Month: November 2003

bq. Every time a friend posts something about how their eye just fell out or they’ve just had their entire house stolen, I realize what a creampuff life I’ve led.

– “Wherein the bigger picture is temporarily(?) out of focus”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/kermix/345229.html

which we got a bunch of in Olympia this morning.

but. I talked to Grandma on the phone today, after she got out of the hospital. I can just barely hear the Grandma I remember through the obviously very delicate old woman who was on the phone. mainly in her acerbically saying that she hadn’t heard from me in years and what had happened, but not just that.

I mentioned the snow, because I didn’t know what else to say, and we were having a hard time understanding each other over the phone. she said she hadn’t seen snow in she didn’t know how many years. (she was born in New York, but has lived in California since the mid-1940s.) I said I’d send a photo, I said I’d stay in touch, I even said I’d try to come visit, which I think I might actually figure out how to do. and I said I was sorry (for not keeping in touch) and I said I love her, which are the two things I really needed to say.

[deep breath]

I’ve been incredibly shitty about staying in touch with all the people in my life that I supposedly care about. if you’re one of them, I’m sorry.

Elizabeth tells me not to freak out yet (which I did by email), they really don’t know and it could go either way. bleh.

just got word from my sister that our grandmother (and last surviving grandparent) is seriously, quite likely fatally, ill. severly low blood pressure, which like the kidney failure that killed at least two other grandparents, is just the last straw. if it doesn’t go up in the next few days she’ll die, says Eliz.

she’s 92, so it’s not as though she’s dying before her time or anything. hell, I’d be damn happy to live so long, though I don’t want my last few years to be like hers have been. (parkinson’s, mostly, plus the usual (!) broken hip)

but she’s Grandma, and losing Grandma…

I can’t stop feeling guilty because I’ve been so terrible at keeping in touch since I moved up here, and in particular since I graduated from college and essentially stopped going to Calif. if I go down now, she’ll either be unconsious, or in any case not herself (the grandma I remember) at all. if I go to the funeral…ugh. I don’t know if I want to go. when Grandpa D. died, about 8 years ago (so long?), and I went to the funeral, I had the feeling that this particular group of people, my relatives on that side, would only all be in the room again one more time, and that would be for Grandma’s funeral.

(as it turns out, I was wrong. everybody went to Aunt Jane’s last wedding except me.)

I just feel raw & rambly and I don’t know quite what to do or say.

I probably shouldn’t publish this while I am (a) home by myself and (b) feeling so churlish, but there you are.

was starting to plan holiday vacation times, so I looked up C’s school schedule for winter break. I’d been laboring under the impression that school didn’t start until after MLK Jr. Day (probably because that’s how it was when I was in college), but it starts just after the first of the year.

which makes it too early for us to go together to Mom’s birthday bash, which Eliz. has been planning like crazy for. and after C went to Wisconsin alone summer before last, we’ve decided that we don’t want to take vacations apart.

so I don’t know what to do, and I’m bitter and irritable about it. I’m really wishing that Elizabeth hadn’t made such a huge freaking deal out of this, as now I’ll feel guilty for not going.

or maybe I’ll just take the train, rent a car, stay in a hotel, but make it a quick trip, not a real vacation. but I want to take a real vacation to Calif. with C, because the only other time we ever went together it was a real rush — drove down & back for Elizabeth’s high school graduation in a week.

some of that trip was great: I am forever grateful that he & Uncle Bill met before Uncle Bill died. but most of it was too crazy, esp. since he burnt his mouth on fast food just before we left, so he couldn’t eat hardly anything. a recipe for crankiness.

I want him to see the places I grew up in, the same way I’ve seen so much of this area through his eyes, driving around rural Pierce County.

sigh. and grrrr.

…at the wall of my (home) office, it’s amazing: the books are shelved, scarves & hats put away, various pretty knicknacks & photos finally seeing the light of day, art supplies (should I ever make anything ever again) accessible.

…at the floor of my office, it’s also amazing, but for the opposite reason. drifts of paper, journals, empty picture frames, even more knicknacks. half-empty boxes open showing even more things that I should probably go through.

all in all, it makes me want to run away to the internet.

it’s pouring buckets, which nixes my idea of yesterday to spend much of today finishing on the bed I started working on last weekend. (darn, no digging about in the side yard.)

which makes the world look cold and dark. blustery, too, with the wind whipping the trees about, scattering our front yard with aspen leaves. (I noticed one day last week the wind blowing the evergreens along my vanpool route, and how it really did look just like those mysterious mood-making bits in Twin Peaks.)

and yet, and yet…I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel wonderfully cozy, with the house lit up inside, the radio mumbling away in another room (tho god how garrison keillor annoys the hell out of me), a cup of sweet creamy tea by my side. cats begging to be let in and out…oh, wait, that’s sort of irritating. but still, I feel like this is right, what fall shading into winter should be. I just wish I had a waterproof camera so I could go take pictures.

(of course, aside from all this domestic bliss, I have a metric ton of things to do: laundry and dishes and sorting through the stack of crud in my office and touchups to my website and writing, because (ack!) after writing more than 2500 words on Friday I wrote less than 200 yesterday.)

this is a placeholder for a longer thought/meditation/reminisce about libraries & librarians, inspired by “Liz Lawley”:http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/12/everyone_should_have_a_library_to_love.php who was inspired by this bit of “librarian-worship”:http://torillsin.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_torillsin_archive.html#106856138150432834 — much to say on this topic, even though I may not get back to it for a while.

in progress, may change later depending on time & inclination….

the house we moved into when I was seven, where my mother lives now, is about five blocks away from the only library in town. I learned to read when I was about four. so…I spent a lot of time at the library.

they had a summer reading club, which (IIRC) required 10 books to “win” — they had a felt board where you could pin up your name under how many books you’d read (weird…I can see that so clearly in my mind, but I haven’t thought about it in years). when I was 13, I read my 10 books in about two days, and the librarian suggested that perhaps I might be interested in volunteering. I spent the summer helping out the children’s librarians (two fulltime, two parttime) and the regular page, a girl of maybe 16, with shelving and such.

then she got into a rather nasty car accident (something to do with an RV, which she was driving) and they needed someone to fill the job. and I was there, and liked working there, and wow: it paid 4.25 an hour! so shortly after I turned 14, I started the job I had all through high school, as the page for the children’s section of the library. I worked there until about a week before I left for college.

my boss was a woman named Jackie (in what would become a weird trend), a very short black woman, funny and tough. scared me half to death I don’t know how many times sneaking up on me when I was reading a book instead of shelving it. she *hated* technology. we got an electronic catalog during my senior year, or maybe it was the summer after, and she just loathed the whole idea of the thing. Tina, the other full-timer, was a thin intense white woman, very lefty. I wish I could remember the names of the other two librarians, both were part-timers (again, IIRC) partially so they could spend more time with their respective kids.

there were three men who worked at the library: the janitor, the director, and a young guy who I think was an intern (grad student, I’d imagine). oh, and I think one of the adult services pages was a guy.

I had my first on-the-job injury at the library, when part of a bookshelf fell on my and I sprained my ankle. (again, the first in a weird trend.)

most of the librarians, including my boss, had known me since I was very young; a couple of the older adult librarians had seen me and my sisters and my mother (and I suppose dad, too), since I was a toddler.

that library was like a second home for me, even before I worked there. I was in a production of The Wizard of Oz (as Glenda!) there; I played my viola at a recital after it fell on the floor and the bridge nearly broke in half; we went to Friday afternoon movies and the book sale (every year); I went from Dr. Suess to Nancy Drew to Anne of Green Gables to E. Nesbit…I think I even read my first Anais Nin checked out of that library.

I still have dreams about being there.

I didn’t really even think about becoming a librarian though, except briefly towards the end of my college days. But I didn’t want to spend the money on the GREs, and I had a steady job and an apartment in Tacoma.

Strangely enough, I’ve been thinking about library school off and on over the last year or so. Something about the librarians and future librarians whose blogs I’ve read; something about coming back to organizing information, but through this amazing bizarre medium of the Web.

I don’t know if Jackie would be proud or appalled. (I should ask Mom if she’s still there….)

I hit 10,001 words (approx). just 39,999 to go.

I can’t seem to get back into writing again after taking yesterday to work in the yard. (moving plants, sod-breaking. my arms are still tired.)

instead of writing, I’m reading blogs, re-org-ing the new metal rack I installed in my office, painting the coat closet…everything except going back to my novel and picking up where I left off Saturday morning.

shall I go backwards (more of Saithe (the “tall guy”) and little Ani) or forward (Viola, Aila’s abandonment of her history in the pursuit of sex)? I don’t know where to pick it up again, although I imagine I’ll figure out something while I’m in the van tomorrow.

most people, I gather, do more writing on the weekends. I do the most writing during the week, if only because of my commute.