Banner day

It is a banner day in the Soggy Librarian world, as I am wearing, NOT the maternity jeans I wear almost every single day, but instead an actual dress. My public is amazed. Normally I love wearing dresses, but I only bought one maternity dress because maternity dresses just didn't seem like such a great investment. Also, it's winter so you have to buy maternity tights. Which are expensive and frankly not very easy to put on, what with all the maternity getting in the way. One pair of those seemed like enough.

My annual Big Thing I Do at the Library is this weekend. Sadly, being me, I can never host a Big Thing without some level of anxiety. But this is my third annual Big Thing, and I think I've pretty much got the hang of it by now. It'll be fun. Still, I'm really looking forward to the period of time after the Big Thing, when I will activate my own personal autopilot button and cruise on out to maternity leave.*

Next weekend, Mr. A and I are taking a 3-day weekend and going to Portland! Actually, on Friday we are going to Corvallis, OR, where Mr A will be attending something or other. I lived in Eugene, OR for a couple of years, but the only time I made it over to Corvallis was when I joined a friend who wanted to go to an Ani Difranco concert there. And the only thing I remember was that the concert was in like, the basketball stadium I think, and Ani Difranco could NOT get over the fact that Oregon State's mascot is the Beavers. She was way into it.

So anyway, I have two questions for you, Intertubes:

1. What should I do in Corvallis while Mr. A is doing his something or other? Has anyone ever been there? What is Corvallis' deal, anyway?

2. Portland. I have been there before, of course, but I am not an expert. Favorite restaurants? Shops? Onesie peddlers?**


*If my boss or anyone above me in the pay scale at The Library is reading this, please note that my autopilot functions on an extremely high and productive level and is undetectable except by very expensive instruments not currently owned by The Library.
**Mr. A and I can no longer walk past over-priced children's stores without going in and poking everything. We do not buy. Only poke.

Mystery solvers, library edition

As promised, let's chat about Project Runway's new season for a second, shall we? It's already so much better than last year! Don't you think? We are watching it on the computator, so we stay a little bit behind, but I am seriously loving it. Just moving back to New York makes a lot of difference, but I think the designers are better, too. And Nina and Michael are in regular attendance so far, instead of those terrible sixth rate L.A. judges from last season.* In these times of strife, I really need to be able to depend on Nina and Michael.

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In the past two days, I have had two different patrons come to the desk asking me for Section 9. Any guesses as to what they actually wanted? Patron #1 was looking for District 9, the major motion picture, while Patron #2 was looking for the 9th floor of the library. It is for solving these brain-busting mysteries that the library pays me the big bucks.

p.s. I feel bad about yesterday's whiny post. I really do know how lucky I am, sometimes I just forget for a few minutes when I get an email that doesn't agree with me.



*Of course, the first episode of this season featured Nicole Ritchie. But at least they didn't let her talk very much.

Getting cranky

I'm going to get to take about five and a half months off for my maternity leave. I'm well aware that I should be grateful--and I am grateful. It's going to be wonderful to be away from work with the baby for so long, and I know it's a chance that a lot of parents in this country don't get. The bummer about it, though, is that in order to do that I've had to save up all my vacation time (and sick leave, though luckily I haven't been very sick) for quite a while now. So I haven't had a real vacation in a year. And I'm getting CRANKY.

This year has been a real struggle at work, and every time I think it's getting better, everything backslides again. It's gotten to the point that I don't know how to make things better, or if I can. Then, people keep asking me if I'm coming back to work after the baby. Although I know this is a reasonable question, I can't help but think, how fancy do you think Mr. A and I really are? Have you seen our tiny shoebox house that we can barely afford? Our single car with the cracked windshield? Believe it or not, we need both of our incomes to make this glamorous lifestyle possible. Would that it were otherwise.

Also the national and international news is so terrible these days that I can't even bear to listen to my beloved NPR. If I hear ONE MORE WORD about Scott Brown pimping his American Idol daughter, there will be violence, I swear.

Sigh. Sorry--I needed that. My next post will be about rainbows, bunnies, or Project Runway, promise.

While watching the US snowboarding championship on Universal Sports

Mr. A: I think the 2026 Olympics are the earliest we can aim for.*

Me: (pause) 2030 is probably more realistic.

Mr. A: Nah, he can make 2026. He just needs to focus.




*For the baby to compete in. If that's not clear.

Smiley-smiley

So, uh, I haven't been such a great blogger lately. This is partly because I wanted to try to come up with a post that wasn't pregnancy-, baby-, or weather-related (the sun has been out! sort of! thank you, El Nino and climate change!)--and failed miserably. There just isn't room in my brain for very many thoughts, and those topics are taking up most of the available space. Also, once I go for a while without a post I feel like my next post should somehow be extra interesting, which is a pretty high bar to set for myself since my regular posts are not all interesting. Hence, the long periods of silence.

We went to our first birthing class this week, and it wasn't too bad. There was a lot of smiley-smiley "no question is a stupid question" sort of stuff, but people really weren't asking stupid questions, so it was fine. The class seems to be free of the kind of people who ruined graduate school for me by never, ever shutting their pieholes under any circumstances and turning each class into their own personal therapy session. So that's nice.

There were ten couples, all due at more or less the same time--late March through late April. One of the couples still hadn't looked into finding a place to deliver their baby, and I was disconcerted to find myself for the first time feeling smugly superior to other parents. Clearly it is only a matter of time before I'm denouncing bedtime techniques and pacifier practices left and right. I'm going to be so much fun to be with!

Shoe mysteries revealed! High school football shows plugged!

For those of you waiting with bated breath to discover the results of the Great Shoe Debate of Late 2009, the answer was . . . none of the above. I couldn't reconcile myself to the elf shoes, and the Frye boots were just too expensive. Instead, I got these Clarks boots, which I found on sale for a pretty sweet discount at a local shoe store. So everyone was a winner. Well, mostly me. I was a winner. Of boots.

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Mr. A. and I are currently obsessed with Friday Night Lights. I know it's nobody's fault but my own that I had never seen this show before, but in my defense, a show about a small Southern town obsessed with football just seemed a little too close to home. Still, enough of my ladyfriends recommended it that I finally caved--which was half the battle, since I also had to convince Mr. A. to watch it. He is not a football fan, which is one of the many things I love about him, but it made this tv show a hard sell.

I must say, FNL ladyfans, you were so very right--I am crazy about this show, and Mr. A is pretty near as crazy. We agree that we have crushes on Coach and Mrs. Taylor, respectively (although actually I sort of have a crush on both of them). And I never get tired of saying the name Tim Riggins. Don't you wish your name was Tim Riggins? Of course you do.

Still got it

The other day a couple of boys (we had established they were twenty, which equals "boy" in my book) were asking me about getting hired at the library. So I was telling them the boring details of all the pieces of the application, when and where to turn them all in, etc., when one of them said, "I wanna get that job just to be able to sit next to you all day. You fine!"

"Honey, I'm old and married and pregnant."

"Well . . . old and pregnant ain't bad!"