Looks like it will be today! Weather forecasts predict some chances of afternoon rain, but it appears that the pop-up showers will mostly be west of Worcester, so we should be safe.
I’ve been busy with the last minute details for the Social, so I’ll write more once this giant event is over.
My tutoring gig ended for the school year (and most likely for good) on Wednesday, and school ends today, so I’m moving on to the next phase of my year: summer reading. Our first event is tonight – a movie night, we’re showing Bolt – and the summer reading kickoff event is scheduled for next Tuesday, though I’m guessing that it will be rained out and we’ll have to use a rain date.
At any rate, after the marathon of seven tutoring lessons in ten days, now I feel like I can breathe again. As much as I loved working with my student, I am tired tired tired of tutoring. It’s just too much intensity and focus on top of my full-time job which also demands intensity and focus. I’m not quite sure how Jim and I will manage without that extra money, but sometimes, truly, the money isn’t worth the toll on the body and mind. Last Thursday I came down with another brutal head cold, which I’ve passed on to Jim, and I’m sure that my long days of regular work and tutoring contributed to my getting sick. (Though the main reason has to be the cute kindergartener who accidentally sprayed spit on my lower lip as he responded enthusiastically to the story I read to his class on Tuesday of last week…) And my mind is tired, too.
A couple of weeks from now, sans tutoring, I’m sure I’ll be my usual energetic self – hopefully healthy, too – and no doubt I’ll start to think wistfully of tutoring come September. When that happens, please remind me that I’ve retired from tutoring in order to get my life back. I know I’ll need that reminder.
I’m afraid I won’t be posting much this week (week of June 14), due to extreme busy-ness. This afternoon I’m making the felt pieces for tomorrow’s storytime; the theme is “Mealtimes,” and I’m currently debating whether to make pieces for Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar or if I should go with the lesser known but very cute Pizza Kittens by Charlotte Voake. Either way, it will take me a good amount of time to make the feltboard story for tomorrow, and I won’t have time today to write a week’s worth of blog entries ahead of time, which is what I would normally do (and yesterday was one of my Saturdays to work at the library).
And this coming week promises to be, shall we say, a bit killer. Quite a few classroom visits are scheduled for this week, which are a huge amount of fun but also – at times – a bit more tiring than my usual routine at work. And I’m scheduled to work this coming Saturday, culminating in a B.J.’s shopping trip for Ice Cream Social supplies with Lisa (Lisa belongs to B.J.’s and I don’t.) But more importantly, my almost-graduated tutoring student and I are fitting in four lessons this week in a desperate attempt to meet our semester total. Josie missed three lessons in the last few weeks due to school and athletic commitments, and I missed two lessons due to that nasty illness a few weeks back. Which means that we’re fitting in five extra sessions before school is out on the 26th. Lesson learned here: though semester pre-payments are nice for tutoring clients, they can also cause problems that are hard to solve. We should have figured out a way to buffer in some absences when we did this semester’s schedule back in January. Too late now, though. And the week of the 22nd will be similarly tight, as we fit in three lessons on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights.
At any rate, know that I’ll be posting again as soon as humanly possible. Until then, check out some of my new favorite books: Deeper by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams and The Ruby in the Smoke and its sequels by Philip Pullman.
Last night, when I got home after tutoring, Jim asked me something along the lines of “What’s up with all the photos on your blog?”
Here’s the scoop: summer reading is coming, and I’m working like a dog preparing for the summer, but I don’t feel like writing about it. There haven’t been any cute stories recently that were worth sharing (there was one nice story from yesterday at the library, but it’s not one that I’ll share on this blog because it’s about two moms and I think they’d prefer not to have the story told). And then there are the things that I’d like to write about, but won’t, because they’re negative – or cranky – or controversial.
If I had an alter-ego on my blog like my brother does on his in the form of Mr. Crankypants, then I’d be all set. Mr. Crankypants will say controversial, incendiary things without blinking, and he can get away with it. I’m not quite sure how my brother manages to have Mr. Crankypants on his writing team without getting into trouble, but he does. Working in the public sector makes that kind of honesty dangerous, to say the least. One of my coworkers often says to me that she thinks blogs should be anonymous, which would certainly solve for me the problem of writing honest entries, but I completely disagree with her about blogs and anonymity. In my opinion, if you’re going to have a blog, then you need to own your writing. Anonymity breeds extreme grumpiness, and can spiral into all kinds of problems, including entries that are personal attacks and hurtful to others.
So I guess it’s a good thing that I have my name as my domain name, and that I don’t have a Ms. Crankypants on staff. But it also means that I’m struggling to come up with library-related entries at this moment in time. I hope you’re enjoying the photos and non-library stories – they might be here for a while.
I’ve been meaning to post this photo for a while now, because it gives me some hope for the world. If Ophy and Pippa, two cats who tolerate but don’t love each other, can curl up and relax side by side on a small footstool, perhaps there’s hope for the rest of us. Although this is the one and only time that I’ve ever seen Oph and Pip get so friendly with each other… (Click on image to enlarge.)
As I mentioned a couple of posts back, I’m a wee bit stressed at work right now, what with catching up from being sick and visiting the school to promote summer reading and doing all those last minute summer reading preparation things. So I’m giving my poor brain a rest from work issues when writing on my blog until things settle down a bit. With that in mind, here’s a photo from this year’s Patriot’s Day parade on April 20. Last year I posted a photo that Dad titled “Bad Horse,” of a Concord Independent Battery horse getting frisky and a bit out of control coming down Main Street. This year’s horse photo is of one of the CIB horses freaking out back at the start of the parade at the beginning of Lowell Road. Dad and I were in a prime spot to see the action (on the steps of the Christian Science church) and snapped some good photos. It was a cold morning, and the other CIB horses looked calm, cool, and collected. This horse was lathered in sweat, steaming with its own heat, and clearly undone by the crowds of people on either side of it. After a few tense minutes of trying to calm the horse (including getting idiotic curious bystanders to back off and give it space), the CIB men decided to loop this horse and its wagon around Monument Square and back to the Armory. We didn’t see the horse in the parade again that day. (Click on photo to enlarge.)
Last Christmas Jean gave us the coolest thing ever: a squirrel feeder. Ophy and Pippa and I had tons of fun watching the squirrels hang upside down and gnaw on the concentrated corn cobs. Jim didn’t love the feeder as much as we did, mainly because all kinds of petrified corn scum accumulated on the deck underneath the feeder.
At any rate, one morning I snapped some great photos of my favorite squirrel (the one with the poofy ear tufts) feasting on the corn, with the intention that I’d post the photo here for Jean’s amusement. And then I forgot to post the photo. Better late than never, though, so here it is (click on image to enlarge):
When Jim and I bought our house, Dad and I dug up all kinds of plants from the family homestead (which at that point had been promised to a developer, but had not yet been sold): lilacs, peonies, creeping myrtle, pachysandra, roses, forsythia, daylilies, crocus, and iris. Jim’s and my house came with a small, but completely blank, yard. The people who owned it before us had gotten rid of all the poison ivy (thank goodness), but hadn’t added any plantings.
The plants from the house I grew up in, most of which originally came from my two grandmothers, settled in nicely in our yard. Five years later, the lilacs are getting tall, the rose bush is bursting out with new growth, and the iris are having their best year ever. These iris didn’t come from a grandmother like the other plants – they came with the house when Mom and Dad bought it. At that house, they lived out by the street, and suffered a lot from salt and sand; at our house they have a place of honor far away from the street, and they are incredibly happy.
So here’s a photo of the iris in full bloom, mostly for the benefit of Jean, Dan, and Dad (click on image to enlarge):
Obviously, from the lack of entries this week, I’ve been a bit busy at work. (That’s the understatement of the year…) In fact, I’ve been so busy at work that I don’t want to write about anything to do with books or librarianship or storytimes or anything else today; the girl needs a break.
So I thought I’d share with you the two wild animals who have visited our neighborhood in the last week:
Last weekend, for a period of three days, a momma snapping turtle moved in, living part of the time under the hedge that divides our property from our neighbor’s, and the other part of the time digging an enormous hole in our neighbor’s lawn. Adrienne and her three little kids were fascinated – took tons of photos, kept the snapper from wandering into the street, and anxiously watched to see if any eggs were laid. Last time I talked to Adrienne, no eggs had been laid (for which I’m grateful!), but there’s always the chance. And now momma snapper appears to have moved on, for which I’m also grateful.
And then on Thursday night, Jim and I were walking back from the local convenience store (cashed in our scratch ticket that won a whole TWO DOLLARS – and, of course, bought two more lottery tickets with our winnings; desperate times call for desperate measures), and we saw an animal start to dart across the street just down from us, its profile highlighted in the headlights of an oncoming car.
“Oh, no!” I cried, “It’s a cat!”
“No, it’s not a cat,” said Jim, “it’s a…”
“It’s a skunk! It’s a skunk!” I cried.
“That’s no skunk,” said Jim, the voice of reason, “That’s a fox.”
And it was – a beautiful fox that ducked back into our other neighbor’s yard, its tail unmistakeable in the headlights.
The thing that’s odd about these two animals is that we live in a neighborhood that is very clearly marked “Thickly Settled” on the sign just before our house. The houses are tight together, and there isn’t much open space. And our neigbor’s yard is a bit of a walk from the nearest marshy area; a long commute for a slow and steady turtle. I can only imagine that the fox might be feasting on garbage left outside, or an outdoor cat or two. I can’t imagine that the fox much likes it here. And I’m guessing the dinosaur-esque snapper turtle didn’t think much one way or another as she wandered into our neighbor’s yard.
It seems like just yesterday that I saw my first coyote in our backyard. This was back when I worked at Massachusetts Audubon, and the naturalists were very skeptical that I had actually seen a coyote; I had to describe it in great detail before they’d believe me. At that time, twenty-one years ago, I lived with my parents in an almost rural area that backed up to a large tract of wooded conservation land. And now, in 2009, I’ve seen a fox in my thickly settled neighborhood. I feel sorry for the wild animals that are trying to make do as their open land gets gobbled up by new houses and the exploding human population. Where will we all be twenty years from now?