Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

Someone prefers naps to packing boxes. And the cat does too. The move is plodding along. I finished painting the living room and hallway yesterday; 2 coats primer, 2 coats paint to cover up the monstrosity that was a room consisting of: rust red, vomitrocious green, and dish water dirty brown. Still trying to understand that motif. I've slowly been taking batches of boxes over as layers of paint were drying. My hope is to finish getting all boxes moved by this weekend. We'll begin sleeping there Friday night, and furniture will be delivered next Saturday. So close! I'll be happily settled before Christmas! As most moves go, I find, this is happening while we're super busy at work: book groups, Santa's visit, holiday movies, and Gingerbread houses are all on the calendar this week and next; our Holiday Silent Auction winds down soon; and we're again doing Feet for Fines (folks bring in new socks, shoes, etc. and we clear their fines). Counting down the ...

It is hard to think of something as grand to write about as Europe...so, as I recoup, I'll share a picture of my adorable furry son, Hemmy.

Beautiful 13th century architecture in Bruges, Belgium Amsterdam at night The best lunch EVER. Homemade bread with mustard, ham, violet creme fraiche, gherkins; salad. Amsterdam The Bern Munster (Church), Bern, Switzerland Freiburg, Germany Beethoven (born here) watches over this square, Bonn, Germany City Hall, Hamburg, Germany Normany U.S. Cemetery and Memorial, France Commemorates D-Day invasion, Omaha Beach Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, Paris France The Eiffel Tower, Paris

Last night was about a long walk a vodka and soda on the rocks an amazing sunset yoga mediation reading before bed One more day of Summer Reading. Tomorrow. I can do this. "Sunset" Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors which it passes to a row of ancient trees. You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth. leaving you, not really belonging to either, not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent, not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing that turns to a star each night and climbs- leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads) your own life, timid and standing high and growing, so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out, one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star. --Ranier Marie Rilke

Last week was a stressful mess of working on our yearly state report, paperwork galore, and sorting out some staffing issues, among other things, but none of that mattered yesterday. Yesterday my beautiful little nephew was born to my brother A3 and sis-in-law Dayna. We went to the hospital yesterday, my niece, my Mom (who's watching while her parents and new brother are at the hospital) and I, and as I stood there holding this new little wonder I thought back to nearly 2 years ago when I stood in a room on this very hospital floor holding my now walking-talking-sassy niece --where does the time go!? And then there she was climbing onto the couch to sit between my brother and mom, examining her new baby brother, looking up at us to say, "Baby Alex." Heart. Melted. I can't believe I am the Auntie of 6 kids: 3 boys, 3 girls, ages 9years - newborn. Seems just yesterday I was meeting my first niece. *Sigh* So, until I can get my shit together to write a proper blog...

I've been flying around like a busy bumble bee lately: Training a new staff person Getting tax forms ready and out (my office looks like an IRS truck exploded...ok, maybe not that bad) Preparing to weed Adult Fic/Non-Fic AGAIN Preparing to weed our Reference collections in Children's and Adult AGAIN Preparing to shift collections around to make more room for our teens--so hard with no space! Working on Summer Reading--Yep, I've had all of our entertainment booked since before Christmas, now booking some local speakers of interest. Summer Reading 2014 is going to be awesome The usual paperwork And in my free time I've been reading like a mad person--did I mention that I am a judge for the 2015-2016 Choose to Read Ohio? It's been great, but still have 7 books to get through by next week. YIKES! I feel like I haven't seen the sun the past two weekends, holed up in my apartment So, in lieu of going into detail about anything right now--maybe I can do th...

Sometimes I get so foot-stompingly, hmpf'ing-ly angry when life doesn't go the way I planned it, and that's usually when I see the "life is beautiful," reminders like Sunday night's sunset. 

One of our 7 year olds created this masterpiece! Day 2 of gingerbread houses and we had even more people yesterday then we did on Thursday!  74 people came to our program--we had toddlers up to senior citizens making houses and EVERYONE had a great time. Are we going to do it again next year. Yep!

My favorite tree on my street--snow covered and enormous! The snowman I built outside the Library, he's ready for Santa's visit! I decided to hit up Grumpy's house and give him yuletide cheer in the form of a snow penguin (against his wishes) The text message convo after the gift was unveiled--MEN! Can they ever just say, "WONDERFUL!?" ;) Snowed all last night and today, giving us about 5 inches, and though I had to work today I still got to: go for a walk, make a snowman for Sticks Library, make a snow penguin for Grumpy, guzzle hot chocolate, and take a ridiculously hot shower. Life is good. Saturdays are wonderful.

Yep, it's official--I'm a weird cat lady Librarian.

In the greater Cleveland area meant "Lake effect snow," inches of the white stuff, which the nieces and nephews from SC and VA were excited to play in. Snow angels abounded! Time with family, feeling grateful for the kids: this is my chunky monkey, the youngest of my 5 nieces and nephews. Working together to produce an amazing meal...what was left of mine.

Not sure what this was...? Dried tongue=I think this was some sort of fruit jerky Slimy Eyeballs=olives Zombie skin=old flour tortillas rubbed with just a little olive oil Beating Heart=whole, skinned, tomatoes Brains=a jello molded spaghetti and red jello monstrosity--this looked so real it freaked the kids the hell out! Waxy ears=dried apricots Extracted teeth=fried corn (the kernels get groady dried and brittle--never saw that before I moved here) Toenail trimmings=? Don't remember Dry bones=dried out chicken bones  I mentioned our FRIENDS of the Library's awesome pizza party and zombie laboratory, held here at the Library on Halloween night, but never shared the pics.  Super fun and super simple.

Cockroaches and eyeballs! Our table cloth Spiders and bugs hanging in webs! Best thing on the table: WITCHES FINGERS: pretzels covered in chocolate (dyed green), with almond finger nails. Zombie signage Zombie signage We recently hosted a teen Zombie Prom at the Library; Prairie Dawn had a great time doing "The Creep," with the kids, enjoying snacks, and other gross-out games. Thought I'd share some photos!

So many things I want to talk about! More on that soon, but until then I did want to share some pics of my mini-vacation-long-weekend! I drove down to Mummy Dearest's in NC on the sunniest and most glorious fall day! Clouds over Tennessee! We bought fresh flounder and shrimp--caught that morning!--from Gay's Seafood. Not sure what these are called, I'm calling them trawling boats. Mummy Dearest and I woke early on our last morning and watched the sunrise over the Atlantic. We were rewarded with dolphins! Little Fish (7 yrs. old) and I built this sand castle--she's got quite the designers eye!

Living in corn country has its advantages, namely...corn. This fall has made me homesick for beautiful New England at this time of year, and the part of Michigan where I grew up--both areas rife with beautiful foliage: fierce oranges and reds, sharp yellows; colors as crisp as the fall smell in the air. I went for a walk this past week and though these are not the most beautiful fall leaves I've ever seen, I was just glad to find some colors! I took solace in the cool evening, in the rain, and in the running into a friend and being invited in for conversation. I went home decidely less homesick. As you read this, I will still probably be in South Carolina on the ocean with my dear friends; sleeping near the ocean in a tent, enjoying weather so unlike what's happening in the Midwest...it will be hard to leave later today.  I'll bring some sand back for you...

  I'm on Hunting Island, South Carolina on the OCEAN!! Since I'm not blogging while I'm here, I took the opp to have ready-posts, some pics I've taken recently. Just look at this handsome devil! I've got two of these horrendous orange--I love them!--chairs. This one is obviously Hemmy's. While I work this lazy, adorable bugger snoozes.

Today marks my 10 month anniversary of when I started here at Sticks Library! I can't believe how fast the time has flown by and how much fun I've had since I started, and so many fun things ahead of us!  Thought I would share some more Summer Reading fun (since I was so remiss about doing it during SR!) A big push in libraries and schools in the past couple of years has been projects which fall under the category of S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)--as we all know the U.S. is so painfully behind the rest of the 1st world in these subjects--so Prairie Dawn and I scheduled S.T.E.M. projects for K-12th graders one day every week during our 6 weeks of summer reading. I say we, but all I did was put it on the calendar and Prairie Dawn did an awesome job of finding interesting projects for the both groups, which we split up into K-6th, and 7th-12th grades. Simple fun on our Make & Take Monday: water bottle bubble makers Not a S.T.E.M. project, ...