Just Flowers

As my children could tell you, I will crawl around  in almost any-thing to take pictures of flowers. Note: Systemic poison ivy... not fun. But I did it all for you! To the left, this weed was growing under said black fence and had gotten painted.Wild Phlox

The blue ones are Ground Ivy (from the mint family) and the yellow one is a False Strawberry.

Pink tulip by a black fence.

Spring Larkspur

 

Red tulip by a black fence.

White violets by the roadside.

White and yellow daffodil by a black fence.

Red and pink tulips together.

Violets behind the library.

Giving the lie to the phrase "modest as a violet."

The last of the spring buds on our Japanese Red Maple.

Babies, Babies, Everywhere

Spring is all things pleasant: rain, flowers, skinned knees, dirty faces, frog spawn... and kittens. Daisy the Cat has taken it upon herself to supply the Holler's kitten deficiency. Just about two days ago, she laid babies (sic, per Charlie) in the insulation stored up top of our garage. I think that'd be itchy, but they seem well enough. Two of the kitties are organgy blonde, making me wonder if Boots the Cat's sibling kitty who disappeared right after I drug them unwillingly home with me is alive and well, and male, somwhere in the woods across the street. We check on the itty bitty kitties every day, which will probably cause Daisy to get sick of us and move them. Between cuddly baby kitties and not-so-cuddly baby froggies, Charlie is going to pop if he doesn't get to hold a baby animal very soon. At Tractor Supply, I'm told they have chics and baby rabbits, so maybe we'll go there. Spring is goooood.

Springy Thingie

Spring, finally!! I haven't seen a crocus, which is supposed to be the harbinger of spring, but everything is certainly coming up daffodils. I just hope that while I was photographing the daffodils, I wasn't wallowing in poison ivy/oak/sumac like I did last summer while... well, taking pictures of flowers, actually. Maybe I should've learned something...

Anyway, the very moment things started to look greenish, the boys and I bounded out the door and have barely come in to sleep since. In addition to seeking out new and inventive ways to acquire allergic rashes, we have been having particular fun with ponds these last couple of weeks.

There's a pond right at the top the hill adjacent the holler that we like to visit to keep tabs on its level, relative slushiness, and visible wildlife. To our delight, on our last trip we found several clutches of frog eggs out at the pond edge where we could poke at them and feel their sliminess. A few of the poor little eggies found their way onto my kitchen counter (in a jar of water) where Charlie checks their progress every 30 seconds or so and asks me if they've hatched yet. The joy of boys.

This particular bout of beautiful weather also has brought with it a canine interloper. The doggie showed up on Monday this week and has been called a different name for every day he's been here. No, not those kind of names. He started out being called Copper, after Disney's Fox and the Hound. After I vetoed this for sheer lack of originality, we tried Ebenezer. Charlie imediately shortened that to Neezer. Then, while watching The Great Mouse Detective Charlie decided that we ought to call him Tobey. This fellow looks like an English Foxhound or a giant Beagle, and has taken a particular dislike to Boots the Cat. So now, when we're trying to get him to stop baying in the middle of the night, we run the whole gamut of names. Finally, I resorted to chaining him up by the old chicken coop using a walking harness that fits around  the neck and the ribs behind  the forelegs, with cables along the back and chest connecting the two. Two nights running, and twice on one of said nights, he's managed to slip out of the harness. So I'm thinking that the name Houdini might be on the horizon... if we can keep the escape artist long enough for a name to stick.

If Librarians Ruled the World

If librarians took over the world, you would not have to worry about any silly irradication of ethnic groups or suppression of ideas. (We are in the idea business, after all.) No, if librarians had aspirations to world domination, it would only be about one thing: books:

1) No more tiny books, no more huge books. Uniformity of size, people! Do you know what a pain it is to shelve all these oddly sized books in conjunction with the Dewey?

2) Sorry, J.D. Robb, but if you don't start numbering your Inanity in Death series, you will be facing a firing squad. And that goes too for any author who plans on writing a series that goes on forever. Recognizable sequences, or death.

3) Sorry about your luck, L.J. Smith, but you won't be allowed to republish books you wrote ten years ago under a different publisher with a new copyright date. You can republish all you want, but that original copyright date from that original imprint stands. You don't reissue a birth certificate when someone gets married and changes their last name, do you!? No. You're not fooling anyone.

4) Oh, and authors, if you're planning on genre-hopping, you'd better have a healthy imagination for pseudonyms. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to hand a blue-haired old lady the newest book from an author who has heretofore been family-rated and down-to-earth only to have her return it reporting that it contained vampires and *gasp* nudity!? New genre=new pseudonym.

5) James Patterson, you unmitigated fraud, if you want to help out unknown authors whose books you feel deserve to be published, set up your own publishing imprint. Slapping your name on the front of the book along with the real author is just fraud. Plus, after reading Sunday's At Tiffany's, we question your taste anyway.

This is life under the Librarian Reich!

Guest Blogger-- Flat Stanley!

In 1964, a fictional character was born who has grown to national renown. In the original book, by writer Jeff Brown and illustrator Tomi Ungerer, Stanley Lambchop wakes up one morning flattened by his bulletin board. Keeping a positive attitude, Flat Stanley soon discovers advantages to being flat: he can go under door, fly like a kite, and even mail himself to California. Inspired by Flat Stanley's trip to California inside an envelope, Canadian educator Dale Hubert created the Flat Stanley Project for his grade three students and in 1995 put it on the Web. Classrooms around the world exchange cut-out Flat Stanleys and keep journals as a way for kids to learn about other parts of the world. Over the years Flat Stanley has become a pop culture phenomenon as well as an educational tool. He has "met" world leaders such as Bill Clinton, made appearances on television shows such as The West Wing and Jeopardy!, been aboard the U.S. space shuttle Discovery and made trips all over the globe, including to Mt. Everest and the Taj Mahal. On the red carpet at the 2005 Oscar ceremony, actor and filmmaker Clint Eastwood flashed a Flat Stanley for photographers... And most recently, Flat Stanley came to visit the Pearsons. So without further ado, I give you guest-blogger Flat Stanley! (No relation to the blog owner's father...)

Hi blog readers! I'm visiting for a couple of weeks with Charlie, Abraham, Joe, and Hannah doing the things they do.

Charlie is a great inventor and adventurer. He and I worked on an invention together the first night we met. It was a little tin steam engine. Then we had a sleepover.

The second day I was here, I went to work with Hannah, Charlie’s mom. She works in  a very tiny library, but a fun one. Hannah let me play hide-n-seek in the books, and then she let me try to drive the bookmobile! Too bad I couldn’t reach the pedals. (I didn't say he could drive. He locked me out when we went down to get a book for a patron. If the police station wasn't two doors from here, I don't know what would've happened! That flat kid is a menace!)

On Saturday, Charlie, Abraham, and their mom took me to McDonald’s for supper, and then we did some shopping at Walmart. I rode around in Hannah’s purse through the store, but she let me go swimming in the fish tanks when no one was looking. Then Charlie, Abe, and I tried out the bikes. I rode with Abe because Charlie goes too fast! I got my picture taken with some Barbie dolls that Hannah thought were funny. Then Charlie and I tried on hats. Isn't he dapper? (On the Flat Stanley website it says to take pictures of him with local landmarks. How's Walmart for a local landmark, eh?)

On Sunday afternoon, all of the Pearsons and I went for a walk in the creek that flows from the Holler Hills to the Licking River. The Licking River had a very bad flood about 12 years ago that put all of Falmouth under at least 10 feet of water! The creek was rushing the day we visited, but it wasn’t that high. We found the ruins of what is often called a “slave wall” down near the creek. Slave walls are walls made of field stone stacked carefully together, and were actually not built by slaves at all, but by Irish immigrants in early Kentucky settlement days.

Next time I visit Kentucky, I want go somewhere besides Walmart. Maybe Natural Bridge or Mammoth Cave or something. (Little complainer. I offered to mail him there, but he said he didn't know anybody. Maybe I should've taken him to Kincaid Lake and shown him the "landmark" golf course.)

Anyway, I had fun with the 'Tuckians even though going to McDonald's is their idea of a special occasion. You should visit sometime!

Library Ninja

I do the interlibrary loan handling for my library, as some of you may know (little though anyone cares.) A week back, a guy asked me to get him some books about the history and practice of ninjitsu. It is astounding (okay, no, not really) how few serious books about becoming a ninja there are. One book that I did find was called Secrets of the Ninja from the Citadel Press. If you can't trust a name like Citadel Press, who can you trust? So I ordered that book.

The way interlibrary loans work (for us 'Tuckians, at least) is that I search for the item on an interlibrary database called Firstsearch, then apply to a queue of five libraries to send me said item. Usually someone sends it, but occasionally it goes through five lenders who all tell me to buzz off. Such was the case with Secrets of the Ninja. The responses I got were as follows:

20100223 FTL No - Not On Shelf/Missing

20100224 DZM  No- Unspecified

20100224 ZGN No - Not On Shelf/Missing

20100224 LEB No - Not On Shelf/Missing

20100225 LFY No - Not On Shelf/Missing

To me, this begs the question: Have all of the copies of this book been.....

STOLEN BY NINJAS!?

Charlie-isms, Snow, and Zombie Roosters

A couple of new Charlie-isms:

I can't believe I forgot this one. This has been a favorite of ours for as long as Charlie has been talking. One day Daddy came in from outside to find Charlie snacking on a small bowl of minimarshmallows. Charlie looked up and said in tones of great triumph, "I got snows!"

Likewise, I came home from work on Friday to find Joe still working on the truck and Charlie watching "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" for the hundredth time. Charlie, it seems, had largely fended for himself as well as a five year old can for most of the day, as he announced to me when I walked in the door, "I ate a hundred gorilla bars today!"

And when we were out playing in the snow after dark last night (Weird things happen to second shift families. 7:00 p.m. is the middle of our afternoon...), Charlie turned to me and said, "Kids, don't try this at home!"

That brings me to the snow. They keep threatening us with 5+ inches of snow, which, for a small town librarian translates to 100 old ladies completely depleting the Christian romance section because they've got to have something to read while we're "snowed in." In this case, we did actually get the snow, and it did actually close some things: the schools and the library. So I guess it's a good thing that the ladies stocked up on books, eh?

The cold temperatures have driven our remaining to roosters to spend their nights snuggled up on the potting bench Joe built me two summers ago, which in turn has driven Joe to call it the "pooping bench." Red is looking much the worse for wear. He appears to have frostbite on his comb and wattles. The combination of the two above facts has led us to decide to put Red out of our misery. Joe decided to do this the other day when Charlie and I were out getting groceries to spare us any possible trauma. While I would've expected him to just shoot the dodgy bird, Joe decided to get old fashioned and break Red's neck. A quick snap, and Red looked quite sufficiently to have joined Earl in the Great Corn Patch in the Sky, so Joe laid him to rest in the woods across the street from our house where, hopefully, there was too much underbrush for Lucy to decide to bring him back. Turns out that was not what he should've been worried about. The next day, Joe called me up on my cel phone:

Joe: You'll never believe who is outside the window pecking at corn.
Me: You're kidding.
Joe: Nope.
Me: I thought you were sure he was dead.
Joe: He looked dead.
Me: Maybe he's a zombie.
Joe: How can you tell?
Me: Well, go out there, and if he looks at you and says, "Bok bok bok bok braaaaaaains!" run for it!

Isms and Stuff

Recently on Blogger's Blogs-of-Note, a blog called Sleep Talkin' Man appeared. Apparently it is the nocturnal ramblings (ha ha) of a man called Adam who has consented to having his wife blog them for the edification of the world. Warning: if you're going to go read this blog, its nonprofane parts are funny, but there are a lot of profane parts. Adam is a Brit, and they don't view profanity the same way there. But this all got me thinking about the things my family says that tickle me.

Charlie-isms:

Gerbil Tubes: Actually a Gramma-ism that Charlie and I adopted for that germ-infested sludge pit known as the McDonalds Playland.

Purple milk: Apparently Charlie felt that chocolate milk had a distinctly lavendar hue. He stopped saying this when he realized his preschool teachers were not familiar with that flavor.

Pianio (Pee-Ann-Ee-Oh): This is anything that resembles a musical instrument with keys.

Toys Rust

and

Cheetoh Tracks: This is where we went and what we bought for his birthday present (Toys'R'Us and GeoTrax.)

Oh, why can't I think of more of these? I'm sure there are more...

Here's a me-ism:

Kiddar: the innate ability of all children to hear the whispered mention of ice cream from across a crowded restaurant.

It's not really an -ism, but the funniest thing my husband has said recently was when he was puting a whole new shock-strut thingie on the Civic, and a million ball bearings fell out and went rolling all over the place. Joe says, "I don't even know where these things came from!" Yeesh. Just what you want to hear from the guy working on the steerage of your car...

Abraham is talking a bit these days. He says, "Ay-oh!" which we're sure means "hello" since he says it into telephones (and shoes, remote controls, bananas, sprayer faucets, and anything else vaguely phone shaped which he holds up to his ear.) He says, "Ny-ny." I'm not sure what that is. Logically it could be "night-night," except I just can't remember anyone really saying that to him, so where did he learn it? It could be "not nice," and I lean towards this because he says it when he's upset/tired. He says mama and dada and bah-bah, of course. Well, actually "ma-ma-ma-ma-ma" and "da-da-da-da-da." What is "bah bah?" It's not, "bottle" because he's a boob man. Baby? Brother? Not sure. But my favorite is that he actually says, "Nom nom nom" when he's eating. And you thought it was just LOLcats...

You've got to wonder what baby thoughts are like. They don't really have words for the things they recognize. Me, I see a car, and my brain says, "Gas sucking money trap..." What does his brain say?

This brings me in a jerky segue to my recent foray into child psychology. Charlie grows like a... well, faster than a weed and all I can think of is a toadstool and that just sounds uncomplimentary. At any rate, his legs frequently hurt him and usually I keep chewable ibuprophen on hand for when they do. Recently, though, I ran out of the tablets, and all I had was a berry flavored, dye free liquid suspension. I told you that story so I could tell you this one. A while back, Charlie got sick and the Nurse-Practitioner at our family doc's office said he had the flu. (He didn't and she's a dufus, but that's a rant I won't go into.) She gave us liquid Tami-Flu for him, which is a white colored syrup medicine. Charlie could not keep the stuff down. It made him yak faster than whatever he was sick with, and ever since he's been afraid of "white medicine."

So the other day his legs were hurting and all I had was "white medicine." Oops.

Me: "Charlie, it's not the stuff that made you sick. It tastes like grape candy. It just doesn't have any color in it so it won't stain your shirt if it drips."

Charlie *holding hands out in supplication*: "No, Mommy. Stop, Mommy. Stop. Pwease."

Me *with drop of white medicine on finger*: "Taste it. It tastes just like the stuff you always take."

Charlie *touching less than one actual tongue cell to medicine then recoiling in horror*: "I don't like it! It's icky!"

Then I had an epiphany. Why have this fight? Charlie was getting in the shower, so I took the medicine in the kitchen and put three drops of red food coloring in the bottle and shook it up. "Oh look, Charlie! Red medicine!" Heh heh heh...

He drank it, said "ich" rather blandly, and went on with his shower.

Problem solved.

The Anti-List

Lists are depressing. At least to me, they are. There always seem to be three things added to the bottom for every one thing crossed off the top. As my sage father told me once: everything takes longer than it takes. Or, if not that, then there's the fact that most of the things on my "To Do" lists are things that are never done: laundry, dishes, the checkbook. It makes me question my priorities. If all this stuff is still going to be here, day after day, why am I so worried about it? My kids won't always be here. My husband won't always be here. I won't always be here. So if laundry is eternal, and life is not, laundry can wait. Then there's the uncertainty principle. I find lots of my mental lists have to do with money. Money, money, money. But even if I had no debts and millions in the bank, what's to say that the next few years may not bring with them a catastrophic war that ends life as we know it and brings on a new era? Not that I plan to go stand on a street corner wearing a sandwich board or anything. I'm just saying that it's awfully easy to forget what's really important in favor of that to which the world applies pressure. So to kick off 2010 in the blogging world of me, I present you with the Anti-List!

Eleven Things I'd Like to Do Before I Kick It

Write a book

Publish a book

Learn to sign

Learn another spoken language

Achieve a black belt in a martial art

Travel outside the American continent

Get an advanced degree in Library Science

Learn silversmithery and lapidary arts

Become a competent editor

Own a hairless cat

Become a Blog-Of-Note on Blogger.com!

Ten Christmas Wishes

1. I wish I could get my dog a Christmas present.

2. I wish the lighting in this picture were better.

3. I wish Christmas cookies had no calories.

4. I wish that transporter beam technology from Star Trek actually worked. It would make Christmas shopping so much quicker.

5. I wish someone else would wrap my presents.

6. I wish my family all lived on one street and we never had to be apart at Christmas.

7. I wish my friends were close by too.

8. I wish I had a recording of Abraham saying, "Ooh!" every time he sees the Christmas tree.

9. I wish I could stop time and keep my beautiful boys little forever.

10. I wish YOU well, safe, happy, blessed, and loved this Christmas.

Road Legal

I have invented a new traffic violation. DUC. Driving Under the influence of Children.

As some of you may know, the transmission in our Suburban has, after weeks of failing health, officially committed Sudoku. Or something like that. The boys and I had gone to Walmart for a day of high class shopping, when it started to make funny noises. I rationalized said noises as being a product of the cold weather and high winds, because I am a mechanic, and went to church that night anyway. I guess that turned out to be a blessed decision, because that meant that when the transmission kicked it, our friend/babysitter/guardian angel Susan K. was right behind us on the road. Long story short (too late), we managed to limp it home with Susan following, and when we got there, she rolled down her car window and said, "I already called Wayne (her husband) and he said it was fine if you borrow this car for a while, so I'll pick you up in the morning and then you can drive it home after work tomorrow." Now you see why I call her my guardian angel.

So, with extreme gratitude, I took her up on her offer and have been driving her car for a little over a week. I've been trying not to drive it any more than necessary, but last Friday night, after work, I decided to make a run to Tractor Supply and Kohls to do some Christmas details. Don't ask. Well, a couple of details turned into ten minutes in Tractor Supply, then one hour at the Gerbil Tubes, then heaven-only-knows how long at Kohls, then, finally, Meijer. It was about 10:30 when we started home, which, in our second-shift life, is not too too late. But I was tired, and my hair was standing up in spikes from my fingers running through it, and Abe was uttering intermittant shrieks and giggles, with Charlie alternately making faces at him and hitting him with things...

Good times.

On top of this, the car was still unfamiliar. It has more quiet power than what I'm used to, as well as slightly squishy steering. So I was snarking at the kids, babysitting the speedometer, driving one-handed to point out pretty Christmas lights, and going cross-eyed about the time we passed Grant's Lick. And,  you probably guessed it, on go the pretty lights in the rearview mirror.

So I pulled over, thankful that at least I did not have the breast pump going... which is something I admit I often do while driving. Wouldn't that cop have been surprised? I was so chagrinned that I didn't notice that Charlie's immediate reaction to being pulled over was to take off his seatbelt. Excellent choice.

Kentucky's Finest leaned down to peer with his flashlight in my driver's side window, and I completely forgot what I had planned to say, because the first words out of his mouth were, "I think I know what the problem is."

Good grief.

He went on to tell me he'd pulled me over because I was "weaving pretty bad on him" and asked if the car was mine, to which I answered that I was borrowing it from a friend. Then he asked for my ID. Igg! "It's here somewhere," I said, then proceeded to excavate it out from the pile of coats, diaper bags, shopping bags, and general chaos in the passenger seat. He gave it a cursory glance, told us to be careful, told Charlie to put on his seatbelt, then let us go. Thank God highway patrolmen don't like to give tickets to chubby, harried-looking women with two small children in the back seat. As we pulled back onto the road, I told Charlie (quite calmly, I might add) that if Mommy ever got pulled over again, he had to keep his seatbelt on because Mommy could get a ticket just because he had it off. To this he replied, "I thought you were going to get arrested!"

My work is done here.

Burma Shave 2010

Not that I (or, in fact, almost anyone who would be reading this) am old enough to remember Burma Shave's roadside sign campaign that began in 1925, but I am going to revive it.

I'm going to campaign for Barbasol: the broke-mom-of-two-small-

children's choice for shaving comfort.

"If I shave

my legs at all

I shave my legs

with Barbasol.

My leg hair is

so blasted thick

I cannot shave it

with a BiC.

When I need to be

nylons-ready,

I shave my legs

with a machete."

It's gonna be big.

The Tale of the 26th Prisoner

I have officially arrived in the paraprofessional world.  "Paraprofessional" means I get paid about ten bucks an hour to do the same work it would take a pair of professionals to do. Just kidding. Actually, I love my job, with all its quirks. And on Tuesday, a co-worker and I went to a quirky workshop and I loved it.

The workshop was at KDLA in Frankfort, which stands for "Kentucky Dept. of Libraries and Archives. Vicki drove, because Frankfort is an hour and a half away, and given the state of my vehicles at the moment, there was every chance we would've ended up living there if I'd been the one to drive. Vicki driving meant I had to navigate, which is never a good thing, especially when I like the person I'm with and start talking too much to pay attention to the directions. We only got lost once, though, and in my defense, the turn we missed wasn't marked. Well, it was marked, just not with a green sign with a foot tall number "62" like I was expecting. At any rate, we didn't get very lost for very long, and Vicki didn't hit me with any blunt objects, and we'd left early-ish anyway, so we got where we were going just under the wire.

I didn't expect KDLA to be in such an idyllic setting. Frankfort isn't the largest city in Kentucky, but it is the capitol, so I expected it to be more... urban. KDLA, however, sits on a hill off to the side of the city, surrounded by wooded hills and parks, with a spectacular view of the capitol building on an adjacent hill. If I hadn't talked myself out of taking my camera with me just before I left in the morning, I'd have a better shot of that view, but here is the best that Vicki's camera phone could provide, and then a little bit better one from the web.

The KDLA building itself is an artistic looking block of concrete with three huge silos down each side that store, as I was told by the front desk attendant, sensitive documents that require climate controlled environments. And you thought librarians never did anything cool. Just inside the lobby, a visitor is presented with the Braille Library for the Blind stacks. To the right lie the Archives, ensconsed behind a guard's desk which I'll tell you about later, and a beautiful sculpture called, Kentucky in Woods, shown  at the top. This is what SLA Kentucky's newsletter says about the sculpture, "Located in the building’s main lobby is a unique sculpture by Bobby Reed Falwell. The monumental wood sculpture is made of 28 Kentucky woods and is an abstract representation of Kentucky, with the sunrise on the east and the sunset in the west. The woods came from the Estill County land of Dr. Thomas Clark, who worked with Falwell to locate each variety of tree needed for the project." That's cool, but mainly I just thought it was pretty.

The first half of the workshop was about the services offered by KDLA, most noteworthy of which is the Talking Book Library. Basically, what this program does is make audiobooks of books that mainstream companies wouldn't; i.e. a cookbook in audio form so that someone who has had a stroke and can cook just fine but can't turn the pages of a book can still try new recipes. The possibilities are endless. I love this program! Since I can't do it justice in this blog without writing a novel, I'll direct you here and here for details.

During a tasty lunch, eaten in Vicki's van to get out of the horrible cave the seminar took place in, we revelled in the wildlife experience of KDLA. No, I'm not talking about wildlife in the library/archives: they only let them in if they have all the proper forms of ID. But while Vicki and I were eating lunch, we saw a herd of five mysterious deer emerge from the woods to crop grass unabashedly by the roadside. They were mysterious because they didn't look like white-tailed deer, but my expert source, a.k.a. my husband, says there aren't any other species in Kentucky. Shortly after the herd made its appearance, it was joined by a flock of wild turkeys who I can only assume were having a last hurrah before the start of turkey season which was coming up the following Sunday. So fascinated were we by the view of distant critters that we took a drive to try to get a better look. Alas, the camera phone didn't have enough oomph to document that. I'm still kicking myself that I decided not to take my camera with me.

After lunch/safari, Vicki and I went back to the dungeon to take part in *booming voice-over* The Tale of the 26th Prisoner! This was a collection building/censorship excercise meant to illustrate the challenges that library "book selectors" face when chosing books for their collections. There were something like 80 of us library book slaves who took part in this training excercise. They split us up into six groups and we were given these instructions: You are a librarian who has committed a terrible crime. (Probably something to do with those five copies of Twilight that the library has been trying to get back since January...) Because your character has been found to be in all other ways irreproachable, you have been given a lightened sentence to serve as the librarian of a new prison island. This island is separated from the mainland by 75 miles of frigid water. You and the other inmates will be expected to be 75% self-sufficient. Two of the inmates will have children with them, because they have been found to be exemplary parents and their crimes were not violent: a nine year old boy and fourteen year old girl who have been tested to reveal genius level IQ, and one seven year old severely autistic boy who excels at art and music. The children must pass the same standardized tests as other children their ages or they will be put into foster care and their parents put in a maximum security prison on the mainland. One woman is pregnant. The other prisoners range from seven to eighty one years of age and represent all major ethnic groups and world religions, both genders, and all sexual orientations. You must select ten books to meet the needs listed above, but... The governor of the island will vet all books being brought in and will not allow any books containing violence, sexual descriptions or images, religious ideas, or any ideas deemed to be of an inflamatory nature. If the governor disallows more than three of your choices, you will be put in solitary confinement for life.

Needless to say, we should've just chosen one title and had done with it: Catch 22. That's obviously what the situation was: it is impossible to meet all the above needs without breaking some of the above rules. No history books: violence. But what about the standarized tests? No medical books: naughty pictures. But what about the pregnant woman? And you can just forget about any novels with the above rules... You get the idea. After the scrutiny of the governor, my group had only three books left, five out of six groups were in solitary confinement forever, and I was chanting, "Revolution! Revolution!" The presenters did tell us that we must be the good kids that our directors allow to leave the library because every other time they had led this workshop, at least one group said, "We want a book on boat building..."

After much hilarity and being shipped off to solitary confinement forever and ever, Vicki and I decided to stop in at the Archive room. Getting into the Archives is much like getting into Canada used to be: it can be done without a passport, but we had to have two forms of ID, sign away our firstborn chilren, and make extra certain to put our middle initials on all blanks asking for our names. Sheesh. All we wanted was to take a look at the portfolio of the Packhorse Libraries, which Vicki had read about in Down Cut Shin Creek.  The Packhorse Libraries were a program of the W.P.A. in Kentucky during the Great Depression. These intrepid librarians would take books in satchels on horseback to the remote settlements and camps of Appalachia where the poor families would receive them with great excitement. Because the culture of the area and time was such that these families didn't feel right about taking something without giving something in return for it, even if it was a loaned library book, these families would often give the librarians something of personal value, like a family recipe or a scrap for a quilt. The librarians then began to make scrapbooks of these items, which eventually became a highly valued part of their cirulated materials, passed on from family to family around the region. What Vicki and I were hoping to see was one of these actual scrapbooks, but either through miscommunication or because the scrapbooks are not actually kept at KDLA, what we ended up seeing was a folder of photographs of the Packhorse Libraries, a couple of which are  shown here. When we left the Archives, we were told that KDLA actually has a signature of Abraham Lincoln's, amongst other valuable articles. And the themesong from Mission Impossible started playing in my head...

Thanksgiving

The week of Thanksgiving dawned foggy at the Holler. Not that fog isn’t picturesque, but it doesn’t make me think Thanksgiving, so I was glad to be going out of town. On Monday before the big day, my mom and brother came to pick up the boys and me for a week’s stay at Midmile Farm-- the old stomping grounds in Indiana. My brother and sister-in-law had flown in from New Mexico a few days before, so it was to be a nuclear family reunion.

Of course, a trip to Grandma’s house is ever an opportunity for Charlie to discover how many different playgrounds the world has to offer. We got in late on Monday night, and after a day in the car, Charlie went to sleep even later than usual. As chance would have it, he also woke up early Tuesday morning with a nose bleed, so Grandma and I formed a plan to flat wear him out that day. The first park we visited was the VFW playground in Columbia City. It is a paradise of wooden wonder that makes me wish I was a few feet shorter, a lot of pounds lighter, and at least twice as energetic. It was a chilly day, but we played as long as we could before going home to Grandma’s to make lasagna. After a day of running in the cold and very little sleep, Charlie still managed to keep himself awake until the end of the movie he was watching: 10:30 p.m. I don’t know what it is about sleep these stubborn Pearson males dislike so, but after the movie was done, he fell asleep faster than I’ve ever seen.

Wednesday morning, Charlie didn’t quite wake up all the way. He zommed his way down to breakfast, but quickly gave up on sitting upright, and went to nap on the couch, sleeping the morning away until 1:30 p.m. This was enough for me to decide he must have strep; it was so out of character for him. So just for a little vacation fun, we visited ReadyMed. No strep. I guess we just wore him out a little better than we intended to.

Thursday was, of course, the big day. What Thanksgiving would be complete without the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, or, as my sister-in-law Susan and I came to call it, “Where Celebrities Go To Die.” My eyebrows hit my hairline first during the performance by Alan Cumming, who closely resembles nothing so much as a strung-out, gay elf. A little while later, I was wowed by Cindy Lauper, looking like she had spray painted hot pink stripes on an albino ferret and Superglued it to her head. About the last thing I saw was what appeared to be duet between Miley Cyrus’s doppelganger and Kermit the Frog. I went to Thanksgiving dinner thinking, Well, that really puts the “Ummm...” in “awesome.” Dinner was, of course, fantastic. Perfectly slow roasted turkey, Mom’s signature cranberry salad, sourdough rolls, au gratin potatoes, stuffing, pies... And a new dish: Mom’s Spontaneous Cajun-style Blackened Green Bean Casserole... which happens when an overworked cook forgets the beans are still in the oven. Seriously, though, if I ate that well every day of the year, they could fill me with helium and float me along with Snoopy and Buzz Lightyear in the Macy’s Parade.

A little while after lunch, Uncle Joel took Charlie for a run/ chase/ mudfest/ exercise in futility which I, sadly, missed while giving Abraham a nap. The futility part came in when Charlie tried to catch Uncle Joel. I think it was good for him. It’s not often Charlie’s will gets bested. The mudfest... well, as you can see here, we didn’t escape the unfestive, non-crisp yet still beautiful fall weather.

The rest of the week blurred by, with a couple more parks thrown in, a trip to see some Christmas lights, and a shopping escapade at Michael’s Crafts. I’ve never been dragged out of a store by my collar before, but I think the experience was good for me. Temporary insanity happens I see a wall of beads marked “50% Off.” What can I say?

On the way back to the Holler on Sunday, Grandma, the boys, and I crammed a five hour trip into seven hours. Grandma jury-rigged the little dvd/tv so that it wouldn’t shut off every 5 seconds. Charlie watched movies, looked at books, played Leapster, and in general complained very little. Abe slept and also complained very little. Grandma drove, and I only complained when I started to get queasy, which was in no way intended to be a comment on Mom’s driving. We stopped at a school playground in Eden, IN for an hour long fifteen minute break. May I just say that playgrounds are way cooler now than when I was a kid? Here is what Mom looks like after a week with my children... We had supper at LaRosa’s, and got in at the tidy time of 5:00 p.m., in time for Grandma and Grandpa to turn right around and drive home again. Super(grand)parents! Any ideas what I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving?

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.

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.

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.