Summer

Summer means many things to many people. Right now for me it means that it is almost too hot to ride my motorcycle. Notice I said almost. Last Saturday when the thermometer said 101 as we rode through town, my husband and I put 150 miles on our bikes. I liken it to riding into a giant blow dryer. There is enough wind to dry the sweat but not to cool you off enough to keep from sweating. It's a unique experience. Even my husband who is what I would call one step below hard core considering his years of experience and the two tropical storms he has rode through, said "I'm not doing this again." I called him a wuss under my breath. Of course I didn't do it out loud because I'm not even on the bottom rung of the hard core ladder. I would do it again though. The main reason being that if I don't I may not get to ride again until next September. That is unacceptable. There are too many stessors in life to not be able to enjoy my main stress reliever.

Which brings me to the next thing summer means for librarians everywhere. Summer reading programs! Yes, they are stressful. Especially when you are in a single person branch and you have to deal with about 20 or more people wanting to check out at the same time. And you have to remember that most of these people can't see over the desk and are used to my undivided attention when they come into the library. They can't possibly understand that there are other library children in my life. Sometimes the preschool ones look at me like I'm cheating on them when I use my silly, fun voice on another child. It is very interesting. But for all the stress there is so much joy. Every library should be filled with children at least a few times a year if not every time it is open. It breathes life into it. And with that breath of life, it leaves behind a whirlwind of unshelved and misshelved books. Oh well! At least they are using the books. That's what will keep our doors open for years to come.

I leave you with a video from our program this week. We had a bagpiper. In an effort to stay with the artsy theme "Be Creative" this summer I invited local musicians to do a couple of programs. I tried to find instruments they may not have heard played live before. I definitely succeeded this time. Our piper was Zoe Brumfield from Forest. She did a beautiful job explaining the instrument and her garb and what it all means and how it works. The children and adults were all fascinated. It was a big hit. And that my friends is what it's all about.

Yelp!

I don't know how to begin this tale of woe. It starts out simple with such good intentions and ends miserably. I keep a bucket of water with Mr. Clean or something similar in it under my desk for cleaning the unmentionable books that often arrive at the desk. Today, I reached for the Handi Wipe in the bucket to wring it out and thought I felt something. Then, as I was cleaning the book, I moved the rag and there was a huge, albeit dead, cockroach (hear the Psycho music that is playing in my head right now for dramatic effect) stuck to the rag. I didn't really scream like a girl because I'm really a tomboy. I'd call it more of a yelp. After several seconds of doing the creeped - out shake, I retrieved it and placed it in the trash. Now the moral to this is not don't clean the books. Although I have to admit, that was my first inclination. Just check the bucket before you put your hand in. My question is why do roaches like the library so much? Should I call MLC reference and ask them? It doesn't seem to matter if the building is old or new, they still seem to show up. I even found one in the paper tray of my printer one day. (That definitely earned a yelp because it was alive.) I mean it's a library, not a grocery store. I know they can live like a year off the glue of a stamp or something crazy like that, but what are they living on here. I guess Mr. Clean when I'm not looking. The only food here is in the refrigerator or sealed containers. What's an entomophobic librarian to do?

Storytime joys

I think one of my favorite parts of my job is storytime. Don't get me wrong. I hate planning it but I love implemeting it. Where else can you dance around and look goofy and you fit in without having to drink any alcohol? Also no one makes fun of my singing. It's awesome! It's like "Where were you people when I was in high school and I needed a self-esteem boost?" Anyway, yesterday I got the best of both worlds. I had to fill in for a fellow librarian and do storytime for her. All I had to do was the implementation part of it. That rocks! I had nine children to play with and we had a blast. Now I knew most of the children since I have done storytime there before, but there is one little girl in particular that I want to focus on for a moment. I've known her since birth since her older brother is in my son's class. When she was a baby, she loved me and then it took an ugly turn somewhere around 18 months and she didn't want anything to do with me. She wouldn't look at me or talk to me and don't even think about holding her. Please! She is almost three now. Yesterday at storytime everything changed. It was like she suddenly discovered a new toy. She wanted to dance with me and help me keep my hair out of my eyes. When it was time to color she wanted me to put her name on her paper and then mine too. Then she pointed at it and said, "That says Miss Selena". When they were walking out the door, she ran back to me behind the desk and said "I want to kiss you." Now at first I thought she said, "I want to kick you" since that is kind of how she felt about me in the recent past. When I got over the initial shock, I leaned over for her to plant a sloppy kiss on my cheek and then she ran out the door saying, "Bye, Miss Selena. I love you." Now that to me is worth more than any paycheck you can get. I will still be a little wary of her for a while to make sure this friendship thing is going to stick. Now that it has gotten started though it could very well be lifelong.

Whoops!

I just read on another friend of mine's blog about her library goof, so I thought I would share one of mine. I have been helping out at another branch lately that is a man down right now. A lot of my time is spent at the circ desk because that's where it is the busiest of course. This also includes helping people on the computer. I had been working on something in the back and walked back out to the desk and a lady looks at me from her computer and points at her screen and asks, "How do I get this off the screen?" Now I'm used to computer illiteracy, so I just said "Click on the little red X in the top right hand corner." I thought that was pretty easy. Then a minute later she comes up to me at the desk and smiles and says, "So did it print?" I imagine you can guess the rest. As I said I'm used to computer illiteracy, but this took it to a whole new level. She was nice at least when I had to explain to her that she had to type it again because it was gone forever. It also taught me a valuable lesson in asking exactly what people need before I tell them how to exit.

This is a stick up!

Well, times are getting hard everywhere. Sometimes it makes people do things that they wouldn't normally do. It also makes them resort to extreme measures. Well, here we caught on film a normally mild mannered librarian holding up the library board members of her system. Apparently, she was unhappy with her pay/work ratio. She was demanding a raise, which in this economy is just unheard of, so you can already tell she wasn't in her right mind. Rumor has it that she has been watching a lot of westerns and reading books in the suspense genre that focus on crime. Another thing going through the grapvine is that she forgot to take her medicine. We don't know if any of these things are true, but we are happy to report that the employees of her system received a 4% pay raise. We can't say if it is from her efforts or not. We suspect it is from the hard work of the bodacious director of their system, but don't tell her that. That may be what puts her over the edge. We wouldn't want to be responsible for any more incidents of violence.

My purpose!

OK We've all been there as librarians or teachers or mothers. It's the reading milestones. I had a young teenager who has been coming to my library since he was a young child and somehow I just didn't notice how he was growing up. He is homeschooled and he is not quite a reluctant reader but not exactly the voracious reader that his older sisters are. They are the kind that will read ingredients if they don't have anything else to read. He is a bit more of a challenge as most boys are. Well, he's moved from the juvenile section to the YA section in natural progression but still can't find anything he wants. I offered to help him one day and he turned me down and wanted to browse. A few heavy sighs later, I asked him again. He said he just couldn't find anything, so I asked him how old he was. He said 14 or 15. I can't remember exactly, but I thought back to myself at his age and told him what the problem was. I said, "Dude, have you ever thought that maybe it's time to step across the library into a new section to look for books?" He gave me a confused look. I told him, "It's called adult fiction." He wouldn't be bought. I told him that all adult books (like his sisters like to read) don't have to be thick and complicated. He likes mysteries and Sherlock Holmes and whatnot so I showed him Agatha Christie and Dick Francis. Not too thick. Very involving. He still wasn't sure so I left him alone in the stacks to look with instructions not to show up at the desk until he found something. Well, he came back with an Agatha Christie and a very thick Sherlock Holmes book. I didn't say anything. I just checked them out and told him that I hoped he would enjoy them. Well, the books came back today via his sister. I asked her if he read them. She said yes. I perked up and asked if he had read the very thick Sherlock book too. She said yes. She told me that he was driving her nuts following her around telling her all the cool things going on in the books that she wouldn't believe. She said, "I told him, 'Why don't you go tell Ms. Selena?'" I broke out in a giant grin and looked at her and dabbed my eyes and said, "Our little boy has hit a milestone". She said "Is there any coffee left?" Another one of my patrons is stepping into the world of adult fiction and hopefully will turn into another lifetime patron. I may have a job for another generation after all.,

I'm off to see the wizard...

OK Maybe not the wizard, but I am off. I leave tomorrow for the Mississippi Library Association state conference in Natchez, MS. I don't know what to expect since this is my first time there. I hope it will be informative and fun. I feel like fun is where you make it, so I'm sure it will be fun. All I know is I leave tomorrow and I don't come home until Friday night. Room and board is paid for already, so there are no worries. Four days away from home anywhere is great to me. The laundry is done. There are casseroles in the freezer. The instruction sheet is on the fridge. I'm outta here!!! Maybe I'll be able to post some pictures along the way. We'll call it Librarians Gone Wild.

AAUGH!

I felt like Charlie Brown when I got to work today. You can picture him, can't you? All you can see is his wide open mouth, ears and nose. That was me. I brought my motorcycle to work and had a beautiful ride because the weather is just lovely. Perfect first day of fall! I gather my belongings with a happy sigh as I made my way to the door and there it is on the door to the library. A note. It says that they did the best they could but they left the wet vac for me if I want to do more. I know what that means. Water in the library again. AAUGH! Will it never end? Must I cringe every time it rains instead of being happy for the flora in my yard? It didn't get far this time, but I do worry about mold. I need a cup of coffee!