Friday, November 20, 2009

To Distraction


Abraham's hair was getting shaggy. Of course, it was cute the way his forelock hung down over his eyes. Pretty much anything is cute on a baby; hair sticking out every which way being no exception. But I just kept thinking that, if I were him, I'd be annoyed to have hair tickling my ears, my neck, my forehead.... Not to mention that less hair means less water being dumped over his head to rinse it, which, from his point of view would have to be a good thing, right? So I decided it was time for Abe's first haircut with the clippers. I've trimmed him up with scissors from time to time, but this would be the first time I cut the whole shebang.

And it went well. It tickled; he put is arms up and giggled. I managed to dodge little flailing arms and buzz buzz buzz that hair off. He hung over the side of his high chair to watch the pile grow. "Hey, she's stealing my hair! There it is!" This made cutting the back of his head easy. And when I was all done, viola, cute as ever.

Then I decided Charlie needed a haircut. But I hadn't figured all the elements of the equasion. Element one: Charlie has much more, much thicker hair than Abraham. Element two: I had forgotten to oil the clippers. Element three: I've never given a haircut with an almost-one-year-old hanging on my pant leg before.

So I'm buzzing away at the back of Charlie's head, and nothing much seems to be happening. That's when I remembered the oil. So I popped the 5/8 inch comb off of the clippers, oiled them up, all the while having to repeat, "Charlie, stay there! This will only take a minute. Then you'll get a treat! CHARLIE, STAY THERE!!"

And on my leg is Abraham, going, "A-YA-YA-YA-YA-YA! MA-MA-MA! BAH-BAH-BAH!" at his most plaintive volume. So I picked him up an plunked him in his high chair to watch the shearing process. Then I went back to the clippers.

Buzz! There go the clippers, slick as butter through a swath of hair up the side of Charlie's head... without the 5/8 inch comb on them.... "OH CRAP! I'M STUPID!" Yes, I did actually yell that in front of my two children.

And Charlie jumped up out of the chair going, "What!? What's wrong!? Is thur bweed!?"

Erm... *Trots out extremely soothing voice* "No, honey. Mommy just cut too much hair off... It's okay. Sit back down."

 (You're just going to look like a Neo-Nazi midget. No big deal.)

Later, after we'd gone to church that night, and Charlie had explained to anyone and everyone, loudly, and with great detail that Mommy screwed his hair up on accident, we were driving home. Solemnly, he turned to me and said, "Mommy, you have to pay attention."

Yes, I guess so.

Friday, November 13, 2009

A Funny Thing Happened to Me

...at the library. A couple of funny things, actually.

For anyone who doesn't know, I've been a part time aide at my local library for the last... erm... two and a half years or so. And, working with the public, I get to see lots of funny and bizarre behavior. But yesterday, I was the bizarre one.

Every fall, we have a "staff enrichment" meeting, where we do actually do some staff enriching, but also goof off a lot. This year, the goofing off was in the form of making beaded lanyards to hold name tags. The idea was that a beaded lanyard was prettier than a pinned on name tag, and more versatile too. Our tags have our names on them, of course, and also a little "Ask me about..." blurb where we can share our particular interests. Since beading is my particular hobby, I got really carried away with the lanyard-making part, and made myself six or so. That was a couple of weeks ago, so now whenever I'm at work, I'm wearing my lanyard and badge.

Yesterday, one of our public access computers had been acting up all day. More accurately, the patrons had been logging off of it wrong all day long and I kept having to fix it for every new patron. So when one patron had just left computer 4 and another sat down to log on, I was at the circulation desk twiddling with something or other. Suddenly I heard my name. The girl at computer 4 was calling, "Hannah? I need some help." I peered at her. She didn't look like anyone I knew. So, trying to look professional and absolutely NOT clueless, I went over to help her, all the while thinking, how does she know my name!?

Blonde. Moment.

Later that same day, I was inputing interlibrary loan requests into the database we use for such things, when I came to a request for a book that there was no way to get. It was only available from five sources in the U.S., three of which were booksellers, and two of which were inactive. Long story short: this book would not be coming in. So I called the patron.

Me: Is Kathy there?

Man Who Answered: No, this is her husband, can I help?

Me: This is the Pendleton County Library calling to tell her that the book she'd requested through interlibrary loan is not going to be possible to get. It's just that the availability is too limited, I'm afraid.

Him: I remember her saying something about a book. What was the title?

Me: *squirming* Uh... well... it's called, Give Him Back His Balls actually so... er...

Awkward.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

November


Is it honestly November? It must be. The leaves have finished falling, and the light that so many poets have called "the golden light of Autumn" has faded. But not before I got a good picture of it.

We've had such a weird year, climatologically speaking, here in the holler. The summer was cooler and a whole lot wetter than we've been used to which, in perfect accordance to Murphy's Law, meant our riding mower broke down resulting in our yard looking like an ungrazed pasture. Even August did not bake us with its usual supernova, and now that autumn is almost on its way out, I feel I can safely say we've skipped over this year's "Indian summer." I'm not complaining, but I do wonder if we're going to get as much snow this winter as we did rain over the summer.


We've been stacking up wood for the winter, and generally battening down the hatches around here. Back during the summer, God gave us a gift of readily available firewood, when He blew the bark off of a tree just over the hill from our house during a lightning storm. It was about eight a.m. one day, which for the Pearson household equates to "too early to be awake" when a tremendous BOOM rattled the windows and caused Charlie to levitate and air-run into our bedroom. Later that day, we took a walk and found the lightning-struck tree not fifty yards from our house. Viola, the search for this year's wood is over.

Maybe, though, Sunday was this year's version of Indian summer. The day was a sunny, breezy seventy-something degrees, so we took a break from the battening to have a picnic and take a bunch of goofy pictures. Here is one of the illusive and wonderful Abrahambeast in its natural habitat.


After we explained to Lucy that "hotdogs" are not actually made from dog, she wanted to know why she had not been included in the party.


After we explained the same thing to Boots, he was no longer interested.


And after writing this entry, I'm thinking that maybe the light of November is still golden after all.