My week has been pretty bipolar, languishing in the manic part and I’ve been dealing with it well. Until today. When my morning turned from frazzled to a series of Unfortunate Events.
First I woke at 2:30 AM, rolled over and fell back asleep. Then I was up at 3:07, 4:23 and again at 5AM. I proceeded to sleep through the alarm set for 6AM and The Bee and I had a mad dash morning that consisted of grunts, gripes and (I’m not ashamed to admit it) homemade Rice Krispie Treats for breakfast. Shockingly we got to school on time.
My HOLIDAY COLD season has begun. Each year I get sick from around Thanksgiving to right around Christmas. It may be the stress of the holidays, it may be the change in weather but you can almost set your clock by it. Sometime in December I will be coughing up green crud, have puffy eyes and sound like Suzanne Pleshette.
The YSD meeting that I had thought I was to attend today was actually yesterday. I received an e-mail about it and somewhere along the way confused the 9th, a Thursday, for today the 10th, a Friday. Whoopsy!
The thing that threw me over the edge, the coup d’etat if you will, was my outreach visit for today. I love Outreach. I feel that I can be a much more effective library chick if I am spreading library cheer as opposed to sitting behind my desk thinking about it. The kids are always excited to hear the stories, I’m able to bring the library and the thinks I’m thinking to them and, my favorites can be read over and over without fear of boring someone and (most) of the staff are terrific*.
Today, sigh! The kids gave me pause and I swear every bit of knowing ‘it’ just ran out of my head. I get that that holidays are right upon us but Holey Hockey Mom! These kids must have been given cola laced with sugar and a taffy chaser. They were literally bouncing off the walls! One kid was so excited she ran into a wall. For real. My normal groove was so off that I surrendered after two stories and headed back to my messy desk. But really, my worth as a library chick has been vexing me lately. Last week some gut compared my library to another and declared that he ‘never knows that anything is going on’ here. He lives in this community but has never heard about what’s happening. So much for all of the PR that I do. He also said he would be back for storytime this week and never showed. (O_O!) There was a kid who complained about the lack of new books and some grumblings from some staff about my, erm, organized chaos of a desk.
Personally I want to say kick rocks but professionally I have to see if I am excluding a reader or neglecting someone. I don’t meant to toot my own horn but beep, beep! However, horn tooting aside is what I’m doing something that people like and want or something that *I* like and want. The pity party that proceeded was crushing and quick.
I don’t have an answer now; the little bits of my day that show me that there is something that I am getting right (introducing a new reader to The Maze Runner and The Hunger Games or the sweetie pie two year old telling me about The Little Engine That Cooled) make me think that I am in the right direction but those bumps in the road…grr!
Well, the weekend is here and the only book emergency is that I don’t have one on DC to listen to…hiyo!
It will get better.
-r
*Do YOU like everyone you work with?
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