knitting librarian

I started my day off at 4am when AJ woke me up because there were bugs in his room. (I got up to inspect, no bugs!) Fortunately I did manage to convince him that it was a dream. I put him back to bed, covered him up and crawled back in bed.

I got up again at normal time and scurried around so I could go vote in the PA primary today. I spent most of that time discussing with AJ that he could not stay home and he had to go to school and we had to go to work. I negotiated with John to go vote before work if I would take AJ to school (so we were able to go out to dinner with friends tonight without holding off until after we voted).

The line at my polling place wasn’t long—there were maybe 12 people there, but it still took probably 10 minutes—five in line to get checked in and five waiting for an available voting booth. Then we got stuck in construction traffic on the way to AJ’s school. At least he didn’t fight me when we got there and there were no tears or gnashing of teeth.

I was off and running for work—which is also a polling place so parking is at a premium (no parking lot, on-street parking only). I was running late as it was from voting..and the traffic…and running AJ into school. I was about 5 minutes from work and hit additional construction traffic that made me about 10 minutes late for work. My usual parking place was taken but I still got a spot pretty close-by.

I’ve been talking with some co-workers about how behind our kids are technologically and yesterday afternoon I managed to convince one of them that one of his annual projects should be a wiki from now on. Last night, I did some checking and found pbwiki has an ad-free educational version. Today, I got one started, added a list of potential resources, offered to post a copy of the assignment on the wiki, and generally did a bunch of back-work that will make this teacher look good.

After several years of trying to get a new teacher to use the library and me, she’s finally scheduled me to come to the computer lab with her early next month—great—except that she’s leaving teaching to go to seminary at the end of the school year so I haven’t actually built a new partnership. Oh well, maybe her replacement will work with me!

Our music teacher is having vocal chord surgery in a few weeks and will not be able to speak for over a month. She’s working on reviewing and adding to her three year old’s sign language vocabulary. She also asked me if I knew of any good text-to-speech software and/or if there’s a plugin for MSOffice. BUT it has to be available for Apple/Mac, not PC. I found a few suggestions before I knew of the Apple limitation…so we’ll see if what I found will work for her. (I think she still wants to be able to yell at her husband but she’ll never admit it! Okay, maybe she will!)

We had that dinner tonight ($3.50 for wings—can’t beat it!) with a friend who was asking us about a Dave Ramsey book she’d read over the weekend (we took his Financial Peace class last fall). It sounds like the book’s been helpful for her to see some things she can do to work with her budget and make some plans/changes. I hope it helps her as much as it’s helped us! I also did some straight talking with her about some verbal abuse that her daughter is dealing with and suggested that she take some action to protect her. I hope she finds the courage to file for divorce and court-ordered child support. If she’d applied for it three years ago, she might not be worrying so much about money now.

AJ went to bed without much hassle tonight AND promised me he’d wake daddy up if the bugs show up again!

Tomorrow Zoe will be one year old. We had her party over the weekend (I need to take a minute to do a flickr upload.) Speaking of flickr, did you know you can now upload video there? I suspect that means it’ll be blocked by the filter at work soon but until then…

I don’t know how everything happened so fast, I remember how miserable I was that last weekend of pregnancy just wanting to have the time with her—I begged the doctor to take her early but he was kind to the OR staff and made me hold off until Monday. Oh was I sick of laying on my left side from that high blood pressure!

Saturday after her party she was exhausted and we ended up curling up on the bed while I stroked her forehead and tried to calm her down enough so she’d sleep. It reminded me of last year after the boys had left for work and daycare and she and I were snuggled up in bed together. I was weepy on Saturday evening remembering how nice that was and how much I’ve missed it (but it was a good cry.) She’s such a sweet girl. She says AJ’s name when we arrive at daycare to pick her up. Today though, she was waving at me and moving right past him to come get me. I love her so much. warm fuzzies here

I got this puzzle made from an M. C. Escher print from someone on Freecycle(TM) this week and took it in to school yesterday. The kids were intrigued by it and were unable to resist asking questions about it and working on it. It was so funny to listen to them talk about the images. (The puzzle is only 40 pieces and each piece is one of the creatures or objects pictured.)

When a few puzzles were offered this week, I jumped on them saying I’d like to put them in my library. I figured it would give the kids something constructive and meaningful to do for a change. It’s good problem solving skills to do puzzles.

Since putting the puzzle out yesterday after lunch, at least 8 different groups of kids have stood or sat at the table and worked on the puzzle. Most wanted me to see it when they completed it. The ones who ran out of time and had to return to class before they got it finished took it apart so no one else would “get credit for (their) work!”

I even had a sales rep in to show me some books today and we sat at the table where the pieces were and he couldn’t keep his hands off of it while I was up and down helping kids check out or deal with computer problems. I’m so glad that I picked them up from that fellow Freecycle member!

It’ll be interesting to see if they decide to do some of the other puzzles I got as well.

I got a call at 3:15 this afternoon that Zoe had a fever of 102, was fussy today and wouldn’t drink her after-nap bottle. Since there was a chance she’d caught AJ’s strep, I called the doctor and got an appointment for 4:45. She tested negative on the quick-test but they’ll do the longer one too and see what they find out. With acetominophen, she still had a fever of 100.3 90 minutes later. Doc says her throat and ears were bright red and he was surprised the strep test came back negative. He decided to do antibiotic for the ears figuring it would cover the strep as well.

We came home, Z had some supper and her first dose of antibiotic and her first dose of fluoride (she should have been on that already—okay, they why didn’t you prescribe it sooner?) AJ went to bed hard so I let her stay up for a little bit to avoid him screaming and bothering her. Poor kid was doing head bobs in her exersaucer so I took her up, changed her and put her to bed. I really hope it’s not strep. Thank heaven Mom’s home from Florida so I don’t have to take another sick day!

Her birthday party is on Saturday so I had to call everyone and warn them. I just hope she’s feeling well enough by then that she’s not miserable!