Saturday, October 15, 2011

This week at the library; or, This is fall??

It was 80+ on Sunday. My dahlias are blooming vigorously. I am annoyed. I do not like heat! Everything should be dead by now! I should not be sneezing!

Monday was Monday was Monday. Another staff meeting and then swinging around town to deliver flyers. Angela drove, I jumped in and out of the car.

Tuesday. I've been worrying on and off about whether making sharks' teeth necklaces will work. I advertised it before I'd actually tested it (always a bad idea, but it took me a while to get to the knitting group, where the woman who donated the sharks' teeth was going to show me how to make them into necklaces). So I had cardboard boxes in addition, which they could paint and glue shells to. Then I worried that they wouldn't dry fast enough and not enough people will come....I seem to be worrying a lot these days. Maybe I need more sleep? Four kids, 2 parents, and one younger sibling ended up hanging out. The sharks' teeth necklaces were too hard, but they loved the shell boxes - and a bunch of older kids wandered in to look at the sharks' teeth before the program. I feel like I've killed this program by taking it to twice a month - who can remember 2nd and 4th Tuesdays? But I am getting different kids, and they are checking out books. Is an average of 5 kids enough to justify the program? I don't know.

Wednesday was a loooooong day. I had a big group for Preschool Interactive, and ended up throwing in a couple extra stories, Fuddles by Vischer and Is everyone ready for fun? by Jan Thomas. Chick 'n' Pug didn't go over well, too subtle for this age group, I'll need to trade that one out. Jan Thomas was a big hit, as always. I had lots of new people!

My first visit from Lakeland - that's our county's special education school. Only 8 kids and they were amazing! This is a new group for me, and I tried to do things a little differently, using what teachers and friends have said and some common sense. We did a short tour, then read I'm a Shark and Pete the Cat I love my white shoes, then a second part of the tour, and one last story, Jan Thomas' Is everyone ready for fun? the whole thing was about 25 minutes and my only worry is that I talked too fast, but I can work on that - they're coming back every month.

Next Wednesday program was Messy Art Club, fingerpaint today! This will, I think, be the last time I do fingerpaint for Messy Art Club indoors. It's getting increasingly more time-consuming to clean up - I think because I have such a wider range of ages coming, or maybe it was just the particularly collection of kids today, or maybe I should have distributed the paint differently...anyways, it took me about an hour to clean up, paint got spilled on the rug, I had to mop the kitchen, and we're sticking to glue from now on.

Final Wednesday program was a visit from some cub scouts. I was awaiting this in trepidation, since I've had some very...rough visits, but this group was good. It helped that a couple kids were regular library visitors. I took them on a long tour, showed them all the staff areas, and read The Book that eats people and I'm a shark.

Bedtime! In case you're wondering how all this fit in, I got to work at 9:30 and got home at 7:30. Phew.

Thursday. Went in to work an hour late, because of marathon day yesterday. Computers all down. Kindergarten class couldn't come b/c of rain, so I went over to the school and did a storytime. Technology, it hates us.

Friday. Entire system still down, piles of books and movies in the back waiting to be checked in, lists of requested holds and renewals on paper, have to make guest passes for every single person who wants to use a computer. Argh!

Saturday. I went in a couple hours extra because the system came back online and it was CRAZY. What a week!

I've loaded more flannels!

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