Hello!

Hello! My eldest nephew, JJ, answers the phone and says Hello! and sounds just like the MovieFone guy and when he does it I can't answer him because I can only laugh. I'm just sharing.

I am just soooooo tired today and there's no reason for it at all. I fell asleep around 9.30 last night, cracked open an eye at 10 and again at 11 to change the channel, and again at 3 to turn the TV off, but I never got out of bed that I can recall (or, as it were, off the couch) and I woke up with the alarm, which is maybe the third or fourth time that's happened this school year.

Ooh, I just had fun. It's first lunch in the library, so I'm here -- the SCM is at lunch -- and in the last few minutes I was asked for stuff on the Beatles and hippies, anything we had on the Salem which trials, and a basic summary of Andrew Jackson. And that's where the fun is, if you're a dork, I guess. This is the fun part of being a school librarian, jumping from one topic to another, seeing what it is they're looking for. As I've said many times, I don't like my job, but I love my work. So there ya go.

Okay, back to the exhaustion. I have had three cups of coffee today, although sadly, my experiment to see if I could have a cup of real (aka, caffeinated) coffee for my second cup was a failure. (Which means I had three cups of decaf today, but hey, it's got some.) I thought I could have just one cup of caf a day, hours after my blood pressure med, and it wouldn't interfere. And it didn't. No shakes, no feeling quivery or anything. But the heartburn! And it only took me two weeks to make the connection! So I'm back to just decaf, and as little chocolate as I can get away with, including no chocolate at all at night because that will just kill me. Really, I'm going to be a joy one day in the little old tattooed ladies' home when they have to cope with all my special diet needs, not to mention my plaid blanket problem. (Although, I've recently realized that I don't sleep under a plaid blanket in the family room, so what's up with that? I've justified it in my mind by deciding that the family room is two steps down from the rest of the house and it's a well-known fact that *ahem* serpents cannot go down stairs. SHUT UP! Leave me alone with my fantasy rationalizations!)

Today is pedi day which means that tomorrow is tattoo day. I have already said that this is my last one, but god help me, I'm reconsidering. Wonderful Niece expressed her amazement that not one of my tattoos is Mickey related, and you know .....

My day continues to amuse. Here it is, almost time to leave and a boy came in and asked for a book by title. I looked it up and asked him "The one about the siege of Stalingrad?" and he pumped his fist in the air and said "YES!" and ran to the shelves to get it. He was very cute.

And now, home after the pedi, and listen: I know what I want for Mother's Day. The Sibs and I have been getting our pedis here forever and until today, neither one of us thought to turn on the massage in the massage chair. Ohhhhhh ..... heaven. It was wunderful. Well, they're always asking me to tell them what I want, and now I've got something to say.

However will I stay up for Lost tonight?

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1743

At the Salon

It was an amusing day, because the SCM was out, and K was indeed his substitute. I was a little aggressive this morning when I got to school -- at 6.45 -- to make sure that the ladies who schedule the substitutes didn't take mine away, since I had business outside the library for five out of the eight periods in the day, and they didn't. K says it was the easiest money she ever made, and considering she had a few kids who were damn rude to her yesterday and had to be referred for disciplinary action, she wasn't kidding.

Anyway, the interesting parts of my day seemed to take place between 3.30 and 4.45, at the nail salon.

First, I got there a little early, and the Sibs was there in my chair, being finished up. Always a nice surprise, getting to chat with her in person unexpectedly. She finished and sat at the nail dryer and I got started, we talked about one thing or another, and then her driver arrived. Oy. Not only can my sister drive, she has a year old Prius that has maybe 500 miles on it -- I swear it's still on its first tank of gas -- but her hubby likes to drive her places, so she lets him. He dropped her off for her appointment, he came back to pick her up. Oh, okay. I was facing the front window and saw him coming, and I said "Oh, your ride's here!" and when he came in I threw him a very cheery "Hi!" and he looked around the room at the various manicurists and said a cheerful "Hi, ladies!"

I think I am somehow invisible to him. I really don't know what it is. I do know that he is sometimes odd with people, since apparently I don't have the market cornered on socially odd husbands in the family, but yes, I take offense at it. There have been a few times when I've stood right in front of him with no one else around, spoken to him directly, and gotten no reply or recognition whatsoever. It's weird. It's possible he sees me as some kind of threat to his lock on the Sibs' attention, and it's true that she doesn't generally hesitate to spend time with me when she's so motivated, but I don't think he has to worry. I'm happy that she's happy, but I was certainly the loser here, since we used to spend a LOT of time together and now we don't. (Not bitter, just saying.) But he is strange.

So, in and among the ladies at the salon, there is one young male manicurist. This is common in some places, but it still feels strange to me, although he has never done my nails or toes. He is, of all odd things, half Korean and half Chinese. He considers himself ethnically Korean but was born and raised in China and came here a year ago; he speaks Korean and Chinese, but very little English. Which began today's adventure.

Tom -- he says his name is Tom -- said to the woman sitting next to me getting her nails done, kind of out of the blue, something like "Where ... you leave?" She was a little taken aback, but said "I live in Townname." He looked puzzled, and said again, "Where ... you leave?" Then he said something in Korean to Mimi, who was doing the woman's nails, who asked Grace, who was doing mine, and Grace said to him "Where you living?" And then the other customer and I realized that Tom was studying his English book, and didn't want to know where anyone lives, he just wants to know how to ask the question. So we were both repeating "Where do you live?" and "Where do you live?" and so on, and he kind of caught on and went back to his book.

And Mimi asks us if it's "live" or "leave", and decides she has it right and announces "I leave in Townname." Oy. And now we are explaining to these poor women "live" [exist] versus "live" [Live on TV tonight!] and leave [get out] and leaves [on the trees] and you know what? English really is a crazy language. Grace, whom I think was somewhat well educated in Korea, finally heard the difference between live and leave and said, with some recognition, "Oh. One is a short sound and one is long." Why, yes. Exactly.

And then she was telling me about some of the difficulties involved, some in not being fluent in the language of the place you live, and some in the sense she has that she doesn't really belong anywhere. She sees that her children are totally Americanized -- two boys, one in college, one in high school -- and she sees her culture slipping away from them, and that makes her sad. But when she went back to Korea for a visit eight years ago, she didn't belong there either, because so much had changed since she left years earlier to come here. She told me about her frustration of having her car break down and not being able to explain clearly, in English of course, to the mechanic what the problem was, when she could have explained quite well in Korean. She wondered why we have the words talk, say, tell -- why so many that mean the same thing? I told her about the Eskimos having 20 words for snow, or whatever that old wives' tale is, and she was amused. She really does struggle for a lot of English words, but if she's not rushed -- or tired, she says -- she'll come up with them. I suggested that she watch TV in English, but she says everyone talks so fast, she loses the thread of what's going on.

And we thought we had it tough.

So, a little window into a different way of looking at things. I'm very fond of Grace, and Mimi also. Tom not so much, but hey. It's certainly different to have a friend who doesn't exactly speak the same language I do.

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1742

So, Then I ...

[copied from dland]

Let's see. I was at school this morning, and then took a half-sick day in the afternoon to go to the doctor, which wasn't until 3:00, so I went directly from school to the gym, which is definitely the way to get that done. Wish me luck for tomorrow. I did all the weight machines, some of them twice, and added a new one, and even did some time on the stationary bike without feeling like I was fixin' to die. The trick there was that I could hear the music playing in the gym, and it had a good beat and I could pedal to it. So now I'm loading up the little shuffle with the only music I have that I've ever been able to exercise to consistently, which is the Doobie Brothers, and I'm hoping it strikes twice here and I'll even be able to ride for longer.

I squeezed in a nails appointment between the gym and the doctor -- another task-filled productive day -- and then it was time. This doctor has some different methods than my former one -- a 30 year age difference will do that -- so she was different, but not bad. I have to say that I have no negative feelings about her or her office. I never felt that she wasn't being appropriately thorough. The other thing I liked was that I wanted to ask her about not taking the hormone replacement therapy anymore, and the very first thing she asked me about, before I got to say anything, was the hormones and that she thinks I should go off them. I told her I want to stop when school is over for the year, and she said I will actually go though withdrawal, and unpleasantly so, if I stop cold turkey. Funny how the GYN never mentioned that. So I'm going back to her (today's doctor) in June, and she's going to put me on a plan that weans me off them slowly, to minimize the bad effects. Sorry if that's TMI. I'm psyched.

*Geek Spoiler* Aw, the little Trekkie just got bumped out of the mansion. I do adore this show. And that CeCe, what a bitch.

Oh, I also asked the doctor if she knew the magic secret to losing weight. She was very sweet, and seemed sad to have to tell me that the only answer is aerobic exercise. (Hence tomorrow's return to the gym with biking music.) She also said that there's some new med coming out that targets belly fat, and since she's a doctor, I assume she's not talking about the same stuff they show on infomercials in the middle of the night. (Maybe this is that thing I was talking about a few weeks ago where they found that certain bacteria in the stomach cause you to retain weight and they're working on a pill for it, but I don't know.) Anyway, she said it might be available when I see her again in June, and if so, she may prescribe it for me. Of course, with any luck, I'll have accomplished some on my own by then and won't need it, but let's not hold our breath. (Oh, and I was weighed in her office today, as opposed to not having the courage to weigh myself at home for some time. The last time I saw that number on a scale, I was nine months pregnant. Enough said.)

So I'm in school all day tomorrow, which is the second day of midterms. That means the kids get out at 12:25, after which the whole staff has lunch at the same time and then we come back until ... when? Thursday is usually one of my early days in the rotation, which means I leave at 2:35, but I know that the SCM will figure that since there are no kids there, he gets to leave early, too, but I think he's not supposed to. Whatever, not for me to worry about. The only thing I don't know, since I wasn't there today, is how long the staff lunch period is. Which means I don't know whether to bring my lunch -- if it's short -- or just go home or do errands if it's a whole hour. One of the errands is for the library anyway, so maybe I'll just ask for permission to go do that, I don't know, I'll see.

The errand, btw, is to go get some posters. I ordered a lot of them today, but there are a few more I want that I couldn't get cheap online, so I need to go to Michael's or some place and see if they have them there. The SCM and I decided to forego the standard library READ posters, and we made a list of iconic images that we wanted to put on the walls. To the best of my recollection (the list is in school), I ordered

• Starry Night
• American Gothic
• a picture of Albert Einstein
• Washington Crossing the Delaware
• a reproduction/explanation of The Bill of Rights
• the Beatles crossing Abbey Road
• a picture of John Coltrane

and a bunch more, I think about a dozen altogether. I'll post the list tomorrow. I'm still looking for

• Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms
• an Ansel Adams photograph
• a poster for Casablanca or Citizen Kane
• a Picasso
• Jesse Owens leaping from the starting blocks at the Berlin Olympics

and I think some others, but again, the list. I have only three posters on the walls now, saved from the old library. These are

• Martin Luther King and the text of the I Have a Dream speech
• The Niemoller quotation about the Nazis first came for the Jews, etc. and no one was left to stop them when they came for him
• a portrait of John F. Kennedy

Oh, I'm also looking for the picture of the Big Three at Potsdam (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin), but if I can't get it, I'd like a big portrait of just Churchill. And the burning of the Reichstag, if I can find it, and the explosion of the Hindenburg, but I doubt I'll find those at a crafts store. (I did find nearly all of these online, actually, but not all in my price range, which is cheap. I'm not going over $15, and that better be a nice big poster.) Oh, and Lou Gehrig's farewell to baseball.

Okay, there ya go, two entries for the price of one.


WATCHING AMERICAN IDOL :: ENTRY #1358

Thursday Off

[copied from dland]

These are the socks that R made me for Christmas:

and this is the belt:

I'm weighing in on the Gerald Ford thing. Although I liked him very much at the time (personally, not politically), I'm afraid that what I remember about him are things that are not so great. For one, I remember watching him debate Jimmy Carter and saying something about Eastern Europe not being under Soviet domination and everybody's jaw just dropping -- including Carter's -- and knowing that he had just lost himself an election. On another note, my nephew, now 32 and pictured here in a recent post at his most adorable, was quite the verbal little kid. In 1975 -- roughly when the picture was taken -- we could get him to say, with great excitement, at the beginning of any baseball game: "Bicentennial fwag! Bicentennial fwag!" because, as you may or may not recall, the standard American flag was replaced with some bogus thing for a couple of years there in honor of the great Bicentennial of the nation. But his most amusing Stupid Kid Trick, which his father taught him in 1976, so he was about two, was this:

His father: "Jeff, what does Jimmy Carter do?"

Little Jeff: "Jimmy Carter make peanuts!"

His father: "Jeff, what does President Ford do?"

Jeff: "Pwesident Fawd fall down!"

On the other hand, I admired him and his family very much, and thought he should have been made our permanent ceremonial president, someone with no actual power but who makes all the public appearances. He seemed to have a great deal of integrity, a good quality in a president.

In other news, I'm enjoying these days off tremendously. Today I got my nails done -- more on that in a minute -- and then had a facial. Tomorrow I'm getting orientation on the weight machines at the gym and then the complimentary massage that comes with my membership. (Then an afternoon with the Sibs.) The funny thing about all this, the nails, the facial, the new make-up, is that I smell terrific.

Which leads me to my next problem, which is that I'm allergic like crazy this week, but I don't think it's to any of these specific things: the make-up, the other cosmetic smells. I'm reacting to every bit of dust in the atmosphere, and to other scents that I can't quite track down, but I've been sneezing like crazy. It doesn't seem to be a cold, but it's hard to tell sometimes. The SCM has been known to say things to me from time to time about how he was bothered by post-nasal drip and couldn't sleep the night before and has that ever happened to me? and I have to tell him each time that I've had permanent post-nasal drip since I was four; I was probably a teenager before I realized that every other human didn't have that feeling all the time like I did. But it's been bothering me more this week, I guess because of whatever it is that's irritating my allergies. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it really isn't all my fancy new make-up.

Oh, nails, I almost forgot. I may have asked this before, I don't know. Someone told me that getting your nails done regularly is "a New Jersey thing." Whatever the hell that means, but is it true? Are there no nails salons anywhere else in the country? (Not counting New York, as New Jersey goes, so goes New York City and the surrounding suburban counties.) We have maybe a half-dozen nail salons here in little Bizarro Town, all with names like Sexy Nails, and Sexy Nails II. (Yes, there's also a Sexy Nails III.) Or French Nails. Like that.

My last rant of the day is -- again -- my hearing aids. You know, I have these two devices clipped onto my ears that communicate with each other via RF (radio frequency) signals. This is the only way hearing aids are made now for my kind of hearing loss, but I'm increasingly aware that this is no longer a viable technology because there is just so much random RF signal traffic in the general world. It's increased exponentially in the last few years since I got these aids. At first, I wanted to complain about some new device in CVS that was causing the static, but now it's everywhere, randomly, in stores and in all kinds of places. It's time to replace the technology that powers my ears with something new -- bluetooth would be nice -- but it doesn't exist yet. I wish I knew where to complain to, maybe to the company that makes them. (Only one company does.) It's my understanding that there are so few people with my kind of hearing loss, at least people who have it and wear hearing aids, that the industry just isn't motivated to do much for us.

Anyway, I'm running out to CVS to pick something up (and to avoid folding laundry), so I know what to expect when I get there.

Damn, I smell good.


WATCHING DR. PHIL :: ENTRY #1333