Archive for January, 2004

Six-year-olds need to be given less sugar

Wednesday, January 21st, 2004

Well I survived another day with the six year olds. I think doing a craft helps alot. I just need to keep finding crafts for them to do. After story time, my boss told me to go have a drink. I didn’t, but its so cool to have a boss that understands.

I just discovered the joys of Oriental Trading Company
They have so many kits for poor librarians that needs programs, but don’t have any money. I’ve already planned about five or six programs (in my mind).

On a non-library note, my sister told me to visit this knitting blog:
It makes me so happy to see other people my age that love yarn too. I try to crochet or knit and I love both, but all I can make are scarves or blankets. I think I need to take a class… I started to look at other knitting blogs, and boy does it make me jealous when I see how talented other people are. I’ll get over it though. For example there is a woman in Japan that knits, and she does a lot of stuff in miniature. It’s incredible!

Oh well. Life goes on.

Summer reading… in January?

Monday, January 19th, 2004
In New York the summer reading program (I know, I know its not even February yet and I’m thinking of the summer reading program, but I need something to look forward to :>) is READ WHITE AND BLUE and I thought it would be cute to have a travel around America theme. However instead of going to typical places like the grand canyon or the Washington monument, I’m going to have the kids go to weird places… Like the world’s biggest ball of twine, or the toilet seat museum or the spam museum or the biggest pecan. I had the librarians at PUBYAC give me suggestions and it got pretty crazy. Even so, the more I think about it, the more I love it! I was going to have a big map of USA and have pictures of each location. The kids would all get a paper care and for how long they read they would get to go a certain amount around the map. Maybe for the kids that couldn’t read as well or didn’t have time, I could have a gas station picture for those that “ran out of gas” and they could draw a picture of something weird, write a poem, or find a piece of information I asked them about in an encyclopedia. I would give them prizes like big pencils or postcards, and at the end maybe we would have a drawing to go somewhere weird around Rochester (like the Jello Museum in LeRoy). I love it!On a different note, I started practicing yoga again, after a huge break… I think its been a year. I want to release all the work related (aka child-related) stress that I’ve been having, plus I want to be more flexible, because I heard that yoga helps with child-bearing. I find it very amusing that in one breath I can say how stress inducing the kids at the library are, but I still want my own. Perplexing.

Anime Anime Anime

Friday, January 16th, 2004

So Tuesday I had my Anime discussion group. Boy talk about weird times. There were six people at the meeting (not including myself), which I was quite happy with, considering that I didn’t expect anyone. There were two boys that I think may have been in sixth grade. Their sisters: one in eighth grade and one in ninth grade. A boy who I think was a junior in high school but he could have been a very dirty thirty-year-old. And a girl in college who was probably a freshman. Pretty interesting. They didn’t stop talking once, which was wonderful for me because my knowledge of anime was exhausted in five minutes. They even said that they wanted to meet more than once a month! (I was impressed, but I’m already burnt out at month nine, so I changed the subject pretty quickly). Overall I was very pleased, however I have to find a way to make it last more than a couple months.

On a cheery note. The weather in upstate New York has been dismal. The temperature has been below zero and the snow has been blowing all over the road making conditions pretty horrid. Unfortunately its not bad enough to close the library, but I was able to cancel the story time for 6 – 7 year olds, with the scary child in it! One week free of scary boy! One disappointing side effect is my fingers and toes feel like they were going to fall off. Oh well we can’t have everything.

My boss decided at the spur of the moment to check out the library’s policy on maternity leave. After one year, I can get 12 weeks unpaid leave. So she gave me her blessing to be fruitful and multiple! I’m not happy about the unpaid part, but I can’t expect everything. She just said that before I give birth I need to make sure that I have someone to cover story time because she won’t do it. I guess I can handle that. 🙂

I have changed my name…

Tuesday, January 13th, 2004

Just thought you guys should know…

My goddamn rock solid ghetto shiznit name is Ass Machine Kool.
What’s yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey.

Anyway. I had to take a stuffed dinosaur away from a kid yesterday because he was hitting other kids with the thing and then he started to hit his head into the wall and a few times he ran out of the story time room. I had everything organized and planned. I think my first stupid thing to do was starting 5 minutes late. About five kids all came in 5 minutes late and totally disturbed any sense of peace there was. Then one of the kids had to go pee and I was afraid that everyone else was going to have to go pee. Luckily this didn’t happen. However just as I had all the kids sitting down (for the most part) and coloring pictures, the power went out in the library. The power went out in the story time room… where there are NO windows! Somehow all the kids got out. I do like being a librarian? What’s going to happen when I’m a mother!?! Jeeze.

I have an Anime discussion group today. My first. And there was a big write up in one of the local papers. So now I have another thing to worry about, since I’ve been reading the stuff, but I really am not an expert, so I hope the kids aren’t expecting much. 🙁

And tomorrow is my dreaded 6 – 7 year old story time. I heard that the woman I had trouble with has been kicked out of other libraries and other story times and that she has a habit of suing places she’s renting. My lucky day! Oh well. I figure I’ll read a few longer books and then do a craft (we’ll be making paper pizzas this time). Wish me luck!

I may have the coolest boss… in the WORLD!

Friday, January 9th, 2004

Yesterday I told my boss about how the lady had given me trouble after story time, and I realized now that my boss is very cool! She suggested that I just stop having story time for 6 and 7 year olds. What a novel idea! She said kids that age don’t really want to sit still anymore, and if they aren’t going to appreciate what I’m doing then I shouldn’t have to stress myself out doing it anymore. I couldn’t agree more. I’m only 24! There’s no point in burning out before I turn 25.

That’s why, even though I’m slightly afraid, I’m going to try just reading one or two longer books and then doing a craft. Children and scissors frighten me. One of the pages was helping with a craft with the kids and even though we were using child safe scissors, the kids cut the page and she bled all over her white shirt. (why she was wearing a really nice white shirt when she knew that she was going to have to work with the kids I’ll never understand).

I was talking with a co-worker about this whole thing and I mentioned that things might have been different if I had taken education classes or worked in day care for a while before becoming a librarian. I got my bachelors in English and went right away to get my masters in Library Science. So there was no time to learn how to beat young children into submission. Even in my masters level courses, we really didn’t learn too much that can actually be used everyday in the library (except maybe the reference course… But since I work in a small library we don’t make much use of Bartlett’s Quotations or Who’s Who in America. Usually people just want to know what the most recent Danielle Steele book is called and if they can find it on the shelf [that’s when I titter under my breath]).

Needless to say, I really have no experience with kids, and my predecessor wasn’t much help. She basically left me a lot of junk to clean up, 30 years of books to weed and no story time rhymes or notes what so ever.

Can you burn out at 24?

Friday, January 9th, 2004

I told my boss today about how the lady had given me trouble after story time, and I realized now that I love my boss (not in that way… She’s just cool)! She suggested that I just stop having story time for 6 and 7 year olds. What a novel idea! She said kids that age don’t really want to sit still anymore, and if they aren’t going to appreciate what I’m doing then I shouldn’t have to stress myself out doing it anymore. I couldn’t agree more. I’m only 24! There’s no point in burning out before I turn 25.
That’s why, even though I’m slightly afraid, I’m going to try just reading one or two longer books and then doing a craft. Children and scissors frighten me. One of the pages was helping with a craft with the kids and even though we were using child safe scissors, the kids cut the page and she bled all over her white shirt. (why she was wearing a really nice white shirt when she knew that she was going to have to work with the kids I’ll never understand).

I was talking with a co-worker about this whole thing and I mentioned that things might have been different if I had taken education classes or worked in day care for a while before becoming a librarian. I got my bachelors in English and went right away to get my masters in Library Science. So there was no time to learn how to beat young children into submission. Even in my masters level courses, we really didn’t learn too much that can actually be used everyday in the library (except maybe the reference course… But since I work in a small library we don’t make much use of Bartlett’s Quotations or Who’s Who in America. Usually people just want to know what the most recent Danielle Steele book is called and if they can find it on the shelf [that’s when I titter under my breath]).

Needless to say, I really have no experience with kids, and my predecessor wasn’t much help. She basically left me a lot of junk to clean up, 30 years of books to weed and no story time rhymes or notes what so ever.

Maybe I should mention weeding before I head off to slumber tonight. My old boss had a thing about keeping everything, no matter the condition. So after she retired, I had quite a little job ahead of me. In about 2 months I deleted almost 1750 books. This includes easy reading, juvenile fiction, and a very small section of the juvenile non-fiction. I found one book that had a copyright of around 1920. I almost died. I found non-fiction that used the term “negro” in the index. It was almost a game to see how awful some of these books were. Needless to say, I am dreading to weed the picture books. Maybe they will all disappear before I get there tomorrow.

No such luck I’d say.

Horrible no good rotten day

Thursday, January 8th, 2004
Yesterday was horrible. I had story time with 5 kids between the ages of 4 1/2 and 6 and they ran amok. I don’t really think that my position calls for me to be excessively loud to reprimand them. I told them to be quiet, or to stop hiding, or to stop pushing the littler ones over, but they tend to ignore me. So I decided to talk to the parents. One of the mothers understood, and said that she would talk to her daughter, but when I told the other mother that her son was a little hyper, she practically killed me. She told me that her son was not hyper, that is too strong a word to throw around. She said that he was just a boy. At this point he was running through the library and sliding on his knees, all the while yelling. She told me that I should be more stern with the kids, that she was mad that I had cut story time from 1 hour to 45 minutes (none of the libraries in my area have story time for an hour) and that she had never had a problem with the previous librarian… of course this means that her son is not the problem. I am.Then I went in the back to breath, and a co-worker said that she wanted to speak to me again. So I went out and she wanted to talk to me about signing her older daughter up for the elementary reading club. ARGH!!!

I left work a 1/2 hour late, and there was a terrible storm going on so I had to try and keep my calm through my 45 minute commute home.

Sometimes I hate people.

Bloggers Anonymous

Monday, January 5th, 2004

Phew! I didn’t realize that this could be so addicting! Now I have lots of web links, but almost no actual blog. Well maybe I should talk about ME some more… Considering that it supposed to be my personal journal. So anyway. I’m a children’s and young adult librarian in a small town in western New York. I like it, but sometimes it gets really crazy. It can become really overwhelming.

I’m also a modified librarian! I have a tattoo on the back of my shoulder, a nose stud (which my boss let me keep in and none of the patrons seem to freak out about) and tons of earrings. My husband hates them, but I love them. They make me feel young and carefree, although the high school students still seem so much younger than me. I’m already old, and I’m not even 25 (at least not until April).

I cut my story time from one hour to half an hour, yet they still exhaust me. I’m trying to be more organized by giving my story times themes, but then it means more work putting it together. Ergh! It amazes me all the work that public librarians have to get do, as compared to the amount they get paid. If my husband wasn’t a computer guy that I wouldn’t be where I am (a yuppie… shocking isn’t it). I actually love my life right now!

Stressed out and loving it?

Sunday, January 4th, 2004

Work is really stressful to me. I don’t know why, I really like where I work. It just feels like there is just too much to do. I’m a children’s/young adult librarian (otherwise known as “youth services”) in a public library. I try to serve both groups, but one or the other can consume so much time. I especially want to make sure that the teens feel welcome at the library, because right now I don’t think that they do. It just seems hard because I don’t know what to do or how I should do the things that I want to do. I also think that it could lead to an ulcer (I have had quite a bit of stomach pain recently), but it really isn’t my boss’ fault or anyone else’s… just my own.

Errgh. Its so frustrating. I’ve got so much in my head that I can’t sit still, but I’m always so tired that I can’t get motivated.

barefoot and forgetful

Thursday, January 1st, 2004
a red dress
flowing free
in the breeze
she sighs
but the sun is bright
and she feels warm
and carefree
barefoot
she runs
away from
problems and pain
away from empty hearts
and cruel looks
the city lies behind
the hills and fields ahead
she hears the wind call her name
and she looks forward
to the unknown
– 10:36 PM