Both sides of the coin

On the children's side of the library today:

A kid approached me and asked how many books he could check out on his library card.

I started to give my usual spiel - tell the kid that the limit was 150 books BUT he needed to check with his grown-up too.

He only heard the number before running off.

The next thing I heard was, "Hey mom, how many books do you think we can fit in the car?"

On the grown-up side of the library today:

A middle-aged patron asked for help printing a map and address. 

"I'm going on the first date I've been on in years.  I want to put the address in my bible for a keepsake."

😮 

Creepy? Hopeful? Sweet?  All of the above?

Before he could jinx the date any further (or say anything else that was awkward), I helped him send the document to the printer and hurried away.

But he had one more question.

"Is there any way you can spare a nickel?"

I found a nickel in the change jar at the desk and handed it to him.

He went to pay for the document and I breathed a sigh of relief.

But my sigh of relief came too soon.

He gave me a big smile and said, "I'm so lucky.  I hope you get lucky tonight too."

His face immediately turned a dark shade of red as he realized what he just said.

As an equally awkward person, I had no quick save or any words of comfort to offer, only a cough as I tried not to laugh.  I made a beeline to the stacks to "straighten books" while he made a beeline for the door.

a few reviews about squishes, bees, Mother Earth, a special tree, and an upcoming holiday

 I've been diving into my picture book TBR pile, which is humongous.

Lunar New Year by Hannah Eliot and illustrated by Alina Chau (Board Book)

I am impressed with how much information Eliot squeezed into such a concise description of the Lunar New Year. Though this is a board book, I think all ages will enjoy the details, traditions, and illustrations. And hopefully, like me, readers will want to know more and check out other books about the holiday.

Begin with a Bee by Liza Ketchum and illustrated by Claudia McGehee (Nonfiction Picture Book)

What a wonderful way to get kids (and adults too) excited about bees! Begin with a Bee is truly a work of art. The illustrations, which use the scratchboard art technique, are phenomenal, radiating an electricity that buzzes. My favorite spread is the transformation of grubs to pupae. I can feel my heart and enthusiasm growing with each little change. There’s so much depth and movement in these pages! The language is equally rich, includes many flower names, and yet it’s not too dense. My favorite line is “Flowers drop seeds, seeds that started when bumble bees buzzed the pollen loose from the flowers…” Spanning the course of an entire year, beginning and ending with a small hole in a ground, and following the life of a queen rust-patched bee, this book is an outstanding journey into the life of bees.

Dear Little One by Nina Laden and illustrated by Melissa Castrillón (Picture Book)

A singsongy letter from Mother Nature that encourages the reader to appreciate the earth. There isn’t a lot of explanation about why we should appreciate the earth, but perhaps this will encourage the reader to dig deeper and ask questions. What really stands out in this book are the illustrations. So much to see on every page, and so much color to get lost in.

Survivor Tree by Marcie Colleen and illustrated by Aaron Becker (Nonfiction Picture Book)

Survivor Tree tells the story of a Callery Pear tree, which was the last living thing pulled from the rubble of the Twin Towers. Both text and illustrations are simple and haunting, but also comforting. The Callery pear tree needed a lot of help in order to survive. It was moved to a nursery and, once it was strong enough to be transported, back to where the towers once stood. It still bears the scars of 9/11 and visitors can see and touch the line between past and present. Included in this book are notes from both author and illustrator and a little more information about The Survivor Tree, including the seedling program, which is truly a thoughtful program. Colleen writes that by telling the tree’s story, she hopes “readers and their caregivers will find an entry point to a topic that is difficult to comprehend.”

Can I Give You a Squish? by Emily Neilson (Picture Book)

Not everybody likes squishes or hugs! When Kai gives Puffer Fish an unwanted hug he learns about all the ways his friends and family like to be greeted. Octopus likes tentacle shakes, Dolphin likes fin bumps, and his mom likes squishes. This is a great book to use as a platform to talk about tricky topics like touching, consent, and how others like to be greeted and shown affection. My favorite moment happens when puffer fish puffs up “like a water balloon, which is what puffer fish do when they are scared or upset.” This demonstrates social cues in such a simple way and provides space to talk about them. Puffer Fish also lets Kai know that he doesn’t like to be squished, which illustrates that we can politely let others know when something makes us uncomfortable. Neilson beautifully explores some big topics in Can I Give You a Squish, and if I could, I would give her a squish for her beautiful effort. But only if she’s ok with squishes!

So much to be thankful for part 2

I took that picture!  With my fancy phone camera!

It's been a glorious fall here with mild temperatures.  

Jo Pie!

The dogs and I have been enjoying lots of time playing tennis on the backboard.

Josie always finds a comfort stick to hold and sometimes eat.

And one day, something truly special happened.  In all the years I've been bringing them to tennis with me, we've never seen another dog on the courts.

Not only did we see another dog on the courts.  We saw it racing to the courts without a leash and it was a golden!  I rarely leash the girls when we're walking to the courts and I just keep their leashes nearby in case someone is playing next to me and the dogs make them uncomfortable.  They just lay in the sunshine like two rugs, so it's rare when someone is uncomfortable with them.  Sometimes rugs are ferocious and scary!

Robert has been blowing/raking/bagging a lot of leaves!  I've helped a little, but I don't like the leaf blower.  Margo and Josie, however, do not mind the leaf blower at all.  In fact, they get so comfy sometimes they are soon buried in leaves.  Like I said, ferocious and scary rugs!

The only thing that's truly terrifying are Margo's lips, which hold a lot of sass and a lot drool.

 

Back to updates!  I had a birthday!  It was a good one!

My coworkers got me an adorable card.

We visited our favorite neighborhood cat, Joy.  We met one of her humans a while back and told her how much we loved her cat.  She was only mildly alarmed by my cat enthusiasm and told us her cat's name is Joy.  We now visit Joy at least once a week on our walks.  If she's on her porch, we'll call her name and she comes right on over.  She doesn't give a flying fart about the dogs anymore.  Whatever little trepidation she had initially, is now just ambivalence or sass.

I was so thrilled she was outside on my birthday. 

We were all pooped from the excitement of seeing joy!

I've mentioned Margo's lips, right?  They are so baggy and floppy and lovely.  Robert calls them her curtains.

So yes, a lot to be grateful for.  It's an exhausting, all-consuming, electric, feeling-like-I-belong-and-matter, kitty-cuddles, new-amazing-niece, feeling-good-in-my body kind of joy.

Much to be thankful for part 1

November and December have been two of the craziest months I've had in a long, long time.  Most of it was the good kind of crazy, and there have been a lot of special moments I haven't properly absorbed or recorded.  

So here we go!

My niece, Savannah Jane was born November, 5th and she is beautiful.

Here is Savannah with big sister, Autumn.

Not sure if I've mentioned it, but I've been reading virtually with two of my nieces (Autumn and Harper) every week for several months now.  Reading with my nieces got me out of the 2020 muck, which is too mucky to talk about here.  Reading with them has also helped me feel close to them even though they live far away.  I love them both dearly and reading with them is the highlight of my week.

I love this picture so much.  Autumn is reading, and in the background you can see my brother, Scott holding Savannah.

Here is Harper and her bunny, Cuddles Cocoa, who sometimes reads with us.

Something else has helped me get out of the 2020 muck, and that's eliminating dairy from my diet.  After years of digestive and sleep issues, I barely crawled into 2021.  I was so sleep deprived I was struggling to get through the day.  I was a total wreck.  I have spent 2021 undergoing a baffling number of medical tests and procedures and am getting close to figuring things out.  The biggest change was eliminating dairy, which was part of a larger food testing experiment.  Eliminating dairy has dramatically improved the quality of my sleep and mellowed my digestive issues.  I'm still working on the digestive issues, but life is SO much better.  I can't even begin to describe all the tiny and big ways I feel better.  I have struggled with sleep paralysis since my teens, and I haven't had an issue with it since June.

Going dairy-free hasn't been as challenging as I thought it would be.  Though there is dairy in a lot of things (The wasabi powder on nuts! Salad dressings!) There are so many dairy-free options it's a little ridiculous.  Robert has also been super supportive.

At the end of October, I was able to play a little ukulele for my dad, who was proud as punch.  And Robert captured a video.  Playing the ukulele is hard!  I'm not what you would call musically-inclined, so this has been a workout for my brain.  But it's also surprisingly cathartic.  I hope I'm a part of in-person storytimes when my library has them again, because I am ready to rock on (Old MacDonald had a Farm style that is).

Part 2 coming tomorrow!

Bookends

I drink a lot of tea, so I always have a pile of tea wrappers to sort.  When I'm stewing on a project, I sort my papers.  Today, I started my day sorting the rainbow.  

 

Later, while taking the dogs for a walk, we noticed a toad playing rainbow hopscotch.

and in this corner is a wasp

Fellow blogger, Snowbrush and I have been talking about wasps in one of my recent posts, and so naturally I came across a wasp cartoon in The New Yorker (I can't remember which one).  It gave me a chuckle.  Maybe someday I won't run away in complete terror when I see a wasp. 

Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

                                               

Favorite poems & lines:

From The Secret of Soil: “…a step in the forest means you are carried on the back of a thousand bugs.”

From Corpse Flower: “He even gave it a name and when the farmer said the name out loud, the flower began to move—then completely devoured him.”

And from my favorite poem, The Light I collect, Nezhukumatathil writes this about her newborn son, “When I hold him in the sunshine, even his ears glow from behind like a church window shining a celebration within.”

blinded by the guinea fowl

I started this piece in March, which goes to show how long it takes to chop up a zillion pieces (a few lost with each big breath), stew over toes and poke toe papers around (at least a month's worth of stewing and poking), and place stamens on one at a time with tweezers.

I'm going to forgo modesty for a moment and share something I'm really proud of.  Everything went as expected with this piece.  I enjoyed every minute making and putting the flowers together.  Her face was a delight to make.  And the feet were just as tough as I expected them to be.  But not so tough to cause any extra anxiety.  When I got to the feet, which I saved for last, I went into making them with the mindset of, "this is going to be tough," and thankfully that's all it was. 

When I map out a project, I can't tell you how many times I end up changing things because I didn't take the time to think everything through.  Not this time.  And I'm so proud of that.  

I listened to a lot of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Beats Antique while making this piece, and oddly enough, I feel like the spirit of those artists comes through.  She's such a happy, sassy guinea fowl (who really doesn't look much like her guinea fowl friends).  And I think the colors have a lot to do with the beautiful music I listened to while creating her.

Now I get to spend the next month carefully sealing her.  Wish me luck!

Here are some fun pictures of the progress!

I love these little tea tins I saved from a gift set a few years ago.  I spent a little while figuring out how to lay out the flowers both on and off the piece.  I didn't know what my favorite color was going to be, but it quickly turned out to be purple and gold, so I tried to make those pop the most.  

This piece is huge, about half the size of me.  So I spent a fair amount of time with it on the floor.  The dogs aren't allowed in my office.  Hair and collage aren't friends, but my girlies are usually right outside my door while I work, and occasionally an ear or lip finds its way into my office.  This always cracks me up.  They know what they can get away with! 

First flower!

I used a few chocolate wrappers, and I love the way the gold glows in the sunlight.  Who knew a person would ever say, "I was blinded by the guinea fowl?"

An ordinary day at the library took a decidedly dark turn

Today, when I asked a patron to verify the spelling of his email address, which had the word 'chop' in it, he said, "you know chop - like chopping up bodies." 😨

Later, while talking to a kid about Pokémon, he suddenly said, "do you want to hear a riddle?"  

"Sure!" I replied.  Anything to stop talking about Pokémon.

I didn't say that last part.

So the kid says, "what is greater than God, more evil than the devil, the poor have it, the rich don't need it, and if you eat it, you die?"

Before I could say anything, his face grew somber and he asked, "Do you know who's worse than the devil?"

He had my attention.  And my concern!  I nodded at him to continue.

He paused before leaning in to whisper, "my brother's girlfriend."

He was so serious, which made it almost impossible to control my laughter.  Thankfully my mask hid my face!