Enter?! I’m supposed to hit Enter?!”

I assured him that this would direct his browser to change pages if everything was entered in the proper location.

“Why did you take the Go button off? I mean, people use the Go button and when you take it away, how are we supposed to get to other websites?”

Enter. Really, who lifts up their hand and uses the mouse to click the Go button? Just one guy: Mr. Hissy Fit.

He stormed off, completely infuriated that he would now have to hit Enter instead of clicking Go.

Sorry I ruined your day, bub. Try being me for a shift.

* * *

There’s a woman who frequents the library with her husband, and my nearest guestimation is that she was hit by a train. Nothing is right on her body – nothing. She looks like a Picasso painting. Also, it’s impossible to understand what she says through the grunting, which is just like Karl Childers in Sling Blade. Where she gets brand-new-looking 70s rock band T-shirts, I’ll never know. She is a mystery. But if she asks for some biscuits, I may lose it. Mmmmm-hm

* * *

A man asked me where the Ann-himes are.

My look must have said it all because he tried again.

Ann-hymees. Ann-hymms. Ann-himates. Those movies!

Anime movies.

* * *

People who bring in handfuls of pencils to borrow our sharpener periodically creep me out. How can you be so devoted to wooden pencils but against purchasing your own little, plastic, hand-held sharpener?

* * *

Boyfriend Extraordinaire is flying in tonight and staying for 2½ weeks so I’m not sure how much I’ll be around to post things. Not that I’ve been posting all that much anyway. Perhaps another camping adventure might inspire some written observations of the foibles of amateurs venturing out in nature or the intersecting of irritating people with the perfectly reasonable pair we are. We shall see.

A Day In the Life

2010-08-20T11:16:00.003-05:00

A teenage girl walked up to the desk and we had the following conversation:

Girl: Do you have scary movies?

Me: Are you looking for the series of movies called Scary Movie, or are you looking just for scary movies in general?

Girl: Scary movies.

Me: Um… the series, Scary Movie 1, 2, 3 and 4?

Girl: Uh… scary movies.

Me: Soooooo, just movies that are scary.

Girl: You know? Scary movies?

NO! I DON’T KNOW! PLEASE TELL ME!

Later, a handsome black guy walked up, and he was walking with a limp and a cane, but all I could see were those gorgeous braids in his hair – I get severe braid envy – and I tossed him a really big smile.

Guy: Hey there. I’m looking for books on magic.

Me: Oh, well, okay, so do you mean books on how to do magic tricks, or books on the card game Magic: the Gathering, or just novels with magic as a theme, like wizards and stuff like that?

Guy: Well, like, magic. Just books on magic.

Me *blink, blink*: Yes [deep breath], but what kind of magic?

Guy: Um, the regular kind of magic.

Not irregular magic. Thanks for that clarification.

Me: Okay, let’s narrow this down. You’re not looking for stuff on the card game Magic, right?

Guy: I don’t think so.

Me: Are these books for you or someone else?

Guy: For me.

Me: Okay, so you don’t play the game Magic, right? We can get rid of those from the equation, correct?

Guy: I guess so.

Me: Well, that leaves us with books that teach you how to do magic tricks. Is that what you want? Or do you want fantasy books about magic and dragons and things like that?

Guy: Just, whatever you have on magic.

Me: Okay. I can show you samples of both. But what are you hoping to get out of these books? Do you want to learn magic?

Guy: I don’t know.

THEN NEITHER DO I!

I walked him over to the learning magic tricks section and said that if this was not what he was looking for, then to come back and see me and we’d hit the novels. He browsed for about 5 minutes and then left empty-handed, didn’t come back for more help or even make eye contact on his way straight out the door. Now really, I can only take the blame for so much. Clearly if you don’t know how to communicate what you’re looking for, my ability to mind-read a blank canvas is almost nonexistent.

As if it were a full moon, more irritations continued.

We have the usual creepy crowd of pathetic, older men who peruse singles ads online, as well as porn sites, looking to hook up. Some are guys who won’t ever get their foot in the door, and others might hide some of their creepiness in the first couple of exchanges before it becomes a full-on, heebie-jeebies fest for the receiver. One of these guys I’ve caught on those barely-legal porn sites, advertising teenage girls for your sick pleasure, so I keep my eye on him. The second I see something illegal, he’s going down.

My first encounter with him was when he ran up to my desk, completely frantic, on the verge of tears, voice cracking and wild panting, wanting me to help him find someone he’d had three email exchanges with on Craigslist, and now his emails weren’t going through to her inbox. He wanted me to figure out a way to find her, a phone number, an address, an alternate email address, something he could use to continue communicating with her because suddenly he can’t get any email through to her account. Things had been going so well, too. He needed to know if she was okay and he had to find a way to talk to her still. All the while, he was sniffling and fighting back complete loss of emotional control.

My absolute favorite commercial out right now is this one.

And I had, at that moment, a fantasy about calling him a jackwagon and chucking a box of Kleenex at him. Seriously. Get your ass back from mamby-pamby-land and get a clue, crybaby.

Ugh. Teen porn and online stalking: he’s a winner.

Anyway, I was working in the office while Marina was at the reference desk and she sent me an IM.

Marina: Creepy Guy just asked me for a camera.

I laughed really, really hard and turned to my boss and shared this gem.

Boss: Did he want a web camera? Ewwww.

Me (typing to Marina): Web cam or digital camera?

Marina: Digital camera I think, but I didn’t ask. I don’t want to know.

Me (to Marina): Did he say why? Did he want to use it here or take it home?

Marina: He started to tell me why he wanted it and then stopped himself in the middle and quit explaining.

I roared with laughter and shared this bit with my boss as well.

Me (to boss): So, when are those volunteers coming back? The ones who clean the keyboards and stuff?

Boss: Not soon enough!

Me (to Marina): Whose turn is it to clean the computer stations?

Marina: The good news is he’s been here ALL DAY but I just keep giving him extensions on the computer he’s at, so he’s only touched one computer the whole time he’s been here.

Me (to Marina): Uh… good? Hey, [Coworker] comes back from vacation tonight. We could suggest she wipe down the computers when she’s looking for busywork.

Marina: That’s exactly what I was thinking!

Me (to Marina): Great minds think alike.

I later did not suggest to our beloved coworker that she wipe-down computers. I like her too much.

And to prove her worth, she came up with the most brilliant idea I’ve yet heard.

There’s been a world of controversy swirling around our library and our cherished security guard, Arms, has received some bad PR by a group of idiots who dubbed him a thug. It’s hysterical to me, but then again I don’t have to deal with the fallout, so I can afford to laugh.

Anyway, I was telling our recently-returned-from-vacation coworker about the mess, and she too was experiencing gut-busting laughter about it all, but she got me thinking that we needed to show our appreciation to Arms for all that he does, to stand by him. All week I’ve been saying we love our thug, and our thug can take your thug any day of the week. My boss even added, “Bring it on. It’ll make his day.”

Coworker: Someone said we were going to get him a t-shirt?

Me: Yeah, it should say something like “Have you hugged your thug today?” and have handprints on the back. Can you imagine how much Arms would freak out if we hugged him? Particularly you and me?!

We both laughed hard about that one because we pick on him a lot.

Coworker: “Thugs need hugs too!”

Me: “Thug love!”

Coworker: OH GOD, we should do a DISPLAY!

My tiny little brain began turning and a smile slowly spread across my face until I erupted with a scream of enthusiasm.

Me: YEAH!!!! I have so many thug-titled books in the street lit collection! We could subtly throw them all on a display and call it Thug Lovin’ or something like that, our homage to Arms!

Coworker: Do you think the director would get mad?

Me: Oh c’mon! I put his big, life-sized head in the middle of a display and he looked at it for a while and didn’t even realize it was his picture! He’ll never notice!

Coworker: Do you think we’ll get some heat? Will we get in trouble?

Me: Why would we?! It’s a mini street lit display, right? It’s not like we’ll put his picture on it. OR SHOULD WE? Would that be going too far?

Coworker: Oh, we should! We should put his big head right in the middle of the Thug Lovin’ part!

Me: Most people would have no idea what it was about. It would be pretty much an inside joke. Do you think we could get away with that?

Coworker: I don’t know.

Me: Maybe I’ll just do a subtle Thug display and if that floats, I’ll stick Arms’ head in it later. That is the single best display idea you’ve ever come up with. You are my absolute favorite person right now! I may love you more than my thug!

We laughed for a long time, and other staff members started finding their way to our desk wanting to know why we were having such a good time. We did not share. They will find out soon enough.

And that’s a typical day at my library.

**Update**

Done deal.

Wish Book

2010-08-13T14:56:00.004-05:00

In March I bought a bike. It was my first bike since I was a teenager and the billowing nostalgia washed over me as I instinctively got into my car and drove to the department store that represented all of my childhood wants: Sears.

If you’re old enough, you remember the Sears Wish Book, which was a catalog that Sears published annually, pre-Christmas, and it rivaled the size and heft of the most daunting tome my juvenile eyes had ever beheld.

Hours and hours of my life were spent pouring over each page in that behemoth, mentally drooling over every single thing any human could possibly want or need save for food, water and air. Every toy, every article of clothing, every electronic, every appliance, every tool, every THING anyone I knew could possibly crave was in that book. Until I was about nine, that Wish Book was completely mine, and every circled item description on each dog-eared page marked an item that I desperately wanted. When my brother was old enough to share in the mental drooling, we color coordinated the pens we used to circle items so that Santa would know who wanted what. Whether anything we ever dreamed of was purchased at Sears is a mystery to me. The gifts on the wish lists we compiled were likely purchased at any store where it was sold the cheapest, which was fine by us because as far as we were concerned, the Wish Book from Sears was merely a catalog of everything. It was the Amazon of my youth, hard copy.

Someone recently told me the largest seller of bicycles is Walmart, which makes sense, but I hate Walmart and only shop there when all else fails. There are pros and cons in dealing with large department stores. What you give up in skill, service and knowledge you bank on with apathetic employees who are more willing to accept returns and exchanges without questions or receipts because they’re not personally invested in the store’s success. Neither of these are selling points to me, but I hoped and anticipated that no matter how lacking the help at Sears could be, at least they’d be better than Walmart.

My $200 bike from Sears presented with problems immediately, and what frightened me was that my model wasn’t even a bike listed on Schwinn’s website as one they offered, so how proud were they of this product bearing their name? The seat was a veritable torture device, which was replaced after my very first ride, and then I immediately had to buy gloves with gel cushions because the grips on my handlebars were hard plastic. That was only the beginning. Quickly, my $200 bike was growing into a $300 bike, and no one could explain why my kickstand was way too short for the frame and would never hold it up or why I have to fill the tires with air each and every time I ride it. It must have taken four full months for me to finally find comfort on that bike, accessories and upgrades essential in making it a ridable vehicle. Bikes were not this complicated when I was a kid, and the difference between riding as an adult and riding as a child were so stark, it was a whole new experience to me.

Once I found my groove, felt as if the bike was finally where I needed it to be, and I could ride 10 – 20 miles at a time, I started experiencing problems with the gear shifting. Initially it was just violent shifting that would jolt me on the bike so hard, my feet would fly off the pedals and I’d momentarily lose balance. My brother kept promising to help me adjust my derailleurs, but it never happened. On a 20-mile ride last week, halfway into it, fifth gear would not hold at all and slipped harshly and continually into another gear, up and down, randomly. I ended up riding back to my car 10 miles in smaller gears, pedaling my glutes off, utterly exhausting myself trying to keep pace with the person I was riding with. The next day my brother attempted to adjust my derailleurs and discovered that sixth gear, not even the gear I had trouble with, had a quarter of the teeth missing. They did not look like fresh breaks, either, and though I hadn’t had any trouble riding in sixth gear, the fact that the teeth were broken did not give me confidence to test it.

Bike riders I know were incensed on my behalf over my very young bike being such a problem child already, and many times I was snapped at to return the lemon and get a real bike. However, my receipt only allowed for a refund within 90 days of purchase, which expired in mid-June, and as far as I could tell, I was stuck with it.

Boyfriend Extraordinaire, in an impressive showing of assertion and support, got on the phone and began making phone calls on my behalf, both to Sears and to Schwinn. By Monday, he had arrangements at Sears for me to drop the bike off, where a manager would take a look at the damage and decide whether they would replace the cassette or simply switch out the wheel with another bike, but they would do right by me and fix the problem for free. In the event that they failed, B.E. also secured a promise from Schwinn that they would send me a replacement part free of charge and all I had to do was get it installed. Plan A took place yesterday and I dropped the bike off at Sears, where The Bike Guy and The Manager would put their heads together today and fix my problem for me. I was told I’d receive a call in the morning with their decision.

My impatience was killing me. I couldn’t sleep last night at all, woke up far too early this morning, and managed to hold off until 11 am to call Sears about my bike when I, of course, had heard nothing from them.

This is when my lemon of a bike turned into a lemon of customer service.

The phone number listed for the Sears store where I took my bike was on an automated system. I spoke to the machine that I wanted the Repair Department, and I was forwarded to a new series of choices, none of which suited my needs, so I asked for Customer Assistance. A woman with an Indian-sounding accent answered the phone and I was immediately sifting through a cacophony of white noise of a call center surrounding her. When I spoke my problem to her, wanting to find out the status of my bike repair, she could not hear me. I repeated loudly and she still could not make out my words. Shouting at an uncomfortable volume was the only way she was able to discern the words I spoke, multiple continents away. When she finished taking my information, she transferred my call, and that line rang and rang and rang. Eventually someone picked it up and immediately hung the phone up on me.

Sigh… back to square one.

Called Sears again. Spoke that I wanted Repair. Spoke that I wanted Customer Assistance. Was immediately disconnected before anyone in India could answer.

Deep breath.

Called Sears again. Spoke that I wanted an Operator, hoping that this would give me a live person in the store itself. A man answered, I explained what I was looking for, he forwarded me to a department that forwarded me to another department, that never picked up the phone and I was disconnected for being on the line too long. Or so it seemed – the ringing stopped dead and the line disconnected.

Called Sears again! Spoke that I wanted Repair! Spoke that I wanted someone in Parts! Got another woman in India who also could not hear me unless I screamed myself hoarse, and she could not find a record of my purchase or me in Sears’ system, so I had to feed her all of my personal information at eardrum-puncturing volume, after which she said she’d transfer me to a store nearest my address. I managed to stop her before the transfer went through and explained that the local store was merely an outlet for tools, and I had taken my bike to the Sears Grand at the mall. This I had to repeat because I wasn’t screaming loud enough, though I felt as if she might have been able to hear me in India better if we hadn’t been holding up phones/headsets to our ears. She transferred me, someone answered after about five minutes of ringing and hold music, and they said I had to be transferred elsewhere, which resulted in another disconnection.

CALLEDSEARSAGAIN! It was now 11:30 and I’d been having conversations with machines and people in India for a half hour, with a mix of ringing, hold music, and disconnections to keep the conversations lively. I’d had it! I did not ask for Repair. I did not ask for Customer Assistance. I opted for the choice at the very end of the menu for someone in no particular department to handle my unclassifiable problem. It was a woman! And she sounded at least within 2,000 miles of me! And she spoke English without an accent! And she could hear me speak in my normal voice! Though now I felt a lot like screaming at someone! And I felt myself start to unload on her the horror of dealing with their automated system, India, screaming, being transferred all over the world, and disconnected more times than I even cared to count – would she please help me find someone at the store I went to just yesterday who had my bicycle?! In a very practiced, scripted voice she apologized for the inconvenience I’d experienced and promised to stay on the line with me until someone picked up the phone where she transferred me this time. Part of me wanted to hit her just because she was there, and another part of me wanted to French kiss her for finally being a person who pretended like she cared enough to get someone else on the line.

The man who took in my bike yesterday answered the phone and I explained who I was and why I was calling. Has there been a decision on what to do with my bicycle? That’s all I wanted to know. Nearly 40 minutes of fighting my way through a maze of dead-ended extensions and I could ask the question burning deep into my soul, and ask someone who was actually in a position to know.

Well, The Bike Guy isn’t in yet, and he only works on Fridays, but no one knows when he’ll show up. The Manager who was going to decide what to do hadn’t responded to the repeated attempts to get him to take a look at the bike and make the decision, and attempts had been made all day yesterday and were starting over today. If The Manager doesn’t make a decision before The Bike Guy leaves today, my bike will not be serviced and will have to wait until The Bike Guy returns sometime next Friday, at his leisure. But The Phone Guy promised to call me today with an answer, even though this Sears doesn’t do any bike repairs, which are usually sent 60 miles south of here to a bigger store that will take roughly 35 years to ship, fix, and ship back my bike. He was quite clear that they were doing me a favor by taking in my bike and considering fixing it themselves. And oh what a favor it was to indefinitely hold it hostage and create a myriad of puzzles one must solve in order to get through on the phone to find out if my bike has even been looked at by anyone who is kind enough to bless me with their attention. They sure do a helluva job avoiding being reachable. You’d think they didn’t want to deal with people. Who gives them business if not people?

The department store bike purchase has now become one of those epic mistakes I’ve made in my life, on par with dating a pro-wrestling fan, and one I will stand at every podium and climb upon every soapbox to warn people against following in my footsteps. Much as it causes parts of me to die a little bit, I can’t help but wonder if I should’ve gone to Walmart after all. No, no I shouldn’t have. That was a correct choice. I’d be in the same boat, except that I’d be able to get through to people at Walmart without having to call India twice, and find that they were equally apathetic about helping me get what I paid for.

On the verge of a nervous breakdown, feeling a lot like there was some kind of conspiracy taking place in the universe to keep me off of a bicycle, I called the local mom-and-pop bike shop, who have done right by me selling me the myriad of accessories and upgrades my lame bike has necessitated. Quickly I explained that I have a Schwinn that has broken teeth, Schwinn will send me a replacement cassette for free, which is so much easier than dealing with the numbskulls at Sears, and how much would they charge to install it. She did some mental math out loud, wheel off, change cassette, wheel on, and replied that the charge would run about $15.

Fifteen. Dollars.

How many gray hairs did I just get from dealing with Sears and how much will it cost to color those hairs for the rest of my life? More than $15.

How much is my time worth: driving to the mall, dropping off the bike, driving home, waiting around all morning for a call-back that would never occur, calling all around the globe for answers for nearly an hour, calling other places to fulfill Plan B, then returning to the mall to break my bike out of Sears prison and driving home again? More than $15.

How much is my sanity worth? Well, what little is left might be worth $15, but not much more.

So, it’s 3 pm and I’m on my way to retrieve my bike so that I can spend $15 and have it fixed by the people I should’ve bought a bike from to begin with!

Long gone are the Rockwellian days of the Wish Books and Sears love. Outsourced, no doubt.

Back Talker

2010-08-11T17:51:00.000-05:00

A man walked up to my desk and mumbled something to me, which I could not make out. All I heard was something about signing up for something. Given that our newsletter just landed in the mailboxes of all our residents, he could’ve been asking to sign up for any number of things.

Me: Excuse me? You’d like to sign up for what?

He rolled his eyes at me, turned his back to me and leaned against my desk facing away, and mumbled again, “[Mumble]...sign up...[mumble]...library card...[mumble]...for a few minutes.”

I know why old people are cranky. I’m getting there way before my time already. Patience with rude, inconsiderate and stupid people runs very thin somewhere around the age of 35, if you’ve been dealing with the public. The more you deal with the public, the quicker it runs out.

Surmising from the three phrases I managed to understand, and completely jumping to conclusions about the mumbles that interspersed the intelligible portion of his conversation with me, I not so patiently replied to him.

Me: I’m sorry but it’s hard to understand you when you’re not even talking TOWARD me. Are you asking for a reservation for an Express computer because you don’t have your library card?

Him (glancing over his shoulder, rolling his eyes again): YES, a COM-PEW-TUR!

This guy was not a punk 14-year-old. He was easily in his late 20s, judging by his receding hairline and slight acne still upon his skin. And by the way, he needed to wash his thinning hair. Even though there wasn’t much, it was greasy-gross. I should also mention I might not have noticed how clumpy and sticky his shiny hair was if that wasn’t the part of his head he insisted on presenting to me.

So I made the reservation, tore off the reservation slip, and held my hand out to his back. Still he would not turn around and face me, and eventually he noticed out of the corner of his eye that I had my arm extended to hand him the slip. With maximum effort -- I kid you not -- he twisted his arm around backward so that he wouldn’t have to actually move his body at all, and just opened his hand up so I could put the slip into it.

I did not gracefully and delicately place it into his hand, lets just say.

From there, things did not improve. Though I was helping other people, in the middle of explaining something with words flowing freely from my informative lips in the direction of patrons standing before me, FACING ME, he would yell to me from the computer, “MISS! MISS! THIS ISN’T WORKING!”

“This” being his brain? Sorry, I’m not trained in handling that kind of problem.

I grew tired of looking at him in the middle of my conversation and giving him the finger.

Not that finger. Thought I very much wanted to.

The hold-one-minute finger.

Eventually I quit bothering with the finger and just kept talking. He would sigh and get the point, though it didn’t stop him from continually doing this throughout his stay.

What it turns out he needed was something from his mortgage company that had his address on it. A simple bank statement wouldn’t work. Apparently, in order to register his child for school, he had to prove not only his address with formal ID, but ownership of property. I’m guessing he was mistaken but this was what he insisted upon, and logging into his online account did not include the physical address of the property anywhere in the account, so he was frantically demanding I figure out what he could do.

I asked if another item would suffice: utility bill, car insurance card, etc.

He looked at me with incredulity.

Guy: They’ll take a car insurance card?

Me: Well, I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. What I’m asking YOU is if you asked them if they’ll take anything else with your address on it.

Guy: I don’t know. Why would they take my car insurance card?

Me: Because some have an address printed on them, which may or may not be enough proof that your car is registered to that address. That’s something else with an address -- car registration. I mean, there are a number of options, but I can’t tell you what the school will accept.

Guy: But why doesn’t the mortgage put my address on my online account?

Me: I don’t know that either, but it’s probably a security measure. You log into your credit card account and, at least with mine, they don’t put the account number on it. Sometimes the last four digits, but mostly you just have to know it’s yours and recognize the rest of the information. It’s for your protection.

Guy: So how am I supposed to get this information?!

Me: Call your mortgage company and see if they can print something out for you. Or call the school and see if they’ll take something else.

Guy: But what else would they take?!

I was tempted -- oh so tempted -- to turn my back on him and mumble my repeat of suggestions, rolling my eyes. If he can dish it out he should certainly be able to take it, but that is almost never the case.

Instead I paused and repeated. He was realizing that his problem wasn’t going to be immediately solved and so he stormed out.

Good riddance, I say.

Or...

[Mumble] riddance...

The Bitch Principle

2010-07-26T12:28:00.002-05:00

Thank you so much to my anonymous commenter for reminding me of this post. I wrote it when I worked for another director, in another department, and the reminder was both painful and jarring. I needed it, thanks. It's part of the defunct Happyville Library archives and no longer published, but I figured I should re-publish it for nostalgia's sake. And my own. So here it is.

Warning: I wrote this post after reading (and re-reading, because it was so damn funny) an entire book of Dilbert comics. When I finished, I had an abundance of crazy manager memories flooding my brain and I wrote this with many of my past jobs in mind. Happyville is NOWHERE near this bad, but I've been places that are and this is not an exaggeration of some workplace philosophies. Read it with the humor it was written with.

The Bitch Principle

You are owned by the taxpayers of this community. This means you are their bitch. They pay your meager salary and begrudge you every penny.

Corollary 1
A bitch’s job is to keep the patrons happy, at all costs. Some will be satisfied that you have done your job if you merely answer their question about the library’s hours; others will be dissatisfied with your output if you call in favors, pull strings, hack a government computer and sell your personal possessions to pay for the bribe used to acquire information you seek on behalf of a patron. It is recognizable that you may eventually find your resources have reached a limit. When this occurs, find another bitch with greater resources and tell the patron you are referring them to someone with more authority in that area.

Corollary 2
If you are off the clock and shopping in a local store, you are still their bitch. Whenever possible, without regard for your personal situation, do your best to serve their needs.

Corollary 3
Find someone else’s bitch for them. Sometimes patrons get attached to the work done by a particular bitch on staff. If Joe is Mr. McCarty’s favorite bitch and Mr. McCarty is on the phone looking for Joe, find Joe immediately. Patrons don’t like to leave voice mail messages for staff because it feels less like their bitches are at their beck and call, so you must track that staff member down or take a message, thereby taking personal responsibility for Joe getting the message. Bitchdom is transferable like that so it is preferred that you find the bitch in question.

Corollary 4
Never forget you’re their bitch. No matter how harsh, offensive or brutally critical a patron is, show them their proper respect. Only when a patron breaks a law and infringes on the rights of other patrons can you act in defense of the other patrons. Your honor is not important and if they belittle you, that is their right. If it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t have a job. It is only through their generosity that you are able to put food in your mouth. Show some gratitude.

Exclusion
If you are a member of the community in which you work, a taxpayer to the library where you are employed, you are not your own bitch. Being everyone else’s bitch overrides any entitlement you might have. If you would like to have a library full of your personal bitches, you must move out of the library district in which you work. You automatically forfeit your rights to having library bitches when you live and work in the same library district.

Behavior Principles and Management Noninvolvement

Patrons are unpredictable and you should predict their behavior accordingly, without aid of your supervisors.

Corollary 1
Try to diffuse a belligerent patron’s temper before they take their complaint to management. Managers sought promotions to get themselves away from the positions of serving the public because they were terrible at it and they hated it. Do not remind your boss of his or her shortcomings by bringing them a raging patron.

Explanation
By “diffuse” we mean to use any means necessary. A shovel and dolly are in the receiving room and the property is adjacent to some dense woods. Use your resources wisely. A dead taxpayer is preferable to a disgruntled taxpayer.

Corollary 2
Inebriated patrons should be refused service. There are no repercussions because if they are as drunk as they seem, they won’t remember it anyway. If the inebriated patron raises suspicion that they might be dangerous or driving, the police should be alerted. If you are feeling apathetic on this particular day, remember that they are parked in the same parking lot as your own vehicle, and they might have lagged on their liability insurance.

Corollary 3
Mothers with children are like ticking bombs and should be given an enormous amount of leeway. Some prefer you to discipline their children for them; others don’t care if their child has eaten the first three volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and they do not want you to say a negative word in the direction of their children. You have to figure out which type of mother you are dealing with and then be prepared for the fallout. Again, “diffuse” the situation accordingly and avoid management if at all possible.

Corollary 4
Patrons will deny responsibility for any and all offenses they commit, no matter how obvious it is that they are guilty. If you cannot convince them that they must be accountable for their actions and the matter is presented to management, be prepared for the manager to exhibit his/her spinelessness and give the patron what they want, not backing you up and not standing by the written and formal policy. Managers suppress their confrontational abilities until they wield the pent-up confrontation on an underling. If you are the patrons’ bitch, your manager is an upper echelon bitch and held to an even higher standard of devotion and servitude to the patrons. Do not expect your manager to take your side or uphold your decisions.

Corollary 5
When all hell breaks loose, call the police instead of management. Though there will be a delay in the time it takes for officers to arrive, it will be much faster than locating an effective member of management. Order must be restored as quickly as possible, and often that can only be accomplished by those with guns. Choose wisely and keep in mind that the library will remain open regardless of fatalities, so minimize the mess because it will be you working among the splattered blood.

Emergency Principles

The only thing that should close the library is the building itself being blown to smithereens. Your emergency kits should suffice in rescuing you from any situation, with the exception of the building being blown to smithereens. If you and the building are blown to smithereens, you may officially close the library.

Corollary 1
If there is a fire, gather the patrons and rescue them first. Your life is less valuable and without the patrons, you wouldn’t have a job anyway. Then you may rescue the library pets. Once the important ones have been evacuated safely, you may leave the building. Don’t forget to sign out (you won’t be paid for your time of evacuation), log off the computers, turn on your voice mail, leave a note for your boss saying you left early and why, and get it signed by a fireman on scene (preferably the first one in the building so that they don’t force you to leave before you have finished your duties). The library should reopen immediately unless otherwise indicated by the fire department.

Corollary 2
In the event of a tornado, patrons should be gathered and led to the shelter areas in the building. Some will refuse to evacuate to a safe place – leave them where they are because that is an effective “diffusing” of a problem patron, no doubt. Remember to bring the emergency kits located at each reference desks and the circulation desk. You should then nominate a staff member to check outside to see if the tornado has passed and it is safe to come out. If that staff member doesn’t return, wait a while longer, nominate a new staff member and repeat. If the building collapses on you due to the tornado’s damage, you will be glad you have the emergency kits handy.

Explanation
These emergency kits will save your life. In the rare event that a sharpened pencil, some scratch paper, a flashlight, some glow sticks, a whistle, band-aids, and a battery-operated radio cannot be utilized to save your life, their presence will absolve the library of liability and prevent your next of kin from filing frivolous civil suits. If you do not know how to save your lives with the whistle, a sharpened pencil and some glow-sticks, then that is your problem.

Corollary 3
If a bomb threat is made, follow the same instructions given in Corollary 1, but remember to call the police and have them sign your note to management. We do not have bomb alarms and if a board member or the director happens upon an empty library with all the patrons and staff running for their lives and no police or other law enforcement present, it will be assumed you have abandoned your position and you will be fired. This is particularly important if the bomb threat was a hoax and the building was not blown to smithereens.

Corollary 4
With frequently erupting cases of violence and mass murder occurring in workplaces and public buildings, a domestic or non-domestic terrorist threat should be handled as exhibited in the following passage:

Evacuate as outlined in Corollary 1. Inform the director immediately so that she might sit in her chair observing a storytime session, staring off into space, ignoring the threat for a good hour or so. Employees will be ordered back to work right away and the director will protect the public from future attacks by posting a color-coordinated Library Terror Alert system, which instructs everyone to be watchful but continue with their lives, regardless of color warning. Paranoia will be the key to convicting the suspects and the library faction behind it will be chased, without being caught, for all eternity. Dissidence will be considered anti-patronotic and a Patronage Act will be passed that allows the library to revoke library privileges from anyone, at any time, holding their library card hostage and forcing people relinquish their library books indefinitely, without a defense. Terrorists will not get away with harming our library. Well, they might, but we’ll look busy trying to fix it.

Corollary 5
If a patron has an accident, becomes ill, or shows symptoms of ill health, call an ambulance immediately. If you are unable to prevent a bodily fluid spill from occurring, it is up to the staff member nearest the spill to clean it up, regardless of their job description. Supplies are scattered about the building haphazardly, and you will probably have to cordon off the hazardous area until the supplies can be gathered. No matter how enormous the spill, the library should not be closed. A biohazard suit is available, as well as anti-tuberculosis wipes and individual alcohol swabs in case contact is made. The janitors should be notified immediately and contaminated material should be set aside to be determined if it is in need of being destroyed. It is preferred that contamination should be contained and only staff exposed. Innocent patrons should be spared first and foremost, and management spared second.

Corollary 6
Miscellaneous emergencies such as gas leaks, flooding, building damage, power outage, water shutoff, etc., should not result in evacuations unless advised by the fire or police department, and the library should remain open. Keep in mind one steadfast word: smithereens. If the building is not in eminent danger of being blown to smithereens and valuable patrons are not in danger, you should continue doing your job and the library should remain open.

Reminder
If a patron knifes/shoots/maims one of your coworkers, you should not suspend your duties or accompany that coworker to the hospital. Should that person die, you are advised to mourn their loss on your off time.

Remember: smithereens! Don’t stop doing your job unless the library is blown to smithereens!

A Little Understanding Goes a Long Way

2010-07-20T21:52:00.000-05:00

It’s nice to have a boss I can complain to and follow up my complaint by saying, “Some days I go home and pat myself on the back because I didn’t kill anyone today. They may have deserved it, but I let them live. Good job!” He agreed, good job, and there was no call to 9-1-1 to have me taken away. He gets me, thankfully.

The patron I was complaining about is quickly becoming one of the most hated people we deal with, not just by me, but by anyone who has to help him. First, he comes in right before we close and has extensive research he wants us to do. Secondly, he has no idea what he’s looking for and requires a ridiculous amount of digging to discover what he’s looking for, and then we must try to locate it. He’ll know a song, but not remember the name or the band. It’s always Christian rock too, so don’t even get me started on that crap. The song may be by this band or that band and he’ll know it when he sees it, so he needs us to look up each band, every album they’ve made, so he can look at the song lists until he recognizes the one he’s looking for. Some of these bands have 20 albums, and because they’re obscure, unpopular Christian rock, maybe 10 libraries in the world might have it. I have gotten to the point where I’ve said he has to sit down and figure out the album and artist himself – Google or Amazon can deliver the information – because I just don’t have time or patience enough to have him leaning over my desk so he can see my monitor as he tells me, “Scroll down, no, not that one, down, more, wait, maybe, no, not that one, keep going, is that it?, no, okay, next album.” I won’t do it anymore. I make him get on a computer and scroll through the albums himself until he finds what he needs. There is no leaning over my desk, breathing in my face, giving me orders to scroll anywhere. Not anymore.

But he does this to other people, though I think many of them have followed my lead and tell him to find the album first and then see us.

Yesterday he came in and wanted to make a resume for his daughter, who has only worked at the local arcade. Why a high school student needs a resume I’m not sure, but that’s his problem – he has to make it. Well, evidently he thought he didn’t. Rude awakening! I’m not writing your daughter’s resume, moron!

So, I sit him down at a computer, get him to open Word, show him where the templates are, explain it’s fill-in-the-blanks and I can’t do that for him so he can get to work on it.

He said, completely seriously, “So, if I have a question, what do I do? Yell out ‘HEY YOU’?”

*blink*

I replied, with a definite air of irritation, “Uh, nooooooo, you walk up to the desk and ask whoever is available to help you.”

Why do I have to teach this man basic rules of etiquette?

Later he walked up behind me, behind my desk, and said near my ear, “I need help!”

When I shook off the fact that he scared the shit out of me, I wanted him dead. Not quickly dead of an aneurysm or stroke, but slowly, losing parts of his body one by one, with time in between to wallow in the agony, and then another comes off. To the pain. Then to the death.

I walked over to discover he had 2 minutes left until the computer shut down, which is irreversible and not extendable when we’re closing – it’s automatic. So, instead of being able to teach him how to save a document, I jumped to action and saved it quickly to the computer so I could log in again after it shut him out. Oh, and he also wanted a PDF as well as a DOC, even though the document wasn’t complete. And he wanted it burned on a CD, not emailed to himself, free of charge. And he then had to go purchase a CD from Circulation. I kept thinking about his deserved death and the injustice of not being able to give it to him myself, but I managed to get through it.

As we were finishing and the CD was burning, he wadded up a piece of paper as garbage and tried to hand it to me, saying, “Here.”

This was too much. There was no nice left in me. WHO DOES THIS!?

Cold as ice I said, “There’s a garbage can right there. You can put it in yourself.”

He laughed a stupid and unfriendly laugh and responded, “Yeah, you don’t get paid to do that, huh?”

I said, “That’s not the point. You can throw away your own garbage. The can is 5 feet away.”

He didn’t say anything after that and I just walked away in disgust.

On his way out he thanked me and said he’d be back the next day to keep working on it, would likely need more help, just so we knew.

I nodded. I knew I wouldn’t be closing tonight so I figured it was up to the next crew to not kill him. And if they did, I’d completely understand. And I’d testify on their behalf. And I’d dance on his grave.

He never showed up tonight. Maybe someone else did the deed for us. He can’t be that rude and shitty just to us – this has to be a trait he practices all the time. To be this good at being an asshole takes a lot of work.

But it takes more work to let him walk out the door without shedding a drop of his blood.

I’m glad I have a boss who understands and appreciates this.

Pockets

2010-07-17T19:48:00.001-05:00

Pockets are not attractive. I realize they are very important, essential possibly, for many people to have built into their attire. It’s why we love marsupials so much – pocket envy. We need to have stuff with us. Given the size of women’s purses, the number of pockets in cargo pants, and the inability to get rid of silly little breast pocket on shirts, pockets are clearly here to stay. However, they are ugly and they distort the shape of our silhouettes, weigh down our clothes with stuff, and no matter how neatly they are sewn into the designs, they still look bulky and droopy, and the more you have, the bulkier and droopier you look.

That said, women, your bra is not a pocket.

If you’re going to walk around in microscopic shorts, a tank top and a bra, your bra does not become a place to keep your cell phone, reminder notes, money, lipstick, or other necessities. Get a purse like the rest of us. And if you pull a library card out of your sweaty bosom, you might as well put it right back in there because we are not going to handle that biologically contaminated tit-card. Your girls are round, they are pretty, they are soft and they should be treated with respect. If you put 53¢ in change in your bra, along a wad of bills and your credit card, those breasts end up looking like a refrigerator decked out in too many magnets. I can only imagine what your boobies look like at the end of the day, the indentations, maybe even the paper cuts, and nothing you can wiggle or jiggle will make them look nice when there’s an imprint of a quarter and the large, rectangular fossil of your cell phone visible on that soft flesh. It doesn’t matter if it says Samsung or Blackberry backwards on your melon – that’s just trashy. Get your shit out of your bra, ladies.

Also, men, your underwear do not qualify as a pocket.

If some smart designer started putting pockets in boxers (for surely there’s no comfortable place to put them in briefs), the pocket wouldn’t be right down the center of your waistband. When you reach down there to pull something out – anything out – you should be prepared to be either arrested or ridiculed because nothing down there is something you want to show to a librarian, even if it’s just your library card. Unless your full-time job is at a male strip club, you moonlight doing stripper-grams, and you’re in really high demand, leave it in your pants, you perv. If it’s touched a part of your skin that is warmer than room temperature, we don’t want anything to do with it. I know there’s a long-standing tradition of stuffing socks down there, and that’s fine so long as you don’t whip out that sock and hand it to me. In fact, stuff whatever you want down there, but whatever it is has to stay. You’re stuck with it. Money, credit cards, cell phone, hamster, tapioca, Brilo pad, or whatever your heart (ahem) desires to have down your underwear is between you and your underwear, literally. Keep it to yourself.

So, while I admit I use pockets, though I dislike any more than one or two in my clothing, I don’t like people creating pockets where none exists. And what baffles me the most is why don’t these people put pretend pockets somewhere that isn’t R-rated?

I swear, I don’t know why I serve the public. The public is so creepy.

What I Learned Camping

2010-07-16T21:59:00.010-05:00

When I was in Girl Scouts, we went on a two-day camping trip to Butternut Springs. This was something like 28 years ago, and the way it was set up was there was a cabin for the troop leaders to sleep in, prepare meals, and a dining room to feed the troops. The girls camped in tents in the surrounding woods. These were permanent tents with a deck-like floor and prison beds and mattresses inside. Given that it was in Indiana, and we were there in the height of a sweltering summer, we were fairly miserable in the woods, sweating and bored, with only a single strip of flypaper hanging in the tent for bug protection. The first night we were there, I did the sensible thing any kid who had been trained by her cruel, older cousin would do: I scared the crap out of the girls telling them ghost stories in the dark. Many of the girls couldn’t sleep, either because they were terrified or because they were homesick, and throughout the night many cries were heard from many of the tents. And then a terrible storm hit, which quieted the sobbing, but also brought a tree down on one of the tents. In the morning, the nonchalant troop leaders congratulated us on surviving our first night camping and said the second night would be easier. I was having nothing of that and I organized a coup against the leaders. Screaming, crying, whining girls ranging from 6 to 12 years old, dozens of them, have a way of wearing down the defenses of even the most weathered troop leaders, and the second night we slept in the cabin, snug as bugs in our sleeping bags on the linoleum floor of the dining hall. So went my first camping experience, which I don’t really count as camping.

Last weekend I camped for the first time for real. Aside from having a lot of fun, it was quite a learning experience. And being a good librarian, I’m going to share it with you. (Click pictures to embiggen.)

1. This stuff, without DEET, is awesome at keeping bugs away. This is not a light statement made by someone who can frolic in the woods with Skin-So-Soft. Oh no! If there is a biting bug within 100 yards of me, it will find me, send up a signal to any biting bug in 4 square miles, and the swarm will descend upon me with ravenous hunger until I am all but exsanguinated. They leave enough blood for me to survive so that they can feed upon me when I step outdoors the next time.
This is the stuff I usually use. If you can’t read that, it says 98% DEET. This is the only way for me to come in from an evening outdoors without losing my mind – and my blood.

2. Putting up a tent is a lot easier than I thought it would be. But it would’ve been a whole lot easier if it hadn’t been 95º.Even the tent wanted to melt. Taking down a tent is easy too. Getting it back into the container it came in is a whole nother story. Good luck.

3. Never bring a photographer with you on camping trip. They are way more interested taking pictures of you putting up the tent than actually helping put it up.

4. When your car wobbles (or shakes violently) at high speeds, something is wrong. If you have the tires rebalanced and this does not fix it, check again. Because sitting in your car on the banks of the Mississippi River on a Saturday night, changing a flat for a spare, trying to find space in your already packed car for the tire that was worn down to the cords is really going to put a damper on the whole camping experience.

5. This little LED lantern (which is merely 5½ inches tall) generates enough light in a 9’ x 9’ tent for two people to lay on their bellies and do crossword puzzles in the darkness of the late night, while waiting for the neighboring tent campers to either kill one another, or shut the fuck up. Handy little device. I highly recommend it.

6. If Person One is in the tent doing crosswords with the lantern on, head positioned right by the tent door, turn OFF the lantern for a few moments before Person Two enters tent, or all the moths, gnats and other light-attracted bugs who are patiently waiting at the door to get at the lantern will invariably get into the tent and drive you completely mad.

7. These batteries only work if you scrape them with something metal each and every time you use them in the little LED lantern. Totally retarded. Don’t know why. Don’t know why we tried this. They worked fine in B.E.’s camera, his camera batteries worked fine in the lantern, but these batteries + the above lantern = need for scraping.

8. When you have inconsiderate, idiot camping neighbors who stay up until 1 am setting up their tents, hammering their spikes with actual hammers and not mallets, vacuuming the tents out, using their car headlights to do all this, with the keys in the ignition and the alarm going off the entire time, slamming car doors every three seconds, no matter how many times you complain, they will insist they’re almost done and that your complaints are absolutely unreasonable.

9. However, revenge is yours in the morning when the drunken losers are trying to sleep off their hangovers. Revenge is sweet. And best served cold. And loud.

10. Millipedes are gross, but massive quantities of millipedes in the campground’s bathrooms/showers are massively gross.

11. When you camp and the temperatures are already above the mid 80s by 7 am, you get so sweaty, so slimy, so dirty, that even in showers infested with 1-inch millipedes, you will shower daily, and you will be grateful for the ability to do so.

12. Bug spray needs to be reapplied before you leave the safety of the shower. Freshly showered humans are most delectable.

13. Trees make for nice insulation against noise, protect you from the direct sunlight that seeks to fry you to a blistering pulp, and provides perches for the early morning birds that sing you awake. Yay trees!

14. Trees also are the homes of many bugs that will annoy you to no end. Tit for tat.

15. The only thing worse than sunburn is sunburn with bug bites on top of it.

16. If you have a sweetie with you who will scratch your sunburn and bug bites for you, you are a lucky, lucky person.

17. No matter how awful you think the whole experience is going to be, it’s never going to be that bad. Bring the condoms just in case. Assuming you won’t be in the mood is an underestimate. Being sexually frustrated in the woods is just sad.

18. Air mattress. Get one. You will not regret it.

19. A bag of cherries is great for camping. Put them in the cooler and the cherries will stay fresh longer, but they will dye the ice water a purple-ish red color. Which will dye everything else a purple-ish red color.

20. You, too, can have the coolest meals around if you have a propane stove and make pizzas for dinner! Others are eating sandwiches, or burgers and hot dogs that are not cooked enough, or cooked too much. Pizzas rock.

And so, despite the heat, bugs, things we forgot, people who irritated us, car mishaps and general annoyances, we had a really great time and are already planning our next camping trip. After we get an air mattress.

Benje

2010-07-01T22:44:00.003-05:00

I learned to read when I was three years old. That sounds a lot more impressive than it is because all I did was beg my parents to read the same bedtime story over and over every night until I memorized it. Once I could recite the entire book cover to cover, I applied my knowledge of those words and the combinations of letters I saw on the pages of the book, and quickly understood what I was looking at. After I figured that out, I was able to read other books and increase my written vocabulary by recognizing words I already knew and adding the sounds of the letters around those familiar words. It was a lot of figuring out, but from an early age, once I had a taste of something I liked, like reading, I attacked it and had to devour it entirely.

Working in a library, I run into many people who also love to read, and though I haven’t interviewed them all, I suspect they all have a book – a single, solitary book – that they can trace their love of reading back to, and will remember that book (or the essence of that book) for the remainder of their cognizant lives.

My book, which not only taught me how to read but also bred my love of books, was Benje, by Elizabeth Rice. It’s a touching story about a squirrel who loses his tail in a trap and becomes depressed because he isn’t like the other squirrels and can’t do the same things he used to as well. Eventually he’s talked to by an owl, who teaches him to appreciate what he has and learn to do things again without his tail. He does and lives happily ever after. Something about the sad, tailless squirrel spoke to me and the book just stuck.

This is the actual book, which some 34 years ago turned an ordinary child who was a veritable blank slate into a life-long reader.

I’m curious what your book is. What started you on the path of being a reader?

Benefits

2010-06-22T10:39:00.004-05:00

At the reference desk, we have about seven of these toys for the public (and us) as a form of self-entertainment.

The director walked over to the desk and as he started asking us how things were going, he flipped one of the seven toys over, but left the other six as they were.

This bothered the OCD part of my brain, and with no regard for his position, I snapped, “You can’t just DO that! You have to flip them ALL now!”

And so he did. With a smile. And without batting an eyelash or challenging my tone of voice. It was great.

So…

Me: Now stand on one foot and “bock” like a chicken.

Director: I’ll do that… later. That’s an after-hours game.

Me: Oh my! What other tricks do you do after hours?

He laughed evilly.

My partner at the desk, who’d only last week sung along with the “My Ding-A-Ling” song, begged out of the conversation because it was getting too racy, but typical of her, she never actually left and then rejoined and upped the ante.

Partner: Do you play the chicken with feathers or without?

Director: Well… [more evil laughter]

Me: He starts out with feathers, but then…

He began making sexy plucking motions that had me in hysterics.

Ahh, the benefits at my job are not monetary, but they do exist.

* * *

One of my favorite regulars was in using the computer, as always.

On his way out, he asked about our Summer Reading Club display (which I will share with you when I get a chance – it’s so twisted), and we joked about it for a few minutes, then he left.

I turned away and heard a crash, looked up to see him, and he was looking at the big glass door, dazed, and his son was laughing at him.

I shouted, incredulously, “Did you just run into the DOOR?”

He scrunched his head down between his shoulders, giggled a little, and left.

My partner at the desk looked at me and we both busted up. It reminded me of the glass conversation I’d had with my brother a while ago, and I couldn’t stop chuckling.

Partner: You’re so mean! You shouted that! ‘Did you just run into the DOOR?’ Everyone looked up and saw him!

Me: I… I… was concerned about him.

We collapsed into giggles.

Partner: You were not! You embarrassed him!

Me: No! He embarrassed himself! I was worried about his health! His mental health, but still!

Partner: And people say I’m mean!

Me: You are mean! But that’s why we like working together.

And we do. More benefits you just can’t put a price on.

Hands

2010-06-20T19:56:00.002-05:00

His hands were a deep bronze hue from years of sun exposure, a shade of brown that no longer faded in the winter. If you flipped them over, palm up, you’d see the softer, tender pink shade that likely was the same color since his birth. They were strong hands, but not hard, not callused. He’d broken many fingers, many times, and his knuckles, which sometimes locked up on him, were large and appeared knobby with his slim, dark fingers. His fingernails were odd, unlike any I’d ever seen before. Instead of being curved over the tops, they were flat, then angled down sharply toward the cuticles, and if they grew out beyond his finger, they curved sharply inward, creating something like the lid of a box closing over the ends of his fingers. My nails have this tendency as well, but not nearly as pronounced as his. His skin was smooth, no coarse hairs anywhere on his hands or arms, and his veins were pipes making rolling hills on his flesh. He worked with his hands a lot, had scars, blackened nails sometimes, and he wasn’t afraid that they’d ever get ugly from use, though they never did.

His hands always mesmerized me. I’d sit near him and turn them over, study them, open his fingers, close them tightly, hold mine up against his, compare them, try to get mine to look like his, wonder if they would be identical when I got to be his age, and finally rest with my hand in his. Long ago he could fit my entire balled-up fist inside his own, and later we simply folded our fingers together, almost matched in size.

I miss his hands.

Those were the hands that tucked me in the best, mummifying me in my blankets, rendering me immobile in my own bed. They were also the hands that brushed my hair the gentlest, for he was terrified of discovering a snarl and yanking too hard. When I was really little, after a bath he’d wrap me up in a trove of towels, naming each towel a piece of my royal garb, declaring me a princess, and they were wrapped so securely that I could prance around the house in my terrycloth regalia until it was bedtime and I had to put on pedestrian pajamas. They were the hands, too, that would take my cares away when I’d lay in his lap and he’d stroke my back softly. To this very day the technique still works, if only I could find someone who could master the touch that he had. These hands pushed me so high on the swings that I always soared over everyone else at the park, until the day when my own hands betrayed me and I fell, head-first, from high in the air, and then his hands carried me home and never pushed me on a swing again.

I didn’t hold it against his hands when he spanked me, which I mostly deserved, though not always. Nor did I hate them after he smacked me in the face so hard it catapulted me across the room and I bounced off my bed and landed on the floor, bruises created during the landing and mortification alone brought on by the hit itself. It wasn’t the fault of his hands. How could they know my mother had lied and told him something I did wrong that never happened? When I innocently denied it, it came down to a decision over who was lying, and in this case those hands didn’t know his head had been fooled and I took the hit while the liar watched with satisfaction. His hands stood for justice, even when the delivery was wrong.

I watched his hands when he wrote his detailed notes on the yellow legal pads he used for everything; I watched them bending wire clothes hangers in just the right shape for us to dip hard-boiled eggs in dyes; I watched him fumble and gain confidence as he learned to use a keyboard and mouse with his hands, so adept at everything else and so clumsy with a computer; I watched him build things; I watched him dismantle things; I watched him rebuild things; and I watched those hands twitching subtly when he fell asleep in the recliner in the middle of a lazy afternoon.

Sometimes, when my hands darken up with a summer tan, I hold them up and they resemble his hands -- this makes me feel good. I don’t always wield them like he did. Mine are not hands that hit, or hands that do hard work. My hands may never sport popsicle sticks fastened with duct tape over a broken finger, or do intricate wiring to fix a broken electrical device, or build furniture, or be remotely as interesting to my adoring eyes as his hands were. However, the reminder is there, the vague resemblance, and it’s a part of the legacy he left me. They are closely related in that I use my hands to show love: a gentle touch, the sweeping of my fingers across sensitive skin, a tender embrace, a firm squeeze to show support, a soft pat to bring comfort, or just curling my fingers around someone else’s for closeness. They are things his hands did, things they taught me about people, about love, about myself, about what’s important, and though I miss his hands tremendously, I treasure the memories, good and bad, because so much of him was revealed in his hands. And so much of him remains in my own.

Sing It Again, Sam

2010-06-15T21:03:00.002-05:00

Given the title of my last post, about doorbells and why we have to ring them for help from our coworkers, the subject of this one is going to look fake, but I swear people, I cannot make this stuff up.

Allow me to introduce the guest of my post tonight: skinny guy with scraggly facial hair, a mullet, a red wife-beater, bad posture, shorts made from cut-off sweatpants and a farmer’s tan that turned parts of him so red, it looked like his tank top was actually a full-length shirt with white holes in certain areas.

The conversation that ensued probably won’t translate as well to written word, as many of my encounters do not, but I feel compelled to try.

Guy: Hey, I was just at [Neighboring] Library and asked them a question, but they just looked at me like I was NUTS.

Any conversation that opens with a line like that is about to become blog fodder. This I know from experience. Fortunately, my coworker had finished helping the odd, affable guy with the big Jesus belt buckle, and as she was walking toward the desk, our redneck friend (who was looked at like he was nuts at another library) decided to approach my partner.

Maybe I was already reaching for scrap paper to take notes and appeared busy. Could be.

Guy: There’s this song, and I wanted some information about it. Maybe you’ve heard it. It’s called “My Ding-A-Ling.”

I bit my lip to hide the emerging grin and sniffled to cover my brief giggle. Not only was this guy dead serious, he was talking so loudly that the entire library went quiet. And mine is a library that is seldom quiet unless the computers are down or the police are walking through. The soft pitter-pat of 20 computer users tapping away at their keyboards, a wonderful white noise that keeps me from hearing all their personal bodily turbulence, abruptly slammed to stop, giving my ears whiplash, plunging us all headfirst into a dead silence. There was not a mouse click in the whole building save for my partner, looking up the "Ding-A-Ling" song.

Guy: Do you know how it goes? It’s like, “My ding-a-ling, won’t you play with my ding-a-ling…”

I was suddenly very interested in inspecting the ceiling tiles, tongue attempting to poke a hole in my own cheek, grimacing at the pain of trying not to laugh. Oh, look! There are more dead bugs in the fluorescent lights! Surely I should ponder this instead of listening to the conversation going on only three feet from me!

Professional in a pinch, but seldom so elsewise, she started rattling off facts about the song to this guy, something about Chuck Berry, something about 1972, blah-blah-blah, and she asked what else he wanted to know about the song.

Guy: Well, I kinda know how it goes, but I want the lyrics. It’s something like “it’s the prettiest little song you ever had…”

And then something spec-fucking-tacular occurred!

Partner: Right, then it goes, “And those of you who will not sing, must be playing with your own ding-a-ling”

The patrons situated on the perimeter of our reference desk erupted in gut-busting, capillary-popping, wailing laughter. Patrons all around me were red-faced and gasping for air, no longer interested in politely eavesdropping on the patron’s request, but full-on, no-holds-barred, doubled-over hilarity hearing the librarian talk about playing with a ding-a-ling.

Seeing the reaction of so many people positively roar with uncontrollable laughs made me lose it, and I came very close to having to excuse myself to find somewhere with more oxygen and possibly a diaper for my own safety.

The conversation went on, him quoting parts of the song, her nodding stoically as she read along with the lyrics online, telling him that he had the words right, correcting him here and there when it wasn’t “ding-a-ling”, but the longer “ding-a-ling-a-ling”.

Two teens in particular, a young man and a young woman, were holding each other up listening to these two people recite the words, looking at me for some confirmation that this was for real and not staged. I just shook my head in disbelief and continued laughing, trying my hardest not to look at this guy.

He went on and on about the song.

Guy: You know, they used to sing it in bars, too. And it’s not about what you think it’s about, which is why it’s so fun to sing, right? I mean, it’s great to sing about your ding-a-ling!

Partner: Uh-huh, I remember this song. So, do you want me to print the lyrics out for you?

Guy: Oh yeah! That would be great! I gotta take this back over to [Neighboring] Library and show them, since they thought I was nuts. I’ll sing it to ‘em, now that I got the lyrics, and I bet they’ll remember it then.

Partner: Um, yeah.

Guy: This is great! I gotta show Randy!

Partner: Okay.

Guy: And we can sing “My Ding-A-Ling” all the time!

Partner: Uh-huh.

She never laughed. She was perfectly calm, perfectly unamused, and only started laughing when the patron walked away and she saw how hard everyone else was laughing.

Indignantly, she scoffed at us.

Partner: What?! It’s just as song!

I bounced up and down in my chair, childish grin on my face and said, “Sing it again! Please! PUH-LEEEEZE!”

She brushed me off and walked away, leaving me cracking up with the nearby patrons, and we were content with the memory of hearing her recite the “My Ding-A-Ling” lyrics to a patron.

Ding-Dongs

2010-06-11T11:44:00.002-05:00

Marina: Sorry

I had a rather demanding patron

Me: Did you ding-dong for help? Is that why [coworker] was out there?

Marina: yes

Me: Oh my, whatever did she want?

Marina: I needed him to help the other woman while I scrolled through page after page of abuse memoirs.

Only like 3 were of any interest to her and then we didn't have them.

Me: Figures.

Sheesh.

Marina: yeah

I think she's coming back when she’s done on the express computers.

Me: Of course. Why would she bug only one staff member?!

Marina: What I don't get is why I'm going through this when she doesn't even have a card to check the books out on

This is when I realized the patron Marina was talking about was the one Circ had told me about, who came in with no money, no wallet, no ID, and had a story about how she just left her boyfriend with only the clothes she was wearing. She wanted a library card, but without any proof of who she was, saying that her boyfriend was possessive of her ID and wouldn’t let her have it. Odd story. But the woman was odder still.

Me: Ugh.

Yesterday I had a lady get really pissed because she wanted Chicago museum passes, and I said we didn't have any for the Shedd Aquarium or other museums she wanted, that the Chicago Public Libraries had some kind of program, but it could be exclusive to their patrons, and she threw a tantrum.

Insisted Brookfield Zoo was in Chicago and I was lying about the Chicago museums.

And WHEN would they be available and WHO could she talk to about getting them.

Because having Brookfield Zoo passes meant they all should be in there.

Marina: wow

I hate our patrons somedays

Me: Uh huh

Marina: it drives me CRAZY when people stalk me in the stacks while I'm helping someone else to ask me questions

Me: Oh yes

That creeps me out totally

Marina: I have to refrain from spinning around and screaming "back the f%&* off" at people

Me: Patron paparazzi.

Marina: I would recommend going home sick

You don't want to be out here tonight

Me: Hmm, I'm eating cheese.

That could parlay into digestive problems.

Marina: close down the whole desk and go to a bar with [coworker]

Me: Oh, you are sounding wiser and wiser with every sentence.

Marina: :)

Me: [Coworker] will love you for it too

AND it's payday

So that means I can afford a drink and not a water at a bar.

but sadly, only one drink.

Marina: aww :(

Me: baby needs an oil change

Marina: but you have heirloom tomatoes instead

is that expensive?

Me: I do have tomatoes, and oil changes are not expensive, but drinks are. The ones I like, anyway.

Marina: me too :(

Me: Fruit, frozen, gigantic glasses, umbrellas... pricey.

Marina: damn my girlie taste buds

Me: MINE TOO!

Damn them!

Marina: :)

Me: A friend of mine started calling me Malibu Barbie. Fucker.

Marina: stab him

with an umbrella :)

Me: I shall. With my high heel.

Marina: ooh even better

Me: So, shall we compose our stabbing list?

Patrons who stalk and paparazzi us.

Marina: patrons who can't use Google Maps.

Me: Grrrr.

Marina: Patrons who don't know how to turn off mute.

Me: Being made fun of for being girlie girls.

Not enough cheese in your pasta.

Not enough money for all the drinks your job makes you need.

Marina: Patrons who don't realize that minimize just minimizes their screen.

Calories.

Me: OOOR, patrons who you tell to minimize their screen and instead they hit the restore size button and it just makes the window smaller.

Marina: Oh god! I HATE that!

Me: NUMLOCKS!

Marina: I had to explain links to that woman at least 3 or 4 times today

Me: She is so dense.

Marina: yeah :(

Me: HOH, and yesterday, here's a new one. Woman wanted us to show her how to put her picture up on YouTube (which she called YouToo) so she could be rich and famous too. What? It's for videos? You have to have a video camera? You have to upload? Oh, I can't do that. I'll have to find another way to get rich and famous.

Marina: OMG

I think the shorter list might be the non-stabbing list

Me: Sigh...

True.

This could go on all night.

Marina: it really could

And it did. The woman whose boyfriend is possessive of her ID was very nearly as irritatingly needy as Needy Betty. She went outside to smoke and stood right at the front door, so a non-smoking patron yelled at her that he couldn’t even walk to his car without having to breathe in her smoke, and she was so upset by his statement that she came in and told everyone how hurtful he was. I thought about telling her about the Illinois law that requires people to be at least a certain distance from the front door of businesses if they’re smoking, but she stunk so badly that I didn’t want to talk to her for any longer.

Somehow, she had enough money to be carrying around a big cup of gas station coffee and she purchased headphones from Circ, so she did have cash on her, despite her claims. And she struck another of my pet peeves by carrying around this coffee cup that was actually three coffee cups stacked inside one another. Look, folks, I understand that two cups together help insulate, but I still see it as a waste, and the “green” girl inside me wants to smack you silly. Bring your own damn travel mug and gas stations will let you “refill” it for a fraction of the cost. Anyway, this woman had THREE cups sleeved together, and that irritated me even more! On top of that, she kept leaving her garbage wherever she went. I found that stupid three-tiered coffee cup sitting on the counter in the washroom, right by the garbage can. The patron (who was as odd, or odder) who used her computer after her stood by it, mouth agape, horrified, saying that there was garbage all over the computer and he didn’t want to use it. It was the packaging from this woman’s headphones, that’s all. I heard him whisper to his girlfriend, “There could be DRUGS in there or something. Did you SEE that lady? Ick.” Sometimes I feel like it might be best to let the patrons kill each other and solve many of my problems for me.

Later on, when she couldn’t use one of the computers because they were all taken, she asked to use my phone and proceeded to start calling people to come and pick her up, but no one could. That’s when the neediness got REALLY irritating.

Lady: No one can come and get me.

Me: Oh really?

Lady: And I have to walk all the way by the Walgreens. Can you tell me how far that is? Because I think it’s really far.

I looked it up. It was 2.5 miles.

Lady: *gasp* That’s a LONG way. And it’s COLD outside! Can you tell me what the temperature is?

Me: It’s 67º.

Lady: That’s way too cold to walk almost three miles.

Seriously? To me, that’s just the right temperature to go on a walk, but then again, I haven’t been raising my body temperature all afternoon by whining and drinking a well-insulated coffee either.

Me: Is there anyone else you can call?

Lady: Nooooooo, I don’t have my address book, and I don’t know anyone’s phone number.

Me: You can look it up online, or look it up in the phone book.

Lady: Noooo, I don’t think I could find anyone.

Me: Okay, well, you can call a cab.

Lady: I don’t have any money.

I should mention that all of these sentences she uttered were in the most annoying whine I think I’ve ever heard. The last word of ever sentence dragged out painfully until I cut her off and began speaking over it. I was waiting for her to employ some vibrato for added punch.

Me: Hmmm, I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to suggest.

Lady: It’s so COLD outside. I don’t think I can walk that far.

Me: Well, it’s 6:00. The sun is going down and it’s only going to get colder.

Lady: *gasp* Noooooooo. Can I use the computer again?

Then she plopped her butt down in front of the computer for another hour, blasting music into her headphones, watching videos online. At 7 she simply slipped out, no more whining, no words to anyone.

I thought the weirdness had left with her when another young woman walked up to me and asked why her money wasn’t coming out of the change machine.

I said, “Um, we don’t have a change machine. I think you put your money in the copier.”

Copier? What copier? She was so clueless, she didn’t realize the big machine she leaned over to put the money in the “change machine” was in fact the copier that the machine was accepting money for. I suggested she either hit the print button and get a piece of white paper and 90¢ change, or she talk to Circ about possibly getting a refund. She nodded and kept walking past me.

Incredulously, I shouted to her, “Ma’am, your dollar is in the machine still, right? You’re going to want to go over and take care of that now, otherwise someone might think that’s $1 in free copies for them, and then there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do to get your money back.”

She looked at me blankly, said, “Reeeaaly?” and I nodded and told her to go get her money.

Marina was right. We should’ve closed down the reference desk and gone for drinks. We should’ve continued making our list of people to stab. Which would’ve gotten too big and then we would’ve switched and made lists of people not to stab.

That would’ve been a short list.

It might have only had our own names on it.

Out of Office

2010-05-18T21:52:00.002-05:00

For the next two weeks I will be on vacation at Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, possibly also Badlands and any other National Parks I can hit en route to or from.

Have a good two weeks and I will be back in June. Wheeeeeee!

Replies

2010-05-12T16:54:00.002-05:00

Microsoft Outlook should be sued for putting the Reply to All button next to the Reply button, in an easy to find, accessible place. Assholes set us up! If you click on Reply to All, a loud buzzer should sound and a neon orange pop-up should appear on your screen asking if you are a totally reckless lunatic who wants to make enemies, or if you really think the All recipients are interested in your reply. If you answer yes to either of these questions, another pop-up should appear and ask you if you’re on any medications, suffering from delusions of grandeur, or just stupid. Answers of “no” should then require a special series of math questions (like Gmail labs instituted) that you have to answer correctly to prove you are smart enough to decide and cogent enough to include pertinent information for your All group, and only then can you actually Reply to All. If Microsoft really cared about their customers, this is what Outlook would do.

Additionally, people who misuse the Reply to All button should be flogged and whipped in public for their indiscretion. By their boss. And then docked a day’s pay. And this should be a global law. Screw off, Amnesty International! There are some instances of torture that are worthy!

Yesterday, a very sad email went out to thousands and thousands of employees who are part of our library system, self-defined in the following paragraph:

...is a consortium of over 650 academic, public, school, and special libraries in [4 counties of Illinois]. It is one of nine multi-type Illinois library systems funded by yearly grants from the Illinois General Assembly and the office of Jesse White, the Secretary of State and State Librarian.

The email explained how little funding the State has doled out, how desperate things are in the system, and how they are all but shutting down at the end of June, running barely a skeleton crew for minimal services, which are also in jeopardy.

We all saw this letter and sighed heavily. They do so many things for the libraries in my neck of the woods that losing them would be devastating. Not only do they run the van service for our Interlibrary Loan, but our health insurance is administered through them, so we’re terrified what kind of implications this will have on our functionality as a reciprocating library, and how it’s going to impact our health care. This doesn’t even touch on many of the other services it offers, including the entertaining continuing education seminars/classes we often attend, where we laugh and shudder at the weirdos in our field.

So, none of us is sure where the mailing list came from. Perhaps anyone who has ever taken a course through the system and registered their email address was a recipient. Regardless, once the email went out, many others assumed they were special, had received this email from the director of the library system personally, and then forwarded it on as well. Many of us received the initial letter, somberly read it, and then continued receiving it from others through forwards for the remainder of the evening.

Sigh...

Okay, that’s bad enough, but today started the replies to all (meaning all the staff members in all the libraries in four counties, I should remind you) from various recipients that went on and on about how sad they were about the losses.

Lovely. Thanks. We’re all sad. Glad you felt the need to share it with every-fucking-one, but whatever. That’s part of why we laugh at you in the classes, you nitwits. Reply to sender only, please!

After a few hours of monotonous, repetitive letters of sorrow being emailed out to every-fucking-one on the list by Repliers to All, the hostile remove-me-from-your-listers started hitting Reply to All as well. So now, I’m in the middle of a shitstorm of idiots who were pissed to be receiving the heartfelt letters of sorrow, and are now Replying to All to be removed from the list because of the abusers of the Reply to All.

Seriously?! You do NOT need to hit Reply to All when you are asking to be removed from future Reply to All notifications.
GAH!

Now, I’m not going to reveal my font snobbery and complain that the director of the consortium sent out this email in Comic Sans, because that would be petty. I am also not going to comment on the long-winded explanations about why some of these people are baffled as to how they got on this list because I quit reading them. What I’m amazed with is the fact that 27 have arrived in my Inbox thus far, a few in my spam, some surely pre-filtered before they even reach me, and then there was someone who used the opportunity to forward their own professional agenda to this list. WTF, people? If you’re the director of a huge consortium and you’re sending out a massive email to thousands and thousands of people, filter the list so that it’s not reusable by every moron who receives it! Maybe everyone who knows how to do this was already laid off. I don’t know. But goddammit, this is getting ridiculous. And it wouldn’t be ridiculous if people weren’t booger-eating morons! Or as Arms likes to say, “window-lickers on the short bus”.

So, while I’m at work and I’m dealing with the neanderthals who can’t enter their computer reservation number because they don’t know about the Num Lock key, or the folks who can’t figure out how to scan their barcode using a scanner (holding anything but the barcode up to the scanner), I’m going to say they’re less infuriating today than the people who work in my field.

And as if to top it all off with an even bigger irritation, someone just Replied to All to stop sending out Replies to All about wanting to be removed from the list because this is a serious situation we’re talking about here. As if this serious situation warranted thousands of respondents to clutter my inbox with identical emails of woe. Shut the fuck up, people!

Aaaaaaand, now people are Replying to All in support of the whiner who wants people to stop whining in their Replies to All.

Sigh... these are not my people.

The bottom line here is, it’s not going to change. Why does our library system deserve money the state doesn’t have more so than the schools? More so than any other organization they owe? My local school system is owed $1.5 million. There are school systems doing mass layoffs in anticipation of not receiving any state funding next year and trying to stay afloat. Fundraising has become essential for organizations like ours. We have to learn to adapt and survive any way we can, and writing our politicians, buying T-shirts, and singing Kumbaya around a bonfire (funded by donations and not the state) is not going to save anything. Despite what the idiots who are Replying to All think, this is not exclusive to Illinois. Get over yourself, folks. And quit using my Inbox as your soapbox! Frankly, if the Powers That Be came to me and asked if $2 million should be paid to our public schools or our library consortium, I’m going to be hard-pressed not to say the schools. While I think this is all quite sad, mainly the loss of jobs in this terrible market, I really don’t understand why so many people would rather whine about it en masse than pick ourselves back up and figure out a way to subsidize.

If we could sue Microsoft for putting together Outlook without all of the pitfalls attached to the Reply to All button as there should have been, we could solve many of these problems.

Wisdom In the Stacks

2010-05-11T21:06:00.000-05:00

Marina: I can’t find a shallow little divided dish for under my monitor to put my rubber bands and paper clips in. You know? They’re all these big things with pen holders attached, and I don’t want that.

Me: Hmmm, maybe a little baby food divider dish?

Marina: I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe.

Me: Where did you look?

Marina: Target. I went to MULTIPLE Targets.

Me: Try Office Max. Or, of course, Amazon.

Marina: Yeah, I SHOULD try Amazon. Amazon has everything!

Me: You know, yesterday I had a woman come in and she insisted there was this book, by this author, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I suggested the title was wrong, the author was wrong, etc., and she swore up and down that it was all right. I checked Amazon and there was no such creature, so I said to her, “Ma’am, Amazon doesn’t have it listed so it’s pretty much not out there.”

Marina: I know! What did we do before Amazon?

Me: We wasted all our life looking for stuff all over the place and overpaying!

Marina: That’s right! If it’s not on Amazon, you’re just out of luck, lady.

Me: Exactly! AA! MUH! ZON! C’mon, people. There is nothing more definitive. Have you not heard of Amazon? Have you not used Amazon? Sit down. I will show you the way to enlightenment.

Marina: I have a friend who is waiting for the day when he can order all his groceries from Amazon and they’ll just show up automatically every month and charge his credit card.

Me: That is probably not too far off.

Marina: You can already do it with some things.

Me: That’s right. Because it’s Amazon. AA! MUH! ZON! Get with it.

* * *

Last night I had the following conversation with my coworker.

Me: Oh, all that drilling in Circ is them putting up the AED device on the wall. I forgot to mention.

Coworker: The what?

Me: AED. You know? With the paddles? CLEAR! [holding hands like the paddles] Ka-chunk! A defibrillator.

Coworker: Hahaha, ka-chunk! Sounds scary.

Me: Oh, it is!

Coworker: Hey, did you see the pictures of the people who won the Ugly Shirt Contest?

Me: Yeah.

Coworker: They weren’t that ugly!

Last week the Sunshine Committee sponsored an Ugly Shirt Contest, and being the Gloomy Committee, I wore a plain, nondescript coral shirt and didn’t participate. There weren’t many participants, and when the winners were announced with a photo accompanyment, we all scratched out heads because the ugly shirts weren’t so ugly after all. Well, one one heinous, but that’s because it was her husband’s shirt.

Me: I think a lack of participants kinda guaranteed that whatever these people wore, they were going to win.

Coworker: Well, that makes more sense. What did they win?

Me: I... I don’t remember. Maybe they won a free Jeans Day pass. Or a restaurant gift card. Something like that.

Coworker: So, speaking of which, this policy on wearing jeans on Friday, is that for real?

Me: Yeah, I hate it. I worked a Friday recently and was going out after, so I didn’t want to have to change, and I paid the $1 to be able to wear jeans on Friday. Sigh...

Coworker: OHMYGOD, I would never pay a buck to be able to wear jeans to work! Is anyone else doing this?

Me: Yeah, that’s what got me. I paid my $1 and [clerk] took my cash, and she too was wearing jeans, and had paid her dollar. Marina did the same. I was really hoping I’d be the only one stupid enough to do it so after a month or two they’d scrap the $1 charge because no one was paying it. But, dammit, people are paying it!

Coworker: What would they do if I wore jeans and didn’t pay my $1?

Me: Well, that’s part of the dress code. You’d be considered insubordinate then.

Coworker: Are they going to write me up?

Me: Maybe they’ll send you home and make you change! WOOHOO!

Coworker: Maybe they’ll hit me with the paddles -- KA-CHUNK -- knock me out, and I’ll wake up a while later and my jeans will be gone. Instead I’ll have on someone else’s ugly pants.

Me: Maybe you’ll win for Ugly Pants Day then!

Coworker: Maybe I’ll just pay my dollar.

Dear Patrons

2010-05-09T17:17:00.001-05:00

Thank you for redeeming yourselves.

Sometimes I have no idea why you do what you do, where you hide your values, and why you bother with a library at all. Sometimes I wish you'd spend less time complaining about things that can't be changed (fines, rules, etc.) and put a little effort into using all the free services we offer so that you see where your money goes. Sometimes I wish you all just wouldn't come in at all.

We have awesome programs, some of which cost a lot of money, and no matter how much we hype it and how much support the public shows, you often just don't come to the program itself. We put up heart-felt, elaborate displays to help you realize just how many useful and entertaining items we have just for you, and you ignore them all. We give ourselves near aneurysms trying to concoct ways to appease you, to serve you, to provide you with material, information and tools you need, and you destroy or scoff at them. It gets discouraging. It wears on the soul. I frequently am asked by coworkers if this idea or that idea will fly around here and I inevitably answer, "I have no idea what these people want." This isn't always true, of course. Sometimes I, like everyone else here, hit the nail on the head, but we have no clue as to why often. It's a crap shoot. We try so hard to bring you the The Goods, and frequently we are left feeling like you think it's The Shit.

My recent displays included genealogy, foods to improve your health, crafts, DIY home improvements, job searching online, and Darwin/evolution. You checked out nearly nothing on any of them, leaving me feeling a lot like nothing I do is worthwhile to you. It's depressing.

But, as I said in my opening, you have been redeemed.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, dear patrons. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for raiding and emptying my Memorial Day display. I have no idea if it was one person or a smattering of people, but walking in today and finding my display nearly empty of books makes me feel like you are decent folks worthy of my efforts. Good job checking out those books! I hope they bring you the emotions you expect and then some. I hope you are as proud of yourselves as I am of you. And mostly, I'm thankful that we share one value in common, and that is a reverence for those who have served.

Now I can go on working here, giving you my best, because if nothing else, I know we see eye-to-eye on one issue and that will be enough to carry me for a bit. So, thanks for that.

Much Love,
Happy Villain

Twizzler Update

2010-05-04T20:26:00.002-05:00

Under the strictest, most scientific of conditions, Ann and I conducted experiments at Applebee's on Friday night and have the following to report on the Twizzler Straw issue:

Long Island iced teas are marvelous sipped through a Twizzler.

Frozen strawberry daiquiris are impossible to sip through a Twizzler, as it is too narrow and the end with the daiquiri plugs instantly, causing the center of the Twizzler to collapse and the sucker's head to implode. Tried repeatedly, this failed every time. Additionally, the frozen drink rendered the Twizzler inedible as it was far too hard to chew, despite animated faces and slightly-inebriated gusto.

Thankfully, I have a brilliant brother who has suggested the best possible solution to the Twizzler Straw problem: Red Vines.

Red Vines are an alternate brand to Twizzlers, and though their consistency is slightly different and they have a mellower, less licorice-y taste, they are much larger and have a wider hole in the center.

A large package of Red Vines was purchased by this scientist and three Mike's Hard Berry wine coolers are chilling at the moment. If Red Vines serve well with Mike's magical drinks of happiness, I will dare to give the daiquiri another shot.

Anyone else conducting experiments of this type are encouraged to report their findings herein.

Carry on with your straw experimentation.

Oddities

2010-04-29T21:58:00.002-05:00

Tuesday, Marina had a problem patron.

First he insisted he did not have time to obtain a library card, but then insisted that he needed more time than the 20 minutes allotted to folks without cards at the Express computers. Already she had a rash from him, and then he sat at a computer asking her inane questions and talking loudly into his cell phone. He was driving her nuts and I suggested she tell him to take his call outside, but she said the person was helping him with his computer issue, and better that person than her because she was sick of him. Two hours passed and he was still sitting there, still talking loudly into his cell phone, and still struggling with whatever he was working on. I asked Marina why she didn’t just kick him off the computer and she said he was filling out an application online and she just wanted him to finish and go. Turns out, he was filling out an application to the University of Phoenix, purveyor of online degrees.

It made us feel SOOOOOO much better knowing that this obnoxious jerk couldn’t even fill out an application online, so he was surely not going to get a degree that way. It’s little moments of other people’s fails that sometimes give us a moment of win.

* * *

Yesterday, I had a splitting headache from a week of sleep deprivation, and when I opened the first aid kit to grab some ibuprofen, a cold pack clobbered me on the head as it fell out. Irony tastes so much better when it happens to other people.

* * *

Also, I received an email Monday night from the director inviting me to join a three-person Green Team (I would be the third person), knowing how leery I am of committees but that going green is a personal passion of mine. We emailed back and forth about my concerns about committees, he assured me it would not be like that, and I said I’d speak with my supervisor about the time that would be required for it, and if he would grant me permission. Before I got into work yesterday to discuss it with him, the director had sent out an Outlook invite for a meeting with me and my supervisor to discuss whether I’d have time for future meetings. A meeting to talk about whether we have time for more meetings. A meeting to discuss meetings. A meeting meeting. Lovely. Fortunately, logic (my supervisor) prevailed and the meeting meeting was canceled when he walked into the director’s office and said, yeah, it’s okay, and then it was over. No need for a meeting meeting. Seriously, you’d think we worked in a gigantic corporation and never communicated with one another or passed each other 10 times a day. It’s laughable. A meeting meeting?

* * *

Today, when I arrived, I walked casually over to the computer where we punch in, sunglasses still on, hands full of stuff, and as I leaned down to input my name, I saw a 2-inch cockroach on the keyboard. I gasped and felt my heart stop momentarily, then restart at a pace that was too fast for speed metal. Someone chuckled. It was a plastic cockroach. I looked around and asked who’d done it. No one was talking. I punched in and walked off, eyes rolling, knowing that other staff members (namely Briana) would likely die if it happened to them, and I stomped angrily to my office. Once inside the confines and safety of the office, I asked who among them knew about the cockroach and its master, but there were no takers. Two of my officemates were also “gotten” by the fake bug trick and equally irritated.

I left mid-afternoon to go to the gym and run an errand, and when I returned the bug was gone. Good. Good riddance.

I overheard someone telling the director she removed said fake cockroach from the sign-in computer because Briana had a strong reaction.

You must understand that the grossest cockroach event at our library happened to Bri when she opened up a DVD case and three came crawling out of the case. She screamed like a banshee and ran, but by the time anyone brave enough to take care of the cockroaches arrived, they were long gone. At the Circ desk. Where we worked. For hours. In constant danger of them crawling up our legs. We were uneasy for weeks after, and Briana never opened a DVD case the same way again.

And today Briana spotted a spider in her car on her drive in, was unable to smoosh the spider and it scurried off somewhere not to be found. A good case of the heebie-jeebies in your own car while driving is bad enough, but when she got out and felt safer, particularly in her workplace that should be mostly heebie-jeebie-free (save for a few creepy patrons... and coworkers), she found the plastic cockroach on the keyboard and screamed.

Evidently, she screamed bloody murder! People came running! RUNNING! It was blood-curdling!

And as instincts go, when she stopped screaming, she then dropped the F-bomb.

Oh, if I could’ve been there, I might have died laughing! GOOD FOR HER!

Bri doesn’t use the F-word very often, but when she does, it’s more obscene than when normal people use it. This must have been, historically speaking, the best Bri reaction to have been privvy to, and I missed it. Not that I condone idiotic fake bug placement, but the thrill of hearing her get so angry that she used the F-word would’ve been awesome.

Someone on staff grabbed the bug and threw it away, deciding wisely that enough was enough and we didn’t need to put our coworkers through this for some ridiculous laugh. Briana nearly died AND she dropped the F-bomb! Clearly the prank had gone way too far.

I heard of the event from others, and then from Briana herself, and still giggling a bit I returned to the office and shared with my supervisor that the bug was gone, thanks to Bri’s strong reaction and the beautiful little F-bomb she dropped.

Perhaps the only truly intelligent person in the entire library, he said, “Why didn’t someone get rid of it sooner? Why didn’t the first person get startled, take the fake bug, and throw it out? Why leave it there to scare everyone else? That’s what I don’t understand Why didn’t anyone do anything?”

I nodded. He was right. The voice of reason, the one who saved me from a meeting meeting just yesterday, pointed out something I hadn’t considered and that was WHY did we all leave the stupid bug there after it scared the crap out of each of us?

So, while it was cruel and poor Briana didn’t deserve to lose 10 years off her life, the F-bomb was deserved and I hope everyone was horrified to have heard it, particularly since it was uttered by Bri, but we also learn a little about our human nature, to leave irritating things alone because we don’t want to be the one to party-poop, even though the party is shitty to begin with.

Just odd.

Makes Mouths Happy

2010-04-27T21:48:00.001-05:00

Via IM today

Leelu: Water is better when you drink it through a Twizzler.

Me: But Twizzlers are not better when they've been submerged in water.
Me: They get slimy on the outsides.

Leelu: That's why you drink a little, eat a little, and repeat until the straw is pointless.

Me: I see.
Me: Very cold drinks tend to melt the licorice slower.
Me: Ice, for example, seems to prolong the life of the Twizzler.

Leelu: And I'm drinking heavily iced water.
Leelu: It actually made the Twizzler tougher to eat.

Me: Then you are maximizing your Twizzler/water experience.

Leelu: I am.

Me: Yes, that's true too, but then you can refill the water and enjoy longer.
Me: You know what's good?! Jell-O through a straw. And now that you mention this, I'm wondering if Jell-O through a Twizzler would be awesome.

Leelu: Twizzler openings are so small, though. I don't know if you'd be able to do it.

Me: Don't they make big ones?
Me: Size queen, you know.

Leelu: Do they?
Leelu: I'm not a Twizzler fan, so I'm uncertain.
Leelu: (I do know. And I love you for it.)

Me: I dunno.
Me: You do, and you do?
Me: Oh, size queeniness.

Leelu: Yus.

Me: Well, it seems we need to do some Twizzler experimentation.
Me: I could pose the question on FB.
Me: See if we have experienced friends.
Me: Or the blog.

Leelu: (lol)

Me: (more readers)
Me: :)
Me: We need to know the extents and limitations of using Twizzlers as straws for food items.
Me: NEED TO KNOW

Leelu: Ask away, my love! I eagerly await the collective voice of your experienced readership.

Me: I shall. I'm sending myself an email reminder to post it tonight.

Leelu: Hehe.

Me: And...
Me: no one will respond.
Me: :(

Leelu: :(
Leelu: *hugs*

Me: Heh, thanks.
Me: The only time I ever got lots of good feedback was when I posed a question and asked people how they met and came to love someone.
Me: Those were good.

Leelu: Those were good.

Me: Otherwise... much silence from the peanut gallery.

Leelu: I think you have to ask questions people are willing to answer.

Me: Sigh
Me: Twizzlers should be one of those questions!
Me: *slams fist*
Me: It's important!

Leelu: But others don't realize that; they're so absorbed in the trivialities of life that they miss the genuinely meaningful things.

Me: So true.
Me: Sigh.
Me: What's with people talking about politics, religion, natural disasters, hunger, etc.?!
Me: TWIZZLERS!
Me: C'mon!
Me: Priorities, people!

Leelu: Well, Twizzlers and hunger are related...

Me: Oooh
Me: Good tie-in.
Me: It can be a religion for some

Leelu: And they should be a religion...
Leelu: (lol)
Leelu: Clone!

Me: :D
Me: Politics of proper licorice usage is up.
Me: For discussion, that is.
Me: And it could be a natural disaster if you used it for, say, coffee!
Me: OMG.
Me: I hit them all!
Me: People HAVE to respond.

Leelu: I don't know. Coffee needs sugar. I can only see Twizzlers helping coffee.

Me: Coffee would eat it quicker.
Me: And warm Twizzler in coffee would be kinda gross, I'd think.

Leelu: Twizzler milk!

Me: OOOOOOOOOOOOOH MILK!
Me: Oh, man, you have just created a delightful goal for me.
Me: And you know, licorice comes in many flavors now.
Me: Imagine a nice orange Twizzler with milk would almost be like a creamsicle.
Me: DUDE, I WANT ONE!
Me: (You know I'm going to have to c&p this verbatim to the blog, because we rock like that)

Leelu: Iced coffee.
Leelu: Don't you love it when we write your blog posts together?

Me: It's always better with a partner.
Me: Sometimes my fingers get tired alone.

Leelu: Sometimes more than one.

Me: I need to try that.

Leelu: I highly recommend it at least once.

Me: How many times would you recommend it if you weren't limiting yourself?

Leelu: As many as you wished.

Me: Heh. So, collaborating on blog posts is something you would like to do more often?

Leelu: (lol)
Leelu: Only when/if I have something to say.

Me: Do you have people you PREFER to collaborate with?

Leelu: (I completely forgot what we were talking about, too.)

Me: I know. We derail into our metaphors and then it becomes about the other thing.
Me: I was trying to drag them both into it parallelly.
Me: Is parallelly a word?
Me: I like it.
Me: Anything that says lelly sounds happy.
Me: genocidelelly.
Me: See?!

Leelu: Happy happy genocide!

Me: WHEEEEEEEEE!

Leelu: Should we start a kickline?
Leelu: "It's springtime for Hitler and Germany!"

Me: My skirt is too short.

Leelu: Isn't that how they're supposed to be?

Me: But I have on my plain-jane panties. I only kickline in short skirts when I wear the frilly stuff.
Me: Frilillelly.
Me: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Leelu: Oodelolly oodelolly golly what a day!

Me: Beck?
Me: A Beck kickline? With frilly panties and genocide?
Me: WE SHOULD WRITE A MUSICAL!
Me: OMG, can you tell I've had caffeine for the first time in months?

Leelu: Beck?
Leelu: I was going for Disney Robin Hood.

Me: Beck's album was Odeley.
Me: Odelay
Me: Oops.
Me: Oopsililly.

Leelu: I'm sure it's a word in the Becktionary.

Me: Disney Robin Hood, huh? You're such a mom.

Leelu: Haven't seen it in years.
Leelu: Lummox likes it, though.

Me: I'm looking forward to the new Robin Hood.

Leelu: Any reason in particular?

Me: RUSSELL CROWE!
Me: *slurp*
Me: I'd suck him through a Twizzler.
Me: Hmm, that doesn't sound flattering to him.
Me: Maybe I should take that back.

Leelu: (lol)

Me: I do so love that man in period piece movies looking tough.
Me: Although he was super-dee-duper hot in the other one, where he played the gay son.

Leelu: Which one was that?

Me: The Sum of Us.
Me: OMG, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT!
Me: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111309/.

Leelu: Wow. That totally looks like not my kind of movie.

Me: But, but, but.
Me: Gay love story!

Leelu: Mushy family flick.

Me: Sigh...
Me: Hot guys kissing!

Leelu: Romance, not porn.

Me: Okay, if you're not going to see it, I'll ruin it for you.

Leelu: Okay.

Here I blather about the movie, which I won't ruin for you, so watch it!

Me: It's really sad. You get the thoughts of both characters.
Me: And Russell Crowe plays this bumbling, love-sick, awkward guy.
Me: It's totally out of his usual roles.

Leelu: That's always nice.
Leelu: It's good to see actors stretch themselves.

Me: He did it after he played a ruthless skinhead, because he felt so awful about that horrible character.
Me: He felt it was redeeming.
Me: *swoon*

Leelu: Heh.

Me: So, I'm hoping they put him in leather miniskirts again for Robin Hood, like Gladiator.

Leelu: (lol)
Leelu: You delightful perv!
Leelu: We're totally clones.

Me: HORRAY!

Leelu: Why won't they leave me alone?
Leelu: Patrons won't let me have fiend time!

Me: Beat them with a frozen Twizzler!
Me: Whip!
Me: Send them home with Twizzled lashes on their foreheads!
Me: Dear FSM, that makes me laugh.

Leelu: Foreheads?
Leelu: I'll get them on their legs.

Me: Okay then. I just thought it would be more humiliating.
Me: Like a mushroom stamp.

Leelu: Leave marks where they don't show. It's the only way to abuse.

Me: You can abuse better with words then.
Me: The point of Twizzling someone is to leave a Twizzled mark.

Leelu: What a waste of Twizzle.

Me: How so?
Me: By exposing it to the germy flesh of your enemies?
Me: Making it inedible?

Leelu: Yes.

Me: Hmmm.
Me: Buy in bulk.

Leelu: I hate to waste food, regardless.

Me: Okay. So can we design Twizzler whips that aren't food?

Leelu: Then they aren't Twizzlers, are they?

Me: Should we just be using regular whips? Do Twizzlers add to anything?
Me: So, Twizzlers are food, not weapons. Weapons are weapons, not food.

Leelu: Except in food fights.
Leelu: Hot mashed potatoes are organic napalm.

Me: A vegetable defoliant. Interesting.
Me: Full Metal Jacket: I love the smell of hot mashed potatoes in the morning.
Me: Yes, perfect substitute.
Me: Wait, that was Platoon.
Me: Sorry.

Leelu: Apocalypse Now, wasn't it?

Me: OH YEAH!
Me: Thanks.

Leelu: I'm awesome at quoting movies I've never seen.

Me: LOL
Me: That takes talent.

Leelu: I do try.

So, the question remains and we pose it to you. Twizzlers as straws for what? What can we suck through a Twizzler? I'm serious. I need info.

Watch It Wiggle

2010-04-22T09:40:00.002-05:00

Patron: Can you tell me where your Jell-O section is?

Now, despite having worked here just short of 18 years, and knowing my patrons as well as I do, I also know myself better, and I know that I do not know everything. In fact, I feel quite often that I know so little, it makes me feel shamefully inadequate, so I go read another book about something that has no relevance in my life, wherein I collect more useless information that could help one random person if they happen to cross my path before I forget what I read, and thus the attempt is futile. So, you see, my brain gnaws on my indigestible pulp of ignorance all day long, and when a patron comes up to me and asks a question that hurts my brain, I assume they are knowledgeable and I am not.

For instance, the Jell-O query made me question my very existence. Have I been living a lie, concocting an environment of books and library-ish items that surround me, while all along I have actually been working in a grocery store? Have people been asking me grocery questions all this time and I've been telling them Dewey locations of items in aisles at Jewel?! I looked around. I pinched myself. I tried to grasp this total mental FUBAR situation I was in, mind racing with thoughts of electro-shock therapy and a cupful of pills a day just to keep me in this world, dingy and gray, in paper slippers and a hospital gown that doesn't close all the way in the back. Have I been working in a grocery store all these years?

NO! The answer is no! I have not. SOMEONE would've told me. Somehow I would've figured it out. I'm not THAT clueless.

So, back on Earth, I comprehend that the question asked of me, which sent me on that spiraling quest for reality, was weird and I needed clarity.

Me: The Jell-O section? As in...Jell-O recipes? Science projects? What are you looking for specifically?

Patron: Jell-O art. Jell-O sculptures. Things like that.

And here is where my 18 years of experience working in this library, not a grocery store, came in handy.

Me: We do not have a Jell-O art section. There MIGHT be a reference to some kind of food art in a modern art book, but that's something you're going to have to sift through. I can show you where the art books are. Or, if you want to do some online researching and you have an artist or a known book I can look up, but we don't have a Jell-O art section.

Patron: No?

Me: No.

Patron: Never mind then.

Indeed. Never mind.

Bicycle

2010-04-16T10:14:00.002-05:00

When I bought my bicycle, I was very enthusiastic about this new addition to my greener/healthier lifestyle, that is, until I rode it and realized how ill-prepared my legs and rear end were for such an abrupt change. I had no idea going greener was going to be such a literal pain in the ass.

It started off a grandiose rude awakening as I struggled to make the 2.5-mile distance around my favorite forest preserve. The pain in my tush from an uncomfortable seat sent me straight to the bike shop for a decent gel seat, which helped, but did not empower my legs, nor did it stop the burning and trembling after a short jaunt around my subdivision.

Also I learned you have to tighten that seat really well before going on a ride away from your car and toolbox.

My brother sent me this email right after I put the new seat on and he found the old one in the garage.

Hey, I was in the garage tossin' some trash and saw you have a new seat for your bike. Did you want me to throw it on for you? It's been a while but I've changed about 2 thousand bike seats so it would only take me 5 minutes. Seeing it made me nostalgic for the old bike riding days and it is oddly mind blowing that as a kid I could ride a bike for 4-5 hours straight and now I don't even like going downstairs. Time is just rude.

This was my response.

Thanks for the offer, but that's the old seat I put on the thingy for the new one. I have a 90-day warranty on the new one and didn't want to throw away the packaging, so I threw the old seat back on it so no one would throw it away. See, I was thinking all smart and stuff! Thanks for the offer, but I already did it. And, of course, having never done it before, I put it on too loose and half-way through the trail at the forest preserve it started slipping, and I had to ride 1½ miles back to my car to get the socket wrench with the seat standing straight up between my legs, like some naughty toy. Very humiliating. BUTT, I tightened it and it's been okay since. Still, I need the packaging because I think I'm going to take it back and get the wider seat. My butt still hurts.

You're right about time. I do 2 laps around the subdivision and fall off the bike trying to get up the driveway at the end because my legs can't hold me up. Sucks to get old.

Later on we were discussing it and he asked me where I liked to ride.

Me: Well, I had been doing the forest preserve, but that's too hard because it's a 3-6 mile loop, depending on the route, and so much can happen, as I learned with my seat, and bad things only happen when you're at the farthest distance from your car.

Bro: OHMYGOD, I hadn't even thought about that. What if you have to pee? What if you get hungry? GASP!

Me: Well, I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking more serious. Like, what if I take a dive over the handlebars and break my face? Or what if a coyote jumps out and bites my leg? Or what if I have to...poop?

Bro: Wow, I hadn't thought about the serious stuff. I was focused on peeing and being hungry, but you're right.

Me: Yeah, now I just ride around the subdivision because at any point I can cut across the field in the middle and get home a lot quicker, or if I feel up to it, do another lap. Or if I get marauded by a low-flying flock of geese, I can get home to get the dog and sic him on them right away. The subdivision is a lot safer to me. And I'm all about safety. I even carry ID with me when I bike and I take my cell phone. I don't trust myself not to get killed.

Bro: I just never thought about it! You COULD get killed! Riding a bike when you're grown up is so different from riding when you're a kid. Wow.

Me: Tell me about it! It's not only worse because I have no strength or endurance, but I'm all wigged out about dying on my bike from a freak accident and being far from home or unidentifiable. It really sucks being a grown-up biker. God, I should get a helmet. And pads. And prescription pain-killers.

At some point, I posted on my Facebook page that my thighs and ass were aflame, or something less offensive. Best Friend Extraordinaire saw the post and commented that we should go biking together, which sounded novel, but then I realized just how stupid that idea was for me. It's one thing to be out in the middle of a forest preserve alone, or riding around my subdivision, huffing and puffing, sweating like a pig, eyes watering from the wind, nose running from looking down, still trying to figure out the complicated gear shifting (which is why I drive an automatic!), and I certainly don't need an experienced rider alongside making fun of me the entire time.

We went out to eat together over the weekend and had the following conversation:

Me: So, I read your comment on my FB page about biking together, and while that's a nice idea...um...no. Not going to happen.

Her: WHY?!

Me: Because I can barely ride.

She laughed.

Me: No, seriously, I'm not as wobbly as I was the first week, thankfully, but I can't shift gears. At all. Or I'll shift, and it makes this terrible noise like grinding the engine and then two blocks later, when the landscape has changed again, it shifts to what I wanted two blocks ago. I'm a mess. I'm dangerous. I can't ride straight or even shift gears.

Her: Shift gears? Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, noooooooooo, I don't do that. I just ride in whatever gear it's in. I don't do the gear-shifting.

Me: No? Whew. Okay. But then I have this strength problem. You'd think that a year of working out multiple times a week would prepare my legs and ass for the ability to bike, but nuh-uh! I ride around my subdivision twice and by the time I get off the bike to put it in the garage, my legs are so weak they can't hold me up and my knees buckle.

Her: What?! You ride around your subdivision TWICE? I don't do that! I ride with my son and we only go 3 blocks at a time. I don't do subdivisions!

Me: Okay, that's good to know. But I also can't do uphill. Maybe it's the whole gear-changing problem, but I can't propel myself up the slightest incline yet. It's strictly flat surfaces for me.

Her: Ohhhhhh yeah, I don't do uphill either.

Me: You don't?

Her: Nope. Why would I do something stupid like that? That takes more effort.

Me: I like your style. We can go biking anytime you want!

And so I have faith again that BFE and I can renew our friendship, despite how our lives have gone in such different directions this last decade. And it was a bike that brought us together.

The funny thing is, we'll make plans to bike together and never do it, which is also fine by me. It's the thought that counts, and the knowledge that we are equals when it comes to biking, and that alone is enough to bond us together once more: sisters in infirmity.

The Evil One

2010-04-14T08:45:00.002-05:00

Despite the addition of two new building maintenance employees and two new security guards, either through personal problems or other jobs, we have seen many absences from these crucial new members of staff, plus my favorite of favorites, Sarge, quit. Almost daily, Marina and/or I will go to the washroom in the early part of the afternoon and find it completely toilet paper free and a total mess. Is that mud on the sink again or something else similarly colored? I don't want to know. Last week Marina found blood all up behind the toilet and on the back of the toilet seat. After a lengthy discussion about how this couldn't have happened, we decided that we hoped someone injured herself in the washroom and neglected to clean up, rather than figure out how menstrual blood got up in back of the toilet. Then I found blood in a more reasonable location: the front of the toilet seat and all over the floor in front of the toilet. Sad that these findings are so common that we are merely grateful we don't have a blood mystery to solve. Also plaguing us are the garbage bags that never ever get changed. Food and junk are dumped from the bags, but the torn, stained, stinky bags are still in the bin when we return each day, for weeks and weeks and weeks, and we have come to identify them by the remnants that will no longer fall into the large bin when they're dumped. My garbage can has some sticky goo and pencil shavings permanently adhered to the bag, while another has what looks like a dime-sized purple booger on the rim. That has to be a health issue, but we haven't made a big deal about it yet. Add to that how overburdened Arms is with his full-time job, his new girlfriend, moving to Chicago, and having to work all the security hours himself (without Sarge or a replacement) and we I deemed our library a dirty, insecure mess.

On Monday, our director hired a new maintenance guy to cover the shift where Marina and I frequently end up finding bathroom disasters, and I nearly fell to my knees and kissed the new guy's feet. No one will appreciate him more than Marina and me, that's for sure.

A few minutes after the introduction, I felt the need to pee, so off I went to the washroom. The upstairs washroom was full of giggling teens, both in stalls and outside waiting, so I scurried to the downstairs washroom where I thought it would be safe and available. What did I find? No toilet paper. It wasn't even on my FLOOR and here I was having to replace toilet paper downstairs too. As I was bringing armfuls of rolls of toilet paper to the washroom, I walked past the director and the new maintenance guy, and I eyed the boss-man with a squint, then indicated my arms full of toilet paper with my eyes, as if to silently let him know that I'm not happy about my role as toilet paper girl.

He said to the new guy, "This is Nikki, who you already met. She's The Evil One. Watch out for her."

The temptation to begin hurtling the toilet paper at my boss was intense. I vividly imagined hitting him with a roll of TP and watching it bounce off his head, sending both his head and the TP vibrating in different directions.

And no, that does not support his assertion that I'm The Evil One. That was simply the appropriate response.

AND I take slight offense to this misnomer, for I am certainly not the guiltiest, evilest one around. There is a sign on his door that reads, "Shhhh, director at work," and Marina, using red marker, wrote below that, "Sure..." When I asked how she gets away with that without a title exposing her devious nature while I get dubbed The Evil One, she simply said, "No one ever suspects the butterfly..."

Sigh.

Tuesday, our new maintenance guy quietly entered our office and emptied the trash, which I thought little of, exchanged a friendly greeting with him, and went about my work. When he left I realized he'd changed our garbage bags for the first time in months. I let out a scream of joy! Instantly, I IM'd Marina to share the good news and she was almost as ecstatic as I was. The new conundrum is, how will we know whose garbage we're using? If not for the big purple glob of unidentifiable food that's been sitting atop the rim of the garbage bag to my right since February, how will I know that can belongs by my boss's desk? And if not for the sticky goo at the bottom, covered in pencil shavings, how will I know that is the garbage bin Marina and I share? Will we even know it's our own office anymore without the stale smell of rotten banana peels due to two banana-eaters sitting in close proximity, constantly heaving peels into bags that collect banana gunk for years? Suddenly, there's a whole new scent of pride around here!

As I was leaving the building last night, I approached Arms and the director standing together, and Arms immediately said, "Uh-oh, here comes trouble."

Now, between the two of them dubbing me The Evil One and Trouble, I'm starting to wonder about my reputation around here. But not much. If I let myself care, then I'd have to consider changing, and that's out of the question. Besides which, perhaps my reputation overshadows Marina and allows the butterfly to get away with more. It's a partnership in accomplishing more trickery, and I'm all for that.

Slightly caught off guard by the meandering thoughts Arms caused by calling me Trouble, I found my way back to the matter at hand and announced to Arms and the director that I think I am in love with Jose, who gave us new garbage bags. They laughed. They have no idea how serious I am. Any man who will clean up after me to my satisfaction is a man I could love. And I think he has green eyes to go with the dark, Hispanic features -- swoon!

No wonder the other guys make me put in the toilet paper and don't change the garbage bags. They want no part of my infatuation. I mean, really, who wants The Evil One to be smitten with them?

BUILD-A-GEEK

2010-04-11T17:25:00.005-05:00

Last year for Ann's birthday, we took her to Build-A-Bear where Marina, Ann and I built bears. Christi opted out because of jealousy issues with her existing stuffed animals, which we all completely understood.

My first Build-A-Bear was Teddy Pringles, a black bear dressed in a Mountie uniform, who is supposed to represent the adorable black bear we met in the wild in Canada. I love Teddy Pringles so much!

In November, for Marina's birthday, we returned to Build-A-Bear with a healthy addiction well under way, and this time it was just Marina and me making bears. Ann had her precious sheep and no need or room for a sibling, and Christi cited the stuffed animal jealousy again, to which we nodded again in total understanding. Given that I'd just gone on my South Dakota trip, I REALLY wanted to make a buffalo, but alas, they had no buffalo. Instead, I made Nanuq, my polar bear (because I was a polar bear in my last life), and I dressed him as an Eskimo. Nanuq is the shit, yo! It doesn't get much cuter. Or softer.

So, in the meantime, I've been pining for my Build-A-Bear buffalo. I had already decided she was going to be named Dakota and I'd put her in traditional Indian dress. Finally, I just bit the bullet and ordered her, and folks, this is the cutest little buffalo in the history of cute little buffalo.

She's soft like Nanuq, has the biggest brown eyes, and a cute pink mouth like she's grazing.

I never meant to fall in love with Build-A-Bears. They're so commercial and silly, and so what if you can help put them together? They're just stuffed animals, right?

Au contraire! They are fuzzy little love beasts and I want more.

Redemptive Weekend

2010-04-05T22:36:00.003-05:00

It always starts off badly, with smelly, self-centered people who want you to coddle them and be their best buddy, doing things for them that their own friends and family don’t have the patience for, and they don’t ask for any of it; they expect it.

Patron: So, I have a file that’s waiting to be burned on a CD, but what if the computer crashes? Will I lose it?

Me: That, um, depends on the crash. It’s always good to have a backup of anything important that you’re working on. Save it on the computer in a different place, save it on a flash drive, email it to yourself, even if you have to do it a few times over the course of your paper. But, yeah, I’d say save it somewhere else as well.

Patron: But will I lose it?

Me: I can’t say for certain. What I’m saying is to keep a backup.

Patron: You’re not answering my question! If the computer crashes and I don’t have a backup, will I lose that file waiting to be burned?

Me: I’ve explained that I don’t know, that it depends on why the computer crashed, but to avoid that being a catastrophe, save it somewhere else.

Patron: How hard is it to answer a question around here?! WILL? I? LOSE? THE? FILE?

Me: Sir, I’ve answered your question three times. I. Don’t. Know. So! YOUR job is to cover yourself. Save it. Don’t risk it. Do you understand what I’m saying?

Patron (defeated): *sigh* Yes.

I immediately sent Marina an IM, though she was sitting 4 feet away, stating emphatically that I hate that guy and don’t like having to be even professionally polite to him. She agreed.

Soon after, one of our least favorite female patrons approached the desk.

Lady: I have a phone number and I was wondering if you could get me an email address for it.

Me: Uh, you want me to try to find someone’s email address? Based on the phone number?

Lady: Yeah.

Me: Is it a business? Or a person?

Lady: It’s a person. They’re not in this country, either. That’s why I want an email address. I don’t want to call.

Me: That I’m aware of, there isn’t a database that links people from their phone number to an email address, unless that phone number is on a website and offers up an alternate way of getting a hold of them. Do you know if this person has a website?

Lady: No, it’s just somebody who wants me to call them.

Me: And it’s an international number?

Lady: Yes.

Me: Do you have a name? I wonder if there are international yellow pages…

Lady: No, I don’t have a name. Just a phone number.

Me: I…I …I only know how to do a reverse phone number lookup for phone numbers in the US and Canada, and that MIGHT give me a name and number if that phone number is listed, but it’ll be for the person who pays the bill.

Lady: No email address?

Me: No. So far there isn’t a database of listed email addresses. Thankfully.

Lady: So, I have no way of finding out this person’s email address from their phone number.

Me: You’re welcome to search online, but I can’t imagine that there would be. And if there were, I’d be very bothered by that. Plus, when people get email accounts, they don’t necessarily use their real information. There pretty much isn’t a way of finding that out.

Lady: You sure?

I wasn’t, but for this purpose I said I was. If she had the idea to go on a wild goose chase, she could do it herself. This is the lady who got very upset with me recently when she forgot her password and I couldn’t track her history on the computer to see what she used. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to use computers.

Another man came in and ranted about losing his job of 10 years, the injustice of it, the anger this spawned, how he now had to go look for a new job and start over at a company when he didn’t deserve to be treated this way. He was livid and told anyone nearby how furious he was to be unemployed, like he was above this. It was embarrassing to me to be standing amongst a group of adults using computers, many of whom were unemployed, none of them raving about how they didn’t deserve it, and I just wanted to slap this guy. What an ass! I did what he needed, but I didn’t even acknowledge his tirade about the job loss with my usual, “I’m sorry for your loss,” or “Good luck with your job search,” or anything remotely sympathetic. I nodded when he looked at me and redirected him toward the technological question he asked me. I’m not your goddamn shrink, you putz! Cut the crap and quit bitching about how bad you have it because not many people around you are better off.

As the day went on, it became clear that the dregs of humanity were out and about, wandering in and out of the library throughout the day, asking me questions that even as I was hearing them, I was thinking to myself that this was going to go in the blog.

Then, as we were cleaning up at the end of the day, a middle-aged man who had been using a computer for most of the afternoon, approached me and told me something that changed everything.

He had that look in his eye like he was a broken man, beyond wanting to retain some dignity. It was a sad, end-of-the-line look, almost child-like in absolute trust, pleading and fragile, and he told me he recently lost his house and was homeless. He needed help because he didn’t want to live in his van anymore.

I bit my lip. It was all I could do to keep from crying.

Given that we were closing, I gave him a list of places to go for help, organizations (governmental and non-profits), shelters, etc., but I couldn’t devote much time to finding more information about programs and such. I did explain that my knowledge might be a mile wide, but is only an inch deep, and calling these places would put him in touch with people whose knowledge runs much deeper and includes personal experience. He thanked me, said he still had a cell phone that hadn’t been turned off yet, and he’d call them first thing Monday when business hours commenced. He walked out of the building and I was struggling trying to remain on my feet. It simply broke my heart.

This man was smart enough and desperate enough to ask for help, which was good, and hopefully I gave him some tools to help him. But he was so meek, so unassuming, so kind, so grateful, so human. He placed no blame, he wasn’t angry, he didn’t demand anything – he simply wanted someone to give him some avenues he could travel down to get out of this. It was beautifully heartbreaking, and for the first time in a long time, I felt some hope. Hope for him. Hope for me. Hope for all of us. Still it saddens me. It’s a heavy weight I feel when people lay upon me these stories of woe and I let myself care. Part of me wishes he’d been an asshole like my previous patrons and barked at me orders to do various tasks for him, and that way I wouldn’t feel much of anything about his loss. But most of me is appreciative for the trust, the humanity, and the mutual respect, because if I can help him carry his burden, if just for a moment, and he walks away feeling like there’s someone on earth who cares, then maybe the job I do isn’t so frivolous, and maybe the person I’ve grown to be isn’t so selfish, so untouchable, so jaded.

I wore this new-found humble sensation all weekend. Well, until Easter Sunday, when I skipped around and wished everyone a Happy Zombie Jesus Day, and cooked a holiday dinner against my mother’s and mine won. Then I returned to work today to find myself just as quick to be irritated with the patrons who bully me without respect.

Yet, there is this memory of the homeless man who, if just for a moment, carried me, too. It makes me wonder who needs to be saved from what.

Defcon 1

2010-04-02T20:53:00.003-05:00

The other day, my mom had a panic attack about not having enough food in the house. She mentioned to my brother that she wouldn’t be able to grocery shop for another week and that we’d have to get by until then, make the food that we had last for a while.

(I should explain that I buy most of the groceries for our house, but I refuse to buy junk food. I buy produce – fresh and frozen – of all kinds, meat, jarred and dried foods, and all the household products. My mother gets a small lump sum in food stamps, and with that she buys the crap I won’t buy, like cookies, cakes, pop, chips, shitty pre-packaged foods full of sodium and preservatives, and the white bread products I can’t and won’t consume. Her money doesn’t go far and she usually runs out somewhere around the middle of the month, so she must spend the remainder of the month eating the fresh foods I buy, which drives her crazy because that means it requires her to cook.)

My brother, of sound mind and body (relatively, compared with her), told her there was plenty of food in the house and he didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. When he told me about this later, we laughed heartily because Mom can take a perfectly safe, normal, calm situation where no panic is necessary and take it straight to panic mode, Defcon 1. We dubbed it Foodcon 1. The fridge isn’t packed to the walls with food and you can actually see the shelves in the pantry, so she was worried we were going to starve to death. We happened to run out of milk 2 days before I was to grocery shop, so she was frantic about having no milk and my unwillingness to run to the store to buy more milk.

Let me show you something.

THIS is what the refrigerator looks like.

THIS is what the pantry looks like.

THIS is the collection of fruit I have sitting on the island at any given time. (I’m a banana and grapefruit addict, by the way.) What you cannot see are the shelves on the bottom that are piled high with potatoes (3 5-pound bags), onions and other fresh produce that can be left out of the fridge.

This doesn’t even include the fact that I have a 5.2 cubic foot chest freezer in the garage (too dark to take a picture) that is so crowded, I’ve had to take things out of their original packaging and put them in baggies with notes on when they were opened and what they are. Meat stacks better when thawed and repackaged in Ziploc bags, the air is pushed out, and you can pile almost twice as much in a given space. Frozen pizzas in boxes take up too much room, so I leave them in their plastic wrap and cut out the cooking instructions, which I tape to the pizza. That freezer is packed so tight that I have to pile heavy things on top to keep the lid down.

PEOPLE, WE HAVE PLENTY OF FOOD! We could go a month without shopping and barely show concern. Part of that is because I learned from my dad to overbuy things that will keep for a long time and I tend to stock up if I can afford to do so, largely because I never know what tomorrow will bring, and maybe the food money will be cut severely, but I’ll have a heap of food to get us by for a while.

Yet, we were at Foodcon 1 to my mother.

That’s her way. Everything is tragic; everything is scary; everything is bad. It’s not even a case of seeing the glass as half-empty. She sees a full glass and panics because the glass isn’t big enough, or worse, it could be knocked over before you get to drink it and then there won’t be anything in the glass! She’s that way about everything: Defcon 1.

She should get a job with Homeland Security. Or airport security.

It's Not So Bad Being Me

2010-04-01T20:57:00.004-05:00

I knew it wasn't going to be a good day when I was getting ready for work. First, I pulled a muscle in my back somehow. All my working out at the gym and riding my bike did not strengthen my back muscles such that they could withstand simple movement getting out of bed, and one would freak out and cry like a baby. Stupid muscles.

Then, as I was brushing my teeth -- which is more like brushing my mouth, including my tongue, the roof, and down my throat -- I hit a sensitive spot and gagged. Hard. Unlike I've ever gagged before. I didn't just catch myself starting to heave, but my throat made a horrific sound that took my evolution back eons, and something resembling the alarmed call of a pterodactyl escaped my esophagus. First I was startled, wondering if that noise really came from me, and when I realized it had, I started to laugh. Not a giggle. Not a snicker. But a full-on case of hilarity that caused me to spit toothpaste foam all over my mirror. This, of course, made me crack up more, and not wanting to spit more on my mirror, I tried to stifle it, which failed. Not only did I laugh harder, but the harder I tried not to laugh, the harder I laughed. Soon there were tears running down my face, toothpaste dripping down my throat, and the gagging started again until I threw up in my sink. And I was still laughing. Harder. Leelu was kind enough to point out that there are worse scenarios for throwing up than in a fit of laughter, and while I do agree, minty vomit is still pretty gross.

By the time I arrived at work, I was really feeling like a lame-o, and then I had the following conversation with Marina, via IM.

Me: You working tomorrow?

Marina: No way, Jose

Me: LOL, okay then.
Me: Do you need help clipping coupons?

She has a coupon program on Saturday and everyone has been bringing in their unused coupon inserts for her.

Marina: I shouldn't
Marina: I keep the inserts intact whenever possible

Me: Ah.
Me: Okay. Was looking for something different to do. So tired of ordering books.

Marina: I know what you mean
Marina: You could do my cataloging homework

Me: Sure. If you want to fail.

Marina: Hmmm good point.
Marina: If I can't understand it after three lectures on the topic, I doubt someone who hasn't sat through the B.S. could do it with no instruction
Marina: I'll get [the head of Tech Services] to do it
Marina: He'll think its fun

Me: Oh, good idea.

Marina: I don't know why it is so hard for me to grasp

Me: Because it's boring.
Me: How well would you do on a project about the chemical properties of paint and how they contribute to the length of time it takes for them to dry?

Marina: Well...
Marina: Probably worse than cataloging

Me: Uh-huh
Me: Detect a pattern here?

Marina: Yeah you're right
Marina: Even with three lectures, cuz I'd likely sleep through all 3
Marina: I'm just baffled, because 80% of my class seems to love it
Marina: They all want to take more cataloging classes
Marina: I think the conclusion that this leads to is that librarians are cracked

Me: Were you in doubt before the class?
Me: Need I remind you of our consortium meetings?

Marina: I guess I never really put it all together before
Marina: What did I get myself into?

Me: You just got yourself into a field where you are guaranteed to be the coolest, hippest, brightest, and most with-it person around.
Me: CONGRATS!

Marina: Oh yay!
Marina: A patron just asked me for his horoscope
Marina: I've never been asked that before

Me: A weird lady came in yesterday wanting copies [a coworker] made for her of her PAST horoscopes!
Me: OMG, what good is that?
Me: In hindsight!

Marina: lol
Marina: Maybe she is doing research on the accuracy of horoscopes

Me: Um...
Me: Maybe
Me: But I doubt it.

Marina: Yeah probably not

Me: Have you looked around lately?
Me: Do it. Right now. Take a look at your patrons.

Marina: I'm scared....

Me: You should be.

Which reminds me of a conversation I had not too long ago with one of my favorite people.

Patron: Hey, beautiful.

I looked around to see who the hell he was talking to and there was no one there but me. I was thinking he shouldn't be this drunk this early in the morning, but as he approached the desk he didn't smell like alcohol. Must be the politician in him that makes him so good at lying like that.

Me: Good morning.

Patron: Are you still dating Boyfriend *eyeroll* Extraordinaire? What are you thinking dating someone who lives in California? You need to look for someone else, someone local.

Me: WHAT?! Are you on crack? Have you SEEN the men who live around here? You'd like me to DATE one of THEM?

Patron (laughing): Okay, you have a point, but you should look in areas like Evanston. They're the types of guys for you.

He said this like it's a question of lifting up rocks and peering behind bushes, trying to find men in certain areas worthy of dating. Wait, that might not be a bad idea…

Patron: You're right, though. I'm looking at the patrons behind you, sitting at the computers. There's one guy, I swear he's on the sex offender list. Don't look, but he's on computer #5.

Me: Oh, yeah, I know who you're talking about. He's harmless, just creepy. And no, I wouldn't date him.

Patron: Slim pickings around here.

Me: Tell me about it! Why do you think I moved on to another state?!

So, while my day started off weird, I realize I'm probably not the weirdest person around, and that's nice.

This Post is Overdue

2010-03-29T23:10:00.003-05:00

A long time ago I received an email from a woman named Marilyn Johnson, who identified herself as an author writing a book about librarians in the cyberage. We began an email conversation that has budded into a respect and friendship, and it all stemmed from her curiosity about my defunct blog about Happyville Library. We discussed many topics, like prudish views and censorship of librarians by themselves, though they are the very people who are supposed to champion free speech. When not sharing experiences on the heavy topics, there was always the never-ending supply of stories about poop. Libraries provide us with the fodder that fill blogs for years, and shock outsiders about what really goes on. Marilyn was no less shocked than any of the rest of us were the first time we found a rogue turd in the library.

As she worked on her book, her deadline fast approaching, I awaited its publication with silly eagerness, anxious to read about what she uncovered during the rest of her research and what a whack profession she would reveal this field to be.

First, she sent me a copy of the galleys (which I learned was the manuscript), and when it was published, I got a copy of the book, This Book is Overdue.

Much to my astonishment and delight, she had much more to say about the profession than I expected. I read every page, devoured it completely, and felt like I understood the job I do a little bit better because I was looking at it from a perspective that I had not entertained in decades: as an outsider. This book was written with a loving touch, a kind of objective reverence, one that made me feel proud of what I do not because I think we're going to save the world, but because we collect, share and preserve civilization, whatever that entails at this point in society. It wasn't all librarian martyrdom, either. Let's get down to business with the nightmare that is a Sirsi upgrade (deep breaths!) and how it pits IT library staff against all others, or the silliness that is the book-cart drill-teams. She covered it all, from many sides, dark and light, all respectful and diligent in upholding the library ideal, and yet still devoting a section of a chapter to my own trials and tribulations, which she dubbed "The Real Poop".

Barring the fact that I have been immortalized in book format for my battles within the library and without, for being the finder of poop, and a blogger who writes because I can't stop myself, I was deeply proud to be mentioned in this book. It's a gem and it will always have a place on my shelf. Not many would think to document the meaning of being part of a library in this day and age, and I'm sure even fewer would imagine this book is worthy of reading, but truly, if you work in a library, if you frequent libraries, or if you're just curious about librarians, this is a book to read. It will shed light on things you had forgotten about, didn't know occurred, or just flat out took for granted. And maybe, like me, you'll put it down and feel a little bit better about your library.

Climate Committees

2010-03-24T22:38:00.004-05:00

An old tradition has been resurrected at my library recently, at a time of year when resurrections are en vogue. For the first time in a long while, we have a Sunshine Committee.

My outspoken abhorrence of committees not withstanding, the very concept of a committee designed to bring sunshine to the staff strikes at my very sensitive phony bone. Cookies, parties and random acts of caloric kindness do not a Happy Villain make. People, I lost 70 pounds by kicking sunshine’s ass, and I’m not about to let a committee of people with teeth too white and attitudes too bright take that away from me. Besides which, I’m pretty damn content being partly cloudy.

Now, I like the people on the Sunshine Committee a lot. They are happy faces I enjoy encounters with and who routinely make me laugh, so righteously they belong on a committee dedicated to raising employee morale. However, given the choice, I’d much rather go home and study my bellybutton than stick around the library on the clock and mingle with my coworkers over snacks and non-alcoholic beverages. Add some lame-ass games to that mix and I’d just about fall upon a sword to get out of it. Forced socialization makes me covet a recluse lifestyle.

As if this all weren’t bad enough, we are having another all-day, all-staff meeting, which, when I look at the schedule, seems to me to be a feeble excuse to get people to obey an order to come to work and participate in seminars, activities and exchanges that no one cares about or really could benefit from. An hour on our retirement fund? Two hours on assertiveness? One hour on happiness? A question and answer session? Should we really close the library for an entire day for this crap, and pay everyone to be there? There is a one-hour luncheon event put together by the Sunshine Committee, and given my specialized diet, it’s a wasted hour and an expense I can’t participate in. Additionally, there is a one-hour activity, fiercely secretive, held at the end of the meeting, put to us by the Sunshine Committee.

I have to go in on my day off for this.

Thus, I have decided I am going to be the unofficial, unsanctioned Gloomy Committee. I will not bake for staff; I will not throw them parties; I will not ask them to play games at work instead of doing their job or going home; and I will not give anyone a hard time for not being gloomier. I will simply be my gloomy self and not impose my attitude on others. It is my plan enjoy my Gloom by politely refusing the Sunshine and sitting in the shade, rolling my eyes, wishing for a fire drill or building-wide case of dysentery.

It’s hard to be sunshiny when I spent the afternoon fielding calls from cranky patrons who aren’t satisfied with all the free things they get from the library. Patron A is pissed because the museum pass program, which gives people free admission, doesn’t include the museum she would like to attend, and though Macy’s actually sponsored this and we just hand out the passes, she would like to lodge a formal complaint that we are misleading people into believing that we have a program ongoing that is of value, which she feels is not. Furthermore, she would like us to find a way to get free passes to her museum of choice to satisfy her need. Then, Patron B, who has an affinity for music that’s so obscure it has to come from one of the 4 libraries in the world who own it, yells at me because we don’t have it on our shelf for him right this minute. Patron C, who is also a music-lover, is looking for Celtic music, but he pronounces it with a soft C instead of a hard C, which makes me wonder if the basketball team is putting out albums now. Patron D just signed up for a new email account and already forgot her password, which she’s angry with me about because I have no way of retracing her history on the computer to see what she used. Am I seriously expected to be sunshiny 4 hours into a shift of frustration like this? Oh, and did I mention I’m midway through my week of estrogen withdrawal and Midol can only do so much? Ain’t no sunshine.

My two favorite patrons graced me with their loveliness today, too, but I was unable to find the sunshine.

Mitch and I discussed books for a bit, until he realized he had a small stain in the middle of his sweater and began rubbing it, licking his thumb and smearing it around, enlarging the stain with each touch.

Me: Um, it looks like you’re growing an emblem on your chest. Maybe a superhero uniform? Is that it? Is that the larva stage of a Superman costume?

Mitch: I should stop, huh? It’s just getting bigger and bigger.

Me: That happens when you rub it. In my experience.

He didn’t get my dirty joke because he was so focused on rubbing the stain. Eventually he wandered off and about 20 minutes later he walked past my desk sheepishly, trying to avoid eye contact, and I noticed that the once pea-sized stain had grown to the size of a softball and looked freshly drenched. I laughed, but even Mitch couldn’t make the gloom go away. There were too many patrons barking at me from other directions.

When the phone rang and I took a deep breath, expecting to be yelled at by another patron, I was pleased to hear the voice of my other favorite, Tim. He gave me the name of a book he wanted and I ordered it, then finally identified myself.

Me: Hi, Tim, it’s Nikki.

Tim: HEY SWEETIE! God, I haven’t seen you in way too long!

Me: I know. Where have you been?

Tim: Ugh, you know how it goes. I’m actually downtown right now in a meeting and someone mentioned this book so I thought I’d get it right away before I forget about it. So how ARE you? What have you been up to?

Me: Well, given that you’re in a meeting and talking on the phone with me, I’ll give you the LONG version: I’m fine.

Tim: Hahaha, okay, I’ll come in so we can catch up.

Me: You better. Or I might forget about you.

Tim: No, baby, don’t do that! I’ll see you soon.

Me: Promises, promises.

Do people have these types of conversations with their librarians? Tell me I’m not the only one out there playing around like this.

But even Tim couldn’t bring the sunshine.

And if Mitch and Tim can’t bring the sunshine, cookies in the staff lounge are not going to cut it.

Thus, I am a natural Gloomy Committee member. A committee of one. As it should be.

Daniel-san!

2010-03-21T17:56:00.002-05:00

If seeing sandhills on Thursday on my way to get my new bike was a sign of a good day to come, I can only imagine what tonight holds for me. (Not holding my breath, though.) As I arrived home from work today, they were back and this time they were in the mood. I got pictures of cranes doing a mating dance! AS SEEN FROM MY DRIVEWAY!

Click below if you're interested. If not, I won't bore you with a long narrative.

SPRING!

2010-03-18T14:57:00.005-05:00

Today I had a mission: buy a bicycle. I've been working my ass off, literally, at the gym since last May and have finally gotten to the point where I think I have the strength and stamina to be a biker again, so today was the day to get it. I even took a vacation day tomorrow and one next week for riding purposes.

However, pessimist that I am, I wasn't so sure it would all work out for me today. Either the bikes would all be out of my price range (because really, it's been 20+ years since I bought one and inflation doesn't skip over bikes because I want it to), or they would only have ugly, grandma, brown ones. Gah!

As I left the house, I was half-excited, half-pre-disappointed.

Walking toward my car in my driveway, I looked to my right to admire the gorgeous sunny day and the birds gathered at the bird feeder and very nearly shit my jeans.

Two monstrous sandhill cranes were standing there, probably 30 feet away from me and approaching! HOLY CRAP! Now, I've seen sandhills before and I love them passionately. My first sandhill encounter happened outside of Grand Marais, Michigan one June when I was driving down the street and spied these two gigantic orange birds and a tiny baby one. I swerved off the road, did a U-ie, and watched these marvelous creatures until they scampered off into the woods. Since then, it's been an ongoing love affair. But they've NEVER, in the 23 years I've lived here, paid a visit to my yard!

Not even the ornery Canada geese deterred them. They munched on seeds and breadcrumbs for a good long time, until someone approached too close and they wandered into my back yard!

SANDHILLS IN MY BACK YARD!

Eventually the guy who scared them off left and they went right back to the bird feeder to continue filling up. They seemed to not care about me in the least, and I was no more than 15 feet from them.

I watched them eat for a while and then went about my bike-buying day. I'm weirdly superstitious about how my day starts off and how that bodes for the remainder of the day. If, while driving to work, I hear a good song on the radio, it will be a good day. If I'm going somewhere and spot interesting wildlife, the adventure will be grand. It always pans out, too. Never fails. So, with my pair of sandhill cranes in my yard, I knew things would go well with the bike-buying.

And it did! I'm the proud new owner of a baby blue Schwinn mountain bike, which I have to re-learn how to ride.

DUDE, they lie so hard when they say you don't forget how to ride a bicycle because in 20 years, bikes are TOTALLY DIFFERENT and I have to learn how to ride new bikes. Also, the style of jeans that are currently out there are not conducive to bike riding, thank you very much fashion designers. I'm going to be one of those geeks with a rubberband around my ankle so my boot-cut pant cuffs aren't snagging on the chain. This was so much easier in the 80s when we wore stirrup pants or jeans with ankles so tight they put zippers in them so your feet fit through. Sigh.

Anyway, it was a successful adventure and I'm a bike owner and temporary neighbor to sandhill cranes.

I love spring!

Thats My Gig, But Do I Really Want This Gig

2010-03-11T03:35:00.002-06:00

Somehow, for some reason, the Powers That Be at my library decided to spend a bloody fortune on bringing in a national author to our hick little town (good PR, dontcha know?), and the lucky author, as voted on by the patrons, was announced last week.

Marina, who is organizing the event, has been inundated with the details of this duty, as well as fielding all patron questions about the event.

Allow me to digress momentarily.

We have a patron, a professional photographer, or at least someone who fancies himself a pro, who has long been using our library. I'll call him Jack. Jack is a classic narcissist who thinks his shit doesn't stink. The only time this guy wants to talk with me is when he wants to brag about some piece of camera equipment he bought, or a job he got shooting for someone quasi-famous. (Meaning, an unknown member of a band that was popular in the 80s, who is now touring with a new band of has-beens and playing local dives with the rest of the local nobodies around the country.) He likes to stand in front of me for 15 minutes and talk about how awesome he is, and then ask me if I'm doing anything important or getting paid for my work yet. It bugs me. Lately he's been suggesting he might be a good mentor for me, that he could teach me a lot (which he says with a creepy grin), and introduce me to important people he knows. I politely decline. I'm on library time, after all. If I were not, I'd tell him to go fuck a duck. Not only do I not appreciate someone telling me they'd like to teach me some things (with a wink and a nudge), but it better not be some jerk who thinks he has talent running out of his ears and I'd be lucky to just witness his genius. 'Twould be good of him to not wear expensive shoes when he suggests such nonsense or he'll be cleaning my undigested lunch out of the seams. But since he thinks a lot of himself, I'm quite tempted to tell him that this opinion doesn't have many followers. The few occasions when I've shown him my work he's been speechless and gushed about how surprisingly good I am (always with an addendum that he could teach me more if I let him), but I am not a good photographer, and it only goes to show he has no concept of what it takes to be a good photographer. Added to this misconception of grandeur is his lack of business skills and the sheer number of people who gave him a chance and now won't return his calls. This is not a guy you want to work with.

Jack was in last week when he noticed the sign about our super national author visit and he began grilling me for information immediately. He's a big fan, so much so that he's stalked the poor guy at places he was scheduled to make appearances, but for comical reasons I can only attribute to this author's divine luck, they have not met yet. Jack is determined, though. With little to tell him, I advised him to ask Marina when he was in the library next.

Yesterday, as I was coming back from my trip to the gym with my arms loaded up with my lunchbag, purse, coat and other miscellaneous junk I carry around with me, I heard my name being shouted from about 25 feet away.

My office, and I think I've said this before, is about 3½ miles from the staff entrance, which requires me to walk through the administrative offices, past the circ desk, past the reference desk, and through the teen area, and we are threatened with unforseen numbers of patron landmines just to get to the locked door of safety where we can finally take off our coat and set down our luggage. (Luggage being that which we lug around.) (We need a tunnel into our office. I think I'll start digging with my spoon on my lunch break tomorrow.) The stress of trying to get to the office before being accosted is intense, and I cannot tell you how many times I've made it as far as unlocking the door and getting one foot inside before someone nabs me and forces me to do my job.

Such was the case with Jack yesterday.

With one foot in the office as I was pulling the key from the lock, I turned at the sound of my name being shouted and found Jack hurrying toward me.

Jack: Were you trying to avoid me?

Already I was irritated. He saw me with all that stuff in my arms, saw me hurrying in to get to the office. It's ALWAYS about him, though.

Me: No, I'm trying to get into my office so I can set all my stuff down.

Jack: Oh, okay. I just talked with Marina about--

Me: The author visit, yeah, good.

Jack: She gave me all the information. I'm so excited!

Me: That's good. A lot of people have been asking so it'll probably be popular.

Jack: Yeah, but my wife and I just LOVE him!

Me: Okay, so you're the happiest about this. Great.

Jack: Oh, and I asked Marina something else. I said I'd be happy to cover the event and take pictures for the library if they'd let me.

I cocked an eyebrow at him. He knows that's my gig.

Jack (looking at me sideways): But I don't want to step on any toes or anything.

I smiled my fakest work smile of all.

Me: She'll probably have to clear that with the director first.

Jack: Yeah, that's what she said.

Me: Well, good luck with that.

Jack: Okay, thanks. It was really good seeing you again. You look great!

Me (less than sincerely): Thaaaaaaaanks.

When I got into the office and closed the door, I whispered as loud as I could, "WHAT AN ASS!" and as I was slamming my stuff down near my desk I continued, "I HATE having to be nice to people here who I'd rather tell off!" I grumbled more, slammed myself into my chair and didn't care who heard me.

After discussing it with Marina, and after she perused Jack's MySpace page, where he showcases his work--

Wait, I have to comment on that.

MYSPACE!? Seriously, you consider yourself a professional caliber photographer and your only online exhibition is on MY-FUCKING-SPACE? Could you be a bigger loser? Could you be a bigger douche? Seriously, unless you're looking to impress underprivileged middle school and high school students and lure them into some septic, decrepit dungeon to perform unspeakable acts upon them, your photo gallery on MySpace will get you precisely ZERO respect, you booger-eating moron!

Sigh.

So, Marina, thoroughly unimpressed with his work, felt the need to tell me that he wasn't so hot and I shouldn't feel intimidated by him, which was good because I was expressing a little bit of trepidation about being so amateurish and covering such a huge event myself. Perhaps bringing in a pro would be good. Just not him. Anyone but him.

Grrrr, that guy makes me angry.

And here it is, a day later, and I'm still angry, even though Marina officially told me today that if I wanted the shoot, it's mine. Plus I helped her craft the denial email she sent Jack, in which I would have liked to find and insert a big fuck-you smiley, but alas, that would make her look unprofessional.

Anger still beads on my skin, though. That weasel!

So, when this gigantic, ornery woman came bounding over to my desk this afternoon, followed closely by Arms, and she was demanding to know why she was only getting in one of her inter-library loans per week since moving to our library from the neighboring library, and why we purchase so few new releases, and why our library sucks, I let her get away with it and tried to reason with her rationally for a bit, but it became quite clear I hadn't the patience or the tools with which to not only give her what she wanted, but to continue with the act without bludgeoning her, and then I snapped.

At some point during her rant about Northbrook's Library, the holiest of all libraries in her eyes, where they purchase every movie released every single week whether their patrons want them or not, but they have strict rules about lending out AV on ILL, I said something maybe I shouldn't have.

Me: Well, there's a big difference between our library and Northbrook's. That's MONEY. They have loads of it and we don't. They can afford to buy every new release there is but we can't. Look around. This town is nothing like Northbrook.

She started to say that we should be more like Northbrook, as if nothing I'd just said made a damn bit of sense to her and I cut her off.

Me: Northbrook is great, right? Maybe you should move there.

I felt myself going down a bad path. A path to Unemployment. So I added to that.

Me: But who can afford that, right? Not many of us could, or else we would. You have to keep in mind that they are LOADED. Their tax money is huge compared with ours. You're not going to get that collection here. Period. End of story.

I could tell she understood, but she wasn't happy and wanted to continue to argue. She altered her rant to be about the stingy ILL policy they had and how that's the only place to get some of the movies she's interested in.

Me: Look, I understand you think that you should have access to everything, and I really wish we could give that to our patrons, but they have the right to do with their money as they please. It's THEIR money. ALL of it. They don't owe us a thing. And you DO have an alternative. You can drive all the way to Northbrook and check it out there. You just can't get it delivered to us so you can pick it up here. You want those movies, go right ahead and get them. From Northbrook.

She said something like that wasn't going to happen and resigned that there was nothing she could do to change the system as she walked out the door.

Yes, blame the bloody system that fails you and your need to see every fucking movie released every week FOR FREE, delivered to your local library, which you can keep for a fucking week! Yes, that sucks, doesn't it? Even Netflix can't beat that deal and still she raves. MAYBE she should get off her cranky ass and do something other than watch fucking movies all day and night, and maybe she should learn that there's more to life than her precious addiction to what fake people are pretending to be doing on film. And MAYBE she should try getting out more so she can develop some interpersonal skills, which she is in dire need of. And maybe then she'll succeed in life beyond her no-name uniformed package delivery job and excel at something so she can move her miserable ass to NORTHBROOK! THEY CAN HAVE HER!

And thus, the fury continues. Good thing I leave town in two days on a much-needed long weekend trip.

Dweebs -- they vex me so.

She Will Math You

2010-03-08T21:38:00.002-06:00

There was a very impish lad sitting at one of the adult computers tonight and I did not believe he was old enough to be doing so. Wanting to bust him for using someone else’s card, I looked up the computer user and tried in vain to determine his age from his birthday.

Me: He was born in 96, so he’s 14, right? No wait, 24. No! 14! What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do mental math anymore?

Marina: Don’t ask me. I’ve never been able to. I have to use a calculator, or there’s a screen you can click on and it will actually tell you the patron’s age. Look.

She showed me and it was the first time in my 17+ years that Sirsi actually impressed me, so I smiled.

Me: That’s awesome! Thank you! So, anyway, he’s 14 and I guess he actually is old enough to be using our computers. Color me surprised.

Marina: Yeah, me too. When he turned around and I saw his face, yeah, he could be 14, but from behind he looks like he’s 8.

Me: I’d rather not confront him anyway. It’s not worth it. But it’s great to know that I don’t have to hurt myself with the mental math anymore.

Marina: I know. I can’t math.

Me: What? Did you just turn “math” into a verb? You can’t do that!

Marina: Yes I can! I totally can!

Me: Nuh-uh, “math” is not a verb!

Marina: Yes it is. I may not be able to math, but I can English.

That became our favorite quote, on the spot.

Me: ARMS! Did you know that Marina thinks she can just turn the word “math” into a verb. She says she can’t math well.

Arms just chuckled and Marina got that puffed-out chest stance that dared this big, gigantic man to disagree with little ol’ her.

Arms: You guys are like Smurfs then.

Me: What the hell are you talking about?

Arms: Well, they substituted regular words and input “Smurf” instead. They would “smurf” this or “smurf” that.

Me: That’s not what we were doing.

Arms: Poor Smurfette, though.

He jumps around in conversations like this often. Sometimes you just have to pretend like you understand and not ask. Guys with big muscles focus on things other than linear and logical thought patterns.

Arms: Just one chick with all those guys.

Me: Lucky girl!

Arms: No, not lucky! Do you know what a nightmare that had to have been?

Marina: Yeah, I’m with Arms. Did you SEE some of those guy Smurfs? Ew.

Arms: Yeah, she was completely abused, you could just tell.

Marina: I think you mean she was completely “smurfed”, don’t you?

Touche!

At some point while we were yakking with Arms, a woman walked into the library carrying her shitzu-poo-poo-doodle-something dog in her arms.

All three of us saw this at the same time and Arms vocalized our thoughts for us.

Arms: HUH!?

He took off after her and moments later he was escorting her and her fluffy little pet out the door. When he returned he was laughing.

Arms: She said the reason she brought the dog in was because there was no sign saying she couldn’t.

Me: Oh, so we need a sign for everything now?

Arms: Apparently she thinks so.

Me: Once we had a guy walk in with a huge iguana on a leash sitting on his shoulders. The guy said he didn’t know he couldn’t bring it into the library. DUH! I said, “Unless that’s a seeing-eye iguana, it’s got to go.”

Arms: Oh, I’ll have to remember that one!

I spent much of the night trying to imagine what kinds of signs we’re supposed to have posted out there so that stupid people know they cannot do it in our library.

No setting your hair on fire?
No stabbing?
No flying squirrels?
No cars?

I mean, where does it end?

Patrons. Totally smurfing nuts sometimes.

Full Moon

2010-03-02T10:14:00.003-06:00

While Sunday was a full moon, I am fairly certain that the effects of the lunar lunacy in my area surrounds the actual full moon by three to four days on either side.

Over the weekend, I was approaching the water fountain to fill my large container that I use to keep my plants surrounding my desk fed. The water fountain lies between the men’s and women’s washrooms, and as I neared that part of the lobby, a man walked out of the men’s washroom still zipping and buttoning his pants.

When a man you are not interested in has his hands on his open fly, opening your mouth wide (in horror) is not recommended.

This guy smiled. What he was thinking, I don’t know, and I’m glad I don’t.

Bluck.

Later, one of my favorite, long-time patrons came in, and as he approached my desk we had the following conversation.

Me: Hey, Ron. Been staying out of trouble?

Ron: Nah, trying to get INTO trouble.

Me: Heh.

Ron: Hello, Trouble.

I’m so lame that the only thing I could think to do was laugh nervously and start twirling my ring around my finger. A ring I wear on my left ring finger. I wonder if he got the hint. Not that the ring means anything to anyone except me, because I’m the one who bought it for myself 13 years ago, but I hope that it gives men the idea that I’m not available. Ron left quickly, but I still had a case of the creeps.

While meeting Briana in the lobby Sunday afternoon, I passed a middle-aged man standing in the movie section wearing a women’s denim jacket with Eeyore on the back. Seriously, I don’t know what struck me as more wrong: the women’s jacket, the poofy denim style from 20 years ago, or the Eeyore embroidered on it.

Then tonight, Needy Betty called.

Betty: I have a question, maybe Nikki would be best to look this up, so if you want you can give this to Nikki.

Me: Um…okay.

Betty: If Nikki is there, that is. If she’s not there then I guess you can look it up yourself.

Me: Okaaaaay.

I wasn’t about to tell her I was Nikki because she likes Nikki and I didn’t want to be someone she liked today. She yammered away for about 20 minutes before she caught me.

Betty: Is this Nikki?

Me: Yeah, it is.

Betty: But, you didn’t say anything earlier!

Me: Yeah, I know.

Betty: WHY!?

Me: Because…

Think! What’s a good reason?

Me: Because…I didn’t want to interrupt you.

Betty: Oh, okay, that’s sweet.

Whew. She talked for about a half-hour, wanted me to research how many people have been killed by coyotes, a copy of the website created for the business someone bought from her husband, transcripts from a radio show she listens to (which aren’t available), and someone to listen to her talk about her tubal ligation for a while. I was texting friends, IM’ing Marina begging her to shoot me, and flinging myself dramatically in my chair like a bored child having a tantrum. When I finally got rid of her, she called back to add some more useless information to my night and request more irrelevant searches that she’ll forget all about before her next trip in.

After work, I drove home to pick up my brother so we could run to the grocery store for some mid-week replacements. He found frozen breakfast sandwiches with croissants and about wet his pants in the freezer aisle of the store.

As we were driving home, we discussed this at length.

Bro: When I get home, I’m having two breakfast croissants!

Me: Don’t you mean cro-sohhhs? Like the unintelligible adults on the Peanuts?

Bro: Why do they put all those letters in if they don’t want to pronounce them?

Me: So they can make weird noises in their throat and pretend that those weird noises are spelled with normal letters.

Bro: I’m going home to have some…hwah-HWAAAHS.

I was cracking up.

Bro: Sausage and egg…hwah-HWAAAAAHS!

Me: Sausage, egg and cheese…hwah-HWAAAAAAAAHS!

We laughed ourselves into hysterics as I was entering the drive-thru to pickup my prescription. There is a slightly raised area at the drive-thru window where the cement has sensors and alerts the pharmacy folk that they have a customer, but I wasn’t thinking about this as I was pulling out my wallet, and as soon as the tires hit the slight bump, I screamed out, thinking I’d plowed into something.

Me: Oh, whew, I thought I ran over something.

Bro: You did. It was just the road.

I started laughing hysterically again and he continued making fun of me.

Bro: WHEW! I thought I was driving for a second. Wait, I was.

Me: *coughing and sputtering*

Bro: WHOA, was I just breathing?

Me: STOP!

Bro: Man, I feel like I’m talking. HEY, I am talking!

The lady at the pharmacy drive-thru window didn’t think we were funny at all. I gave her my name and then my brother said something that caused me to totally lose it.

Bro: I’m picking up a prescription. My name is French. Its Niihaaa, wah-WAHH. And when we go home, we’re going to eat sausage and egg hwah-HWAAHS!

Tears freely flowed down my cheeks and even my brother was laughing so hard he could barely breathe.

So, we weirdoes were out last night trying to keep ourselves from peeing our pants, and I just know that the folks at the grocery store and the lady at the pharmacy were thinking about the stupid full moon and all the lunatics out and about.

Screw It

2010-02-24T22:55:00.000-06:00

I knocked on my brother’s door.

Me: Do you have a tiny little phillips-head screwdriver I could use on my keyboard to open it up?

Bro: Um, let me see. Why do you want to open your keyboard?

Me: Because the letter L doesn’t work, and there’s an L in my email address, so I can’t even check my email.

Bro: Here, try these. They’re flatheads, but they’ll probably still work.

He handed me those lame-ass, bullshit tools that are pretty much large screws with a textured, cylindrical sheath for a grip around the barrel.

Well, it worked, but then the real challenge began.

Me: Why the FUCK do they put 300 screws in one little keyboard?

Bro: Because you’re not really supposed to take them apart. It’s a deterrent.

Me: Because they just want you to go, “Shit, I could take out these 300 screws that are smaller than ants to clean it out…OOOOOORRRRRRR, I could just spend $20 and get another one. Durrrr, I’m going to get another one.” And thus, they make more money on something that could be a quick cleaning fix.

Bro: Yes. Probably. You know how funny you look doing that?

Me: Quit laughing! What do you mean?

Bro: Well, there are all these tiny little screws and you’re using this tiny little screwdriver, and it makes you look like this Darby O’Gill giant trying to work in a tiny little world. “Must get screw out.”

With that, he made a big oaf face and pretended to be rolling a teeny-tiny screwdriver between his thumb and index finger, squinting at the miniscule thing it was unscrewing.

Bro: And it’s even worse with those things because you can’t hold the top like you want to because it turns. You have to hold that narrow, slotted thing around the middle, which is even more awkward, and you’re rolling it between your fingers instead of gripping it with your hand.

Me: Yeah, and the manufacturer made sure to put in 100 screws that are atomic sized, 100 that are molecular sized, and 100 that are barely visible with the naked eye. Why three sizes? And why are they in here so tight? It’s like Dad worked at this plant and convinced them that the tighter a screw is, the more sound the design.

Bro: They do, but over time they get corroded, so not only do you have to break that seal of the super-over-tightened screws the size of DNA, but you have to break the chemical corrosion that has sealed the screw to the plastic, too.

Me (breathing heavy): This is nuts! I can’t get these tiny screws out!

Bro: That’s why no one opens their keyboards!

Me: It’s a conspiracy! I won’t participate! I will fix my L!

Finally I got the keyboard open and all these little plastic suction-cup-looking things went flying everywhere.

Me: SON-OF-A—

He started laughing so hard he had to leave the room.

I spent the next 15 minutes trying to line up the plastic thingies with the keyboard keys and circuit board thingy to get it back together, and when I finally did, only the letters D and F worked.

Meltdown in 3…2…1…

Grabbing the keyboard and all the carefully placed plastic thingies, I slammed it on my desk with a scream and little miniature suction cups and screws went everywhere. It was the biggest miniature mess I ever saw and it made me laugh.

Me: So, wanna go to Walmart and get a new keyboard with me?

And so we went.

In a snowstorm.

But now my L works again. And I feel normal-sized once more.

Adult Services

2010-02-18T21:25:00.003-06:00

Last Week:

After explaining to one of my coworkers that I mistook the earthquake for my room being haunted when I was wakened by a loud boom and my bed shaking, then finding out that Marina thought it was aliens, she asked a poignant question about why it is that all these alleged abductees claim they were anally probed during their abduction. We discussed this, between giggles, wondering if the aliens had some kind of knowledge about the colon that we do not, or was it some kind of anthropology study of the waste of a people revealing their culture. The more we discussed the anal probing of aliens, the sillier we became, and then Arms approached the desk and we asked if he’d felt the earthquake. He did not.

Me: Marina thought it was aliens.

Coworker: What do you think about alien abductions?

Without her elaborating that we’d basically deduced that alien abductions = anal probing, Arms began a exclaiming in favor of alien abduction.

Arms: Oh, I’d LOVE to be abducted!

Giggles.

Arms: I think I’d enjoy that immensely!

Laughter.

Arms: I’ve ALWAYS wanted to try that!

Hysterics.

Arms: Since I was little, I’ve wanted to be an ASSSSSSS-tronaut.

Tears and sobbing.

It was as if he knew what we were talking about and was playing along. But he didn’t have a clue.

So my coworker decided to let him in on the source of our laughter and she wrote on a piece of small paper, “anal probes.” Once he realized what we were laughing about he laughed as well.

Arms: I’m going in the back to shred this piece of paper. I don’t want to just drop it into the garbage and someone else will come along and see that and find it disturbing.

Me: You can’t just fold it up in your pocket and risk finding it later when you do laundry. What if you don’t remember what it’s about and there’s just this paper that says “anal probes” in your pocket?

Arms: Exactly. What if it fell out of my pocket and someone saw it fall out and tried to tell me, but they read it and then had to wonder why I was walking around with a slip of paper in my pocket that said “anal probes.”

Me: You have to destroy all evidence of that paper.

Arms: That’s exactly what I’m about to do.

Monday Night:

Arms: Look, I got a Valentine!

Me: Oooh, who from?

It was from one of the girls who works in the youth department.

Arms: But look. It’s not just any Valentine. It’s a Jonas Brothers Valentine.

Me: Wow, that…that…is…sad.

Arms: It says, “Happy V-Day.”

Me: Yeah, but they’re the Jonas Brothers and V probably means something entirely different to them.

Arms: Whoa! You know, every conversation I have with Adult Services lately goes straight downhill. You guys put the “Adult” in Adult Services.

Me: Don’t be giving them credit for my dirty mind! That’s all me, baby!

Arms: I’m getting out of here and going back down to the youth department where they’re good.

Me: You can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Yesterday:

We were discussing a wild time Arms had at the bars the night before and a random girl he was making out with.

Me: You sure she was a girl?

Arms: Oh yeah, I’m sure.

Me: Are you REALLY sure? Because some of those cross-dressers are prettier women than real women.

Arms: If that happened and I found out she wasn’t female, there would be some violence. ‘Captain Winkie!’

Me: Huh? Tell me you don’t have a nickname for it!

Arms: No, that’s from Ace Ventura! Remember?

Me: No, it’s been a really long time since I saw that.

Arms: Well, I could’ve said ‘cock’, but that’s such a harsh word. I’d have to say ‘cahhhk’ so it wouldn’t sound so bad. I don’t like that word.

Me: Oh, I like it. I like it a lot!

Arms (blushing and laughing): Every time I come up here, this department gets more and more ADULT.

Me: Scary, isn’t it?

Arms: No, I like it.

But he walked quickly away. Back to the youth department for some cleansing.

Tonight:

Arms: What’s that chemical called that the body releases?

Me: Serotonin?

Arms: No, the stuff that makes you feel good.

Me: Endorphins?

Arms: Yes!

Coworker: Margaritas!

Me: Oh, that would be awesome if our bodies just produced that! Every few seconds I’d do this…

I pretended to lick the entire length of my left arm.

Me: Mmmmmmmmmm…

And then I pretended to lick the entire length of my right arm.

We were cracking up and I continued going, pretending to lick myself with an exaggerated lusty, hunger.

Coworker: It would be like pheromones!

She began sniffing the air, searching for the smell of someone releasing margarita pheromones.

I leaned over to her with my tongue lolling out of my mouth and sniffed her shoulder with dramatic facial embellishments.

Me: Mmmmmmmmmmargarita!

Arms was laughing and trying not to watch this directly.

I smiled huge, my eyes buggy, and I leaned over and started pretending to lick my coworker’s arm, making loud slurping sounds. We were in hysterics again.

Me: It’s like those toads people lick to get high. We’d be licking one another all night around here.

Arms (bright red and laughing): OHMYGOD, you guys are sick!

Again, he slithered off to Youth for comfort and sweetness.

I think allowing 14-year-olds in our area is probably irresponsible. We clearly need to be NC-17.

Facebook Fail

2010-02-15T11:32:00.002-06:00

Last week I did something I swore I’d never do, right on the heels of getting that cell phone I swore I’d never get, but once again I disappointed myself and joined Facebook. Already I’m frustrated and trying hard to figure out what to do because I’m getting friend requests from people I don’t consider my friends, like my boss’ boss’ boss (seriously?), and a warning from Bri about the most irritating patron ever who friended her and will likely come after me if she knows I have an account. Bloody hell no! And since I have working relationships with these people, what’s the polite way of saying, “Dude, I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want you knowing even the most irrelevant, superficial things about me. And I really don’t want you knowing who my friends are so you can voyeuristically keep an eye on them too.” How do you say that to people you don’t want to friend?

I think about this shit too much, I know. To me the word “friend” still means something, and I’m not collecting as many of them as possible, not in the real world and certainly not in a fake one I don’t plan to spend much time in. And more than anything, I want my Facebook anonymity back so that I don’t have to “friend” someone and block them from everything in my account. What IS the point?

Anyway, there is something else bothering me that I found on Facebook, something that’s been bothering me for many years and I just shake my head and walk away from the debate because it’s so nonsensical to me that it boggles my mind. One of my real friends, who also happens to be a friend on Facebook, joined a group supporting gay marriage, and another real friend, who also happens to be a friend on Facebook, joined a group opposed to gay marriage, and it makes me scratch my head that I can manage to be such close friends with both.

Here’s what boggles my mind: we’re debating the rights of gays to marry. And it’s such a heated debate that it’s polarized people into joining one group or another to announce their side of the fight.

After taking a few deep breaths, I beg the question: why? Why is this an issue? Why does anyone care if gays marry at all? Why do we even recognize gay couples as being different? Why is it a legal matter? Why is it a political matter? Why do we join groups on a social networking website and announce proudly to the world who we think should be allowed to marry? Why is there such a thing at all as the phrase “gay marriage”? People are people, people!

Here is how this sounds in my head.

I’m against fat marriage. Adam and Eve weren’t fat, the bible doesn’t specifically state that people should be fat and marry and have kids, so therefore it’s blasphemous. Fat people shouldn’t marry. If fat people were to get married, that would send a message that it’s okay to be fat, and clearly that goes against the way we were intended to be. Fat people get diseases and don’t live as long. You don’t see fat animals in nature. We’re not born fat – it’s a choice! Our ancestors weren’t fat. Fat is abhorrent. If fat people got married, they’d want to be parents and have children, and we all know that fat people can’t be good parents or role models. Their kids would turn out fat for sure and it would create more fat people in the world. And how would those kids feel growing up, having to explain to their friends that their parents are fat. They’d be made fun of, other kids would say that they’re going to grow up to be fat, and skinny parents wouldn’t let their kids play with the children of fat parents because fatness is contagious. Don’t get me wrong, I have fat friends, but I’m certainly not going to some fat wedding with all their fat friends and family, because you just know that people are going to be talking about nothing but food, and eating more than I can stand to watch, and while I like my fat friends, I don’t want to support that lifestyle in any way. Isn’t it enough that there are fat bars in the world, where fat people can go and be themselves? What more do they want? Next thing you know, all ceremonies will be fat-friendly and we’ll have fat marriage, fat divorce, fat funerals, fat christenings, and with the way things are going, one day we’ll have a fat president. OHDEARGOD, can you just imagine? Now, it’s forgivable for some to experiment with fatness, I suppose. Many folks put on those freshmen 15 pounds and dabbled in being chubby for a bit, but they realized it wasn’t them and they went back to their normal, natural weight. College is time of experimentation, I understand, but then you grow up. It’s just not right. I’m not going to vote for anyone who supports fat rights and if I ever find out my kids are fat, I’ll disown them.

As much as I’d like to put up a big banner and announce to the world that I support gay rights, I’d feel like I’m entering into battle of idiocy. This should not be an issue that divides us. It doesn’t even make sense to me. I understand that we need to make strides (likely slow ones) that aim toward a more equal society, but like other wars going on, I just don’t want to enter into this war that shouldn’t even be a war to begin with.

One day I hope that common sense will prevail. One day I hope that we’re not on one side or the other for civil rights of any group discriminated against in society. Because while it seemed amusing to read my fat marriage rant, substitute any other section of society for “fat”, like “black” or “Jewish” or anything else, and see how funny is sounds when you have people on Facebook arguing for or against a black couple’s rights to marry and have a family. I’m ashamed to be alive during a time when this is a hot topic.

Leave it to Facebook to make it possible to pretend to be friends with hundreds of people you would have nothing to do with in real life, all the while encouraging us into factions of warring social groups. It’s not a network, it’s a breakdown.

For the time being, I’ll stay a member and I’ll talk about my purple hair, post some pictures of burros poking heads into my car, whatever superfluous, ridiculous, unassuming things might pop into my head, and try hard to ignore it when people want to participate in division, fan the flames of a fire that shouldn’t even be lit, and I’ll just ignore the people who have no business on earth thinking we should be friends, even though that’s divisive itself. Sigh…what a terrible position Facebook puts me in.

Earthquake

2010-02-11T02:19:00.001-06:00

Last night we had an earthquake. This was the first one I’ve ever felt, though we’ve experienced three in the last 5 years. It woke me from a sound sleep because I thought someone walked into my room and banged their leg into the frame of my bed. Not only did I feel the impact, but I also heard a crash. Never in my wildest dreams did I think earthquakes made crashing noises when nothing was actually crashing down. It wasn’t until this morning that I realized what had awoken me was an earthquake – I thought my house was haunted and the fright prevented me from falling back asleep. (Note to self: stop watching ghost shows in bed as you’re falling asleep.)

It appears Marina was jolted from sleep as well and she thought it was aliens, which triggered a lengthy and hilarious conversation that spanned the entire evening at work and consisted of many giggles surrounding talk of anal probes.

When I got home from work, I had to share the anal probes with my brother (what brings siblings closer than shared anal probes?), and when we were done laughing at that, I also shared my anger at the article here, in which the douchebag journalist compares our piddly quake with the quake in Haiti. Seriously, he seemed to think we (the readers) are a bunch of kindergartners in need of asinine, analogous, completely irrelevant comparisons so that we might appreciate the fortuitousness of this quake in relation to Haiti’s. Dude, that’s fucking redundant, you booger-eating moron. You state clearly in your article that no injuries or damage were reported. If any of us was thinking of Haiti (which I wasn’t, because honestly, I’d forgotten that this epic tragedy started from the same common, natural occurrence), I think that pretty much spells out that it had almost nothing in common with Haiti’s earthquake. Frankly, ours seemed almost fun, while Haiti’s is too horrific to for words. Why the comparison? Why take something that amounted to nothing and say that it was completely dissimilar to one that did an incalculable amount of damage? Were you trying to flip off your editors for giving you the writing assignment of an earthquake that merely woke up some people in Northern Illinois? Because really, that was insulting to read. No wonder I stick with other news sources.

My brother’s reaction to the article was one of disgust and astonishment as well, which led to him saying it belonged on “The Simpsons” as a news item.

Having never watched “The Simpsons” (yes, calm down, stop gasping, it’s true), I asked him to elaborate, which he did with gusto. His examples were funny and I understood the reference, but as is true of most conversations with my brother, it spiraled out of control.

Bro: They’ll report that three people died in Chicago today in gang-related violence, but in other parts of the universe, a nova occurred, which puts your three deaths into perspective so you don’t dare think you’re important. It totally marginalizes your more localized tragedies.

Me: That’s awesome. The news should really do that.

Bro: So it’s like no matter what happens, it’s not a nova.

Me: The result is the same as saying the opposite, a star was born, but it sure wasn’t you.

Bro: That’s not true! When I was born, scientists took note!

Me: Yes, when you were born, they started referring to it as The Big Birth Theory. And you’ve been constantly expanding since then.

Bro: That’s right! And they completely stopped measuring time in the same way. It started over! “This is great. We must stop using the old system and start counting days effective today. Today is the beginning of everything because he was born.”

Me: And all time before that will be counted backwards from your birth.

Bro: That’s right. Negative time! Not only did nothing count before I was born, but that time is negative.

Me: Can you imagine how many calendars had to be reprinted and software had to be reprogrammed? It was huge!

Bro: That’s right. That’s how it should be. It all begins with me!

How a fun little earthquake turned into a conversation about anal probes, which turned into my brother being a savior I do not know, but it was funny. And I’m thinking now I might have to start watching “The Simpsons.”

Nah. I’ll just count on him to give me the highlights.

It Shoots Through Schools

2010-02-08T22:00:00.004-06:00

After a wacky night and a series of goofy patron encounters, Marina and I began walking around the library minutes before closing, cleaning up and putting furniture back where it belonged when I spied something on the floor.

Me: Oooooooh noooooooooo.

Marina (sighing): What?

Me: It’s a Magnum condom wrapper. Opened.

Marina: Where?

Me: Right here at my feet.

Marina: NO WAY!

She came over and we both stood a foot from the wrapper silently staring down at it for a few moments.

Marina: Should I go get the grabby thing?

Me: No, I think I can handle this.

Marina: You’re NOT picking that up with your hands?!

Me: Nope, I’m picking it up with my feet.

Marina: What? How?

Me: Well, I’m going to try this…don’t laugh.

Using the tip of my left boot, I pushed the wrapper up onto the toes of my right boot, and with the kind of dexterity a graceless dork like me (who shouldn’t even be allowed to wear heeled leather boots without training wheels) does not normally possess, I not only balanced the condom wrapper on the toes of my right boot, but I managed to walk 2 feet to the garbage can, lift my leg up, and rotate my foot so that the condom wrapper fell perfectly into the bin. It was a thing of beauty. I threw my arms triumphantly into the air and loudly announced that I rock.

This entire time I was vaguely aware that there were two remaining patrons in the library somewhere off to my left.

Marina: Great, you got rid of the wrapper, but where’s the condom?

Me: Ohhhh, I didn’t think of that. Maybe it was IN the wrapper still. Or maybe there’s a condom floating around here somewhere.

This was when I was made aware that the two people left in the building were actually two little girls.

Girl #1 (giggling): A condom? Gross!

Girl #2: What’s a condom?

Me: You...you don’t want to know. Don’t you two have rides waiting or something?

They scurried off, the first girl still giggling.

Oops. Did I just introduce the word "condom" to a perfectly innocent young girl? Crap.

Marina: A MAGNUM too! You just know some little kid stole that from Mommy and Daddy’s supply and brought it here to show off.

Me: Probably stole it from big brother’s wallet. A Magnum. I don’t think even I have ever seen a Magnum. *sigh*

We laughed and made our way back to the office to gather our stuff to leave, giggling about how many condoms we’ve each encountered in the library, fortunately none being worn when found.

As we were leaving, I stopped to let the janitor know.

Me: Um, I just thought I should mention that we found a condom wrapper in the library but we could not find the condom. Just a warning.

He threw his head back and cackled. The folks at Circ were in hysterics. One of the clerks asked if I remembered the incident where one was found in the drinking fountain. Yes, yes I did remember that one.

Marina: Remember when I found one in the travel section?

Giggles erupted.

Me: Yeah, it should’ve been in 613.96.

Clerk: A condom, in the travel section? Of all places!

Me: Well, someone was really getting around.

Clerk: Yeah, going at it, I’d say!

Me: Or were they were com—

Pause.

Me: Never mind. I’m just going to leave now.

I left and they continued laughing hysterically.

Sometimes I think to myself, anything but poo, please! And then I get a condom and can’t quite decide what’s worse. At least it was just a wrapper. However, I can’t help but worry that the condom is going to show up eventually. I hope I’m not around when it does.

Points to anyone who knows the reference in the title.