Day in the Life of an Idiot

But, I went to the Roseville library the day before yesterday and got totally judged by the circ staff who helped me check out.

My Ramsey County library card has been lost for ages, but I always had the keychain bit that had the barcode, etc. Recently, however, the keychain dealio started peeling and finally, the hole that attaches to the key ring had worn through it and it fell off. I forgot about that, however, when I returned a pile of manga to the library on Wednesday afternoon. Shawn was working late-ish, so I decided to do a quick dash through the library, after returning my books, to see what I might pick up to read next. I go to check out and realize, "Oh shit, that's right, the damn keychain thingie is sitting on my dresser in my bedroom." Thanks to years of working at that library, however, I knew that the people at the front desk can check you out if you have a driver's license on you. So, I take my pile of manga to the front desk. I recognize the person helping me, an older woman that I used to work with. I remember liking her a lot, actually. She's a science fiction fan and nerdy in what I'd normally say are "all the right ways," BUT....

First off, she has no idea who I am.  I mean, if this were all that had happened, I wouldn't even find it all that strange.  Yes, sure, I worked right beside her for actual years, but lots of time has passed and I was always an irregular sub. Some people are bad with faces, too. I am wearing a mask, my hair is always different, etc. She does, at least, recognize my name as "that author." Something about this realization--maybe she senses that I sort of thought she should remember me?--makes her suddenly compelled to make chit-chat.

This is where everything goes off the rails.

Just as a spoiler? I want you to know that I totally kept my cool and sat on the fact that I was DEEPLY offended. And, more importantly, I SAVED my rant for y'all. (I know, you're SO LUCKY. :-)

It starts fine? I make some joke about the laser loon card (which I've posted about here--and just to explain quickly for our out of towners, due to some malarky which is too complex and BORING to really get into here, St. Paul, which is in Ramsey County, is actually a SEPARATE library system. Unlike Minneapolis and Hennepin, which are the same system, albeit different from both St. Paul and Ramsey County. The point is, my loon card does not work here.) At any rate, there is some discussion of the new Minnesota state flag, the Weather, etc. It's all going pretty normally, but then maybe the circ staff lady has run out of things to say? To be fair to her, I have made things more complicated by asking her hook my St. Paul card up to my old Ramsey County card and so the awkwardness is made extra long by this slightly more onerous set of things she needs to do for me before I can check-out.

My guess is that while casting around for a topic, she lands on my books, possibly hoping to discover similar taste or something. Instead, she says: "Oh, manga." Which, you know. Good Start with the immediate awkward pause. She then looks up at me, frowns, and adds, "I normally don't see a lot of these going out from the YA section." Clearly, she means, being checked out by ADULTS, because she continues, "Just the stuff upstairs." Which is where the adult manga are shelved. And, of course, she can't mean ever, because teens take out manga by the fists full at this library. Manga is a MASSIVE part of the teen room, it's like eight or nine shelves at LEAST!

After this observation, she gives me the "And your response is..???" stare.

All the things that raced through my head, but I said none of it. I'm weirdly proud of my restraint? Instead, I just said, "Well, these are good stories, too. Adults can appreciate them."

This seemed to end things, with her little laugh and "Oh, of course they can, haha," but HOLY SHIT what I wanted to say (and what I ended up saying to myself on the drive to pick up Shawn) was Legion.

The biggest one was the fact that, not two minutes ago, I was in the teen section (obviously, where apparently I don't belong) and I saw that some (overworked to the point that they couldn't flip through the first three pages) librarian in their infinite WISDOM (not) had marked Lupin III as YA. Now, I don't expect you to know who Lupin the Third is or that the manga about this "gentleman thief" is FULL OF NUDITY, DRUGS, graphic violence, RAPE, and probably a half dozen other things that most mothers (fathers and parents) of young teens probably would NOT like them to see by accident while looking for shounen manga. It was written in the swinging-60s for ADULT MEN. Like, drinking and smoking is just taken for granted, that's just a boring every panel sort of activity for Lupin and his colleagues. (I mean, it's also funny, but it was written for ADULTS.)

Because, AS YOU KNOW, BOB, in Japan, just because something is illustrated does not automatically mean it is for children or teens--which I feel is Manga 101.

Also, in the teen section, they had Act-Age, which, frankly, I'd've pulled from the shelf when the mangaka was arrested and found guilty for child molestation--like you know, they did in Japan. In the actual CHILDREN'S area they have Polar Bear in Love, which sounds cute, but is actually a Boys' Love manga (so, written for adults with gay content)... which relies heavily on the idea that readers find constant harassment and threatened interspecies rape (and violence) funny. Which, hey, for adults, whatever, but it's DEFINITELY NOT something I want to read to my TODDLER??? Meanwhile, upstairs in the adult section, they have Cat + Gamer, which has nothing sexy or adult in it at all, but is an absolutely adorable, WHOLESOME story of a girl who accidentally gets a cat and is such a nerd that she treats learning about it like leveling up in a video game. But, I guess that it's an adult book because maybe some idiot librarian saw the "+" and thought maybe the woman was having sex with the cat??? WHO KNOWS. It would take 5 SECONDS of flipping through the book to see that it is completely g-rated.

So, what's with the "Ah, an adult creeping around in YA, I see" attitude? Or was the circ staff lady going for, "I see you like picture books; do you have the mind of a child?" or WHAT??

AND HOW WAS ANY OF IT APPROPRIATE TO SAY TO A PATRON?

Because the second thing I really would have liked to have said--which I sort of did--is, "So what?" If I want to read actual picture books about ducks walking in the rain in human boots or books with Alphabet stories, I actually can. I am allowed to take out any book I fancy from the library. It is not for anyone to judge. In fact, when I worked at the library, I would occasionally stop and read a picture book or two. They can be lovely. And adults can get the same happy feelings reading them. Who doesn't love a nice little book about baby owls? I should NOT have to justify my reading tastes to anyone.

Also, there is nothing creepy about an adult reading YA literature, illustrated or not. What. The. Actual. Fuck.

But, as to their haphazard shelving, I have long considered writing a sternly worded letter to the Ramsey County library, but 1) I don't want to be that person because it smacks of censorship, which is not my point, (my point is that it would be nice if someone at the library actually knew ANYTHING about manga) and 2) I care/don't care, you know what I mean? Shelve it in a pile on the floor for all I care, I'm just happy that someone in the Ramsey County system is BUYING manga, particularly the re-issues of the old classics like Lupin III, which you used to not be able to find ANYWHERE. I picked up my copy of the first few volumes at Uncle Hugo's back in the day. Uncle Hugo's doesn't sell a lot of manga, but the used stuff they get is often really old? I also found a full run of Kubo's (Bleach's author/artist) previous work ZombiePowder! there.

But, my point is, I don't want to cool Ramsey County's manga purchaser because I actually think they're doing a great job. It's the cataloguer or whoever is making the shelving decisions who needs some better guidelines (or time to actually do a bit a research.)

And, of course, as a former circ staff person, my advice is maybe not shame anyone for what they chose to read.

Sorry for the delay in posting. I realize, too, that it looks like I went off to work and NEVER CAME BACK.

I did survive,

Work was actually decent. The library I was at, New Brighton, does NOT allow the public inside the building. This is something I requested when taking assignments and I feel extremely grateful that my work attempts to accommodate me. I wish everyone had this kind of choice. or something akin to it. It didn't stop my boss from eating her lunch in her office, maskless, with the door open, but bosses be bosses, am I right? What are you going to do?

I'll be at White Bear Lake this Saturday (and also, later the same day at CONFabulous,) and then I'm going to try not to work for a long time. Wish me luck.

I have been generally absent here because my class at the Loft is in full swing. I have ended up with six students, which, it turns out, is plenty of work when you set your class up to basically be constantly rotating critique. Also as I was telling naomikritzer it's funny how easy it is to end up checking class several times a day and thus feeling like the I'm always at work.  I have set up my email to only send me notifications every four hours, so I don't HAVE to go look, but you know how it is when an assignment drops.  Then, I see that I have some critique work to do and.... suddenly I've spent the whole day in ONE class. I have no idea how instructors are doing this with several classes. It must be exhausting.  At least, for me, with in-person, I would do a lot outside of class but I was better about thinking "Okay, today is prep day," you know?  

When the pandemic started, I saw a lot of talk about how bosses were so worried about how much time employees would spend slacking off.  Yet, almost immediately, I watched Shawn put in so much overtime. She would think nothing of answering an email at 7 or 8 pm, a time of night that, in the Before Times, she very vehemently and rigorously defended as HER TIME.  

I'm sure there is less time where people devote exclusively to butt in chair, but I'd love to see some reporting on how much work gets done outside of regular hours. 

Of course, this might be more of a case of how Shawn and I are outliers. We have always had firm lines about work we are wiling to do at home. I think there are probably a lot more people out there who always did work emails at 8 pm.

 ...and am not fond of THAT.

I made the mistake assuming that a small library would have a small staff. When I worked last week, there were only two other people in the whole building (and at times only one other) and I kind of made a foolish mistake assuming that was the new normal. There was a full compliment of staff working yesterday and it was fairly nightmarish.  Especially the one librarian who informed me through her open office door that she had special permission to remove her mask in her office.

Yeah, thanks for that.  How about close your damn door, at least, then?

I have ALWAYS had a lot of sympathy for my fellow workers, particularly those who have no choice but to go to work, and, yeah holy heck. NO ONE should have to work in the age of COVID. We need universal basicincome, stat.

Right. Moving on.

In other much more pleasant news, I have a discussion about my latest book (Unjust Cause, https://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/books-by-tate-hallaway/unjust-cause/)  with the North Country Gaylaxians today at 7 pm (CST/-6 GMT), via Zoom. It is free!  It is international so long as your time zone allows, details on this facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/653999645190057.  

 Hisashiburi desu! Long time, no see!

How is everyone?

I've been obviously kind of out of it. Once again, I don't have any particularly good reason, although, as I reported earlier, I was at Maplewood Library a TON last week, filling in for someone having a family crisis. I was there Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings, all morning, until 3pm.  I like Maplewood. Once again, I got a vague non-offer to consider working there more regularly...which I would love, but, as I told them, that's not even in the picture until we get Mason off to whatever college/university he's considering sometime after next year. 

It's physically demanding work, though?

I know that most people imagine working at the library as very genteel. Shelving books at leisurely pace, answering one or two patron's questions in a quiet, contemplative space, while sitting at a desk surrounded by books.... no, I WISH. I liken being a circulation staff member to working at a book factory. It's HARD labor. When I come in, typically, there are deliveries to tackle. Deliveries come in HEAVY plastic boxes and giant metal bins almost as tall as I am. When I'm at Maplewood, Shoreview, or Roseville, the GOOD NEWS is that I don't have to check-in all those books by hand, but I do have to put them on a conveyor belt that sorts them into the appropriate bins. When bins fill, they need to be sorted by hand, but they are at least all of a type, say, all the fiction (though you do have to separate the genres, make sure the new books go to the right book truck, etc., etc.) There are also movies and other media that need to be sight checked before they can go onto carts, because people will forget discs or put in the wrong ones. Then, there's all the requests, which the bin sorts, except, we have to print out receipts for each one and get those alphabetically by borrower on a separate cart.... and that's just when you're working the check-in machine. Remember, too, you are lifting boxes and twisting and setting books onto the belt. I literally sweat doing this work, because it has to be done before the SECOND delivery comes and you start it all over again.

If you're not on the machine, you're doing all sorts of other check-in work, except by hand. There's all the expired-requests that have to get taken off the hold shelves and returned to other libraries, request lists from other libraries that need to be pulled from the shelves and hand checked in to print out the slips and sorted into the appropriate boxes to be shipped to the right libraries, etc., etc., etc., until your arms are tired, your brain is fried, and your feet hurt.

Even so, I hate shelving the most. I know a lot of people who have volunteered or worked as high schoolers in a library who think back fondly of being in the stacks and shelving or sight-reading the shelves. I actually don't hate sight-reading, but if you think that we ever have time for such a leisurely activity at one of the Ramsey County libraries, hahahahahahahaha! (<--insane laughter.) I hate shelving because it's also a time crunch and a lot of it is, oh, here's yet another Vince Flynn book to stick with the thousands of others or James Patterson or Nora Roberts.  It's not the "oooo, look at this precious gem of an unknown author that looks so interesting...." 

That might be the fault of Ramsey County, though, because they are not in the habit of keeping things on their shelves that people don't check out regularly. 

I do love shelving in the manga and comic book sections because they're often small enough that I can do a little sight-reading (making sure all the volumes are in the right order, etc.) and shelf straightening and browsing. 

But, yeah, normally, it's not RELAXING. I still love the work, however, don't get me wrong, I just really wanted to write this to disabuse people of the sense they seem to have that my job is somehow slow-paced and pleasant. (No, I get 11.50/hr. to break my back lifting boxes of books). But, yes, I still like this job better than almost any other that I have ever had, because love books that much. And libraries attract the very best co-workers. The VERY best.

Also, I have a weird sort of pride in how busy our libraries are. So, like while I'm sweating, I'm thinking, "Yeah, you know, we're only this busy because people are reading this MUCH." Which makes me happy?  Plus, libraries these days provide so many services. One of the reasons they wanted to make sure someone was covering this last week is because they started up their annual AARP tax help service--which is free by the way and open to anyone, just the AARP sponsors it and it's aimed at helping seniors. But, this means, there's a LINE waiting to get in in the mornings, because it's first come, first serve.

Libraries are crazy, awesome places.

And, word has gotten out that I am a manga fan so I actually am going to have a chance to talk to one of the major manga purchasers for my library and give them my fantasy list of titles I want them to buy. I've been collecting titles all week, in fact. If you are a manga fan, feel free to drop a title in my comments, but, it may be a surprise to you, but the library has a LOT of the titles you're probably thinking of, even brand-new stuff, but certainly most of the "classics." I've actually learned about hot new manga from the library. I read most of My Hero Academia through the library and One-Punch Man. 

In fact, I just binge watched the first season of an anime that I discovered as a manga at my library: Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku. 

So, you know, it's all good. 

So, tell me something that would surprise me about YOUR job!

 Right about now, I should be coming back from my daily walk to the Starbucks up Culver Avenue and sitting in the tiny hotel room's overstuffed chair, typing on my similarly teeny phone screen. Instead, I am sitting in the living room with my laptop at home. The only consistent thing? Mason is still SOUND asleep.    

So, yesterday was a very short day, even though our plane didn't leave until 6:40 pm. That was partly because my wife is a bit anxious about planes, and, as it turns out, so it Mason a little.

We did have time to a few things, however. rachelmanija  took us out to a VERY COOL (look how I didn't say "amazing," even though it totally WAS _amazing_!) dim sum place. Mason had only ever done dim sum where you check things off on a menu, so he was very impressed with the controlled chaos of the carts. He was also happy to have recognized the word for "pork bun." The food was exceptional (and also AMAZING.) 

I was quite distracted by the giant screen TVs showing Beautiful Cooking (for jiawen : 美女廚房). Before Rachel thought to look it up on Wikipedia, I was trying to piece together what was happening. It was clearly part variety show, part cooking show, but that was all I could entirely understand. Fascinating to watch, because so much of what makes a competitive cooking show work clearly seems to be universal. There has to be some competition that's timed. Judges have to make expressive faces while tasting the food. And, there has to be some kind of drama involving live animals in need of butchering. Fascinating.

From there we went to a manga/comic bookshop where we probably would have stared sadly at all the things we wanted to buy but couldn't find room for in our luggage, except that Rachel offered to ship it back to us. Suddenly, we had most of the run of Full Metal Alchemist (for Mason, he's read it, but wanted to have it to re-read) and the next two volumes of Spider and Me for me. At this point, Shawn was frantically texting, "You're shopping? But... heading to the airport next, right?" The conversation ended in: "Okay, do what you think is best. Love you!" and I figured Shawn might actually implode at home if we didn't hustle towards the airport.

We finally ended up in a Lyft at Rachel's instance. It was fine, but I can't say it was monumentally better than any of the other forms of transportation we took around LA. Possibly superior to the bus, but that would be about it. I mean, the guy was nice? His car was clean? But, so was the taxis? He even took the exact route the taxi driver had taken us FROM the airport. Possibly it was significantly cheaper, but since it was Rachel's app, I have no idea.

Of course we got through security and to our gate, HOURS before we needed to. On the other hand, that gave me time to get started reading the book Mason loaned me, Six of Crows. 

The flight on Spirit Airline (mostly known for it's pay for everything as you go model) was fine. It was, at least, direct, unlike our flight out to LA. So, three and a half hours (and a two hour time shift) and we were home just after midnight. 

Today is a lot of laundry, retro fitting the photos from the trip, and then... I work tonight at Maplewood. I would totally blow it off, but we now need to pay for this trip AND, thanks to Shawn's illness, I think I've already missed four out of the six days I work this month.

C'est la vie. It's only a four hour shift. I can survive.

 Okay, wow, I forgot to post anything for a week. Gomenasai. My bad.

I did have some stories I wanted to recount, too. First of all, I worked at Shoreview Library on Saint Patrick's Day proper, last Sunday. For some reason I thought that the library opened at 10 am, and, as I was scheduled for 11 am - 3 pm, I waltzed in the door (using my beep-y lanyard thingie) and promptly set off the alarm. As it happened, my colleagues were coming in right behind me and so someone was able to put in the code to turn off the blaring. But, that was... interesting, as we say here in Minnesota.

I've always wondered what would happen if I just randomly tried to go into a library after hours with my official employee badge door opener.  Now I know!

I ended up working at Shoreview again on Monday night, which was fine. I continue to like library work and it gave me an opportunity to discover Polar Bear Love, a ridiculous manga about cross-species love. 

I spent a lot of the rest of the week playing taxi for Mason. He has been volunteering as a debate coach and there were two big tournaments at the U (Anderson Hall, West Bank) this week.  He ended up taking the light rail home last night, because his matches went late and I had Wyrdsmiths--which I couldn't skip as they were reading the apocalypse short story of mine which is due April 1. Speaking of which, that's all revised. I need to look over it several more times before I send it off, but I feel really quite good about it. I took some risks and i think they paid off. We'll see. 

Today is Friday, and so I hung out with naomikritzer and pegkerr at the coffeeshop and talked politics and water in the basement and all that sort of stuff.

And... now I can't remember what else I wanted to report, so I guess I'll close now with a promise to be better in the future.

 I have to leave for work in a half hour. Normally, I wouldn't take a Friday afternoon shift (or try not to) since Fridays is now the day that the women of Wyrdsmiths+ meets. (The plus is because the group now includes other women writers who have never been Wyrdsmiths.)  BUT, everyone had to cancel for various reasons, and so when Maplewood called while we were out shopping for dress pants for Mason, I agreed to come in today.

We were at JC Penny's trying to find dress pants that fit our ridiculously tall and skinny young man BECAUSE Mason has a job interview on Saturday!  

Baby's first job interview!

This is a job he's tried for before--it's some kind of work with the Science Museum that I honestly don't entirely understand, but which appears to be a program that's offered to science-focused teens?  Washington Tech gets the notice about this every year. Last year, Mason applied but didn't get to the interview state. Likewise, his girlfriend applied last year, got an interview, but didn't get the job---so it's HIGHLY competitive. He's really going into this with the attitude of, "Well, no matter what happens, the interview is good practice." As part of that, Mason wanted to be sure to dress appropriately and, OF COURSE, he'd outgrown his previous set of dress pants.

It's been a good start to the year for Mason, actually, as we got a notice from the school a couple of days ago to inform us that he will be letting in Academics. I have no idea of letter jackets are still a thing, but we're totally getting him a jacket because BABY NERD LETTERED IN ACADEMICS.

I think the closest I got to something like this during my high school years was drama? I'm not sure you _could_ letter in drama, but I nearly won a school/drama club award for... well, basically participation, but it was more: you've been in x many plays, done x amount of stage hand work, etc.  The thing I remember about that is being DEEPLY BITTER about the award going to someone else because there was accounting for regional plays/theater done outside of school. So, I wasn't in the spring musical two separate years because I was performing with adults at the Community Theater in downtown LaCrosse.  

There's not a lot I remember about high school, but that feeling stuck with me.

The other big Mason news is that he's decided to rearrange his room and so we moved out one of the big bookcases in order to make room for an oak desk we found (on his request) through the neighborhood group.  He very SPECIFICALLY wanted a solid wood, antique desk of some sort. We'd been thinking we might luck out at an estate sale, but Shawn just happened to surf through our neighborhood group and found a guy offering his son's old desk with the promise of "free delivery." Given the size of our car, we were like, "SOLD!" He probably would have helped us wrestle it up two flights of stairs, but it's currently parked in our foyer waiting for Mason to finish getting his room ready.  And... for someone with muscles to volunteer to help us. Shawn would do it, but she shouldn't. The will is there, but her back is not strong enough. But, once all the various Jewish holidays are over, we've got a call out to our friend Sean M. Murphy, who has promised to be our "dude." We have often used Murphy in this function. He's the one who helped Mason pick out a good razor for his face, so... Murphy has long been our substitute "man around the house."

Ah, the trials of being a non-traditional family, eh?  :-)

Right, so I'd better go get dressed for work.

 I don't think I'd have a single title to report if last night wasn't a REALLY SLOW shift at the Maplewood Library.  

Perhaps you've heard, Minneapolis/St. Paul and surrounds have been bombarded with snow. 6-8 inches, easily. Yesterday, when I was driving around the visibility wasn't EXACTLY whiteout conditions, but the fourth or so block way from wherever I was, was that hazy blur you get in those kinds of snow storms.

So, of course, the library needed me to come in at 5 pm.

In a surprise to no one (but probably library administration) hardly anyone wanted to be out at the library last night.  Well, that's not entirely true. While I was shelving books in the adult comic book/manga section, I overheard two gentlemen discussing where they were planning on sleeping after the library closed. Let's say, instead, last night wasn't a high book turnover night.  So, when it was my turn on the AMH (colloquially known at Maplewood as "the oven,") there was not much for me to do.  I even asked my supervisor if I should be doing something else and she looked at me somewhat askance and said, "Read a book."

So, I hunted around for a first volume of some manga or other. I ended up readed Sapuri / Suppli by Okazaki Mari. (Amusing note about the title, it's merely a 'translation' into the same sounds as spoken by an English speaker.  This sort of thing drove me crazy in Nana when I read it because the scanlators insisted on writing Reira when she specifically says she was named after Eric Campton's 'Leila.'  If you're translating everything else into English pronunciations just write her name Leila. It confused me because I'd have to stop every time her name came up to remind myself to say it "Leila" in my head. I've seen people do this with the name Alice, too. It's dumb, because the last thing you want a reader to have to do is break the pacing of the story for something that USELESS and easily remedied.)  At any rate, the book was okay. I had checked it out and returned it within an hour.

At any rate, the roads were pure ice and packed snow on the drive home at 9 pm.  That sucked (though not as much as having to figure out how to sleep somewhere in the rough.)  I saw two accidents on the way home.

Today, at least, we have bright sunshine. However, it's stupid-ass cold, 17 F / -8 C.  Tomorrow is supposedly the Twins' first home game... they play in an open-air stadium. I heard on NPR that they're hosing off the stadium seats (metal, btw) with hot water.  Fans (if they go) are going to be sitting on ice cubes.  

While I was at the library, I also picked up some novels to try.  I have no idea if I'll actually crack these either, but fingers crossed.

How about you?

I love living in the future. It's true that we don't hav personal jetpacks and the political landscape is some nightmare cross between 1984 and Handmaid's Tale, but I can talk to someone 7,000 miles away in real-time, via Google Hangouts.  Tell me that's not the most awesome thing!  

Yeah, so yesterday, I was able to spontaneously coordinate a chat with jiawen who is currently living in Taiwan.  It was her night time, my mid-morning.  It's really kind of amazing to think that I was able to sit on my sunporch and chat with her as though she were sitting right beside me instead of, almost literally, on the other side of the world.

I love technology.  

People who say that iThings and social media and tech are what's wrong with kids these days are full of crap.  There are downsides, of course, but I think the kinds of communities we can create vastly outweigh many of the other issues.

In completely different news, when I was making a quick grocery run with Mason after school, I got a call from my library schedule coordinator who asked if I could work at White Bear Lake today from 10 am to 2 pm. I really, really wanted to say 'no,' but, as you know, gentle reader, we're kind of strapped for cash at the moment, so I said 'yes.'  In a few minutes, I'm going to have to get up and do the dishes and get ready to go to work.  I worked last night, too, at the New Brighton branch.  I didn't mind that one so much because it was a super-short, three hour shift.  I was basically there to cover dinner breaks for people. New Brighton, when they're not being anal-retentive, can be a quiet, easy shift.  

Mason's been coming home at the usual time this past week. He's in the final push for his History Day project.  He's doing a documentary on the Kent State massacre.  It's been kind of a timely project, in a way, since he's been listening to news clips of college-age students shouting, "Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?" and I literally just heard a radio segment of the school safety walk-outs, where the high school-age kids were shouting, "Hey, hey, NRA! How many kids did you kill today?"

The more things change, eh?

Okay, well, as much as I'd like to continue to sit with the cat on my lap, I need to get up and get things in some semblance of order so that we don't all come home to a messy house.


P.S. Skipped Wednesday reading because I have finished nothing again this week, though I read a hundred pages or so of at least one non-fiction book.  

 ...and yet, I have to leave in about twenty minutes.

Normally, I would treat myself to a fancy latte at Claddaugh on a day like today, but we're out of money until payday for everything except necessities.  Mason's Chinese teacher (or, probably more likely, Washington's administrative office) decided to cash all the checks we've been slowly giving her over the last few months.  So, instead of a nice steady, planned _depletion_ of our account, a whole HUGE wad came out at once.  Luckily, Shawn had moved money over to cover Bearskin (our semi-annual trip to the BWCA) or we would have been in even bigger trouble. As it is, I have go without lattes for a few more days and watch what I spend. Not a crisis, just annoying.

Mason heads off to New York with his Chinese class on Monday, April 2.  The itinerary that the Chinese teacher has planned is... ambitious.  I hope they get to see everything.  I've only been to New York once (discounting stops at airports, heading overseas).  I was about Mason's age, and I won a trip there for some Peace speech project or other.  As Mason's Chinese teacher was talking about things they'd see in Manhattan, I had a huge wave of nostalgia.  I suddenly remembered our trip to the UN, for instance. Something I hadn't thought about for decades.  We were given a lot of freedom, too. I remember that after our group trip to Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty, three of us decided we wanted to walk back to the hotel, up Broadway.  Somehow, miraculously, we were allowed to do so, COMPLETELY by ourselves. It was probably my favorite part of that trip. We walked through Greenwich Village and Chinatown and all of that... I mean, some of it is a blur, and who knows what we missed that was "scheduled," but I think we were told it was fine since it was "free time" and most of the other kids were going to spend it prepping for speeches in the hotel. I did not advance.  The other things I remember about that trip was seeing "La Cage aux Follies" on Broadway and using my French to help a German couple that were locked out of their rooms....or maybe it was the other way around, and they helped us... (Anyway, the doors were tricky, you had to wiggle the key left, then right before it would go.)  The only language we had in common was French. It was probably the one time in my life language study was practically useful.

I hope Mason has a good a time in New York as I did. I hope he gets more opportunities than I did to go BACK.

It was funny, speaking both of money and traveling, Mason was telling us about his reaction to a friend's story about how their brother and dad took off for a car show in Florida this weekend.  Mason told us, at first, he couldn't even entirely comprehend how a trip like that could happen spontaneously.  He said, "I opened my mouth to say, 'What? How do you even?' and then I remembered other people don't have to plan for months in advance. They just BUY plane tickets and go places whenever they want."

Yeah.

And, yet, if next year, Mason decides he wants to go to China with his Chinese class, he has the money saved to do it.  We started an account for him when he was very small with all the little bits of money that Shawn's dad would slip us for "something nice for Mason." We've used that money for things like his changing table when he was an infant, but Shawn's dad was totally the sort that would slip both Shawn and I twenties throughout a weekend and we'd come home with a couple hundred dollars, discovered amongst our things.  So, we saved it all.  Maybe if Shawn's dad had lived longer, it would be a college fund.  As it stands, it's enough for a trip to China.

But, the Chinese teacher is a little... laissez faire? So, part of this New York trip is for Mason to decide if traveling with her is something he's comfortable with.  It's one thing to go to New York; another to go to China.  For myself, I'd go.  I mean, my old French teacher was a LOT laissez faire, and I don't regret a second of our high school trip to France.  That's another trip where, even though I've forgotten 9/10th of high school, I still remember vividly.  It also changed the way I travel, but that's another story, perhaps.  (We had an insane itinerary.  If it was the ONLY trip I ever made overseas, it would have probably been my preference... maybe? But.. as it was, I still have nightmares of being told I have an HOUR to spend at the Louvre.)

Right, okay. That's the time. I need to head out.  See you all on the flip side.