False start

My mother dropped me off at work and drove away with Gavin. I sat in front of the library and ate my sandwich, waiting for Yuri to open the doors for me. I read the weekly paper. I waited. Finally, I got up to examine the summer hours and discovered that the library is closed this weekend! After banging my head against the glass doors a few times, I ran across the street to see if my mother had stopped for lunch at the cafe. She had not. I headed for the campus bookstore, wondering what I should do with a whole day to myself. I was dressed for air conditioning, and the afternoon was steamy and hot, so I picked up a discount University of Hawaii tee shirt and a notebook, then called Mike to rescue me. 

I made myself comfortable on the comfy couch at the cafe and pulled out my notebook, sucking on a large iced chai. I had almost an hour to unwind and enjoy time alone, listening to classic rock on the radio and watching the students drinking their coffees. I bought Mike a brownie when he arrived, and spent the rest of the afternoon at home painting the bathroom.

My mother has not returned home, as she had promised she would. She gets caught up with shopping and spends the whole day out instead of coming home and letting Mike see Gavin before he goes to work. It looks like I might have to drive Mike to work and then meet my mother at the university (since I can't get hold of her, and I know that's where she will go at the end of my usual work shift), then have her follow me back to Aikahi and drop the car off for Mike. That is a lot of driving. If that's the case, I'm going to insist we eat dinner on the town to make up for the inconvenience that today has been for everyone.

Mostly Harmless

My mother and I went to see The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I liked it a lot. I must re-read the books. Zaphod Beeblebrox is a living caricature of my father. Right down to the two heads. The books are such a familiar part of my family history, it was just like going home for 2 hours.

 

I bought Gavin a pack of "water soluble" markers, and our walls, staircase, cupboards, and sinks are now indelibly decorated with scribbles, all in the time it took me to look up and say, "Mike, where did Gavin go?" Yay for Clorox in a spray bottle. This was all a plot to make me clean up, I know it!

Mike insists that he no longer has a crush on Hot Redhead, and that he would like to take her to a bar some time. Hmm. I'm so convinced. I'll ask him to take along other friends if he's going anywhere with her, but I trust him not to do anything. That won't stop me from teasing him, though.

Mother's Day in the Library

The undergrad students are buzzing around the library like bees this week, studying for their final exams. This means more action for us employees, as we are bombarded with book returns, xerox jams, reference questions, phone calls, and complaints. I had to see a man at the computer terminals about a salami, my first ever disciplinary move. No salami in the library for you! My newly budding librarian antennae are all a-quiver. I have abandoned last week's hypothetical job and house in South Carolina and have found a hypothetical job and house in Newport News, instead. Although I only browse the librarian job ads for fun, it makes me happy to think that I can start applying in the fall.

Mike left bouquets of flowers on the table for my mother and I. We admired them, then started in with our usual Mother's Day fight. This year: when my mom started doing the dishes after breakfast, I started cleaning the living room instead of helping her in the kitchen. Damn. Can't win for losing.

What lies in store

Mother's Day. For a few hours before and after work, I get to be a lazy queen... assuming I can drag Mike out of bed and force him to pamper me. My mother is preparing some preemptive fudge to ward off the disappointment that is synonymous with Mother's Day. We will win this time. In fact, I just got very excited watching a preview of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. With the release of the new Harry Potter book this summer, the 4th Harry Potter movie at my birthday, and Narnia at Christmas (not to mention graduation), I'll be in dork heaven.

Here's a first: I told Yuri I wanted to lose another 10 pounds, and she said I would be too skinny. Huh. Maybe I should just knock down another 5 and kick up the weight lifting.

A-flutter

I started the morning with the first of my final 3 classes. After Wednesday, I will be free for all of two weeks before summer sessions begin.

After class, I pushed through a crowd of sulky teenagers and bought a sandwich for lunch at Subway. I clocked into work, checked my e-mail, and spent the next two hours distracted, trying to scan the stacks for mis-shelved reference books. My professor ran into me and gave me feedback on the book review I had submitted last night. As it turns out, I'm not too bad at writing reviews, and he encouraged me to pursue it. Librarian, children's book illustrator, and book reviewer. Sounds ok to me.

Praise from my professors makes me happy. Even happy and distracted, I managed to pull 8 mis-shelved books and keep my title of champion book-finder. I ate mentos, argued with my co-workers about who was going to answer the phone, laughed at Yuri as she pantomimed an unfortunate encounter with her cat, and found myself a hypothetical job and house in South Carolina. (It feels as though we will be forced to move to the mainland next year due to absolutely insane inflation in the housing market - $350,000 for a 2 bedroom house in a crappy neighborhood? Nuh-uh.)

One thing I like about library work are the funny patron names. Today: Peter B. Hung.

no news

I like being a librarian. I like opening the library, putting the newspapers on sticks, turning on the computers and xerox machines, wiping down the counters, and making the place orderly and presentable for everyone. I have registered for my fall classes, the last classes I will be taking. Between 4 classes, studying for my oral exams, work, and a toddler, I'm going to be bald in patches and suffering nervous twitches by the time my birthday rolls around, but it will be worth it.

My mother swore she saw three ninjas dart by the back window this morning, but I assured her that ninjas were too stealthy to be seen in broad daylight. She ran outside with my camera and caught them in the act: the neighbor boys, actually dressed as ninjas. She printed out the pictures for them, and they were happy about how cool they looked. We scored points with the neighbors, I think.

Meanwhile, I had been suspecting that Gavin was a bit too happy to drop me off at work and say goodbye. Today I woke him with a kiss as I climbed out of the car and he mumbled sleepily not the word "bye", but the word "pie". Turns out his grandmother has been taking him across the street for cheesecake at the cafe every time she drops me off. Hows that for a little Pavlovian training?

One of my co-workers is an undergrad in a philosophy course. His professor gave them a self-diagnostic quiz to determine their philosophical standpoints. He didn't tell me what my answers meant about myself, but it was fun considering them:

You have to choose between the lives of a baby or a convict - who do you kill?
The convict, of course. I think a better question would be, "You have to choose between the lives of a 70-year old scientific genius and a baby, who do you kill?" (in which case, I say the baby.)

You're on a sinking ship full of men, women, and children, without enough live boats, who do you throw in the water?
The single men first, then the other men. If preserving life is the ultimate goal, it would make no sense to throw the wombs overboard. But if the swimmers were going to be rescued imminently, then I'd throw the women in, because women have been shown to have higher endurance against hypothermia. Of course, much depends on age, physical condition, etc, either way.

Death penalty? What about the innocent that get executed?
Yes. If the courts are sending anyone to death row for anything other than DNA-linked murders and ones with credible witnesses, then that's a problem with the courts.

Euthanasia?
Yes.

If you were a mother, and your village was invaded and you had to hide, and your baby started crying, would you smother your baby to save lives of the villagers?
I decided this wasn't a fair question, because it wouldn't be a conscious decision. You would either be so terrified that you pressed the baby harder and harder into your bosom until it died, or you wouldn't, and you'd be discovered and killed. Besides, this actually happened during the holocaust. The babies died. Not a happy thing.

I don't know, these questions sounded more moral than ethical. Ethical questions are much harder to answer, because they can be so subtle.
 

I obviously have no news today. I ate pita chips and hummus and strawberries. I took cold medicine. My nose is runny. I have a term paper due in a week. I'm still not in the mood. I have imaginary arguments with my neighbors. I'm brainstorming. I'm doodling. I'm just poking along as usual.

:)

Disclaimer

The really cool teenagers who hang out at the library (oh yeah, they're such rebels) elbowed each other and sniggered while I rummaged through the graphic novel racks for my next YA assignment. Because, as we all know, graphic novels are written and illustrated by acne-pocked 14 year olds, not grody old losers in their 20s who still live with their mom. Not at all.


I have been reading Lois Ann Yamanaka's Heads by Harry, and it has been making me think a lot about growing up on Molokai (the novel takes place on the Big Island, but it's about the same). I thought about my giggly Japanese friend who's father had two walls full of rifles and stuffed heads. About the cute boy she was in love with who came to hunt with her dad, the boy who shot our cats, and who drowned and died in her arms while spearfishing one night. I remembered standing with her in our underwear in her backyard at 3am while our friends played poker around the foil-covered pans of food in the garage. The book hit home, and I haven't decided if that is a fact in its favor yet. Probably. I should take a day trip to Molokai and walk through town, I haven't been there in 7 years.

Soft, 'eh me?

notes from work

The continuing wallpaper project has to wait for tomorrow; my work days are all on the weekend. The library system crashed yesterday, leaving us with several hundred items to back-date and re-shelve. The circulation desk moved upstairs, leaving one person downstairs to man the book return, fix copier machines, and keep people from masturbating on the carpets. Today, that person is me. A long day with no food or water or toilet breaks, punctuated intermittently by patron emergencies. Plenty of time to people watch, one of my more favored activities.

"Don't do anything you wouldn't want to be caught doing," is my motto, and it keeps my life clean and simple (and boring, sorry). I've recently come to the obvious realization that there are just things you can't help doing, that happen to you, that you don't want to be caught at. I don't know how to reconcile that. It goes hand in hand with my other motto, "Let it be", but the two just don't gel into one cohesive motto. "Don't do anything on purpose that you don't want to be caught doing, and just let the rest be"? Not very catchy.

caff-amphetamine

I accidentally started the long day with a jolt of caffeine that made me hyper throughout class and caused my voice to tremble when I delivered my article critique. My hands shook badly as I tried to ink my current illustration before work. This is exactly why I don't do drugs.

My hands evened themselves out after a few hours, and I huddled over my drawing in the cold A/V center all afternoon. The system was down, so I only needed to console patrons and answer phones. At one point, I jumped up to help a student and my reference photos scattered across the table in front of one of my co-workers. I was pretty sure that half-naked photographs of myself* would be against the rules, but she didn't care. Hurray for liberal university folk. I did a bit of research into starting my next Master's degree, and it looks like I'll have to wait until the fall after next to start up my art studies again, if I decide to.

After work, we had dinner at the cafe across the street. Their staff of eerily tanned kids with blonde hair are a bit slow, but they sure make good food. On the way out, Gavin swung happily from my hand, tripped, and I dropped him on his face on the pavement. I think I was more upset than he was as I wiped the blood off his lips.


*I really would prefer having different models for my drawings.

Self pity

After the games, Mike stayed with the group to break down the tea tent while my mother and Gavin went to pick me up from work. I looked forward to an evening with Mike, but the hours ticked away with no sign of him. At last, I heard the car beep as he locked it and I climbed out of bed to say hi to him. Instead I sat on the couch in the dark and talked to him about my recent feelings of loneliness and neglect. The band comes first, work comes first, the RSCDS comes first, while I'm left behind with the baby with not even a backwards glance. Mike hugged me and told me I was wrong, and we went to bed disgruntled.

I dreamed that I was sitting on the couch with an old friend. I put my head on his shoulder as we watched tv, and he shrugged me off. "What are you trying to do? You know I'm married," he said, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. I felt completely lost and rejected.

This was made worse by the realization when I woke up that I don't have a friend on hand at all. As much as I like Yuri, I don't know her well enough to horse around, let alone rest my head against her when I feel alone.

I rolled over and hugged Gavin, who squeezed me back, "Ahhh, mama!" He's not much for adult conversation, but I'm not really alone, am I?