Cathy the Librarian

Well, its over now. I had gotten so worked up about making sure that everything was perfect… well that I survived the program without dying of embarrassment at any point. Jason (the other presenter) was a little worked up as well (in my opinion). I think that he really wanted to make sure that everyone learned something and really enjoyed themselves. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen him talk so much or so fast. (This is why I think he was nervous). Unfortunately, between his talking and spending so long having everyone look at the graphic novels (all of which were good things, so I’m not upset) but that meant that I really didn’t get much time to talk about the site that I created. I just put a lot more work into this site than I thought I would, and I had hoped to explain a bit more about the site. I know that the others could look more on their own, but I thought that it was really important for me to catch their attention so that they would remember to take the time to look on their own. I had just enough time to quickly go through the sections of links and the categories that they are divided into. I think people sort of got the idea that this could really help, but a little more time… ah well. I think people learned a lot, and thats the important thing. Although people were still very reluctant to embrace the manga. I guess its just one baby step at a time. Someday they will understand how important graphic novels could be for connecting with kids. Its just like telling the kids that you know who Boots or Magenta are. Sure everyone knows who Dora and Blue are, but you know Boots! Tell them that you’ve read Naruto, and you’ve caught their attention. Then they’ll know that you really take the time and you care. And isn’t that what being a public librarian is really all about? I’d like to think it is.

Sometimes I wish that I had no responcibilities except going to school and handing in my homework. I’m involved in this grant, which is really great because I get to work with other librarians and it helps homeschoolers, but its hard because there are parts that I need to do, and unfortunately, I don’t really have any help. One of the biggest downfalls to a small library is that when you do things, its just you doing everything, there isn’t a helpful assistant that will pop out at your bidding. Therefor, I have a lot on my plate. I hate even saying it anymore, because complaining is really getting old. I’m getting tired of saying “whaa whaa” “I have to do all the ordering and programming for kids and teens” “Whaa, feel sorry for me” I mean, puh-lease. If I heard someone else say that, I’d tell them to grow up.

Still, I had to create 30 art kits on different topics (15 for K – 2 and 15 for 3 – 5), and I was having a hard time figuring out how to divide up the kits. At one point I had everything divided by time period and type of art. Then one of the pages (who is an education major) slapped me in the face (not really, but she should have) and said umm.. Cathy? How about colors and shapes? Kindergarteners don’t really need to know about the Baroque and Renaisannce time periods. Well how about stating the obvious? At least it should have been. But I just kept getting more and more complex and I really didn’t have any idea what I was going to do. At least now I just have to get books on colors, ballerinas, instruments, play-doh. You know kid stuff.

Oh well. Time to DDR now. Nighty night.

Update (2 minutes later): Too late to DDR since its already 10 pm. 🙁

Nine days until I turn… 27. I know this may not seem a big deal to some people, but to me, okay so its not a big deal. But really, I’m actually pretty satisfied with my life. Okay, so I’d like it if I had more friends (that actually called me) or that it would be easier to lose weight (okay so skim Starbucks does not equal low calories) and it might be nice if work was closer/I made more money/didn’t have to break my butt working, and I wished that I’d never had a seizure, but otherwise, I’m satisfied.

Some things that make me happy right now:

1) I love love love my son. He giggle when he sees me, cries when I walk away and rests his head on my shoulder. I love when he sleeps on me, gets all sweaty and his hair gets curly. I love when I take him to choir practice and he sings with my father-in-law. I love that he has tons of toys and he would rather look at his books. I love that he sleeps all night long. I love that he makes my mom happpy.

2) I love my husband. Granted he can be a pain in the ass, but he really cares about me and that is so cool. He doesn’t try to understand everything about me, but that’s okay because I know that I’m weird. And just because he loves me, that doesn’t mean that he gives in to my every whim. Sure, I’d like it if he would let me buy every purse I want, every pair of shoes, and he wouldn’t bitch when I buy fancy Starbucks coffee, but if he did, then it wouldn’t really be who he is. Funnily enough, that doesn’t stop me from buying purses, shoes and coffee. Anyway, Jeff is funny, he has strong hands that are very assuring and protecting, he makes me aware of lots of things going on in the world and he loves: Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, George Burns, Gracie Allen and Laurel & Hardy. How many people can say that their husband does an awesome Stan Laurel impersonation?

3) I have a brand new car and house… I HAVE a BRAND NEW car and house. We drive home (since I can’t drive my nice new car right now because of the seizure) and I’m still amazed that this is my house. Its not clean very often, what with a 13 month old, and both of us working full-time (and Jeff having to pick me up), but that’s okay.

4) I love my job. Everyone’s nice, most of the regulars are nice, the kids and teens are great, and a lot of times it doesn’t feel like work. This is really important, because sometimes, when I realize how much work I really do have, it makes me faint. Don’t be fooled by the old woman with bun, thick glasses, millions of cats, likes to read stereotype librarians have. Being a librarian is a lot of work. Thank god that I love working with people and encouraging young people to read. Otherwise, I’d probably slam my head in a car door. Oh I’m positive that there are other jobs that are more stressful, more work, more of a pain-in-the-butt, but (tee-hee) it can still be overwhelming.
Librarians need to order books, plan programs, conduct tours, encourage reading, balance budgets, fix toilets (yes that’s right) perform CPR (you heard me right) make sure no one is drinking beer in the bathroom (yup) and make sure that no one gets hurt. Still, I love being a librarian.
Speaking of which, I need to get up early and go to work. Good night!

Found this on Webster Public Library’s blog for children’s services and it looks pretty interesting. I will have to investigate more when I have the time.

Guys Read

On Friday (March 31) I was trying to swallow my multi-vitamin. I had some troubles, as I often do, and I couldn’t swallow it too well. I suddenly felt some tightness in my chest, and as I leaned up against Jeff, I passed out. Jeff said that it looked like I shook once as I fell. I came to really quickly, but it still sucked and it was scary. Then I had to go right to a school for a career day that I promised to do. I’ve been feeling under the weather for about a week and a half, and that morning I just didn’t need any added stress. My head was a little banged up and my nose was really sore. I couldn’t let anyone down though! What if because of me, one of the kids (2nd to 6th grade) had a life changing experience and decided that they wanted to be a librarian? Um, yeah right. I’m not really sure that anyone listened to me. I mean really! Who thought that young kids like this were going to sit still for a half hour to listen to the likes of me? Then, I got to the library where I was supposed to talk (appropriate, I guess) and I didn’t have a teacher or an adult of any kind in the room with me. Okay, I thought, that’s alright, I can handle it. Well I handled it fine until two of the kids decided to hide under the book shelves. I really couldn’t think of much to say for a whole half hour. I told them about how much education you need to be a librarian. I explained what I did, and what important things you need to know (Math, people skills, reading and writing skills, friendly outlook on life). I also read some books. I had originally brought the books to show the kids that reading didn’t need to be boring, so I brought books like The Truth About Poop, My Librarian’s a Camel, Magdelena Catelina Hoopensteiner Wallendiner Hogan Logan Bogan is her Name, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and The Terrible Underpants. I read some of the books and I made the kids shake their wiggles out. Unfortunately, between the cold and the dizziness of passing out, I wasn’t a thrill a minute. Luckily, I brought in my school yearbooks from when I went to the school (I was an alumni of this particular school) and since some of the teachers that were there when I was a kid, are still there, they got a kick out of that and wanted to keep looking at the yearbooks.
I was exhausted the rest of the day and spent the rest of the day at my parents’ house hanging out and reading. I don’t think I could handle having someone’s kids all day long, especially if I didn’t know the kids (or the parents) at all. That would be insane.

Good Night all. I’m really sleepy, and I want to look my best tomorrow!

I was spying on someone else’s blog (you know who you are) and they found this great article on Information Overload… I looked and looked. And then I noticed that all the links were created on April 1st. Ohhh. The evils of blogs and the internet. For shame.

Next Wednesday I have to give a presentation on graphic novels with another librarian, Jason. I have put so much time into this that I really haven’t done much else, but honestly, I have no idea what I’m going to talk about. I am so exhausted. I wanted to edit the style of the blog a little, but I haven’t the foggiest idea on how to do that. I’ve moved everything over to a better looking blog “theme” as they call it, but I have so many links, it takes forever to actually get to all the categories so that you can select which reviews you want to look at… In reality I guess its pretty similar to this theme. Oh well. I guess that’s the last thing I need to worry about. What I really should be thinking about is that

1) I have a presentation to give next Wednesday in front of tons of librarians
2) I have a great (I think) blog full of information, but I don’t have the foggiest idea of what I’m going to talk about.
3) I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT!
Jeeze. Plus I’ve heard that Jason doesn’t feel very confident about the whole thing either. This should be very interesting. I would stay tuned if I were you.

I’ve been transfering all of my blogger posts over to this site for all of my blogs. So far I have finished with all of the other blogs (except for the vap evaluations). However, my personal blogger one still has 90 posts on it, and I have to transfer all of them by hand! With life being the way it is and I’ve been quite out of my mind this year… job interviews, finding out that I’m epileptic, Jack turning one (yippee!) having to rely on Jeff for rides… blah blah blah. I really haven’t had the time that I would like to dedicate to my blog, even though it should be cathartic or something. Plus I’ve got a cold right now and I haven’t really even had the energy to eat or anything, let alone write. I’ve hardly had the time or energy to look at my favorite blog WATAT!

Well anyway, I’m alive and sort of well. And if you’d really like to know, most of my time has been consumed with:
GN for Librarians

which is a blog that I created to use in a presentation that I and another librarian Jason are doing for fellow j librarians. It seems to have morphed into a mess of links and articles and what not. I’ve only had a chance to write a couple of reviews but I need to write some more before April 12, so that it looks more fleshed out.

I also need to read the book Beauty, which I haven’t started yet, for my teen book discussion on Saturday.

Oh and Jack’s first birthday party is on Sunday afternoon.

Yes, and finally my brain has imploded thank you very much.

I had my second interview with Fairport and everything seemed to go really well. I met most of the staff and they seemed really nice. I think they even may have liked me. I tried very hard to act comfortable and easy going even though I thought I might hurl. Everyone asked interesting questions like “do you like coffee?” “do you like animals?” “do you like chocolate?” “do you bake?” Everyone seemed really comfortable with me, and I took that as a good sign.
After a little over a hour, Robin (J Librarian II) showed me the staff areas and the story time room, and I had about 15 minutes to get ready for story time. Story time went really well (we did wheels on the bus and there were square wheels, babies driving the bus and bus drivers crying).
Here’s what I did:
Shake your wiggles out
Don’t let the Pigeon Drive the Bus
Wheels on the Bus
Little Bunny Foo Foo
What do Monsters Look Like
I’m not Scared of the Big Green Monster
Walk, Hop, Run and STOP!
We all got loud and crazy and I think everyone had fun. Some kids were still nervous because they didn’t know me, but overall I think everyone got into the spirit of things.
Finally at the end is where the big mistake comes in. I say good bye to the director and she tells me that they hope to make a decision by the end of the week, which has just passed. I have been feeling completely spastic and neurotic. I know that I should just calm down, but I can’t. Jeff keeps telling me to calm down and I try, but its not happening. I really think part of the problem is that I’ve only had three jobs in my entire life, most of which I got right on the spot or close to it. So I don’t really know realistically how long I should expect to wait and so on. You see my dilemma.
1. I worked at a church rectory from 7 – 12 grade, answering the phone and door, ironing shirts, vacuuming, yaddah yaddah yaddah.
2. Soon before graduating from high school, I got a job at the Highland Branch Library as a page and after a couple of months I was promoted to clerk, which I kept throughout my bachelors and masters.
3. A couple of months after graduating from Buffalo (in May) I got a part time job at Parma as the misc. librarian. The interview was strange. The director asked me about dogs and Dr. Who and I was hired on the spot. About three months later and without much warning (beginning of August) I found out that she was going to retire and that I would be full-time acting director.
So here I am now, Children and Young Adult librarian of a small library with only two librarians in it. I do practically all the programming and while I love the people and all, Hilton is way the heck out there and the pay isn’t really that good.
As you can see, I really need to find out (one way or the other), or else I may implode, which wouldn’t be very good.

Okay, so you’ve been asking me about it… so maybe it was just Adrienne. I’m just going to pretend it was a lot of people. I had my interviews at Brockport (as director) and Fairport (as children’s librarian). Really I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be a director, but I wanted more experience interviewing, and since I’m on the II list, I thought what the heck.
I was really nervous about the interview at Brockport. I have been working in libraries since 1997, but I’ve only been a librarian since 2003, and I was only acting director for two months. So I wasn’t sure… well I wasn’t sure about anything.
I dressed pretty conservatively, but I kept my nose stud in and all my earrings, I guess I figured that if the people in Hilton could handle me and didn’t seem to have a problem, why should the people in Brockport. While one of the interviewers (there were three, two were board members, and the other was a clerk, who was also acting director) didn’t say anything about it, he rubbed his nose incessantly. Believe me, I got the point. Anyway. Then the acting director asked me “How do you feel your time at Brighton will impact your job?” Hmmm. I don’t know since I’VE NEVER WORKED AT BRIGHTON! In fact, she was looking at MY boss’ resume. She casually tried to hide my boss’ resume and look at mine, but I knew. Plus, what if I hadn’t known that she had interviewed? How crazy would that be?
We moved on from that. I think I did okay, but there still were a couple of questions that I flubbed. “What would you like to know about the budget?” I dunno… “What would you do about Outreach?” I dunno… haven’t thought about it… Then at some point I said that the first thing I would do is buy a PS2, DDR and the pads so that the teens (and who knows, maybe even the adults) could come and play. They liked that, I think.
Overall, it wasn’t too bad. I smiled a lot, and they laughed at the right times. I think that they liked me, I just don’t think that they think I’m director material. Realistically, I don’t think that I am either. I honestly think that I like working directly with kids and teens too much. Plus I think that there are so few people that are willing to be advocates for them, that they shouldn’t lose people like me who like working with them. Nevermind the fact that dealing with three districts, people who don’t want to share the wealth, and way too few staff is really scary.
On to Fairport.
I wasn’t nervous until we were trying to get everyone in the car and I knew that we were going to be late. I knew that I could do the job, I knew that I would like the job since Stephanie (the super teen librarian) loves it there and it was pretty exciting to think about working somewhere a little closer to where I live, in fact, it was ALOT exciting.
Luckily, when I got to the library, I saw Stephanie and she was really friendly and calming, so that I was able to settle a little. Then, when I went into the conference room, I realized that I knew both of the women interviewing me, and I liked them! I sort of figured that Robin would be in the interview, since she is the other children’s librarian and I would be working really closely with her. Then I looked at my potential future boss and realized that I knew her too! She’s pretty good friends with my boss from Highland, so that she knew a lot of the people that I worked with. That managed to break the ice pretty quickly. The first few minutes are always the worst anyway.
Then for the meat of the interview.
They both asked a lot of good questions, some sort of typical “Where do you see yourself in five years?” but most of them I think that I answered pretty well. On of the best was when Robin asked “What would you do if an elementary aged child asked for a good funny novel?” Good grief. I haven’t read anything really funny in ages. Everything has been sad, depressing or life changing. Hmmm. I would give them Walter the Farting Dog. No. I didn’t really say that, although I should have. I really couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head, so I said. “Thank goodness we have such great children’s librarians, who make terrific book lists. I would look for our humorous books list, and show that to them.” I was also lucky, because when they asked “How do you handle stress?” and in my typical (koff koff) witty style, I said “I yell at my husband of course!” I then went on to say that I try and stay organized, and I ask for help if I get overwhelmed, then I show them my programming for kids and teens, I think that they may have appreciated that. I did mention, since I figured it would come up at some point, that I had had a seizure and after being in that overwhelming situation, I was able to put things in perspective. Plus, having a 10 month old makes you stay on your toes!
Robin did bring up my color coded system on my calendar. I have moved on to my PDA since Christmas, but I still use the color coded calendar at my desk. I hope that Robin taking notice of that gave me a couple of brownie points.
I really enjoyed my interview at Fairport, and I would be thrilled if they gave me the job. It sounds like everyone really likes each other and people stay there for years, so that’s a plus. They told me that they have a couple more people to interview, so that it will be a little while before I find out. I am keeping fingers, toes, eyes and tongue crossed and I hope I get the job. I love Parma and I’ll miss everyone a lot, but I’d really like to find somewhere that I could be permanently that’s closer, focuses on children or teens and has a better salary.
Well I applaud you if you managed to read that entire post. I haven’t written much of anything for the longest time and then I suddenly get diarrhea of the mouth. I would write even more, but Jeff is supposed to pick me up (I’ve been alone in the closed library for an hour now) in a couple minutes. It really sucks on Fridays. The library closes at 5 PM and I’m here until about 6 PM. Oh well what can I do?
Good bye and god bless. Or whatever. Fhhpppt.