knitting librarian

Well, hopefully not. Today I had a young lady come looking for dinosaur books. I had a cart that I processed a few weeks ago that were purchased a few years ago from a non-library fund. It was single-sided and top heavy because the books were only on that top shelf. As I was rolling it out from the workroom, my phone began to ring. In an attempt to reach it before it went to voicemail, I hurried and caught my foot on the back wheel of the book truck which sent it tipping forward and all of the books all over the floor. None of them hit the student, fortunately. My foot is aching and I’m limping now that I’ve taken my shoe off for the day.

The same girl came back later in the day for another book (“I love dinosaur books!”) and saw some clip art I’d enlarged and printed to change my display case. I’d colored in portions of it with markers and she kindly commented to me, “You’re a good colorer.” I thanked her—and thought to myself that I’d mastered fine motor skills more than 20 years ago!

My ninth period “mathletes” were there today, so I had them take down and redo my display case. They did a good job on filling the space. My plan for the books that are in there on display is that students who want to borrow one will have to choose another book that they would recommend to a friend and put that one in its place. It’ll be interesting to see how many of them end up checked out—it’ll tell me how well I know my students.

1. Music :: Country (Ack! Why did I think that? I hate country music!)


2. Insanity :: My life!


3. Curtain :: Call


4. Nickname :: Name Game


5. Container :: Tupperware


6. Roast :: Beast


7. Thong :: Ouch!


8. Purple :: Passion


9. Holidays :: Crazy


10. Christmas tree :: Not ready yet!

I found this last week and I love word games/word association, so I thought I’d try to keep up with it on occasion. We’ll see how it goes.

Argh! I seem to have caught whatever “ick” it is that my kids have. I was miserable yesterday and slept more of the day than I was awake. When I was up, I was really crabby. Poor John had to deal with the kids and a grumpy wife. I felt so miserable. John knew I wasn’t feeling well and told me that I could lay on the couch and he’d keep the kids upstairs and let me sleep. No sooner did I lay down and he was here plopping Zoe in the exersaucer because she was fussy and “needed to bounce” for a bit. Just what I needed with the headache I had! So I harumphed back upstairs and at first was ready to lay down on our bed, but I ended up on AJ’s bed. I was chilly, so I went to get the down comforter off our bed and went back to AJ’s room. I slept for probably close to 4 hours Sunday afternoon.

Last night, nothing seemed to go right and I was even more crabby about that. I knocked John’s glass over on the table in the living room. I was irritated that the table was so close that I was able to knock it over—and John laughed. The nerve! So, I blamed him—that the table was so close. He probably deserved it—at least for laughing at me. I stomped off and crawled into bed about 9:15 or 9:30 and slept until 6:00 this morning. There’s a time when I would have done a sick day today, but after last year when I took one sick day while pregnant with Zoe (until I ended up with a nasty infection that prevented me from sitting or standing comfortably) so I’d have my time for maternity leave, I learned that I can make it through days of feeling miserable better than I thought.

Today was the first morning of a tougher policy for coming to the library during first period. Aside from students who are in band, choir or orchestra, everyone else in the building has a study hall that period and it’s supposed to be a time to do makeup work or (I thought they said last year) sustained silent reading. Students have been coming to the library in droves. I average 40-60 people on any given day during that one period. My circulation is through the roof which is great! I’m happy, the principal is happy. BUT kids were starting to come to the library to socialize and avoid work rather than to catch up on work, do research or borrow books. Kids who needed to get to the library weren’t making it because other kids were abusing the time.

On Friday, after some discussion with another teacher and the principal, we asked that students write their purpose on the pass so I knew what they were to be doing while in the library—and if they weren’t doing it, I could get them on task or oust them. Probably less than half of the teachers who sent kids to the library had the kids put a purpose on the pass or did it themselves. I guess the principal decided he wanted to see what exactly was going on, so he popped by. It was pretty amusing because he came in and stood there and just looked at 4 or 5 girls who were sitting reading magazines. When I called one whose 15 minutes were up, she clattered by with her 20 or so key chains hooked to a belt loop. The principal asked to look at them and then decided to collect a few that would have landed her in detention if she said what was on them. Instead of waiting for him to remove those few, she left the entire key chain mass with him. He seemed surprised. I wonder why she did it myself!

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll feel a little better, but based on the cough I’ve been dealing with tonight, I suspect that’s unlikely. At least first period shouldn’t be too bad since it will get easier and easier to monitor kids as they realize they’re not going to be allowed to come and hang out for 15-20 minutes. I do wonder though what it will do to my circulation statistics!