Shave that. And get some sun.
Get your hair out of your eyes.
O HAI: Your strobe didn't fire.
AAAAA!
These are the things that go through my mind when I stroll from our library's adult reference desk to the children's section, and pass the display in front of Biography. You just have to assume that the underpaid young liberal arts majors who populate the publishing industry (and I have been there, I know) just hate celebrities, because it's hard to believe that you couldn't find a less shifty-looking royalty-free photo of Tobey Maguire. Look at him - he looks like he's hanging out in Tompkins Square Park pretending to pass out clean syringes but really scoping out the street kids, looking for one to take home and dissect. In fact, I sort of believe that if you called his people and said you were doing a book for kids, they'd FedEx you over a nice one and cut you a deal.
After all, Ella Fitzgerald looks great on the cover of her bios. So does George Bush. Even people who aren't widely considered to be even moderately photogenic:
...don't look near so bad as Lindsay Lohan does here:
Her eyeballs of hate seem to say, "I see you, Mitchell Lane Publishers, and I am coming for you." Nobody puts Baby in a pink ribbon frame.
I am in a FOUL mood. I am in such a bad mood that it's FUNNY. Tonight at work I was a little hypoglycemic and a little menstrual (TMI? F.U!) and I stalked over to my colleague 'Librarian' Is A Euphemism for WHAT? (LIAEFW for short) and told her to give me some of the M&Ms she has stashed in her desk or I would pull her hair.
Her M&M's bag was, as it turns out, being used to store plastic spider rings. Ho yeah, it might have gotten ugly had not another librarian (Pseudonym Forthcoming) stepped in with a bag of Dove Dots.
Now, I have forbidden myself to write about my job on this blog, except to make very general observations, or if I did something silly, or, in more than one case, to complain about being ogled. That is my right. I get ogled, I get to complain. And so tonight, I must limit myself to a few very general observations.
While most people who come into the library looking for help are delightful and civil, some are not. Some people who use the library are lazy. Some are dumb. Or ill-mannered. Some, of course, are mentally ill and need residential services and don't get them because this is America and apparently we think that crazy people are picturesque additions to the landscape. Also tonight, the Internet was so slow as to be considered a Barrier To Effective Service. And for some reason, every time I answered the phone, the volume was WAAAY up and crackin in my ear. Ow.
Of course, I started my shift feeling all Buffy Season Six (in which the writers humiliate the blonde in every way they can imagine) because I had spent eight of the previous 24 hours crawling around on the basement floor. I painted the baseboards, I scrubbed the stray grout off the slate floor tiles in the bathroom (um, that took TWO HOURS), I sealed that slate floor, and I started to lay the carpet tiles in the guest room down there.
Lets count down the positions I have been spending a lot of time in on the basement floor:
6. Kneeling
5. Squatting (including squatting with head on wall for balance)
4. Criss-cross applesauce
3. Hands and knees
2. Prone
And the number-one position for scrubbing grout, sealing floor tile, painting baseboard, AND laying carpet tile:
1. Elbows and knees, ass in the air
It was like yoga - with solvents.
Yeah, no. Actually, now that the contractors have gone, MY work increases exponentially. I (we) have to figure out where things go in the new kitchen, wash or wipe or vacuum or dust EVERY SINGLE THING IN THE HOUSE, seal the deck, seal the grout, seal the new bathroom floor, install the carpet in the basement, move furniture, paint, figure out curtains and blinds... basically reconfigure my house.
But I don't mind. You know I don't. I'm sitting here in the new kitchen working on the laptop and the only sounds I hear are the dishwasher and the washing machine (both of which have been running more or less constantly since Friday, the last day the contractors were here). I can gaze out the kitchen window at my two new bird feeders. I can gaze, uh, INSIDE the kitchen window at the toaster sitting peacefully in its corner on the new countertop. All is well.
To wrap up this thing, here are before, during, and after photos of the work on our house. We had half the basement leveled and built a family room / guest room and full bath down there. We re-did the kitchen. We had sliding doors installed in the dining room, leading to a new deck.
BASEMENT
Before:
During:
They had to cut out the previous, viciously slanted, basement floor and pour a new, flat, one. That corner in the upper left is where the bathroom is now.
Basement guest room leveled and framed. Stairs are to the outside.
Guest room painted.
This little ell was going to be my office, but now looks like a good spot for an elliptical for Bob. We'll make the old playroom into an office / homework room. It has windows.
Bathroom getting its slate floor.
After:
Here's that little ell with drywall, ceiling, electricity, paint and molding.
The blue-sky guest room, with ceiling, light, a new window.
And! Visitors to Chez Librarian will luxuriate in their very own full bathroom! Enjoy the heated floor, the ample light, and the oversize tub! Be sure to notice the dark-purple towels that an entire staff of librarians and everyone I know on Facebook helped me find! Stocked with LUSH products, courtesy of my sister-in-law Janie!
I love this room.
KITCHEN
Before-before-before:
This was an early conception, using IKEA's kitchen planning software. That program kept crapping out on me, it uses a lot of memory. But it's pretty close to what we ended up doing, actually.
Before:
And this is on its VERY BEST DAY.
During:
First they destroyed it.
Then they rebuilt it.
Then it was paint, floor, electricity, cabinets.
After:
And then it was time to stand back and sniffle.
DECK
Before:
Hugged tight to the house, only projects about 8' at its deepest. Old and splintery, with nails that we knocked back in every spring. Its time had come.
During:
Wrecking the old deck. I would have enjoyed doing that part myself, actually.
Building the new one. Bigger. Two levels.
We wanted it to step down into the yard in increments, like.After:
DINING ROOM (sliding door to deck)
Before:
See those two little casement windows? That was previously about it for our view of the backyard. Our house seemed to literally turn its back on the yard - you couldn't see it from anywhere inside the house.
During:
So we paid men to come and chop a big giant hole in the wall.
They found a pack of cigarettes. This is the same brand in which the famous Honus Wagner baseball card was found. No card. We put 'em back in the wall, along with a half-smoked pack of Marlboro Reds.
After:
"Then, window, let day in, and let life out."
And curtains for when the sun is too much.
. 
, and I read the first chapter in the parking lot waiting to pick up the kids. Hm. Awfully heavy on dialogue. Long scenes. Lots of simmering. Not for me. I may try Ann's book after all.
attracted me first with its steampunky green and gold and black cover, then with the inside cover blurb which made it sound meta without being tedious, like Neal Stephenson's 
. I may have to force my friend Melissa to read this book and tell me about it.
because of its cover: an engraving of a bird skeleton nestled in a flat box with a pair of dividers and an old-style museum specimen label. Boy am I a sucker for that style. But leafing through: neato! Tricks and illustrations and marginalia - I love that stuff in kids' books, and it's about time somebody (other than 
, man I can't handle those books) served some of that fun up for grownups. Plus, blurbs by 
by Jason Buhrmester, because a) it looked funny b) it looked cool and c) it was about crime. Also, the word "Baltimore" appears in the back-cover summary.
which I am sure to like. When I can read it.
? 
? A little weird, but 
? You don't need ME to tell you anything 
