I found this in a book this morning...

 

Perhaps it's a marriage proposal?

his small voice rang out

A teenager called the library today looking for her father.  The teenager had been dropped off at the wrong coffee shop where she was scheduled to meet her study partners.  She described her father – heavy, glasses, tall – an accurate description of many of the patrons there today, and after putting her on hold, I spent several minutes asking strangers if they had a teenager they dropped off at a coffee shop before coming to the library.  Most patrons were good-natured about my question and a couple even looked amused.  I finally located the correct patron, who was digging through mysteries with hands the size of tennis racquets.  He was at least a foot taller than me, maybe even two, and quite shy.  He merely nodded affirmatively when I questioned him about his daughter.  As we shuffled to the front desk he neither spoke or walked with me.  Whenever I slowed so that he could walk beside me he would slow even further. 

When I handed him the phone his small voice rang out:

“Rachelle?”  Long pause.  “Mmmhmm.  It’s ok.”  Pause.  “It’s ok.  I’ll be there in a few minutes.”  Pause.  “Alright, love you too sweetie.” 

The conversation, while short, clearly proved that the teenager had messed the address up.  Rather than being upset with her, the father was not only calm but also unaffected and sweet.  I couldn’t help myself.  As he handed me the phone I blurted, “Wow.  You are such a wonderful dad!”  The gentle giant beamed and grew another foot.  

Are you ready for some Washington D.C./Baltimore/Various Places in Maryland pictures?

Robert is ready to dive into a bag of boiled sea insects.  Btw this is Hot N Juicy, and I'm not just talking about my nerd.

Yea baby.  

I pondered for several minutes about how to take this display home with me.  I have become such a diehard elephant & piggie fan that I now have dreams about them and in the dreams they are my friends.

I was mesmerized by this small act of rebellion in the subway.  

Robert, standing in front of the White House.  

Chop't.  

Bring. It. On.

While driving through the slums in Baltimore, elegant structures and buildings popped up every now and then.  After driving through a trash-packed street this gate arose suddenly.

ReReads, located in Crofton, MD, became a favorite bookstore within minutes of entering.  The owner was in the process of shuffling the books around and the poetry was not only in two different places, but also in several teetering stacks in-between the two places.  Close by was an adorable quilt shop, Tomorrow's Treasures, bursting with wacky and delightful textile-artist ladies.  

This is the cumulation of perusing close to ten bookstores.

Robert is the tiny speck at the bottom of the National Monument.

We are not only in the Capitol, but also in the very center of Washington, D.C.  

Hanging out in the cupola of a caboose.  

Library of Congress selfie.

And yes, not only did I get a library card, but also requested items.  This is a very sneaky picture Robert took.  

oodles of fun

Robert and I are currently in the Baltimore area for both pleasure and business.  When one of Robert’s clients asked for assistance in the Baltimore area we jumped on it.  This has been our longest trip since I started working full-time at the library over two years ago and my first visit to the northeast, and we are having oodles of fun.  

We have been exploring both Baltimore and Washington, D.C. with many stops in smaller towns here and there.  When Robert works I have been keeping myself busy with my embroidery and various public library lurking.  While we haven’t been taking very many pictures we do have a few that I will post once I get home.  We have seen the changing of the guards at Arlington, pressed our faces against the heavily-tinted windows of Charm City Cakes, eaten the best bagel of our lives at Bagels Etc., explored at least five public libraries and just as many bookstores.  We walked the block around the White House, enjoyed a couple rides through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, saw some incredible graffiti, including a hand filled with houses in the middle of the Baltimore slums, slogged through our first encounter with a library that uses the Library of Congress classification (good practice for Library of Congress), and had amazing salads at Chop’t.  I also discovered that the subway is a charming place to hang out if you’re a writer or artist.  It is ideal for people-watching and is worth every second of the crowds, fart smells and nausea.  Once I discovered the four different kinds of subway riding I simply prepared myself for the worst so that I could revel in the rare delight of an empty seat.

What are the four different kinds of subway riding you ask?  The first involves sitting in one of the seats next to a complete stranger who is mumbling incoherently.  This is a treat!  The second kind of subway riding happens when there are no free seats but you get to hang on to one of the lovely bars they provide, and if you are defining lovely bars as bars that have never seen a disinfectant wipe, you are absolutely dead on – way to go!  The third kind of subway riding happens when all of the bars are taken and you wobble around with nothing to hold onto.  This is when you engage in  some incoherent mumbling of your own.  This is an excellent way to dispel some of that psychosis that we all have bumping around in the ol’ noggin.  Lastly, the fourth kind of subway riding is when there aren’t any seats or bars but it no longer matters because there are so many people that only your eyes move when the subway lurches.  This is just as terrible as it sounds, but if you’ve been curious how a weave is attached but do not have the guts to get that close to someone who has a weave, this is the perfect opportunity to do so.  

I know it sounds like we are missing some important places in the D.C. area, and you are right!  We still have a few more days of exploring. Pictures soon!

the secret life of pants

While helping an elderly gentleman check out his books today he pointed at a patron exiting the library and loudly shouted, "You see that man?  He has two dummy legs!"

Before I could figure out an appropriate response he took his cane and started smacking his leg with it while boasting, "I've got a dummy leg too!"

New Etsy Item!

My smoochy owl collage is finished.  It's available at my Esty shop, Bright Loud.

I greatly enjoyed making this piece.  It is made mostly out of chocolate wrappers, but lots of other found papers as well.

Puppets get dirty too.

Several times a day I walk patrons through the printing process and only now, as a burgeoning trekie, do I falter in my instructions.  What was once the innocent print queue is now the ‘Q’, a destructive and irritating alien that may or may not charge patrons with the crimes of humanity.  I am waiting for that blissful moment when I tell a patron that their print job has been sent to John de Lancie and they give me the live long and prosper sign. 

Last week at the library we were evacuated because someone at a nearby gas station got a little crazy while filling up their tank and needless to say a less than exemplary gas station attendee decided to just wash it all away rather than following protocol.    

While shelving holds on a very quiet morning a patron approached me with two coffees.  She asked if we had a microwave, and after a quick survey of the regulars I chuckled.  Because it was slow I nuked her coffee in the break room and recorded the interaction as ‘procedural’ in our patron-tracker database. 

During a peaceful hour of shelving children’s books a little girl asked me where the puppets were. After questioning a youth librarian I discovered the whereabouts of the puppets. 

“They’re taking a bath.” I told the little girl.  Her eyes grew wide. 

“Where?” she asked. 

“In their puppet bathtub.  Puppets get dirty too.”

“Can I see?”

“Nope, they like their privacy.” 

This was met with a puzzled expression.

I guess this was too much for the little girl.  She scurried away and then very precisely relayed the entire conversation to her guardian who looked just as flummoxed. 

On my way to lunch Thursday I was flagged down by a man with a cane.  After helping him decrease the size of the image on the page he was copying I thought the interaction was finished.  Instead, he took the copy of the reduced image and asked me to reduce it the same way.  My expression must have conveyed my confusion because he then held out the shaky and age-spotted hand that wasn’t gripping the cane and flashed a handsome ring.  “This right here,” he said pointing to the image on one of the copies, “is my alma mater.  I need to make it small enough so I can tape it to my ring.”  So that’s what we did.  We lightened and reduced and tweaked until it was just right and then we carefully taped the piece of paper to a ring roughly the value of a Prius. 

My greatest triumph last week involved tax forms.  Yes, you heard correctly.  A tax form triumph!  After demonstrating the great ease of not only accessing tax forms online but filling them in digitally as well and garnering nothing but close-mindedness and grumpy faces, an elderly patron actually took the bait.  I walked him through the process with optimism that was never booed or cursed and he walked away with some of that optimism and a willingness to give it a shot. 

Tomorrow is the start of a new week.  I am wearing my elephant leggings and embracing the mystery.  Whether a drawn-in eyebrow furrows at me or lifts in a smile, I am ready. 

What the Funk Part II

So the funk was actually a big bad scary sinus infection sneaking up on me and going woogie woogie boo.  The funk was my first clue.  My second clue happened the day before I got sick.  

This is when that scary music starts playing.

The day before I got sick I biked to tennis, continued on to the gym where I took a shower, and then went to work a late shift.  Before I left the house I struggled to medicate Rose, my lovely flower of a golden retriever, who requires a handful of tasty pills to combat her aching hips and arthritis.  Some days she staunchly refuses and I typically grumble a bit and move on.  Not that day.  That day I cajoled, cried, begged and even hollered before forcing her to swallow them, which is not the preferred method because the stupid pills have to be broken into a billion pieces to do so and the only way to break them up is to soak them in water UGH.  

So I was a grumpy mess by the time I left the house.  On the way to tennis I was stuck behind a garbage truck for two blocks, and once I escaped the gut-wrenching fumes, discovered I was being trailed by a line of cars who refused to pass me even though it was a slow road (max speed of 25 mph) with no oncoming traffic.  And while I should have had a whatever attitude about the cars, I stressed and tried to pedal faster.  

By the time I got to tennis I was late because of Rose (faster pedaling equals squat apparently) and had no time to recover before playing, which is one of the few times I need to recover (when going back and forth from tennis to biking) because I get wobbly and uncentered and frankly, a little tired.  On the way to the next gym I had to stop several times because I was out of fumes and had no back-up positive energy.  

After showering I discovered that not only did I pack a dress with tights, which are a nightmare to put on directly after showering, I also had a run in the tights and they had shrunk lengthwise.  I was getting terribly bitchy fast, and the usual elating combination of wearing a dress and an easy downhill ride to work from the gym only made me feel cold and the wrong kind of inhuman.  Normally when so many wonky and/or awful things happen at once my humor kicks in and the writer in me comes out and I get a little excited.  I point my fingers at the keyboard like I'm poking an enemy in the chest - 'Is that all you got huh huh?'

My lack of bravado-laced humor is always a warning.    

The very next day my throat started itching.  I also felt an extreme lack of zest.  This continued for four days and then the sinus infection pounced.  

I spent an uncomfortable few days on the couch watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and eating popsicles until yesterday when suddenly, at 2:03 p.m. I realized I could read and with that realization, the beautific epiphany that I could get even more books at the library.  POOF I was better.

The Two Kinds of Decay

Sarah battles a crazy disease, the kind of mysterious disease with no definitive end. It’s a disease that requires a central line, the kind of disease that attacks nerves and turns the body into a battleground.

And while all these things are very critical in this memoir, the most important element is how the disease is presented to the reader. This book may be comprised of poems threaded with angst, humor and despair or it could be a teetering castle of prose blocks. Or perhaps it’s one long essay ravaged by the disease itself. The way this book gives you its words feels a little like what CIDP has done to Sarah.

You will boo the disease, yes, but you will spend more time applauding Sarah’s strength, humor and poetic prowess as her body endures cold plasma, a suppository inserted by a cheerleader, countless injections, a rogue ovary relocated during a moment of passion and paralysis that is described as ‘trying to lift someone else’s thigh with your own mind.’ 

what the funk

Today I woke up, ate some amazing pancakes courtesy of Robert while watching Star Trek (we’re almost finished with season one… And I’m enjoying it) and then did the book swap thing, which just means that I sold some books and then turned around and bought almost as many.  I came home and hammered out several submissions and set about tackling my two major chores for the day: vacuuming/mopping the floors and brushing the dogs.  While I was vacuuming I started to feel nauseous and very unsettled, but I chalked it up to not having lunch and ate an apple.  I plowed through all the chores and settled on the couch to tackle a bit of embroidery.  I was so unsettled, headachy and nauseous I couldn’t focus so I gave up and tried to watch a program on tv. 

Halfway through the program it dawned on me what my problem is: I am in a funk. 

What what?

I can’t believe it took most of the day to figure out that I am in a funk.  Usually when I’m in a funk I take a nap that lasts roughly 16 or more hours until it is over or I get whiny and morose and eat a lot of cookies and then get very angry that I ate a lot of cookies.  Somehow I managed to clean and sew and be productive and not negatively affect anyone during the funk.  I think it’s been so long since I’ve been in a funk that I just flat out didn’t recognize it in time. 

So after a brief and lackluster round of applause I am going to sleep until tomorrow.