M. Butterfly

I haven’t blogged in a loooonnngg time.

No, it wasn’t just because I was busy watching the final season of the Oprah Winfrey Show. (My chances of winning a free trip to Australia have drastically plummeted…) Blogging is like exercising. When you’re into it, you’re into it. You have your cute gear on, your hair is up in a bouncy ponytail, your lipstick is on but your foundation is off--- it’s pretty hard to work out with L’Oreal running into your eye. When you’re not into exercise, you’re lying on the couch eating sugar cookies and channel flipping while wondering why that Nora Roberts' movie you swore you were going to watch last year is taking up valuable space on your DVR. What usually gets you up is either you realize you’re expected to fit into a swimsuit---a real one, not a string-one-size-fits-all-bikini. Or someone says, “Hey, did you know you’re morphing with the sofa?”

So when someone recently pointed out that I hadn’t blogged in a while, I thought, why not? There are plenty of books and crafts and TMI things I have to share, and not just with SPL librarians on SharePoint. All the adult participants of my craft programs want to know how to do some of the cooler crafts without having to comb through 15 books filled with impossible to make cards that require wire clippers, blow torches, and 2 weeks of planning.


I came up with this card after going online and realizing a lot of kids card crafts are ugly. Yes, I said it. Ugly. Hideous. Just plain wrong. You smile when they give them to you, but part of you wants to go all Tiger Mom and scream, “This is garbage! But I only say that because I love you…” I started thinking of how to jazz things up when my inner-Martha Stewart took over. The thing is, Sharpies and White Out are not items you want to turn over to a group of children, thus the butterflies were made beforehand. It’s not as difficult as, say, making the Four Season’s duck recipe (takes four days), but there is a learning curve. Sad to say, I can now turn out a butterfly in about 90 seconds, which means I surely have brain damage from the fumes.

Materials:
Card stock
Orange paper
Black sharpies
White out
Colored paper---yellow, plus colors of your choosing
Scratch paper
Glue sticks

Nice to have:
Volunteers
A room with ventilation (or a rock to throw through the window since ours don’t open)

For the card base:

1. The writing.
There are several ways to go with this. I printed “You are the sunshine of my life” directly onto my model card, but for the program I printed out cute sayings on colored paper to allow the kids to pick from. For the inside, I printed out poems to glue inside.

2. The flowers.
Find your desired flower template. Create two flowers using this template. Then take the second flower and trim the perimeter so that it can one flower can sit atop the other. Use these two different sizes to create masses of flowers. (Or e-mail me for some leftovers.) I traced a glue stick onto yellow paper for the center of the flower. (Please don’t tell the kids you are making the ovary of the flower---this will bring up questions you don’t want to answer.)

For the butterflies:

1. Make butterflies using orange paper.
We didn’t have a die cut machine, so we used Elk Grove High School students desperate for volunteer assignments that didn’t involve picking trash off the side of the road. If you need a template Central has this die cut shape, or I can send something over via inter-office mail.

2. Place the butterfly on scratch paper. Fill in the body and outline the shape with a black sharpie. Draw lines in the center bisecting lines.


3. Begin drawing in the other lines.
This is something you might not want to hand over to a sophomore who needs 10 hours of community service by tomorrow. If you don’t have time to closely supervise this work, only let trusted volunteers do this part.



4. Dot the lines created in step two with White Out.
Err on the side of stingy dots. You can draw over your mistakes on the black lines, but you can’t “white out” orange paper. Afterwards go outside and breath fresh(er) air.


5. After it is dry, flip over and repeat.
I only did the middle and right side of the other side, since the left part of it will not show.
6. Bend the butterfly in half.
You don’t want a crisp fold because the butterfly will look less perched-on-a-flower than it will look squashed-under-a-shoe.

7. Remember that perfection is the enemy of Getting Things Done.
Yes, it would have been nice if all the butterflies turned out perfectly. They won’t. Some staff members helped out and said, “I’m sorry, but mine doesn’t look like yours do.” My response: “So? They’re kids. I’m not worrying that an 8 year old might complain that the line’s not perfect.”

Putting it all together:

1. Do the inside of the card first, so as not to mess up the outside.
This is the time to glue in poems, love letters, baby pictures, ultrasounds, etc.

2. Glue the saying and flower(s) onto the front of the card.
Some kids will go all out and layer 3 dozen. Whatever floats their boats is fine.

3. Glue the butterfly atop the card.

And there you have it. I really don't know how long this craft takes because I broke it into many different parts, but the kids loved it and were really impressed. Of course children are also impressed by the magic of jello and finding pennies on the ground, but I take what I can get. Enjoy!

Disco Inferno

I’ve avoided creating a will and trust. Why, do you ask? Because in my pathetic, convoluted way of thinking, creating one means you’re going to die. Yeah, as if not creating one means I’m going to live forever, have thin thighs on a diet of French fries and soy ice cream sandwiches, and grow rich simply by thinking it so.

But this morning I had a bit of a wake-up call. I’m heading towards the north staircase practicing “Where is Thumbkin?” while reminding myself to keep all fingers up while asking, “Where is middle?” so as not to teach the kids to flip anyone off when I noticed flames shooting out the top of the building right across the street. This would have been okay as in not completely horrible if this were a normal building…

It was the gas station.


Gas station + flame= UPTO

So instead of setting up my flannel version of “Old MacDonald,” I’m running into the staff room screaming, “Gas station on fire! Gas station on fire!” while wondering, Why wasn’t I the librarian who resigned? I could be lying on a beach getting naturally exfoliated while drinking a margarita! I was out the door, my purse in one hand, and, unbeknownst to me, my stuffed moose “baby” squeezed under my other arm. The fire department cleared staff to return but I asked, “Can I go work at Valley today?” Translation: “I want to die an old woman warm in her bed, not a relatively young librarian with a pink piggy puppet in her hand!” I got a big fat no as to heading towards safety, and by safety I mean someplace without road blocks. To make matters worse, there were firemen around yet I couldn’t even appreciate them because I was too busy wondering if something would explode. It wasn’t until 1:30 that a colleague and I looked at each other and said, “Firemen! Yeah!”



As the day went on several things sunk into my brain:

1. Pilates in the morning is a good warm-up before running for your life.

2. No gas station means I’ll have to eat the healthy snacks in my work cubby instead of goo-filled cupcakes.

3. I need a will and trust.

SPL has wills, trusts, and power of attorney forms on our website. We all know this. They even have samples. One sample states that the signer wants no electric shock treatments. I’m like, “WTH? I hadn’t thought about electric shock treatments. I don’t want electric shock treatments either!”There are a lot of things I want to happen that everyone should know:

1. I want my hair dresser and a manicurist to tend to me should I fall into a coma.
When my friend woke up from her coma I did her nails, but we had to shave her head.

2. Cancel the cable should I be knocked out for more than 1 week.
No more overpriced Triple Play service!

3. No creepy medical personnel can be near me. Think Kill Bill Vol. 1…

4. I get a private hospital room.

5. If all I can do is blink my eye in some form of Morse code, feel free to accidently step on my oxygen tube for 10-20 minutes.

6. In case of my tragic demise, my nephew can have my PS3 on the condition that he do more than lay on the floor playing “Call of Duty” and eating pizza all day.

7. My mom gets my home but there is a 10 ugly-fake-plant limit---I’m not completely heartless.
8. If I die in an exercise related incident my brother will be disinherited if he states, “I told you so.”

9. My skinny friends can have all my accessories.

It’s going to likely take me a while to work out all the kinks, but the sooner I do it, the less I have to think about it, right?

If you have any suggestions on what I should include in my will and trust, feel free to leave a comment.

Toy Planes

I don’t sleep on planes.

I’m a face sleeper. Not only will I need Botox because of this, I can’t handle an upright position. Since sleep isn’t happening I settle for ignoring those around me, especially if I’m flying with family, and/or screaming children. In order to facilitate this, I have my personal item. No, not the first personal item that was so heavy the straps almost broke. My second one contains a book, a pillow, ear buds, thick socks, a drink, and an eye mask. If you check the fine print, as long as you don’t cart on Bleach Volumes 1-379, these items don’t count towards restrictions. With hours to kill I meander through the airport and look at the exhibits.

The vases weren’t as cool as the one they had the last time I flew out of there---I love sci-fi stuff, so I took a million pictures back in 2009 of the exhibit---yet all we have at Sac International is a lovely Chili’s Too “exhibit.” I board the plane in the last group, which I think is a joke. Do you know who should really board last?

The first class passengers.

Don’t you hate how they look at us, like we’re nothing but petty pathetic peons who don’t deserve to share the same airspace as them? Sure, in an emergency landing they’ll be on rafts instead of huddled on the wings, yet they look so smug I’m tempted to scream, “Might I remind you the Pets.com people flew first class, too, and where are they now? Oh, yeah, that’s right, it no longer exists, just like American job security.”

But I’m too classy to do that.

Settling into coach, I took off my faux feather earrings, wrapped them in the 3 toilet seat liners I lifted from SFO, and waited for something to annoy me, which didn’t take long at all. Instead of finally reading Devil in the White City a whole year after no fewer than 3 librarians recommended it to me, I’m so nauseated by the constant movement of the plane that I give up and put on my eye mask. Big mistake. My eye mask is just a little too tight, something an ophthalmologist wouldn’t recommend, but hey, it was free with purchase. As we near our late landing at O’Hare, the flight attendant begins reading off the list of connecting gates. Mine is not read. Looking at my printout I discover I only have 20 minutes to get off the plane and get to my gate. Bringing the paper up front, American Airlines give me a reason to write yet another letter to company head quarters.

The flight attendant doesn’t know how to read the ticket.

That’s right. This nincompoop (and I don’t say that lightly) tries to convince me that the time on the ticket is actually the date (“It’s June 6, 2005? Really?”) and that my boarding time is 6:50. To which I ask, “How can board at 6:50 when my flight leaves at 6:20?” Instead of arguing with her, I race off the plane into Concourse H and latch onto the first person in an airline uniform, who correctly directs me to Concourse K. Problem is, I can’t really see. Everything past 15 feet is blurry, meaning I’m walking, as fast as one can in heels---they were easier to wear than to pack---and hoping its in the right direction since I couldn’t read the signs. I shouldn’t have worried. Being so late meant I could have simply followed the voice. That’s right, I am so close to missing my flight that my name is being paged. Badly, of course, but paged none the less. I ‘m limping as fast as I can thanks to the earlier ankle injury, and when I get there they grab my bag, place a valet tag onto it, hustle me into the plane and shut the door.

Having booked a completely different flight, I was assuming I was going from one big plane to another plane. OMG, nothing could have been further from the truth. This was some American Eagle you-should-have-flown-Southwest-teeny-tiny itty-bitty 34 passenger plane. The plane was so small it looked like a 747 gave birth to it. While I'll admit to dreaming about being in a plane that small, the dream involved me owning it and having my own massage room, not sharing the space with 33 other doomed people as we fall smack dab to earth. The flight attendant aboard told me they had changed my seat assignment and, “You’re now on an exit row. Should you not be able to perform your duties we can reassign you.” Which made me think, “Exit row? Can I exit out of it now and board a real plane?”

Of course not.

I strap myself in and start my inner dialogue which went something like this:

“I’m going to die!"

"This plane is made of tin foil and Betamax parts and I’m going to die!"

"They'll have to use dental records to identify my crispy corpse! Let it be quick and easy!"

"Maybe I should buy another drink. Then it really won’t hurt when we crash. Or maybe I’ll even survive. In car crashes drunks always survive after ruining everyone else’s life. Didn’t they have a crash where one person survived? Wait a minute, I should have cleaned my house! Now everyone is going to know I haven’t straightened up since I signed for a short sale. Short my inner thigh! How was I to know it wouldn’t close by now? I gave them a June 24th deadline! This is horrible! People are going to pick through my belongings at a garage sale and offer fifty cents for my cashmere sweater that retailed for $150. I should have written an extremely detailed will. Stephenee always liked that sweater. I should text her and let her know she gets first dibs on my clothes, and Amy can have my books since she's my only non-library friend who actually reads, and April can have my exercise DVDs, and Margaret can have dibs on any accessories my mother doesn't want, and no, she can't send my things to my oldest sister because she has no taste at all. She draws her eyebrows into a near unibrow. How many times have I explained the side of nose, corner of eyebrow equation to her? At least she's not as bad as that one woman who looks like her brows take after McDonald's golden arches but it's embarrassing to be in public with her! And what’s my mother going to do? Who will tell her how to use the remote when she insists its plotting against her? Who will stop her from answering the phone when annoying people call? If she goes to live with any of my brothers they'll tell her to get rid of all her stuff because, "There should be white space. A man needs somewhere to rest his eyes." Don’t they understand that if we didn’t want something we wouldn’t have bought it in the first place? I'm glad I didn’t leave them any money. You can have all the white space you want with my $0 contribution to your net worth. What am I saying? I don't want to die! Oh lord, please don’t let me die! How unfair it would be to die when I haven’t even had time to enjoy my life post student loans!”

About 5 minutes later I realize I’m getting hot. My calf is against the emergency exit door, and it’s hot outside, therefore I’m hot, and after studying the seat in front of me I realize it's simply a floatation device and there’s no parachute attached. Then we hit turbulence, the captain told us to stay in our seats and I started thinking:

“I’m going to die! For the love of God, please, someone get me off this plane! I shouldn't be able to tell the weather by feeling it on my leg! If you let me live I promise to be nice to people and eat green stuff other than parsley and Jello and clean my house...or hire someone to clean it, and I'll lie more because telling the truth all the time is plain mean, just let me live!"

Suffice to say, we landed safely.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

You can have the best laid plans, but if an airline is plotting against you just forget about it.

At noon I jumped into a Blue Van 2 hours before my flight to DC for the ALA conference. Remember back when you could arrive 30 minutes before a flight with a Big Gulp while your family stayed with you at the gate while they left their car parked out on the curb? I remember being fed real food with real utensils and even getting invited into the cockpit. Today you go the airport prepared to be strip searched, your drink confiscated, your carry on bag packed to the gills and your "personal item," i.e. big-bag-o-stuff, almost breaking from the weight of everything in it. You used to have 2 carry on bags and a personal item. Now if you want to bring a laptop you'll need to place panties in a manila envelope and slip it in your case. I skipped the laptop and took a real bag because I like stuff and I like choices. Yes, I took 5 pairs of shoes with me on a 6 day trip. By day 2 I'd already worn 4 pair.

But back to the story at hand.

I arrive at Terminal B early. If you haven't been to Terminal B it's because you booked on a better airline. Terminal B is an after thought. Terminal B is the equivalent of thinking you're giving birth to 5 kids and they find another kid in their during deliver, meaning you're in such a scramble to find a name the kid ends up stuck with Epidural or Invitro. Complete. After. Thought. No massage bar. No cute stores. That's Terminal B for you.

I slide through security with my bag-o-liquids was still inside my bag-o-stuff. Yes, the official packing program lecturer says you're supposed to get liquids on the other end of your flight, but she's white. The rest of the world can buy conditioner at the airport kiosk. Blacks have to go to the...how shall I put it...questionable side of town to get products, meaning I spend the night before a flight squeezing shampoo into Barbie sized bottles. Anyway I get through, I have lunch, some nice miscellaneous military man heading to Mississippi pays covers my tab (how thoughtful!) and before we even exchange names we get the news...

The flight was canceled.

Yeah, my thought exactly.

An AC unit broke, meaning they'd have to fly at a lower altitude, meaning if they did so they'd hit a mountain. (BTW, what a pleasant thought to put in the minds of passengers who are about to fly over mountains, thank you very much.) They sent us downstairs to the counter. Too bad they didn't tell the poor woman behind the counter what was going on before they did so. While she was staving off a panic attack my fellow passengers were saying things like, "It's always American Airlines!" and "I knew I should have taken Southwest!" Then a woman passes out the airline phone number as we stare at her because how fast can we really get through to a live person when there's 180+ people calling at once? And what good will it do us when they hadn't officially canceled the flight? So after they cancel the flight we call and are all told, "Oh, we are so sorry, and we'll get you on the same flight tomorrow," which, in airline speak means, "Didn't you learn life sucked way back in kindergarten?"

I'm ready to burst into tears, knowing I can't do anything unless it involves a time machine and booking on Continental instead, when I get a great idea and call back and ask, "Is there anything leaving SFO to DC?"

"Which airport were you going to?"

"Whichever one that has a plane flying to DC."

"I can get you on flight 1522 to BWI tonight. It leaves at 11:45 pm."

I do a mini happy dance, run out the airport, and catch a Blue Van to Amtrak following a call to the KP desk for their number in which I am told, "you really need to get an iPhone!"

I arrive, meet some nice people, take the train to Emeryville, the bus to the Ferry Building, and taking the Embarcadero station BART to SFO.

I get there, bash my ankle with my carry on bag which weighs about 300 pounds, and head up. I go to the check-in line, slide in my card, and outcomes something unexpected...

A notice saying it was too early to check in because my flight wasn't scheduled until the following night.

This is about when the internal meltdown started.

Ever dealt with a screaming toddler and when you go to pick them up they lift up their arms, slide out of your hands, and start bawling on the ground? Just pouring their little 2-year old hearts out on the carpet you just steam cleaned because, "Mommy says I can pee in my pull up!" and no matter how you try to convince them that not letting them watch Dora the Explorer/eat chocolate cake/pry the electrical safety cap with a fork is not the end of the world they're still upset?

That was me.

The person behind the counter said, 'We're not supposed to do this, but you came from Sacramento, so I'm going to put you on this flight." I had to stop myself from screaming, "WTH? Your fellow employee booked me on the wrong flight but you risk getting in trouble for fixing his mistake? What's wrong with you people?" Instead I just told her what anyone in my situation would tell another person.

"I need a drink."

Honestly I could have had a massage instead. A massage is therapeutic. Alcohol, on the other hand, can get you into a bit of trouble. But a 30 minute massage at SFO runs $80, versus $10 for a drink. I'm frugal. I had the drink. While I'm certain the whole restaurant heard me screech, "What do you mean you're out of Mojitos?" and "What do you mean you're out of chocolate cake?" I settled for a top shelf margarita and a vanilla cupcake. As one fellow librarian put it, "A margarita massages your insides." I felt a lot better after I swallowed half in one gulp before slowing down.

All was well.

At least for the moment...

PTS---Conference Style

ALA is coming to an end. I can still here the sounds of the crowds stories above me as they eat cake and down as much alcohol as possible following the Michael Printz Awards reception. What should I tell you I have enjoyed the most. Is it running into amazing librarians from all parts of the world, including one from Bangladesh? Is it doing the author version of speed dating? Was it simply making it here after the chaos of travel, which I will walk about later?

For all of you who have never gone, a national conference can be a real PITA. You're there, everything you want to go to takes place simultaneously at spots across town, it's crowded, and there aren't enough hours in the day. That being said, there must be a reason why I've gone 4 years straight, paying out of pocket the last 3 times. (If any of you want to contribute to my Visa bill, please e-mail me. I'll take it all---dollars, pennies, pesos, whatever.)

It's...magical in a way. This week I spoke with Toni Morrison, if only for a second, sat down next to Laurie Halse Anderson, taken pictures of John Grisham, and sat on my knees in the front aisle to sing along with Natalie Merchant. There were old friends to have lunch with, new friends to make at breakfast, lost connections made at parties thrown by vendors in an effort to intoxicate you enough to sign a binding 5-year contract you won't remember until the invoice arrives on the director's desk. It's wonderful, yet it's awful to know I have to go back to work and rejoin Library Land after going to truly innovative programs and no one telling me their child just peed on the multi-colored furniture.

But most of all, it's just plain fun.


To be continued...

PARC and Wreckreation

Was I the only one to breathe a sigh of relief when the PARC system temporarily went down?

After weeks of, “OMG, I don’t know what I’m doing!” and an hour long training that made me certain that yes, I was completely clueless, there was a part of me---I believe it was my brain---that made me grateful to have a bit longer to figure this out. Who would have thought I’d be nostalgic for the old paper system? Let’s see, 1 hour spent on my 2009 evaluation vs. months spent pulling out my hair trying to determine the meaning of life. And it’s not even the unwanted hair I’m pulling out, so we really have a problem.

Honestly, do I really need goals? My job consists of telling people where to find Magic Tree House books, avoiding paperwork, pointing out where the bathrooms are, telling teens lower the volume on their iPods if they hope to have any hearing left by the time they hit the old age of 25, playing movies, telling stories to classes, and making crafts, mainly paper bag puppets, with toddlers. So far we have made a pig, a cow, a dog, a cat, a bunny, a lion, and even a Christmas tree complete with presents and bows. Go figure. After looking at my schedule and discovering I’ll put on over 130 programs over the next year (movie nights, toddler times, class tours, DCA, summer reading) I think maybe my goal should be to stop looking at craft sites and other library systems’ events calendars and saying, “I wanna do that!”

But a person has to have real goals, right? So I thought about it and created a few that should do the trick:

1. Lose the inches I’ve put on since I started working here.

Time line: By my class reunion.

Is it measurable: Very!

I’d feel better if I went down a size. In turn, I would treat people better. In time this kindness would trickle down to actual patrons. In order for this to happen, an hour of my shift should involve hitting the gym, with another hour devoted to taking a shower and doing my hair. Since I’d feel more comfortable showering at home, where I have all my products and won’t tell a fellow bather, “Those are fake,” I need another hour for travel time, plus one more to get a massage at Mellow Me Out to relieve the tension.

2. Not strangle anyone.

Timeline: Ongoing

Is it measureable: Yes, by number of incident reports.

Adults are not too happy that they can’t use kids’ computers. I get so many complaints. The majority of them boiling down to they are doing their kids homework for them helping their kids out, or the reservation sent them downstairs because they’ve been using their kids’ cards to avoid paying the $700 fine they owe. Then I get the stray adults who want to sit in the purple chair, lay on the bean bags, and are most upset that they have to take the elevator up to the 2nd floor to get to a bathroom when it’s so much easier to walk down a flight of stairs and to the ends of the earth to use ours. Whatever it is, they’re not happy with me, and the feeling is reciprocal. I’d hate to hurt one of them and end up in jail while waiting for my lawyer to get me off scot-free. Jail may have worked out for Martha Stewart, but I’ll take a pass.

3. Stop buying things from patrons.

Timeline: Ongoing

Is it measureable: Yes, in the amount of money I save.

Whether it’s candy or pizza, somehow I am guilted into buying items I don’t need, don’t want, and can’t use in order for some kid to get to Sly Park, Sutter’s Fort, or some other miserable, God forsaken middle-of-nowhere, don’t-know-why-they’d-want-to-go-there place. Can’t anyone go anyplace nice with air conditioning, indoor plumbing, and something entertaining to do? I have yet to have a child say to me, “My class is doing a spa retreat in Carmel and we could really use your help getting there.” Instead I’m wasting my (sometimes) hard earned money so a kid can get frostbite while panning for fool’s gold in the dead of winter.

4. Read more juvenile books.

Timeline: Ongoing

Is it measureable: Quiz me.

The only time I seem to have to read kids’ books (discounting board books and Where’s Waldo) is when I’m on a trip. I read The True Meaning of Smekday during a Thanksgiving gathering at a vacation resort, and The Lightning Thief on my flight to Florida. Seems to me it is in SPL’s best interest to send me on as many trips as possible to enhance my reader’s advisory skills. I’ve always wanted to go to the French Riviera. Just think of all the books I can read on the way over!

I’d write more goals, but I have to be realistic. These four will be hard enough to accomplish.

LH Has Left the Building!!!!!

This is for LH. I can’t believe she’s escaped deserted us! Because she’s a great worker with the organizational skills of a 4-star general, she’ll most likely be replaced with a person who is one step away from an amoeba and couldn’t make chocolate soy pudding to save his or her life.

LH said her old town frowns on dancing---while it’s not a sign you’ll burn for eternity, Satan was reserving you a spot. I find this sad because dancing was one of my pastimes and it keeps teens out of trouble. After dance rehearsals even if you could muster the strength to rob a 7-11, you stunk so bad they could smell you a mile off.


At one time my friends and I all knew this complete dance. It is my greatest hope that by the time LH finishes her library degree and returns to Central (this is not an option---you have to return!!!) she will have learned this whole dance and can perform it for us at Training Day. The rest of you, feel free to join in.