This Is Probably Anti-Climactic

Here's the big news: We're moving!  Here's the rather lame addendum: We're moving to the house next door! 

Ok, see, here's the thing.  If you count my move from Pittsburgh to New Orleans when we got married, I've moved 4 times in 15 years.  And once you set up that sort of a precedent, you start to get itchy when you stay in the same place too long.  The first few moves were job related;  his training happened in 3-5 year increments and we'd move as one program ended and a new one began.  Our move to Oregon was spurred by the fact that David was school-age and the schools  in North Carolina didn't meet our needs.  So we moved to Oregon and we've been happy here ever since. 

When we got here, we found that the people we bought from had moved to a different part of the neighborhood. As I got to know people, I found that this was not an uncommon occurrence.  People here played musical houses.  Someone was always moving down the hill or up the hill, but still in the same subdivision.  How I scoffed at those losers.  For crying out loud, if you're going to make a change, then MAKE A CHANGE!  Don't just shuffle around where you already are.  I believe the word I used to describe this familiar house-swapping was "incestuous".  Fast forward 4 years and here we are buying the house literally next door.  As I sit and type this I can glance out the window and see my new house. 

We weren't really even looking to buy a house.  We love our location.  I can walk the kids to school and our block is built around an incredible common area.  All the houses back up to it which means that we leave our back yard and step into acres of open rolling lawn.  It's like a private park and we spend all summer out there playing with the neighbors.  We were debating adding on to our current house, so when our neighbor put her house on the market, we went to see it just for fun.  We'd looked at another house in our area, but it didn't do much for us.  This one hit us like a bolt of lightning and we decided it was an opportunity too good to pass up. 

Now I need some good house-selling vibes.  And if you want to come help us carry our stuff from one house to the next this summer, we'll be providing refreshments.

Quick Note

Sorry for the lack of entries....I've been crazy busy this past week.  I hope to have a big announcement in the next few days (and NO I am NOT pregnant).  In somewhat related news, I am pleased to report that I just moved a large toy shelf up the stairs all by myself and it didn't require a single call to 911.

Juliana, Overheard While Watching Dora

"Swiper really sucks because all they do is say 'Swiper, No Swiping' and he just walks towards them."

Of Ted And Taye

Did anyone really feel the need for a new Ted Danson vehicle?  Were you spending a lot of time lamenting his absence from television?  I thought not. 

To compensate, ABC is also unveiling a new show starring Taye Diggs.   I was the only person I knew who watched the one glorious season of Kevin Hill, with Taye Diggs at his charming and lovable best.  Do I really want to see him in a dramatic thriller?  Not so much.  But I will.  Oh, yes I will.  I'll Tivo it and watch every second and make good use of the freeze-frame button.    

Bless you, Internet...you and your easy access to Taye Diggs photos.

Everyone Should Have A Twirly Skirt

This is a day for the record books, temperature-wise.  Officially, we hit somewhere around 95, but I'll have you know that at one point my van thermometer read 102.  Which brings me to a funny story.  This afternoon I decided it was time to turn on the air conditioning in the house.  I switched it on and left for Costco.  When I got back, the house was even hotter than when I'd left!  Isn't that funny??  My  A/C is broken on the day we're setting heat records!  How I laughed!  And by "laugh", I mean "stomped into the garage and yelled 'FUCKER!' at the air conditioner thingy".  The nice man is coming tomorrow morning to check things out.  He's the same nice man who installed our new furnace a few months ago.  Wanna bet there's a connection?

Since it was so hot, I decided to close up the blinds and turn on the ceiling fans.  We recently re-arranged Juliana's room, so I was able to step up onto her bed and easily reach the cord to lower her blind.  For once, the Grace Fates were on my side, because as I was standing on her bed, I suddenly realized how close my head must've come to the moving fan blades.  Thankfully, my spatial abilities are so bad that I had no idea what sort of danger I'd put myself in.  (To balance things out, while at Costco I'd carefully crouched down to slide a flat of juice boxes on the rack under the shopping cart.  When I straightened up again, I whacked my left shoulder hard on the underside cart handle.  I really shouldn't be allowed out in public by myself.)

But enough about me.  Here are some pictures of Juliana that my friend emailed to me.  Last month, her Kindergarten class participated in a school assembly by dancing The Twist.  What I especially love (beside that fact that she chose a "twirly skirt" for the event) is how most of the class bunched up at the very back of the room.  Not my girl!  She and her friend Hailey were front and center.

 

 

My Life Is A Cabaret

A few weeks ago, a friend told me that if ever a child was born to be a fairy, it was Juliana.  This observation was based on the fact that she never just walks anywhere.  Walking is far too pedestrian (Ha!  Get it?).  She can only get from one place to another by skipping, twirling, or prancing.  People comment on it all the time.  And while it's cute to the casual observer, it requires me to walk defensively. She is physically incapable of moving in a straight line.   She flutters back and forth, crossing my path and forcing me to stop dead in my tracks at regular intervals.  I am constantly expecting to trip over her and end up sprawled on the sidewalk with a compound fracture. 

Given that she is my child, she's not exactly the picture of grace.  Just yesterday I watched her scamper across the playground at school and fall headlong into the bark chips.  Later that day, at t-ball, she pranced across home plate, then slipped on a bat and fell prone onto the grass.  None of this deters her, however, and she pops right back up because there is more dancing to be done.  

She sees the beauty in everything.  Every day is THE BEST DAY OF HER LIFE.   Today she spent 45 minutes throwing me a pretend, early  Mother's Day party, complete with parade and confetti. She narrated every second of it: "How 'bout I decorated the whole house with balloons and how 'bout people were carrying you in the parade while you sat in a throne and how 'bout we had a pinata and you got to go first and how  'bout it was the best day of everyone's life because we were all having FUN!"  It was a non-stop monologue.  Actually, right now every single waking moment she has is a non-stop monologue.  Everything she says is over-the-top with drama and joy and is accompanied by flinging arm motions and interpretive dance.  Jesus Christ, it's like living with a pint-sized Liza Minelli.  All of my friends think she is so cute--and she is, don't get me wrong--but living with this all day, every day makes me want to crush her little spirit just for some peace and quiet. 

Yesterday, she saw that I had bought some Care Bears gummy snacks at the store.  Her response?  "Oh, Mommy, I just loooooove Care Bears fruit snacks!  They're like magical charms that fill your heart with joy!"  Who in God's name talks like that??  I'm telling you, after two hours with her, Pollyanna would be screaming, "Shut the fuck up!"

Yes, one day she'll be a sullen teenager and I'll be racking my brain trying to figure out ways to get her to talk to me.  I should capture her overabundant joy on video now to preserve it.  Then I'll have it allllllllll ready to show to her prom date. 

You Can Thank The Internet Gods

I just typed up a reeeeeeally boring post.  It focused on cleaning products.  And I used lots of links.  Like five.  To cleaning products.  It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

I composed it all offline and when I went to log on and post it, AOL told me that Journals were unavailable and POOF the whole thing was gone.  If I were you, I'd be thanking AOL about now because apparently their crap filters are working just fine. 

In its place, I'll post this:

Ritu and David went to One Man Star Wars  on Saturday night.  The show itself is just one guy acting out the entire original Star Wars Trilogy which he's distilled into an hour long performance.  Ritu said it was clever and funny and definitely worth seeing.  Before it started, there were people in the lobby all dressed in Star Wars regalia.  Here is Darth Vader and David (who wisely brought his own light saber.)

 

Shelving

Last summer our public library was looking for volunteers and I signed up.  Taking on this volunteer position was a watershed moment as it was the first thing I'd embarked upon in eight years that was just for me.  I love books, I love reading, and I love libraries, so to immerse myself in all of it felt right.   It appeared that the best job for me would be shelver, as it didn't require committing to pre-determined shifts.  I was giddy with excitement during the training because we got to go behind the scenes and into the circulation department.  I even got a key card to open the locked staff-only areas, you know, the ones that would set off an alarm if someone unimportant--someone without a photo I.D.-- tried to enter them.  True, I had to sign the key card in and out each time I  went, but still! 

Shelving is a perfect match for me.  For each book, there is one right place.  It's just a matter of finding it.  Like fitting a piece into a jigsaw puzzle or writing an answer into a crossword puzzle, there is the satisfaction of knowing one correct answer exists and you've found it.  What could be more fulfilling? 

When you think of someone shelving, you probably picture a librarian with a small stack of books clutched to her chest, strolling dreamily down the rows and sliding a book into an empty slot right at eye level.  Curse the entertainment industry and their misleading stereotypes! 

Here's the thing: Shelving is hard physical work.  You start in the circulation room with a wheeled cart that has a sorted selection of books on it, perhaps biographies, or mysteries, or juvenile fiction.  It's a wheeled metal cart with three rows on it and probably holds about sixty books.  Once you've put the books on your cart in catalogue order, you head out into the appropriate section of the library.  Shelving consists of three basic tasks.  First, of course, is replacing each book in the proper catalogued position.  Second is to straighten the row by pulling each book forward so that the entire row is flush with the front edge of the shelf.  Last of all, books must be shifted so that the amount of books on each shelf is approximately equal.  For example, if the top shelf is 3/4 full and the second shelf is only 1/4 full, you need to shift books down from the first shelf to the second so that each is about 1/2 full.   Each shelf has an adjustable book-end on the right hand side.  It's a small metal frame that slides into the upper part of the shelf and can be pulled out towards you, then slid in either direction to adjust to the amount of books on the shelf.  

As this is a fairly large library, with many wonderful devoted volunteers, shelving is an ongoing process.  Which means that the open spot where a book was removed by a patron for check-out is long gone.  Which also means that nearly every time I need to shelve a single solitary book, I have to swing the book-end out, slide it to the right, and shove over part of the row to make room for my book.  Once I've determined I have no more books to put on that particular row, I reach behind the books and move them forward to the edge of the shelf.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  By the time I'm done shelving, I've pretty much touched every single book in an entire collection because even if I don't need to replace books in a particular row, the books need to be straightened and the length of the rows adjusted. 

When you think of a library, you probably  think of a quiet place.  Not surprisingly, given my documented history of clumsiness, I am the world's noisiest shelver.  It starts when I take a handful of books off of my cart (which must remain parked at the end of the row so as not to block those darling library patrons' access to the shelves).  No longer supported by my handful, the rest of the books slam over on their sides with the ringing sound of a wooden mallet striking cast iron.  I get tired of going back and forth to the cart (mustn't block the happy little library goers!) so I usually take what my mother would call a  "Lazyman's Load" and grab more books than I can easily handle, so that the stack starts to slide and a few of the books in the middle squirt out of my hands, often onto the floor.  Once I get down to business, you'll hear the blood curdling screech of metal against metal as I enthusiastically try to adjust a book-end.  Sometimes, with a sound not unlike wind chimes, they come completely free of the shelf and, to my surprise, I find one loose in my hand.  It requires a bit of blind banging around to get it re-attached as the book-end must slide into a hidden lip that runs along the top of each shelf.  Also, think about this:  To make room on a shelf, I first slide over the book-end with my right hand.  At the same time, I have to use my left hand to keep the row of books, now freed from its book-end, from toppling over.  I switch to my right hand for this job and use my left to start shoving the books towards the newly positioned book-end.  Now, I ask you.  How the hell do I keep the books on the LEFT side of the gap I've just created from falling over?  There are not enough hands!  Sooooo, add the sounds of books sliding and slamming over and, occasionally, falling off the back of the shelf to the Secret Book Purgatory.  

It's a physically demanding task.   Between squatting down for lower shelves, reaching overhead for the upper ones, carrying armfuls of books, and acting as a human book-end I am wiped out by the end of each shift.  And to the person who felt the need to check out SIX phone book sized volumes on stamp collecting: Get a life!  Those damn floppy slippery books that OF COURSE belonged on a top shelf nearly killed me.  I briefly considered using one of those wheeled step stools that are scattered about, but I value my spinal cord. 

But as I shelve, I find myself exploring sections of the library I would otherwise never encounter.  (Sometimes I shelve in the Nonfiction 700's where the craft books are.  The other day I saw not one, but TWO books on gourd crafts.  Gourd crafts!  People write BOOKS about it.  More than one!  And then people take those books out of the library, read them, and make things out of gourds!!  Like, you could paint faces on them or decorate them with scraps of felt!)  And it's wonderful when your cart is empty and you can gaze upon the rows of neat, orderly shelves feeling pride at a job well done.  And then watch a library patron wander over and screw it all up by choosing a book.  Bastards.