patrons don’t like Wednesdays

April 30, 2014tempestpilot

There was discontent simmering through the computer stations all afternoon. Punctuations of loudly whispered profanity caused children to look around with interest and adults to act suspiciously casual, and everyone ignored my shushing. That kind of thing can build up and cause discomfort. I took a turn around the staff room and pointed warningly at the microwave when it beeped with my hot water. An old man winked at me. Another old man yelled, “FUCKIN PHONE COMPANY. I KNOW MY RIGHTS.” Aha! I shushed as he went out the automatic doors, but it was lost in the electronic whooshing. There was a rattle of gunfire, and I ran to the computers in time to help someone turn the volume down on a video of a dog being shot to death. Slightly better than the patron who was playing car crash fatality footage. MY EYES, PEOPLE. And then someone ate half a rice cake on the hood of my car. There you have it. Lawlessness.

another patron dies

One of our students in Hana died this week at 17. The car he was driving went over the cliffs and fell 300 ft. to crash in flames. The boy with him - also one of our students - jumped out halfway down and managed to cling onto the cliff. I knew these boys since they were 11, and while I didn't know them closely, I told them off for jumping up and slapping the EXIT signs at the library, and hassled them about putting on shirts.

It was a terrible way to go. I'm so sorry for them.

Home sick

I reached over to click something on the computer, and Leif said, "Wow, your arm is fat!"
"What?"
"Look, it's soft and jiggly."
"That's muscle. Soft and jiggly muscle."
"No, look." He kneaded my arm. "Squish, squish, squish. Fat."
"Your face is fat," I said. "My arms are all muscle. Rippling, tender, flapping-in-the-wind muscle."
He wobbled my underarm and made a turkey noise. I pushed his face away.

KIDS.

GOOGLE PLUS

I HATE YOU.

I clicked on my google plus account, which I don't use and never have, and discovered that all the photos I've ever shared here on my blog were on there in a big open, public page in one big horrifying splash with over 230,000 views. So I made it private and now all my pictures are gone. 

Fixing. And swearing. And considering a fresh start, with an actual theme and purpose.

Easter 2014

It was the usual scene: eggs, candy, early rising, chewed up note to the Easter Bunny ("It's a bunny, it can't read"), hidden eggs, meats, dietary remorse. There was a remarkable percentage of egg breakage this year during the dyeing, but it was ok because the man accidentally boiled 30 eggs instead of 18.

OK LINE UP LET'S TAKE A NICE PICTURE IN YOUR EASTER CLOTHES. LOOK HAPPY. WHAT ARE YOU EATING. COME BACK.

This did not work.

There weren't any good pictures of me, but at least proof enough that I was there.

My aunt and uncle have established the new tradition of flat ham, which is the best thing ever. Bless the little flat pigs.

2012 was a good year for bitches. And "white wine".

We took the meal outside, as an homage to spring and inadequate dining space. I don't go in for kiddie tables as a rule, because I think kids need to learn how to have formal meals and use cutlery without it becoming a Lord of the Flies scenario, but we didn't have a long enough table. And I didn't have to sort out the juice fight and stop my cousins from making ham sandwiches out of the rolls to avoid using a fork, so it worked out.

It was a good scene. 

charm

There was screaming outside the library as we were shutting down the building yesterday, so I climbed on a chair and looked out one of the high windows. A man and a woman were fighting in their van. The mister slammed his door and stalked around the vehicle while the missus wailed and shook her hands. One of our patrons was sitting in the car next to them, and I was about to be worried for her safety when she suddenly reached beside her and handed the man a half-full bottle of whiskey. He took two long pulls on it and handed it back gratefully. She tucked it beside the driver's seat and didn't put the lid back on. They all drove away, unsteadily. Hmm.

Thank goodness I'm a such a calm and reasonable person, I congratulated myself that evening. The man walked by my tote bag, where my failing attempt at a first-place art contest entry was sticking up out of the clutter of books and empty sandwich bags. He made a sad noise. "Oh? What happened to your drawing?" I reacted as if someone had yanked my pants down, and screamed, "GET AWAY DON'T LOOK AT THAT!"

Calm and reasonable

And anyway, something had happened to my drawing: mostly me, accidentally using conté on top of graphite and then trying to erase it with a cheap pink eraser, which resulted in big black grease streaks imbedded with bits of rubber; but there was also a whole lot of cockroach poop and a gross glued-on roach egg casing, which was scraped off (badly) and then scribbled over in my attempt to salvage the old illustration board. I KNOW. But I haven't been paid yet. I was going to trim it. My latest endeavor is to try and win the Drawing Magazine annual art contest and then spend the award money on a garden shed/art studio (/chickencoop/nosy husband storage). The only problem is my lack of space, time, subject, and materials. I have two weeks to resolve this.Which I might, depending on how good I am at charming people into staying still while I draw them. Bribery counts as charm.

I get mad at Alexander McCall Smith

Or: Why I don't write book reviews. 

I hate philosophy. People complain about moral decay and youths-these-days and the good times bygone, and they have been since the first time anyone reached adulthood and realized what shits people are. 

Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers. 

-Socrates

I tried listening to the Sunday Philosophy Club while waiting for my shipment of Terry Pratchett books to come in, because without a book I start thinking in the car and then getting mad about things - like how wasserface in the Fifth Element got all the way to W for War in her wikipedia thing before realizing people kill each other, despite A for Apocalypse, B for Bioterrorism, G for Genocide, etc. Maybe she was having a bathroom break or digging in the fridge while those bits scrolled past. If I'm not getting mad about old movie scenes, I'm picking up memories and polishing them into buffed nuggets of remorse, anger, embarrassment, yearning, or evil intent. So it's best I just listen to audio books. I grabbed this particular one because I enjoyed the #1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but - well, The Sunday Philosophy Club is full of... philosophy. Before disc 1 was over, I was yelling at the stereo as I merged into traffic.

Does anyone ever smile intentionally?

YES. Yes, fucking YES - all the time, for everything. It's good manners. Who even asks that?

To love someone is to understand them completely, and forgive them.

NO. It's to think you understand them. Sometimes. Or maybe you love them against all practicality, for no good reason that you can tell, and maybe you kind of hate them, too. Forgiveness is an entirely different thing than love, they do not go hand in hand. It's much easier to forgive someone you don't give a shit about.

If one is committed to telling the truth, would they answer truthfully if a murderer arrived at the door, asking if their victim is in?

I get that the idea here is that a white lie could spare a life, but come on. If you were that committed to the truth, you could still get around this moral quandary. "Yes, and I will kill you with my own two hands, and maybe this vase right here, if you try to get in." "I am closing the door now" might also work. But I reject the idea that truth is an immutable force in the world. We are tiny little creatures faffing around and making noises, and truth is a figment of our imagination. There are natural events, and there is communication, and there is survival, and where they intersect we get very moralistic and long-winded. Also, there is redirection, if white lies are undesirable. "Was that good for you?" "Oh, let me tell you about the bits that were good!" "How do I look in this hat?" "You are too good-looking for that hat, give me that hat, bad hat." White lies vs Truth is a tired old argument. The main thing to live by when communicating with others is Don't Be an Asshole. 

I turned the book back in at this point. I don't even care who threw McHandsomepants off the opera balcony. And the main character insulted Wagner. Life is too short for books that don't blow your kilt up, and that's my philosophy.

Highland games

note: blog images broke and were removed, sorry

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The highland games used to be an event filled with masses of people in costume and kilt; vendors stuffed under rows of enormous tents, and food booths with everything from bangers to Korean BBQ. But then some charismatic event planner got old and died, and the festival became a limp scrap of an event. This year, it was ousted from the usual park because of construction, and was locked up in a pavilion surrounded by homeless people asleep or dead under every tree. I've had better attendance at my toddler storytime. It's a travesty - one I have no intention of correcting, because Event Coordinator is top on my list of jobs that I never never ever want. Right under Wedding Planner (kind of the same thing, but with more screaming), Emergency Vet (also with screaming, but this time mine), and CPA (see previous).

Anyway, it was still exciting, because Zenny got her head stuck in the cast iron fence.

RSCDS dancing to handful of indigents 

Boys, confused about who was losing Pokemon, but certain it was not themselves.

Red ear of fence-wrenchingness. I win for catching her just before she popped her entire melon between the rungs.

Waiting for very sad fish and chips.

This morning I finally cracked into a new 10-pound range on the scale, and got to pose awkwardly in the mirror to document it.

And then my jokes about positive manifestation backfired AGAIN. I've been thinking kind of a lot about a home and  furniture lately, and then this happened:

Power of the seeeecret. Again. 

Someone moved, and sent their burly nephews over to jam the tiny house full of giant chairs. Be more specific, I have said and said and said.

Send me a new house.

Small bites

The Erin cardigan inches along on my lunch breaks. The back is nearly done, with added waist shaping for my womanly bulges.

In the sketchbook, I've been blocking out book illustrations. In the car, I'm listening to the Shining so that I can read Doctor Sleep, and while the narrator drones desultorily I'm thinking in a detached way about the hypothetical home, with hypothetical art table, design wall, knitting chair, and sunny window. I'm cautious about wanting things too much, as an invitation to disaster, but... it creeps. It's like I'm passing through the weeks in sketchy translucent grey, clutching bits of color hopefully and waiting for feelings to start blooming again.

Question du jour

"Has anyone found a license plate?"
"In the library?"
"Yeah, it fell off."

One more ideal down the toilet

At the age of 16, I was a tall 11th grader in ratty corduroys and over-sized Led Zeppelin shirts, hiding behind a book or a pair of headphones. I was on the swim team, like a goose in a flock of ducks. One evening on an away meet, we sat around the center stage at the mall, waiting for our coach to pick us up from an afternoon of shopping. The boys and girls had polarized on either side of the stage, laughing loudly and jumping off the stairs in a totally-not-flirting kind of way. One of the girls decided to use me as a decoy. She hopped off the stage and came over to where I was reading.

"HAAAAAAALLY! You should wear BONGO jeans."
I stared at her. "What?" 
"BONGO jeans!" She struck a pose, hooking her thumbs into her belt loops and glancing at the boys over my shoulder.
Her mouth was making sounds and emphasizing syllables, but it didn't make any sense to me. "...Bonkasheens?"
She realized she was talking to someone very simple and hesitated for a moment before deciding to forge ahead, prancing in a little circle. "If you wear Bongo jeans, boys will like you!"
She was talking about pants. I was amazed. The boys were watching her now, and I wondered if she would do a display of splits and jazz hands. "But I have a boyfriend." 
"MORE boys will like you!" She gestured like a magician.
"Why would I want more boys to like me?"
"Ugh. You should just WEAR them, they're better than YOUR ugly pants." She stomped back to the stage and sat heavily next to the other girls, peeling her eyes at them. The boys laughed, and she smiled over her shoulder at them, like, I know, right?
 I will never, ever buy Bongo jeans, I said to myself, and went back to reading my book.

So this weekend I found myself buying a pair of Bongo jeans. I am old enough now to have learned that if it fits and makes your butt look higher than your knees, you buy it. Now I would get to find out if the boys would really like me. First, I made sure to activate their magic powers by prancing around like a tart.

I stood at the desk, ready to be likeable. Patrons said hello to me. A homeless man winked, and I got ready to tick it off on my imaginary tally sheet, but then he kept on winking as he asked about the computers, so that might have been a potassium deficiency. Someone said my earrings were scary. And that's all that happened.

Verdict: THE PANTS ARE A LIE. An 18 year mystery put to rest. Breathe easy, Internet.