Well, That Explains It!

In case I haven't mentioned it, and I don't think I have, I'm heading out on vacation soon (long overdue, I'm sure some of you would say!).

It's not so much a vacation as it is a library conference and a several days' long visit to the Corral, but the point is that I won't be at work for over a week.

Over the last few days, I've been just a little bit crazy trying to get everything together before I go, and, for some inexplicable reason, also trying to clean my apartment from top to bottom. Because that's what I do before I go out of town. I clean.

Today is my last day at work this week, and I've been counting down the hours, blissfully pondering how long it's been since my last week-long vacation.

Oh, a few months?

No, TWO AND A HALF YEARS.

I've taken a long weekend here and there, or a few days off at the holidays, but a whole week?? Not in over two years! How on EARTH have I let this happen?

No wonder I'm a bit panicky.

Or maybe it's just me and my need to make sure that not one single moment lacks entertainment. Books? DVDs - better check that my newly resurrected computer has the DVD software on it. Music? iPod loaded and charged! Magazines...hmm...have to pick the ones I don't mind leaving behind...

And then the wardrobe questions. Oh, the wardrobe questions. You see, I need the dress for the family wedding in the corral. I need "business casual" clothes for the conference. I need clothes that will prevent me from melting into a little puddle when faced with the hot, hot Oklahoma air.

In fact, when asked by my supervisor what I was looking forward to most at the conference, I told her, in all honesty, that I was most focused on what shoes to wear when I meet Orson Scott Card.

Of course, the biggest concern of all time, when, oh when, will I have time to paint my toenails?

In the whole scheme of things, that's what matters most, right?

Real World Wednesday

I have read countless articles about how to go green. I have even invested in environmentally friendly dishsoap (I know, I start small). I use cloth bags when I go to the grocery store.

I also consume like nobody's business.

I buy t-shirts and pass them on to the homeless when they're worn out, or I've grown tired of them. I change fashion sense every couple of years, and don't even get me started on my ever-expanding shoe collection.

I have some self-control. If I don't go in stores, I don't buy things. But that's about where it ends.

Though I need to support the economy, I also need to be a less wasteful consumer.

My mom decided not to buy herself things, or to limit her purchases, in 2008. Perpahs I can follow her example, though not with quite so strict of rules.

The prediction from a famous NASA scientist that in our current time, we are having our last chance to save our planet scares me. I have got to wake up and make a change. I have to find a way to stop consuming everything in my wake.

How can I do this? How can you?
1) Reconsider a move to an urban environment. Is this really the end of suburbia?
2) Rely more on public transit, even if it is slower than my car.
3) Do less multi-tasking. How about using my computer only, and not having on the tv, the dvd player and the computer all at the same time?
4) In addition to my lovely pink water bottle at work, I should always bring my handy dandy travel mugs with me so that I don't end up tossing papercups all month.
5) Just stop. Have some will power and control my consumption.

This isn't the first time I've talked about this, but with the fires in California and the floods in Iowa, I feel like we're in a very dire situation. Something has to change, and it has to change now.

I'm Much Funnier in Real Life

This blog has begun to bore me. It's not so much the logging on and writing as what I'm logging on an writing ABOUT. Yeah, I dropped the detailed analysis of my relationship with WG a while back...why? Oh, because people who actually know us quite well in real life READ THIS BLOG and would know things about my personal life that I'd rather they not have access to when we gather together for a little potluck and game night.

Them: Oh...so WG has been getting up to those whole tricks again, huh? What was it that last time that started off a two hour long discussion? Your ticking biological clock?

WG: What the hell?

Me: Uhm...

So, yeah, let's avoid that, shall we?

And then, I went on that whole "Real World Wednesday" kick. Don't get me wrong, I need to do that. I need to do that even when my post is mostly me ranting about how I can't seem to focus on anything outside of my own little life bubble. But given that I like to be self-obsessed in my little bubble, it takes a great stretch of my ability to buckle down and write the dang things.

Let's try to focus on the entertaining things, the stories my co-workers so enjoy. Trust me, they get a kick out of my exuberant hand gestures and my funky faces. Oh, and I do voices, as the situation arises.

Otherwise, you know what will happen to this blog? After six long years, it will just go far, far away, because I won't be able to stand logging-in and writing something completely vague, completely impersonal and completely dull.

And today?

Yup, got it.

The two phrases that have left my lips in the past two days that required a vastly different audience than the one in attendance.

1) Lauren Weisberger's Chasing Harry Winston is a disappointing follow-up to The Devil Wears Prada and Everyone Worth Knowing. It's utter fluff and complete brain candy that leaves me feeling unsatisfied.

The teenagers in my library bookclub just stared at me and said, and I quote, "Oooookay."

What I didn't say? That I feel a little guilty and displeased with myself for having spent time reading that drivel when I could have been reading Playing With the Grown-ups by Sophie Dahl.

2) I signed into Pandora and was listening to my Regina Spektor station. I can't say that I agree that Michelle Branch belongs in the same category as Regina Spektor, but whatever.

The response from the way-older-than-me but thinks he's super cool librarian? Silence.

3) My dad is so excited about the Celtics win that he took his jersey to work and hung it on the wall.

WG's response? Well, he just kind of stared at me and let out a loose, unconvincing laugh, but I swear, I could see him thinking, "I don't care. I don't like basketball AT ALL."

4) And I'll say it now. That novel I wrote that never got published? It was titled What Happened. Can I just say that I'm a bit peeved with Scott McClellan's publisher for stealing the title of my unpublished, never gonna be published novel?

That's all from my pleasant little bubble.

Real World Wednesday

...actually posted on something resembling a Wednesday.

Lately, I have found tremendous comfort in curling up inside my own world, having concern only for family, friends and the little dramas and issues that fill my life.

I turn on the news, and I see destruction in Iowa.

I have deliberately turned away from the news in the hopes that I can, perhaps, avoid the world for just a bit. Life in the library, while replete with crazy customers who comment on the presence or lack of presence of my ankle brace, is not exactly full of doses of what happens outside of my sphere.

World avoidance is one of my strengths.

Luckily, though I have both Irene and my mom to keep me informed when I get caught up in the editorial stories on Yahoo, MSN, CNN, MSNBC...yeah, I make an effort to navigate to the news sites and end up reading about the best ways to conserve water, the family with sixteen children expecting their seventeenth. And before I know it, I'm several pages deep into the website, free from guilt, convincing myself that I'm educating myself.

So, instead of trying to keep up with the real world for right now, I'll try to learn more about the history of the world. Currently, I'm reading The Last of the Just by Andre Schwarz-Bart. It's a fictionalized account of the history of the persecution of the Jewish people. It sounds far more boring than it is, and it makes me feel far more intelligent than reading this did.

Real World Father's Day

My father is my Knight in Shining Armor, and I am the princess who needs to be saved. I am a Daddy's Girl. And I have no shame in that. I am completely clear on the fact that Daddy is human. I also whole-heartedly believe in his super-hero status.

I am an only child. I am an only daughter. My father was a mere 25 years of age, and a very young 25, when I came into the world, and though he had a lot to learn as a husband, he seems to have taken to fatherhood quite naturally.

In our first picture together, he wears a yellow hospital gown, and holds a barely-5-pounds-me in his hands. I look tiny but safe. He gazes in awe at this tiny creature for whom he is now wholely responsible.

My mother will cry in heaving sobs when she tells of how she didn't get to meet me for three entire days after I was born. The nurses just kept neglecting to wheel her down to the NICU. But my father talked to me, held me and began to understand some of what it takes to be a father.

In the 27 (nearly 28) years that followed that photo, we've had our ups and downs, our fights and battles, most of them caused by the fact that we're incredibly alike in personality. Put to incredibly stubborn, defensive, unbelieving people and a room together, and you get two people who can't make a decision and who must consult resources before believing anything anyone says. It's fun.

But the truth is that my father has taught me what to look for in a future husband and what to expect from men in the world around me. With no qualms, I can say that my father has taught me about loyalty, honor and courage, because he has all three in immense quantity.

I love my Daddy, and I realize how incredibly lucky I am to be a girl who knows her father's flaws and can still respect him as a father and as a man.

So, here's to fathers being good to their daughters, because it's true what John Mayer says, daughters give love in response to how well their fathers can love them.

Happy Fathers' Day to all of the wonderful fathers out there, but especially to mine :).

I Don't Like You. Don't Talk to Me.

I am not always the nicest person at work, and it's not the fault of the customers. Not really. Sometimes it is.

It's their fault when they've been borderline harassing me for two years and then decide to tell my supervisor that I've been "rude," when all I've been doing is resisting their creepy advances.

Tuesday was not a particularly splendid day for me. It was the first day of a week that won't end until this coming Tuesday; my ankle (sprained during our fabulous Memorial Day Camping Trip and re-sprained as Irene and I walked into what turned out to be the most-depressing movie since Schindler's List) hurt so badly that I felt sick to my stomach; the library had just opened.

The first few customers were courteous, and I happily answered their questions. I even ran out to re-align the front doors.

Then the creep entered. I won't go into all the details, but suffice it to say, he's overly familiar with a few of the younger women on staff, and we all act a bit differently. There are older men who flirt in that almost Southern way, calling all women "baby" and somehow managing not to offend anyone. This is not one of those men.

Anyway, I never want to talk to this man, and I always treat him the same, with a somewhat cold but polite demeanor. I don't encourage his conversation, but I smile and nod when he says hello.

That's not enough for him. He spoke with my supervisor for upwards of 20 minutes about my "rude" behavior.

The next morning, my two supervisors pulled me into an office and briefed me on some "techniques" I might try to make sure that he's "satisfied" with the level of attention he receives but won't perceive it as responding positively to his quest for closer communication.

These techniques:
1) Make eye contact, smile, but not too broadly, then look away.
2) When asked questions about my personal life, say "I don't talk about my personal life at work" and then giggle.

You think I'm kidding about the second one? No. They both demonstrated how I should say it.

It didn't help my situation that both of my supervisors - attractive in their own ways but not in the group that this man prefers to approach - said that they had dealt with this man before and "all of the encounters have been positive."

Let's repeat those techniques, just for good measure:
1) Make eye contact, smile, but not too broadly, then look away.
2) When asked questions about my personal life, say "I don't talk about my personal life at work" and then giggle.

I am now required by my employer to giggle at smarmy men.

I have a master's degree, and I am now required by my employer to giggle at smarmy men.

Crying Wolf

I don't so much have a crisis every now and then as I make big decisions, or start towards a big decision and then change my mind.

That's not bad in and of itself. No, what's bad is that I tell people my plans. I involve them, and then I call the whole thing off.

For a brief moment (okay, so for about the last 3 weeks), I had it in my head that the time to move was NOW, and that moving out of state was by far the best idea I'd had in months. I also had it in my head that WG would be coming along for the ride, ready to flee the joint before the end of summer.

Yeah, not so much.

As the initial excitment waned, I read more about the library systems in the state to which I intended, in my imaginary world, to move. I learned that one of the less expensive cities in the metro area is less expensive because it has a crime rate worse than Oakland. And my idea of keeping myself close(r) to home mean that WG was 13 hours FURTHER away from his family, and he's already 20+ hours away by car.

But even though I approached this with calm and cool. Even though I did research and made no commitments, filed no applications, I still feel embarassed about my enthusiasm, about my announced now-defunct-decision.

It's not the first time I've done this. It's not even the first time in a year that I've done this.

Last November, I seriously contemplated a move to another county...not job, just to a new apartment. But that fell through, and I found myself informing people that the decision had to be unmade. That's not an easy thing to do.

This time, I didn't tell a LOT of people, but I told enough people that I feel foolish about it. Clearly, I need to learn how to keep my mouth shut.

So, for now, there's no wolf. There's no need to set aside moving boxes for me. I'm still just sittin' here, a librarian with dreams of escape :Þ.

Real World Wednesday

A lot has happened in the world since I spent Wednesdays in May being grateful.

Obama clinched.

Hillary didn't concede.

Sharon Stone decided to be an idiot and say awful things about people killed in an earthquake.

Brangelina had twins...oh, wait...that didn't actually happen yet.

With the world disasters happening, I still continue to be grateful for my own life.

And I want some way to contribute to the efforts to fix/improve the world.

But I want to do more than give money.

That's why Conde Nast's article on volunTOURism caught my eye. Now, this may have to wait until the days when I have the disposable income to pay to travel to a foreign nation and work for free for a week, but it's still a nice thought.

Voluntourists travel to a country in need, and they give back. They teach. They build stoves. They put up houses. They give back in the short-term. Voluntourists don't live in Japan for six years, teaching English to businessmen. Voluntourists are like Christians on a mission trip, but without the evangelizing.

So, before you write a check, visit Voluntourism.org and think about new ways you can change the world.