“Hey There, Hi There, Ho There”
The quote is from the Mickey Mouse song, although what it has to do with my post, I do not know.
Anyway, long time no see.
Lots has been going on.
1) School has started. THANK GAWD! I love those teens, but they were so bored, they were driving me mad. Leaving butts all over the library, throwing food and paint at the building, beating each other up. You get the idea. I really try to stand up for them and listen to them, but sometimes its REALLY hard.
2) I went to Webster for a staff exchange day. It was so great! I love that Adrienne (kids librarian) gets to lie on the floor of her office to look at books and prepare for story time. One of my co-workers said I could do that, but I’d get rolled over or stepped on. The library is gi-normous! You need to call people to talk to them, not just holler or twirl your seat around. There are three people at the Reference desk (we don’t even have a reference desk). Everything is bright and clean. Adrienne has her own story time room, and TONS of crafty stuff. She has a dedicated staff just for children’s services, plus there are two (ish) teen librarians. Sigh. It was a lot of fun and interesting.
On the other hand, I REALLY like where I’m working. Everyone is really close, there is no reference desk (which is good because it gives me more ordering/programming time, but bad because I don’t have much reference desk experience), everyone knows eachother. They like me (they really like me).
This does lead me to some other things I’d like to talk about:
3) Sometimes I feel VERY overwhelmed, like I’m definately taking on too much. There is a class for librarians on managing stress. I may try to take that. Maybe they will teach me how to meditate…Â Unfortunately, this is completely my fault, because I added all the new programs. The only one that was in place as a yearly continuing program was story time. I sometimes feel that I have too much on my plate and it makes me frazzled. Double unfortunately, I want to make everyone (except myself, it seems) happy. I’m a people pleaser, or try to be. I have a couple big projects that I’m doing now that have a deadline. Plus there are other little projects that I have taken on, never mind ordering books and programming. Especially the story times. I’ve been wanting to explore new ways to do story time. Which leads me to story time.
4) I love story times. I put out surveys to see when people want story times, I advertise within the library and one of my coworkers puts notices in the newspapers. I HEAVE fliers at them. Everyone calls asking about story time. Begging for story time.
Four kids signed up for the 3 – 5 years and four kids for the 1 – 2 years. I asked one woman with small kids and she said “We don’t do story time.” Well fine. Neither do I. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll give it a couple of weeks.
I also did a drop in, evening story time. EVERYONE was begging me! “Why in God’s name, don’t you do an evening drop in story time? We don’t want to sign up. We work, and we want it at night.” So, I do it and how many people show up? ONE. And the only reason she showed up is because one of my co-workers drove her to the library (she was her granddaughter). Sigh.
Finally.
I have been having more dizzy spells again. I keep trying to forget about them, mostly because I’m really scared. Of course that’s probably the last thing I should be doing.
These spells are strange. Someone will say something that’ll get me thinking and suddenly the dizzy spell will come on. I don’t know if its because I shouldn’t be thinking too hard, or what. I get a dry throat flushed in my face and I get sweaty. Plus of course the dizziness. Jeff says I should be keeping track of them… and not like the time I said that I was going to keep track of everything I bought and post it here. Maybe next year. Anyway, I’m going to call my mom and then the doctor next week. Jeff’s orders.
I guess that’s it.
Oh, wait. I want to get a custom made earring known as a twister from Primitive Impressions. I’ve seen them and they look really interesting. However, they need to be custom made because they’ll be going through all the holes in my left ear and the holes in my left ear are a little different from the holes in someone else’s ear. Curious, and interesting. We shall see. Got to talk to the hubby, although I’ve mostly convinced myself. The only thing that’s holding me back is the PSP. I’m going to get one so I can play Loco Roco, show pictures/video and listen to MP3s. Fun!
Now I’m off to Slumberland.
September 8th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
cathy, i worry about you a lot. maybe you should take it slower at work. i mean it is just a job and you shouldn’t let it consume you. You are a librarian, but that doesn’t define who you are. You are my beautiful and wonderful sister, who loves purses and shopping. I love to go to coffee shops with you or just hang out with you and talk. You are caring and considerate of others, a great mother, a great writer, and the list goes on. i don’t want you to stress out about these demanding patrons who want you to bend your life around in order to fit their needs. you can do only so much. if they don’t like it then tough. and if they want to complain, give them my email and i will set them straight. Do what you can and do enough that you feel satisfied with your work. At the end of the day that’s the only person that matters. You say that you are a people pleaser, then please me. but I won’t be happy until i see that you are happy, so be happy dammit!
About mananging your time, i learned some things at my teaching assistant orientation. first you keep track of all the important meetings, appointments and such in your weekly schedule. most people do that already. but you also have to sketch a plan of your time that doesn’t have one of these restrictions, such as “from 7 – 9 pm, i will read a book” or “from 4 – 6 pm, i will chase jack all over the house”. i guess it’s a little harder to plan this stuff out, especially with jack but you’ve got to schedule in some “you” time (wow that sounds cheesy, but it is certainly true).
maybe with the storytime that everyone seems to want, you could have the interested parties give a time that they would be more likely to show up. pick the time that has the most votes for and then have one story time at that chosen time. if no one shows up then have a sign that says something like “story time has been cancelled due to lack of participation.” So it shows that their was interest but no one cared to show up. I mean there is no point in you wasting your time on people who don’t appreciate all the hard work you are doing for them. And once that happens, don’t worry about it. you tried your best to accommodate those needy people and they didn’t reciprocate. so leave it at that.
And if there is too much on your plate then maybe you need to take smaller portions. you have said that you are in a smaller library so there are less people to delegate jobs or programs. the bigger libraries can handle more programs because of the bigger staff. Sometimes, just to stay sane, you have to live within the constraints of the situation.
if you are feeling overewhelmed at work then tell someone that you need a breather and go outside for a little bit. walk around or just hang out on the steps. it’s okay to get away from it for awhile. you can call me too, if you want and i can tell you about the trivial matters of my life. if you call and i’m in class, i will certainly call you back once i get out of it. you are important to me, even though i am far away and can’t give you a big hug or tell you that it’s all going to be okay. but it will. you just have to remember that your first priority is you and everything else will fall into place after that fact. if it doesn’t then oh well. as long as you have taken care of yourself and your needs (and jacks!) then it will be okay.
as for the earring, i think i could be talked into a “i love you my crazy sister” present. : )
September 8th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
oh and i forgot to mention in my time management part of my rant that if anyone wants you to do something during those times you have sketched out as “you” time, tell them no. And you can especially since you have evidence of why you can’t do it. Show them your agenda and say “this is the time where i have scheduled for reading.” they will have to understand. and if they don’t then they can go suck on a lemon. but if it’s me then i may enjoy that. lemons are gooood.
September 12th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
I just looked over this post again, and I said (about the teens):
“Leaving butts all over the library”
I did not mean their butt cheeks, but their cigarette butts, although they leave their butt cheeks all over the library too.
September 20th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
How are things going with storytime this week???