Monday Musings

Has fall arrived in your corner of the world?  It has not yet arrived in the Mid-Atlantic.  Our temperatures this week have been hovering around 90.  It's almost October, and we're looking at 90 degree weather.  WHY????

The past couple of weeks have been an interesting couple of weeks.... and not always interesting in a good way.

Daughter and I went to a hand lettering workshop recently.  It was a disappointment.  For my $30, I got to write a quote on a canvas with a Sharpie.  The instruction in hand lettering was minimal.  I've played with handwriting over the years.  I didn't learn anything new.  But I had a great time spending time with my daughter, and we spent a lot of time telling jokes, so all was not lost!

This past weekend, I went to the Baltimore Book Festival.  It was a beautiful weekend on the water, with books and authors everywhere you looked!  We sat in on a few author talks.  Most of them were enjoyable, and most of the authors enjoyed speaking with their fans.

(I'm sure you noticed the use of the word MOST.)

I was reflecting yesterday on how many people we've lost this summer.  Barbara died at the beginning of summer after a 10 year battle with breast cancer.  Joe died after a 7 year battle with ALS.  Two neighborhood kids have died of heroin overdoeses.  Rich died of a massive heart attack last week.  RG, a career army veteran, killed himself. 

I know that's the nature of this crazy life that we live. 

But it just drives home how uncertain our life is.  Hug your loved ones tight, forgive those who need your forgiveness while you still can, and tell everyone that you love them.  You never know what the future holds....

State Fair

I went to the State Fair this weekend.  I hate to admit it, but if you don't have the ability to eat gluten, the enjoyment of fair food is significantly diminished.  I really did enjoy sampling a new fried crap something every year at the fair.  Sadly, that was not an option this year.  I did enjoy myself, however!  I spent some time with the cows, and I was able to spend time in the birthing center, watching new animals come into our world.  It is nothing short of amazing to watch a new life enter the world.  I saw piglets and a new calf enter the world.  I watched as chicks worked they way out of their shells, and stood in awe as exhausted new moms laid down on their sides and fell asleep while their children found the "nozzles" and began to nurse!

Still not steady on her legs, but she's up and moving!

I roamed through the exhibits and saw entries my friends had made and cheered over all of them!  Several of my friends received well deserved ribbons for their work.  I also roamed through the exhibit hall, where I picked up a set of Velcro strips for our EZ pass, and even won a free pair of sunglasses from the Maryland Lottery.

How about you?  Were you able to get to a State Fair this year?  Where did you go?

2017 Resolutions - September Update

Middle child is home and searching for a professional job now.  Until he finds that job, I'm paying him to do odd jobs around the house.  Finally, things are beginning to happen that have need to be done for quite some time now!

1) Complete 12 Home Improvement Projects

New LED fixture at the bottom of the stairs.

This month?  Middle Child repainted the cinder block wall in the basement around the water pipes where we had the big leak over the summer.  Husband went after the very moldy walls in the master bathroom with bleach.  We need to completely tear out that drywall and replace it - but that's a couple of steps down on the repair list from where we are right now.

The list to date:
Recover the kitchen chairs.
Add the knobs to the cabinet under the kitchen sink.
Fix the sewer line out of the house, through the basement wall.
Replace the baseboard heater in the hall bathroom.
Replace the lighting in the hall bathroom.
Re-enamel the hallway bathroom tile.
Replace the light at the bottom of the basement stairwell.

2) Lose a few more inches around my waist.
Honestly, I wanted to lose 2-3 inches.  How hard can that be?  As it turns out, pretty darn hard!
I think I've lost almost an inch.  I'm keeping a record, but I'm quietly ignoring it this month!  My clothes are a little loose on me, so I think that's a good sign!

3) Get away with my husband - TWICE - this year.
Done!
The first trip was a long weekend to visit our oldest child at school.  (OK, that's a maybe..)
Second was the long weekend we spent in Princeton - he was up there for business, and I went up there for a long weekend at our own expense at the end of his official business.  We've got one more week coming up.. sadly, it's to go out to a Memorial Service in Colorado, but we're going to enjoy spending time alone and with family.

4) Lenten Cleaning Challenge

 
5) Post at least 12 book reviews on my Books for Teens Blog
 9 Down!  You can see my blog here:
https://librarynut-booksforteens.blogspot.com/


6) Finish the Hallway Bathroom
9 years after the long nightmare began, we now have 2 working bathrooms in our house!

7) Participate in the NoSpenduary Challenge
The moratorium is over!  End of May, and we can spend money on unnecessary things again.  For now, that means I can pay for some plants for landscaping in the front.  Bigger picture, I am saving again in order to build our emergency savings fund back up to where I like to have it.

8) Learn another language.
So, I've got the CD's in my car, and I've been listening to them.  I'm watching Sesame Street in Spanish.  I don't know if I will ever be fluent, but at least I'm trying.

9) 100 Things Every Marylander Should Do
I was hoping to knock off a few of these this year.  Not all 100, but maybe five more of them?  I really need to get my act together!  Maybe if I ever get more than one day off of work this summer.

10) Daughter's Quilt
Progress!  I am making big progress!

11) Clean Out Closet and Dresser Drawers
I really need to get back to this.  I've been trying to pack up oldest child's stuff and move it down into the basement so that middle child can move into the room - and LIVE in that room - until he saves enough money to move out on his own.

12) Clean Out the Little Room in the Basement and Make it Usable
I've made very little progress on cleaning this out over the past month.  I don't know how much progress I'm going to make on the actual remodeling of it considering how much money we've already spent this year.  I'm going to add cleaning and painting this room to the list of jobs for middle child to do.  (BTW, I am paying him for the work he's doing.) 

13) Work on Landscaping the Front Yard
Sadly, I got a head start on this when the plumber pulled out one of the big bushes in front of the house.  Now, I have only 4 overgrown bushes to take care of in the front yard.  I've got Tiger's Memorial Garden in the back yard, and I'm not planning on doing any more landscaping until Fall.

14) Take at Least One Class through the ALA 
I finished the class!  I submitted two of the lessons that I wrote, and they have been approved as library programs for this summer!  Hooray!  It's going to be a great summer!  Even better?  I got a few more CEU's to add to the total number of hours I need to renew my teaching certificate.

Fortune Cookies Gone Awry

When oldest child was in Kindergarten, his wonderful teacher threw a Halloween Party.  Every child was sent home with a requested good for the party.

Halloween Day, the parents were invited to the school.  The kids dressed in costumes and marched around the fields for their Halloween Parade.  The parents then went inside and we helped set up a party while the teacher read stories to the kids.

One parent had brought in fortune cookies, and she quickly opened the box and set out one cookie beside each child's plate.

The kids were enchanted with the party, and having a great time.  Parents were talking in corners, getting to know each other while others ran around snapping pictures.

One of the kids opened his fortune cookie and took the paper over to the teacher for her to read out loud.  We watched her open the cookie, and then we watched, shocked, as all of the color drained out of her face.

"Quick, grab the cookies" she hissed at her aide, who had scurried over to see what was going on.

As the aide ran around grabbing cookies from the kids, the mother who had brought the cookies ran to get the box out of the trash, and the fortune that had been embedded in the cookie began to make it's rounds through the parents who gasped, turned red, and tried not to guffaw at the absurdity of the situation.

Turns out that the cookies the mother had grabbed were sexually explicit fortunes with details.  Wow, the details. 

I tell you, you just can't make this stuff up!

This and That... but mostly THIS

More changes...

I was a stay at home mom for years.  I knew that when my kids graduated from high school and flew the nest, I needed a plan to keep me busy and my mind active.  I sat down and made a plan.  I wanted to pursue my dream career.  I wanted to be a librarian.  I had worked in a library in college, and I loved every single minute of it.  When the kids were in elementary school, I volunteered in the school library media center, and I knew that this was what I wanted to do.  The media teacher let me experience what it meant to be a school library media specialist, and I became a substitute teacher so that I could gain that experience.  I took a part time job in my local public library, and got more experience working in the library world, and I knew that I wanted to be a librarian.

I sat down and made a ten year plan.  We're looking back to 2005 here.  I planned out how to get a Masters Degree in Library and Information Science while raising kids - and figured out how to do so without breaking the bank while we were saving to send the kids through college.  After much research, I found the online Master's program at Drexel.  It had everything I was looking for, and it was certified by the American Library Association - meaning that the degree would be recognized anywhere in the United States.

Unexpected things happened along the way.  We moved.  I lost a job.  I had to take a year off of my studies when my Dad got very sick and eventually passed away.  But I never lost sight of my final goal.  When the economy began to loosen up, I began substitute teaching in order to gain more experience.  My goal at that time was to become a School Library Media Specialist. (SLMS)

Well, that goal never quite came to fruition - I did a lot of stints as a SLMS over the course of five years of subbing, but I never was offered a job.  So, after I graduated from Drexel, I began searching for a library job that was outside of the school system.

I had one job - part time - no benefits - in an Academic Library.  I earned the startling sum of $200/week for 20 hours worth of work for a position that required an MLS.

I found another job last year.  Again, part time, with no benefits, but this one paid me significantly more than the last.  It was in a public library - and I do adore public libraries!  You can't put a value on what their services add to the community.

Through it all, I've loved every single minute of my job - even when I was working for ridiculously low pay, I still loved what I was doing.

Earlier this week, I got an offer to move up to a full time librarian position!  I get to stay in my wonderful little public library, and work with the best team of people I have ever had the honor of working with!

It is my dream job!  And It only took 12 years from the time I sat and wrote down exactly how I was going to make this happen. 

I'll keep the blog up as much as I can - but it's going to be less.  Over the past year, I've written less and less.  I will post at least once a week.  I'm hoping I can post twice a week.  I will definitely be posting on Mondays.  I'm going to shoot for another day during the week, but I can't promise which day during the week the post will be going up. 

I would like to thank everyone who takes the time to check in with me over the years I've kept the blog up and running.  Believe it or not, having a place to write down my thoughts has been a sanity saver more than once!


Peace!

Have You Ever Wondered?

Who cuts the pope's hair?

Does he use another priest?  Is it his valet?  Or does he just go down the street from the Vatican and have a local barber give him a trim?

Why college food is so much better now?

Back in my day, you ate what they put on your tray that day, and that was your choice.  I knew students who had been in the Army who thought our food was horrible.  Now, colleges are vying for honors as fine dining establishments.  When the hell did this change?  Why didn't it change when I was in school?

State Fairs.. Just how much fried food can we eat?

And how do people think up these things to fry?  Fried Oreos?  Fried PB and J?  Fried Pop Tarts?  It's probably a good thing I can't eat gluten.  Heaven knows I'd weigh 500 pounds if I could eat every fried wonder they have on hand.

Apple Season

Just how many varieties of apples can be found within an hour's drive of your house?  And why do those apples taste so darn good when cooked with cinnamon and brown sugar?

Why does the hair around your face turn grey first?

This and That

Notice: This Post Contains Affiliate Links

 Eclipse

The eclipse of the century is over.  We've got 7 years until the next eclipse in the United States.  Were you in the path of totality?  We were well outside the path of totality, with about 80% coverage here in Maryland.  I made a pinhole viewer and a pinhole projector to see the eclipse, and we were able to watch the eclipse through the viewers and on the reflection off the hood of the car, as well as through the shadows of the leaves on the trees.  It was a fun afternoon for a science geek!

I punched several holes into my pinhole viewer and look!  Many little eclipse shadows!

I love this!  The light coming through the leaves of the trees made mini-eclipses!

We also made a pinhole projector out of a tube of wrapping paper.  Here, you can see the eclipse at it's totality in Maryland in the shadow on the envelopes.  We really, really enjoyed playing with the shadows!  The light was really dim here during our totality.  We never got totally dark, the birds kept singing, but the light was very odd.

The OTHER Eclipse
No, people were not amused when I put this up in our workroom along with our pile of lost sunglasses over the weekend....

Another Overdose
The 23 year old who lives around the corner from us died of a drug overdose over the weekend.  Even one more is too many more.  I've lost count this year.  My oldest son's graduating class has been decimated.  6 years after graduation, 300 kids total, we've lost almost 30 of them to drug overdoses.  That's 10%.  That's just in our tiny little community.  I can't imagine what this looks like on a national level.  We are losing the next generation!  What can we do to keep our kids safe?  What are we missing?  What do we need to change to help these kids? 



On my Nightstand

Sherman Alexie is the well known author of several books including "The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian".  I'm reading his most recent release right now.  I am not certain what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't the stark look at the life of a Native American growing up on the reservation with alcoholic parents.  It's a painful look deep into the heart of a man and a people who have been systematically stripped of their cultural heritage and their hope.   Anyone who has grown up with a parent who struggled with addiction can relate to his tale.  As he relates his own story of growing up and coming of age in this very difficult environment, you see the true strength of the man, and the depth of the love that holds him firmly in this world.

Reading this book right on the heels of Undefeated, the Jim Thorpe story has definitely made me think about the plight of our Indians - how they have been treated them in the past, and how we continue to treat them in this so called "enlightened" time.  I've had a thought provoking couple of weeks of reading.