Coming of age

I think I'm officially an adult now. Doesn't that magical transitional moment happen the first time you are faced with a rigormoris-stricken squirrel* in your backyard and you realize you're the one who has to figure out what to do with it? That's what I am assuming.

According to my friends at the local NPR station, the greater Seattle area is currently experiencing its 24th straight day without rainfall. We even had a heat advisory for a couple of days. I know I'm jinxing it by mentioning it at all but the weather has just been so wonderful I've kind of been beside myself.

I'm obsessed with our garden. Every day I give Mr. A. reports on its progress. "The Yellow Pear tomato plant has blossoms!" "The fourth basil plant has three new leaves!" To his credit he always pretends to be extremely interested in these news items. So great is my obsession that this morning I had some extra time before work and I actually pulled up a chair and sat down in front of our raised bed as though it were a theatrical production, instead of plants growing at a rate that cannot be detected by the human eye. (I guess I'm skipping regular adulthood and going staight for retirement.)

The other great love in my life right now is our woodpecker family. As you may recall, a Northern Flicker couple has built a home in the tree right next to our back deck, and their babies are big enough now that I can see their funny little gray heads poking up whenever they get fed. Both parents feed them, and from what I can tell it's a job that takes up most of their time. Sometimes if I'm rudely hanging out too close to their nest, the two woodpeckers will sit together on the big Douglas fir in the backyard and say, "Excuse me? Excuse me? Could you move?" until I get hint and let them get back to business.


*I am enough of a sicko that I took pictures of it, which I will post here once I get them uploaded. I've also taken pictures of the woodpeckers and the garden, but let's face it, dead squirrel photography is pure journalistic gold.

Very daring!

This morning the local NPR guy was all, "It is A GLORIOUS DAY IN THE PUGET SOUND. Beautiful! Amazing! Get outside and enjoy it, everybody! Currently we have 45 degrees with a 15 mph wind out of the northeast."

Listen, Derek Wong, I feel you. I too am happy that it's no longer raining, not least because I'm going to a baseball game after work and for me, the whole point of baseball is being outside in the sunshine.* However, I don't know if 45 degrees is actually an optimal temperature for late May. I know that happiness is all about adjusting one's expectations and whatnot, but still. Let's at least hold out for sweater weather, okay?

Despite the chilly morning, I bravely biked to work.** When I bike to work I generally just throw an outfit in my backpack without checking to see how it will actually look when I put it on. Then at work I shower and put on the outfit and hope for the best. I think today might not have been the best.

Here's how I know: When one of my co-workers arrived today she gave me the once-over and said, "That's quite an outfit you've got there. Very daring!"

I guess cowboy boots with a lime green skirt are too much.


*I know, it's kind of expensive for what is basically a trip to the park. But then, there's also the beer.
**May is bike to work month, in case you don't know. Today is the first day this month that I have in fact biked to work. It's been cold. What am I, some kind of superhero?

Dear Apartment 3

Mr. A. has been playing in a band with a couple of friends of ours. They practice in our friend's apartment, which, even though it's not my apartment, has always worried me a little bit. Like, don't the neighbors hate them? It's not like they're playing death metal at top volume, but still. I've had vicarious neighbor anxiety.

So anyway, Saturday they had practice, and when they came out they found the following taped to their door:

Bangkok

A woodpecker (apparently a Northern Flicker, if you happen to take an interest in such things) has pecked a giant, perfectly round hole in the tree right next to our back deck. At first I was disturbed, because from what I could tell peering into the hole, that tree no longer has any innards, and probably is not long for this world.

But then I remembered I hate that tree and it might as well function as a woodpecker habitat in its final days. Normally I am pro-tree, but seriously, this tree is an asshole. I haven't been able to definitively identify it but I think it might be a Flowering Pacific Jerkface.

In the late summer it develops giant, strange, stinky blossoms. They attract--not bees, not hummingbirds, not butterflies, but WASPS. Hundreds upon hundreds of terrifying, angry-seeming wasps. And then, once the blooming is over in the fall and the wasps have finally gone away, the damn tree looses not just its leaves but its BRANCHES. Every single bit of the tree except for the central trunk falls right off, which makes an insane mess and leaves us with a sad, stubby-looking tree throughout the winter. So as far as I'm concerned the woodpeckers are welcome to it. Maybe we can set them to work on the linoleum in the bathroom.

**
**

One of our regulars at the library is a woman who is apparently learning English, though her exact mission isn't quite clear. She carries around pieces of paper with English words on them and asks us to pronounce them for her. Most of us limit her to just a few, since this falls sort of outside our job description and she would otherwise hang out and pronounce with us all day.

The other day my coworker and I were talking at the reference desk when she approached. I asked her to choose just a couple of words, and she said, "Okay--this one please," and pointed.

"Bangkok."

She leaned toward me and pointed to her ear. "Heh?"

"Bangkok."

"HEH?"

"The first part is BANG. BANG." She scribbled furiously to write the word down phonetically in her own language.

"Okay. Other part?"

"The second part is 'cock.'"

"Heh?"

"COCK. COCK."

A puzzled look on her face.

"COCK!"

At this point I was screaming and I had the full attention of the room. My coworker had pretty much collapsed on the floor in a giggle fit.

The patron said, "One more time?"

"COCK."

"Oh, okay! Bangkok. Thank you!" And she gave me the sweetest smile in the world.

Exactly akin to a fart

My aunt is a really nice lady. Seriously, she is so sweet it's kind of astounding and I love her, so please take everything that comes after this as the venting that it is. She and her family live in a McMansion outside Atlanta, and they have an even bigger vacation "cabin" (6 bedrooms, 32 baths) on a lake. They are afraid of a lot of things. For instance, whenever one of her two kids has to drive a distance farther than three miles, she's in contact with them via cellphone throughout the trip lest they meet up with some kind of calamity. Her kids are 30 and 26.

Anyway, she sent me an email this weekend. Mostly it was a really nice email about family stuff, but unfortunately she felt the need to attach this lovely op-ed piece. (If you are enjoying your blood pressure at its current level and you don't think all poor people are lazy and/or stupid, you might want to pass on clicking that link.)

I think what happened here is that sometimes over the phone, my mom tells me the political views my aunt shares with her. I say things back like, "Mom, don't worry, Obama is not killing babies. He is allowing access to birth control. You like birth control." Then my mom passes this new info back to my aunt, and the cycle continues. To her credit, my aunt probably thought it was time to cut out the poor middlewoman; she said in her email that she knew this piece was a little too far to the right for me, but she wanted to pass it on because it "well expresses my and [her husband's] feelings on many pertinent issues."

In my mind I wrote back a really awesome email. I pointed out, among other things, that if you really want to see some lazy, stupid people you should head over to the local country club. I suggested that if ever any kids had actually been "entitlement handicapped," then her kids were certainly at the top of the list. I went on to explain that my whole salary is tax payer funded--does she think that I and all the other lazy tax-mooching librarians* should be fired immediately? Does she really feel so put-upon and tired, with her two mansions and five cars and no job? REALLY?

But I didn't send it. I pondered sending a milder version, and then I pondered just saying something like, "Thanks for sharing!" But Mr. A. said that her forwarding of that op-ed piece was an action exactly akin to a fart and should be ignored. So I just responded brightly to the non-hateful parts of her email, and I'm sure that was the right thing to do but GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Is this how everyone else handles these things?


*Who, it was announced this week, will be getting a one-week furlough this year in the city of Seattle. I had been expecting two unpaid weeks so I am actually a bit relieved, but we may have to wait until next year to put in that swimming pool tiled with diamonds.

File under awesome

To the patron who informed me that by having a (small) area just for teens and their families, the library is "basically engaging in apartheid":

Apartheid? Really? Apartheid?

I mean, I get it. You needed a computer. Could you use the teen computers? No. Instead, you were forced to step onto either an elevator or escalator and then travel upwards of 28 seconds to get to the floor that contains over 100 computers for adults. And that is an indignity no one should have to put up with. It is exactly the same, in every way, as a legalized system of systematic racism and segregation.

Anyway.

Mr. A. sent me this email this morning, which I will file under "Awesome":

"The bus was super empty today, I guess because of Good Friday. The one person who got on at my stop was a kid who looked like Eminem, but totally muscled out. He was around 18 and had on a tight t-shirt and a stocking cap pulled kind of low over his eyes. Anyway, he was reading Eat, Pray, Love."

Saintly, exalted, or curly-haired

I'm so tired of hearing the words "professionalism" and "professional" thrown around as though they mean "saintly" or "exalted" or "curly-haired." Being professional is like having manners--it just means being nice and making people feel comfortable. And, okay, probably not wearing your cut-off jeans to work. (But you didn't really want to wear them anywhere, did you? Of course not.)

It should NOT mean draining every last drop of personality, humor, or warmth from every aspect of your job. That's "dehumanism." Or something.

However, this made me laugh.