Cathy the Librarian

I occasionally get the chance to wander around other people’s blogs, besides Mindless Rants on Life, WATAT and Momchops, of which I regularly stomp through. I had a chance to stomp through Ottoman Empire three.0.

I’ve also created a new blog… yea yea, I know. Shut up about it. It’s called I don’t know the title, but its got a blue cover (or blue cover for short)

She requested that I (although all I’ve done is post the songs, not actually do much crossing out):

Go to www.popCulturemadness.com and select the year you became 18. Paste the list of the top 75 songs. Bold the ones you liked; strike the ones you disliked; and italicize the ones you know but don’t exactly like nor dislike. The ones you don’t know will stay common text.

1. Barbie Girl – Aqua
2. ESPN Presents Jock Jams – Various Artists
3. Wannabe – Spice Girls
4. Tubthumping – Chumbawamba
5. To The Moon and Back – Savage Garden
6. You Make Me Wanna – Usher
7. I Like It Like That – Blackout All-Stars
8. Hard To Say I’m Sorry – Az Yet
9. Crash Into Me – Dave Matthews Band
10. Fly – Sugar Ray
11. How Do I Live – LeAnn Rimes
12. Da’ Dip – Freak Nasty
13. It’s Your Love – Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
14. Let Me Clear My Throat – DJ Kool
15. Missing You – Puff Daddy & Faith Evans
16. 2 Become 1 – Spice Girls
17. MMMBop – Hanson
18. Fly Like An Eagle – Seal
19. Say You’ll Be There – Spice Girls
20. For You I Will – Monica
21. Butterfly Kisses – Bob Carlisle
22. I Believe In You And Me – Whitney Houston
23. This Is Your Night – Amber
24. A Long December – Counting Crows
25. Show Me Love – Robyn
26. We Trying To Stay Alive – Wyclef Jean
27. Semi Charmed Life – Third Eye Blind
28. Mo Money Mo Problems – Notorious B.I.G.
29. Say… If You Feel Alright – Crystal Waters
30. The Impression That I Get – Mighty Mighty Bosstones
31. I Want You – Savage Garden
32. Song 2 – Blur
33. CoCo Jamboo – Mr. President
34. Love Rollercoaster – Red Hot Chili Peppers
35. Head Over Heels – Allure
36. All Mixed Up – 311
37. Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down – Puff Daddy
38. Honey – Mariah Carey
39. Spice Up Your Life – Spice Girls
40. Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit – Gina G
41. Dancehall Queen – Beenie Man
42. Building A Mystery – Sarah McLachlan
43. I Say A Little Prayer – Diana King
44. Santeria – Sublime
45. Barely Breathing – Duncan Sheik
46. Men In Black – Will Smith
47. Wrong Way – Sublime
48. Criminal – Fiona Apple
49. Where’s The Love – Hanson
50. Your Woman – White Town
51. You Were Meant For Me – Jewel
52. Firestarter – Prodigy
53. Feel So Good – Mase
54. Where Have All The Cowboys Gone – Paula Cole
55. If It Makes You Happy – Sheryl Crow
56. Don’t Go Away – Oasis
57. Staring At The Sun – U2
58. Lovefool – The Cardigans
59. Blood On The Dancefloor – Michael Jackson
60. Thirty Three – Smashing Pumpkins
61. Secret Garden – Bruce Springsteen
62. Desperately Wanting – Better Than Ezra
63. How Bizarre – OMC
64. I’m Not A Player – Big Punisher
65. Quit Playin’ Games (With My Heart) – Backstreet Boys
66. Daylight Fading – Counting Crows
67. All Cried Out – Allure
68. Dream – Forest For The Trees
69. Push – Matchbox 20
70. Alright – Jamiroquai
71. The Freshmen – The Verve Pipe
72. The Rascal King – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
73. The Old Apartment – Barenaked Ladies
74. Hell – Squirrel Nut Zippers
75. All By Myself – Celine Dion

I’ve been doing a tiny bit more research about seizures, because:

1. I want to get pregnant again
2. Its been really really hard, no matter how much we work at it
3. My cycles have been really strange and sporadic
4. I’m worried that the drugs might harm the baby
5. My mom told me that once my dad was seizure free after a couple years, he was allowed to go off the medicine, but for some reason I thought the doctor said I had to be on it forever

As I was looking it up on the Internet, mostly at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders. I found out that my seizure auras were actually mini seizures. Jeff tells me that the doctor told me about this at her office, but I think the whole thing is still sometimes a shock to me. Knowing that, I’ve actually had AT LEAST eight seizures, which includes all the auras and the grand mal seizure.

An aura seizure:
Some people with focal seizures, especially complex focal seizures, may experience auras — unusual sensations that warn of an impending seizure. These auras are actually simple focal seizures in which the person maintains consciousness. The symptoms an individual person has, and the progression of those symptoms, tend to be stereotyped, or similar every time.

The symptoms of focal seizures can easily be confused with other disorders. For instance, the dreamlike perceptions associated with a complex focal seizure may be misdiagnosed as migraine headaches, which also may cause a dreamlike state. The strange behavior and sensations caused by focal seizures also can be is taken for symptoms of narcolepsy, fainting, or even mental illness. It may take many tests and careful monitoring by an experienced physician to tell the difference between epilepsy and other disorders.

Reading this and actually having it are two very different things. The auras made me feeling like I was reliving a dream I had, but I would get really dizzy and have the shivers at the same time. I’d had these at really strange times. I remember one had come while I was serving pizza at the summer reading party in 2005. Poor me, I had no idea what was happening. Luckily, the auras weren’t usually obvious to anyone but me, so I was the only one who was scared.

The thing that kills me is that I had no idea what was happening to me, no one talks to you about seizures. They tell you all about depression, mood disorders, heart attacks, Parkinson’s disease, but not about seizures. According to the site, there are “More than 2 million people in the United States — about 1 in 100 — have experienced an unprovoked seizure or been diagnosed with epilepsy.” Somehow I think that may warrant more information being made available to people about seizures. If I had any idea that the dizzy spells that I was having were actually mini seizures leading up to my grand mal, I may have been much more actively trying to go to the doctor, instead of waiting until my big seizure sent me to the emergency department.

Grand mal seizures (aka, tonic-clonic seizures) are:

seizures that cause a mixture of symptoms, including loss of consciousness, stiffening of the body, and repeated jerks of the arms and legs. In the past these seizures were sometimes referred to as grand mal seizures.

I don’t remember any of that happening, but Jeff said that it scared the shit out of him.

I don’t really know where I was trying to go with this post, but I’ve been trying to get pregnant and I’m slightly afraid that the drugs are preventing me, and may harm the baby, since the drug I’m taking is relatively new, and doctors don’t think there will be any harm to the baby, but even so there’s a registry learn more information about the relative safety of specific antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) during pregnancy.

I’ve sort of lost my train of thought, and now I’m sad thinking about all of this, so I’m going to take my Lamictal and go to sleep… I love that the medicine I’m taking is also for bipolar disorder. Yummy in my tummy.

I posted this on Momchops a while back, but I thought that for the benefit of those that don’t read momchops, I would let you know some not so well known facts about ME! Hmm… do I want you to know these things?

Here is how momchops found out about it…

“Adrienne tagged me for this variation on the “five things” meme. Although I don’t keep many secrets, there are a few things about the younger me that people in my life now have no idea. Some I’ll share, others…uh-huh. Sorry.”

BTW, I changed it to ten things and these are only Nazareth high school things about me.

1. I tried out for the volleyball team three years in a row before I finally gave up.

2. I was in track and field and almost hit the coach in the head with a discus.

3. I made out with the lighting guy (a 23 year old) in the back of the stage while working on the school musical.

4. I was on the bowling team.

5. I carried a bear named Oatmeal with me everywhere my sophmore year.

6. I was in the Forensics club.

7. I was told that I couldn’t be in Honors English (mostly because I hated Great Expectations) and the next year I went into “regular” English, but found it so boring that I begged them to let me be in the Honors English class. Then I got a 4 out of 5 on my AP exam.

8. I used to skip taking the bus and with friends would walk to Aquinas so we could smoke (since we rode the bus with Aquinas students). I do not smoke anymore because when I was dating my husband he told me that I had to stop smoking or he would break up with me. Isn’t he cute! 🙂

9. I rolled film for the Photography dept. as part of my required volunteer time (at least I think it was required).

10. A friend and I painted a giant sun on one of the walls in the art room, also as part of required volunteer time.

My sister came home from NC for Thanksgiving. I had taken off all the days she was in town without prior knowledge of the days she was going to be here. Boy was I glad I did. It was so much fun to be with both of my sisters. One is still in Rochester, and the other is in Chapel Hill. Get two of us together and we’re pretty freakin cool. But get all three of us together and there is NO STOPPING US! It was too much fun, and I wish we had more time together. Unfortunately, I know that Chapel Hill is doing a world of good for my sister, since she is very smart and gets to go to school for free. Oh well. We always have DISNEY! How many days away? How about 33! Yippee skippy!

Oh Thanksgiving was lovely by the way. We brined the turkey, which wasn’t as much work as I thought it would be, and I tried to do side dishes that wouldn’t stress me out too much. My family really liked everything, and they were greatly impressed that we managed to clean our kitchen really well. Overall, I’d say it was a good time. Of course, our kitchen is a disaster again. Oh well.

And yea! Saturday I get to see Olivia‘s new house!

We’ve been talking about it for awhile, but we finally did it tonight. We put Phoebe down. I really didn’t think it would hurt as much as it did. I know I know, I’m a heartless bitch. But really, she puked EVERYWHERE, she had to be given steroids for the vomiting, that didn’t really work, she wasn’t cleaning herself anymore. Really she was a dirty icky cat. But she was really sweet too. She would let Jack lie on top of her and she wouldn’t move for a minute or two. She would go to sleep somewhere and you’d be able to hear her snoring from another room. She used to sleep in the sink and she’d play with the water (in the sink, or while you were taking a shower). She used to sleep on Jeff’s head… of course there was that awful night where she threw up on his head while Jeff was sleeping.

I guess Jeff and I were just tired of all the steroids that didn’t work, the expensive food that didn’t help and the vomit where you least expected it… on Jack’s toy train, on books, or underneath Jack’s shoes, which he got ALL OVER the bottom of his shoes and then ran around the house in without my knowledge until I scraped what I thought was cranberry bread off the floor with my fingers and very quickly realized it was cat vomit.

Gross.

Still she was a pretty good cat, and it was pretty hard watching the whole thing. Jeff and I decided that at least we could be decent enough to stay through the whole thing. She was so good through the whole thing. The vet gave her the sedative to numb her up and she stayed aware for quite awhile. They said that she would probably be out after ten minutes, but I think it was more like 15-20 minutes. We sat there and petted her the whole time. Jack included. We figured that he was too little to realize what was going on and I didn’t want to wait for Jeff in the waiting room until it was over. I really didn’t expect to cry so much, but I guess I still loved her a lot.

The vet and the nurses all seemed to agree that there really wasn’t much we could have done for her, and that she could have internal damage from the steroids. Of course they may have just been telling us to make us feel better.

Good-bye Phoebe.

This morning I asked my co-worker if she was going to shop for the day after Thanksgiving sales. She said no, and then she proceeded to say that she wasn’t going to shop at Walmart on Friday or Saturday. When I asked why, she said that Walmart was going to give 5% of their profits to the Gays. Boy did that give me a wake up call:

1. go Walmart! I thought you suck, but now you suck a little less
2. it made me think of my co-worker in a different light. A not happy light.

Then, when I got home, I found an article on Snopes, which stated that its sort-of true. They are donating 5% of the online sales of sales initiated through the web site of the Washington DC Community Center for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender People. Well tons of people will know to do that! (She says very sarcastically!) Even though I hate everything that Walmart stands for, I may have to buy something…

Okay, so maybe I just don’t care to think about all those sad individuals that think that being a homosexual is a dirty, unnatural, sin. I sort of like staying ignorant about that. Although, I guess the people that hate gays want to do the same thing. But since I’m right, I can stay ignorant, right? 🙂

Of course, I still understand that part of my duty as a librarian is to:

1. purchase materials for all types of patrons in the community even if I don’t agree with their beliefs
2. not criticize or think poorly of people who view things differently from me

But it seems like its one thing when its a strange patron who just wants to check out books and its completely another when its a co-worker that you really like (not in that way though, because it would be dirty 🙂 ). It sort of broke my heart to hear her say that she basically hates homosexuals… especially in Rochester. I mean we aren’t the mecca of homosexuality, but I thought Rochester seemed pretty progressive and open. Of course, this may be my sad delusional ideals protecting me again.

I’m positive that this topic is one of those “deadly sins likely to not get you another job ever again” topics, but I guess I wouldn’t really want to work in a place that wouldn’t hire me for my beliefs on this subject. I completely honor the fact that she hates homosexuals even if from the bottom of my heart I know she’s wrong, and I would treat a patron the same way. Try and be as pleasant as possible, but pity them just the same. So if my future employer couldn’t honor me in the same way, well then pphhtttt to you.

I really had to get that off my back. Oh and I still hate Walmart. I like Target much better, although I’m sure they have some dirty secrets hiding in there… just looked on Snopes. There’s an article about “banning” the term Christmas, banning the Salvation Army and carrying vibrators & not donating to veterans.

If you don’t get a chance to read the articles they:

1. DO NOT ban the cashiers from saying “Christmas”, however they didn’t use the term Christmas in any of their advertisements in 2005 until they were pressured to start using it again… although I didn’t see Christmas mentioned on their website. I do applaud them for trying to keep in mind that NOT EVERYONE CELEBRATES CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA!!! Well that was until certain groups pressured them enough.
2. DO ban the Salvation Army from soliciting, but that’s because they don’t let anyone solicit at the door. We all know that when you let one person do something, more will follow. Good for Target sticking to their guns.
3. DO NOT sell vibrators.
4. DO donate TONS of money to all different causes, including veterans. In one part of the article, it was claimed that Target only donates to Gay and Lesbian causes, but that’s not true either.

So I can still like Target. Thank goodness. I may even go there this weekend!… but not on Friday. No shopping on Friday, except maybe to Leaf and Bean.
On a happy note, I got my poi-ple ukulele tonight, and it sounds and look bea-u-ti-FUL!

• I love watching Jack dance.

• If I could be anything I wanted, I would be these things:

1. a terrific mommy
2. a best friend
3. a great wife
4. a stupendous daughter
5. a photographer
6. a children’s/teens author

• I really wish I had more time to read. I don’t get nearly enough time to read. I can barely read the two books I have for my two book groups let alone anything else.

• I wish I knew as much about computers as everyone thinks I do. For example, last night one of the teens managed to hack the computer so that when one of us went on the Internet at a certain staff computer, porn immediately came up. It was quite disturbing for the staff member that it happened to, but the teen was quite pleased with himself. Sally was furious with him when she found out, so she was going to have a “talk” with him when he came in. I’ve never been so upset that I had to leave early. Anyway, this is not to say that I want to learn how to put porn on library computers, but I wish I knew enough to get around like that on the Internet.

• I wish I wasn’t so socially awkward. I feel like I’m all thumbs when I try and talk to people. And yet I really do love being in the company of others. Which may explain my choice of occupation.

• Here comes a reoccurring thought: I wish that I wasn’t such a slob. I really hate being unorganized, I sometimes think it makes me physically sick. And yet with all this sickness, work is a disaster, and my house is a wreck. I’m afraid to have people over. I continually think that we should go on TLC’s Clean Sweep, yet Jeff doesn’t think that would be a good idea. Plus I think I would be a little a lot embarrassed.

• I hate that Jeff and I are perpetually late. We are never on time for anything. People are starting to make fun of us now. Especially family. Which hurts the most I think.

I asked for $400 to present to the school district, after asking the most knowledgeable of ladies, Patty U. She knows everything! That’s why she’s such a great librarian. So anyway, this morning I check my email… and they agree! Now I have to give a really great presentation. I’m going to do power point and everything.

Now comes typical Cathy shining through. The presentation isn’t until January. Until then we have Christmas and Disney World (yippee!). So what do I do? I buy a flea ukulele. In uke berry, of course. I’m going to ask for this ukulele video for Christmas (or just buy it myself). It features a dog named Ginger, who plays the ukulele! Plus its meant for 5 – 10 year olds, so hopefully it’ll be easy enough for even me.

Here is someone on you tube playing the flea. And in this video the ukulele lovers just want people to take the ukulele a little more seriously.

Watch out kids, here comes the ukulele playing librarian!

Update: The store called. They don’t have the uke berry in stock right now, but they do have poi- ple! Even better!

I asked them for money. It was scary, but I hit the send button. Deep in my heart I know its worth it. Driving forever to get there, trying to get there early, making sure I have enough copies of book lists and websites, getting enough books to look at, actually speaking for an HOUR (jeez), hanging out after to answer questions, driving an hour or more back (because it’ll be January in Geneva) and making sure that I get to work before I’m late. I think its worth getting paid for. I’m actually getting excited about speaking to a crowd about comic books again. I love those darned things! I just wish I had more time to read them, or maybe just more eyeballs.

Oh goodness. I can never get enough done on my blogs and yet I think my face is sometimes suction cupped to my computer screen. It really is a delightful image. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give me much time to practice my uke. Or play with Jack, or crochet, or read, or go to the bathroom, or clean the house. Eek. Time for bed. Say good night Cathy!

If you can make any suggestions about the talk I’m thinking I’d like to give… can I/ should I ask for money? Should I do a program in January in Geneva?

Should I be worried about the little crying kid? Will I end up being the little crying librarian?

Would a grant for homeschooling teens be a good idea, or am I just giving myself too much work?…