Alone and Unobserved

The following events all took place between 10:00am and 11:30am on June 6, 2009, at the library where I work.

Patron 1: “What event’s going on across the street from you guys?”

Me: “If you mean the event next door at Washington Square, that’s the Utah Pride Festival.”

Patron 1: “Oh, is that an Indian thing?”

***

Patron 2: “Do you got a copy of this you could sell me?”

Me: “We don’t sell books.”

(1 minute later)
Patron 2: “You sure you don’t got one you can sell me?”

Me: “Sir, we don’t sell books. We’re not a bookstore.”

***

Sketchy-looking dude: “What happens if you take a book without checking it out?”

Me: “You mean if you leave the library with it?”

SLD: “Yeah, will it ring?”

Me: “That’s a strange question, if you’re not planning on doing it. But yes, we have an alarm system.”

SLD: “Why is that a strange question? I’m just asking if it would ring.”

Me: “Please don’t take our books without checking them out.”

SLD: “You’re weird.”

“Weird” is getting the following voicemail from a strange young woman:

“Hi, my name is [name] and I’m getting induced tomorrow and I need to know what time. My number is [phone #].”

“Absolutely hilarious” is having the following conversation with that young lady when she called back later:

Me: Hello?
Her: Hi, is Amanda there? I’m [name], and I’m calling on behalf of… the fact that I’m getting induced tomorrow.
Me: You have the wrong number. This is a private cell phone.
Her: (huffily) Well I apologize! (more normally) Uh, goodbye.
Me: Bye.

I hope she tracks down her doctor or clinic’s actual number, because I certainly can’t help her.

To the motherfucker who tried to make a left turn at a busy intersection AFTER the light had turned red but chickened out with the nose of the car in the intersection, completely blocking the crosswalk: You are a moron. What, did you think the other cars were honking for fun? No, they were trying to signal you to back up five feet so we pedestrians didn’t have to sidle out into traffic to get around you. Fuck you. You’re lucky you only got flipped off, instead of having your license taken away like you deserve.

Sometimes I hate drivers. >:(

You know, that thing where I agreed a month ago to work a closing shift but I forgot this morning and so I dragged myself out of bed and all the way to work only to find out I’m not supposed to be here for another couple of hours and I could have slept in?

Yes.

On my way to work I made the mistake of having a thought while still in my not-yet-awake, overtired, uncaffeinated state, which is always a bad idea for me. Because then that thought—or part of it—echoes in the hollow space inside my skull FOREVER, or until I get coffee and wake up, whichever comes first. Some mornings it’ll be a snippet of a song (“I can’t stop loving the MAAAAN of mine. I can’t stop loving that MAAAAN of mine. I can’t stop…”). Other mornings it’ll just be a phrase, or a word (“Biblioteca. BiblioTECa. BIBILIOTECA. biblioteca.”). This morning it was “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça” (“why they would have done that,” in French). Not even a complete sentence. So I walked to the bus, accompanied by a regular refrain of “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi…” This got a bit boring and repetitive, so I mixed it up: “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait cela, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait cela, pourquoi…”

So you see why sleeping in might have been a good idea this morning.

[Note: I am aware that "Pourquoi ils auraient fait ça?" can be a complete sentence in French. You'll just have to trust me that the intonation of the phrase that repeated itself over and over and over in my head this morning ruled out that possibility.]

This happened while I was I subbing at an awesome little neighborhood branch library today.

Me: Are you aware that you have a missing part notice on your account?

Patron: No, what does that mean?

Me: A book on tape was returned missing one of the tapes. So I’ll let you check out this time, but we do need you get that taken care of.

Patron: Well, couldn’t the tape have fallen out somewhere? Can you check?

[I turn to coworker, stymied, and explain the request.]

Coworker: Uh… sure.

[Coworker gets down on hands and knees and personally checks all bins and drop boxes. The tape is nowhere to be found.]

Patron: Yeah, because the book on tape container is really thick, and I couldn’t fit it in the drop box. So I opened it up and stuck it in that way.

That’s right, she dumped the book on tape into the drop box OPEN. She might as well have plucked the tapes out of the case one by one and chucked them down the slot. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH.

A word to the wise: anything that doesn’t fit in the drop box needs to be returned inside the library.

On Thursdays I work at ten o’clock am, which means—if I want eight hours of sleep, which, when don’t I?—I need to get to bed by one o’clock am. No problem.

Except I couldn’t sleep last night. Like, I tossed and turned and turned and tossed and, the sleep, IT DID NOT COME. Every hour I took breaks to check Twitter, blip songs, and ping the entire online world with updates on how awake and unhappy I was. And then I went back to tossing and turning. Until FOUR IN THE FREAKING MORNING OMG.

At nine this morning my alarm (i.e., my iPhone) went off. I apparently slept through seven minutes of that racket without twitching, although it did invade the dream I was having and eventually woke me up.

I somehow got up, got dressed, and got to the bus stop. Took the bus a few blocks. Got off, stopped in at Beans & Brews for a mochaccino and a scone to go, walked the four blocks to work.

There are a few things you need to know about Beans & Brews.

• Beans & Brews is a local Starbucks-like franchise coffeeshop chain, with seventeen locations, all in Salt Lake and Utah counties.
• Beans & Brews coffee is served boiling hot.
• Beans & Brews cardboard sleeves are the thinnest I have ever seen. Far too thin to protect your hand from the heat radiating from the boiling liquid. Like, PRAYER would be more effective than a Beans & Brews cardboard coffee cup sleeve.
• Beans & Brews coffee cup lids have tiny little sipping holes that are apparently specially designed for maximum ballistic efficiency. Beans & Brews lid + boiling Beans & Brews coffee + a normal walking pace = searing gobs of coffee and foam in your face, on your clothes and all over your belongings. Guaranteed!
• Beans & Brews pastry bags are so fragile that if you happen to drop your pastry while, say, juggling an iPhone, sunglasses and a lava-hot, foam-spitting cup of coffee, when you bend down to pick up the bag the paper will neatly split in two, depositing your scone on the filthy pavement.

Needless to say, I was not in a good mood when I finally made it to work. My hands and face were dotted with red boiling-coffee welts, my bag was covered in tan mochaccino foam, my scone (and its traitorous paper bag) was in a garbage can at the entrance to a municipal building, and I was so, so, SO TIRED. Also, fifteen minutes late. And I hate being late.

But the worst was when I got into work and discovered that, surprise! I wasn’t scheduled to come in this morning at all. Suck on THAT, me!

Since I did manage to suck down the majority of the boiling mochaccino, I’m blogging instead of going back to bed. I got enough of the fruitless tossing and turning last night/early this morning, thank you very much. Still not sure why I couldn’t sleep last night—I didn’t take any allergy medication, and the only coffee I had yesterday was a latte at lunch. It must have been the caffeine from the handfuls of bittersweet chocolate I ate yesterday evening, which wouldn’t usually have been a problem, but apparently I need to make a new rule: no chocolate after 3pm. God. My life, it is so hard.

I turned in my last assignment for the Spring 2009 semester a few days ago, and it still hasn’t hit me that I DON’T HAVE HOMEWORK TO DO. Unfortunately, I won’t have long to get used to the idea—the summer term starts in nine days, so I need to get my party on.

That last assignment, by the way, was one I should have enjoyed thoroughly, and should have done very well on, but (as usual) I put it off until the very last day, which meant it was a stressful, slapdash, rush job. The topic: the evolution of feminist science fiction. Which allowed me to read such gems—and I am not being sarcastic here—as “Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!” by Raccoona Sheldon (AKA James Tiptree, Jr., AKA Alice Sheldon) and “When It Changed,” by Joanna Russ. Both keep returning to bother and delight me, just like all the best fiction does. Cannot recommend either story highly enough.

Last night I went to a karaoke bar for the first time since I started drinking, and my friend Denice and I blew everyone’s minds with our rendition of the Scissor Sisters’ “Filthy/Gorgeous.” Also mindblowing, I’m sure: our filthy, erotic dancing. We didn’t carry no watermelon, if you know what I’m saying.

In my feverish quest to put off the final projects in my classes until there is LITERALLY NO TIME TO COMPLETE THEM, I’ve finally caved in and created a Blip.fm account where I post whatever song is currently stuck in my head so that it can infect your brain as well. You should try it out! It is addictive and will keep you from accomplishing anything worthwhile for hours at a time! If that doesn’t recommend it to you then you are far too demanding and also impossible to please.

Mormon sci-fi/fantasy author Orson Scott Card has made absolutely no secret of three things:

1. He opposes the gay rights movement (claiming that “by and large homosexuals already have” civil rights), supports criminalization of homosexual activity and opposes gay marriage.
2. He advocates overthrowing any government that institutes gay marriage.
3. He does not consider himself a homophobe.

And now he has joined the board of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the group behind the campy “coming storm/rainbow coalition” ad and the hilarious 2M4M.org misfire. NOM claims not to be homophobic as well, but are they willing to embrace Card’s extremist, “non-homophobic” philosophy?

Read more about Orson Scott Card’s non-homophobia and his position on the NOM board in this People For the American Way press release.

I’ve been wretchedly bad at updating this blog lately. We’re coming to the end of the semester, and the amount of final projects I’m putting off is poisoning everything I do. Whether I’m reading a book or soaking in the tub or helping library patrons at work or watching TV or getting drunk at a party, there’s that niggling little itch in the back of my mind that says, “You should be doing homework! Stop having fun and work on your assignments!” It’s really cramping my style.

One of the first things that goes when I’m stressed, overtired or out of sorts is my creativity. Not only can I no longer write, I no long even feel the urge to, which is such a bizarre loss that it always catches me completely unprepared. Even worse, I become utterly uncreative and inflexible in my day-to-day life as well, which means I find it harder simply to deal with things. You might not realize how much creativity you use in making mundane decisions, but believe me, you’d miss it if it were gone. Suddenly my mind can only recognize a single way of doing things. In my head, every problem only has one solution, every interaction only one acceptable path to success, which makes dealing with library patrons—who are endlessly creative in thinking up ways to baffle and bemuse me when I’m at my best—almost impossible.

Well, hopefully the end of the semester will herald a brief period of peace, tranquility and (fingers crossed) creativity, before the summer term arrives to crush all my dreams again.

In the meantime, go have fun reading the archives of Mis/adventures in Bookland, where Suffering Silently blogs about dealing with bookstore customers in a small-town bookshop in Canada. I could swear some of her customers also visit my library.