Cathy the Librarian

Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t expect too many people for the programs I offered during the vacation, but this is just ridiculous!
Over the vacation I offered:

: Make a Gods Eye ALL DAY – ZERO PEOPLE

: Make a Felted Bowl – Three people, included in this are the girls mother and brother, who played Uno and Chess while we made our bowls.

: Holiday Storytime – ZERO PEOPLE – I don’t offer it, people complain; I do offer it, no one shows up

: Finish up your Felted Bowl – Two people – these are different people that didn’t come on Thursday. I included the mom because she hung around to talk and read a magazine as we made our bowls.

Monday I’m going to be doing a New Year’s Eve dance. I was going to make that punch with ginger ale, Hawaiian Punch and sherbert and get snacks. I was also going to recreate or find a video to show of the ball dropping, but now I’m wondering how much I should bother doing.

I try not to let it bother me, but still I get frustrated. Even if I spend money on hiring out people, they often don’t draw people either. Someone did ask if we were showing a movie. Maybe if I just sit people in front of our big screen tv so that they can rot their brains, they’ll come. You know they will. Don’t shake your head.

Next year, I’m thinking of stealing Adrienne’s idea and doing a kids advisory group (she calls it “Library Club”). I think this would be a great idea to draw on the kids talents and their ideas of how they envision the library in the future.

We shall see. Its midnight and I’m old and tired. Plus I rearranged stuff at the library in the staff area, so that it won’t effect patrons, thank goodness. They definitely can’t handle change. Of course, we occasionally have people who ask for the card catolog, and actually mean card catalog. I thought it would be best to do this while Sally was gone on vacation. Otherwise, she would find other things for me to move. 🙂 I can’t wait until she comes back so that she can see! Yippee!

Christmas was busy but fun. Jack had a lot of fun playing with his (three) cousins. We went to my in-laws first, and had yummy baked eggs and icy orange drinks. Plus tons of cookies and pastries, all hand done by my mother-in-law.

Of course, first Jack had to break into the presents. Wrapping paper went flying everywhere. In fact, once when I was trying to get someone with a wad of wrapping paper, my brother-in-law was trying to get someone else, and we managed to collide at the perfect moment, missing our original targets. The kids got tons of plastic gadgets, although the hit of Christmas was the Shake ‘n’ Go Crash-Ups Speedway, given to Jack by his aunt and uncle. The littlest one, Ben, insisted in trying to sit in the track.

My favorite present would have to be what I’m typing on, my new ThinkPad. Wee! I love it! I like the noise that the keyboard makes and the little nubby that you use as the mouse. I like the handy little keys to switch to and from previous websites. I like the size of the screen – 15.1″.  I just really like this laptop! What I like most however, is that there is no “Mickey’s Kitchen” game on it. This is my computer.

Whenever I would go on my computer, which is in the living room, Jack would run over and say “Mickey’s Kitchen” or “Caillou” with this adorable, questioning look on his face. Darn him for being so cute! The worst of it is that he would look up at you and say something like “Play Caillou train game?”, and each word gets progressively higher in pitch. Oh my gorsh! I don’t know how parents say no to their kids. I will definitely have to get this on video to embarrass him in the future. It is the right thing to do.

Being the wonderful wife that I am, I bought Jeff the seven disc Carl Sagan Cosmos series, the NINE disc Aliens Quadrilogy and a four disc Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle collection. Let us ignore the fact that I purchased things that I would want to watch too and instead consider how long it will take us to watch all of these DVDs.

During an earlier post, I had mentioned that I was going to make all the kids tote bags. Well I finished them. On Christmas Eve at about 9 pm. They came out pretty good and I’m quite proud of myself. I will, of course, be posting pictures later.

My mother-in-law and my mom both made Jack sweaters. They’re adorable! I’ll have to post pictures of Jack wearing them. Jeff’s mom made one with a cable stitch and I can’t even imagine how long it would take me. My mom made Jack one with her knitting machine. I must say that I’m quite proud of her. She hasn’t really been knitting recently, so I know that it was an act of love. My mother-in-law also made really cute sweaters for the cousins: one with flowers, one with a cupcake and one with duckies. I should have taken pictures, but was I thinking of my fellow bloggers? Nope of course not. I was thinking of the comfy fuzzy lined crocs I got in two sizes too small. 🙂

Lastly on the Christmas front. Our church had its yearly Christmas Pageant last Sunday. Jack got to be a sheep! He was about as easy to corral as a sheep. Jeepers! All these little kids wandering around in white t-shirts with felt sheep ears. Luckily everyone in the church loves the kids and they didn’t really care. Still, Jack was quite the pistol. At one point the sheep are supposed to go up the stairs to the alter and look at baby Jesus and then come back down the stairs. Was that good enough for my little Jack? Oooohh nooo. Nope he had to kneel down next to Mary and Joseph and keep baby Jesus company. Did I care though? Of course not! He was too friggin adorable! And a pest at the same time… how do they do this to us?

Oh well. Now we get to enjoy the depressing January/February dreariness that is Rochester.

Every year, we want to send out Christmas cards and I buy a box of cards. We now have four or five boxes of cards somewhere. Of course I can only find one… but that’s because I’m so organized!

One of Jeff’s cousins decided to use shutterfly and send photo cards. I thought that would be fun, but its so late, we figured there wouldn’t be enough time to do it. Then Jeff came up with the idea that we should do the “Kyle Family’s Notoriously Late Christmas Cards” … I think that’s what he called them. I want to use this picture. What do you think?

at my house. Eek! I think everyone had a good time, although everyone got lost trying to get to my house. A couple of them said, “You have to drive all this way? Jeepers!” (I added the jeepers part because it sounded cool). Luckily I think everyone crowded into two or three cars so that everyone got lost as a group instead of everyone wandering around Henrietta for days.

Everyone brought yummy appetizers and cookies (to share and bring home). Then we had ($10) secret santas. I was given this, which was obviously NOT $10. Luckily, I got the person that got me, and she wasn’t at the party, so I still have her present. It still won’t be absolutely as wonderful as what she got me, but since there is no way I’m leaving the house today, I’m going to make her something nice. I bought her some earrings (which I probably could have made myself, but oh well) and a little wooden cross from One World Goods (that I was going to add some beads to) and a bunch of plastic bangles from a store in Brockport. I thought they were cute! Here’s what I got:

GOOD GRIEF!

I told Sally that I would bring it to work, but she wouldn’t let me. She didn’t want all her staff coked up on caffeine. 🙂 Of course, she can’t even handle her hot chocolate without getting all crazy.

After using it, I figured its probably better if I don’t bring it to work. It took me about an hour and a half to make one cappuccino and a huge mess. I guess the first time shouldn’t count though. I’ll get better with practice. I should probably practice a lot, so I can get really good and invite everyone over. I could be your barista for the evening. IMHO, a cappuccino party would be a lot yummier than a “drinking” party. I could get rid of the hard liquor on my counter and replace it with peppermint and caramel syrups like in coffee bars. What does that say about me?

So anywho. I think I’ll take what I have and add some beads to the cross to make it a little nicer. Still not as cool as what she got me, but oh well.

On another crafting front, a couple of posts ago, I had mentioned that I was going to make bookbags for all the kids. That was a HUGE disaster. I had no idea what I was doing. I put aside the whole day to go to my mom’s house and use her sewing machine. The directions I used didn’t make any sense to me, but I couldn’t ask my mom for help because everyone had gone out for a walk. Then I broke the sewing machine. For some reason, the thread would come out in a bunch, and before I knew it there was tons of thread everywhere. My mom tried to help me, but it still did it. By 4:30 I was fed up.

Beh.

So I decided that I would use felt and tote bags I have lying around and applique something on them. I still have some sticky back iron on adhesive (I know there’s a fancy word for it, but I can’t remember) so it shouldn’t be too hard. Famous last words. I know. We shall see. At least I’ll be fully caffeinated.

I just (a couple of months ago now) got a new mp3 player, and my husband tossed a bunch of stuff on the player. One of the things he put on was the soundtrack to Kill Bill 2. The Kill Bill soundtracks have a lot of neat music on them, however I’ve become absolutely OBSESSED with one song in particular recently. Its called Tu Mira and its by Lole Y Manuel. Now I need to listen to more flamenco music. What an untapped treasure! Its sad and bouncy at the same time. I’ll have to put them into Pandora, which is an interesting take on internet radio. You plug in an artist or song that you like and it finds similar music that you might like. If you like it, you give it a thumbs up. If not, thumbs down. Sometimes it has interesting choices and I can’t really see the connection, but ah well. No one is perfect.

Ack. Its midnight. Time for bed.