This week at the library; or, sudden alarms and excursions

Monday

• Mostly quiet morning (except for the guy who ripped up one of our magazines and threw it across the room and the repeated theft of newspapers. Argh! Someday we will catch you evil newspaper sports section thief!) Good thing too, because in the afternoon...
• We had a staff meeting, where we discussed among other things our dip in circulation, not huge but we want it to grow not shrink, potential parking problems - one of our streets is having construction this summer, and other thrilling items.
• I had stained glass art for Make it and Take it - really just melted crayons. Note to self - must purchase additional pencil sharpeners before doing this again! The couple boys who came tried it once and then left. The girls were more enthusiastic, but didn't like having to wait for the pencil sharpeners. And I ran out of wax paper, but we were practically done by then anyhow.
• Then I raced home for dinner and did some dishes and sewed a few strips on my quilt and dug through the pile of picture books I had checked out from the library then came back again for storytime - poor Tiny Tots got stuck with me again (poor Miss Pattie was at a funeral)! I am so *yawn* not an evening person, especially after I've been at work all day!
• We had a mixed group of ages, as usual, but they were really, really wiggly. I had a huge pile of picture books checked out that I was looking at, so I grabbed a couple at random. First we did Jim Gill's "Jump up turn around" which went well, except they didn't get the holding your breath part, so I left that off the second time. Then we read Ernest the moose who doesn't fit by Catherine Rayner, then we all stood up and did Clap your hands by Lorinda Cauley. I have GOT to buy that one! Pandemonium ensued and a crazy good time was had by all. I read finished up with Leonid Gore's Worms for Lunch but only one and a half 3 year olds were paying attention by then. Afterwards we made butterfly puppets, just used markers and crayons on die cut butterflies and taped them to sticks.
• And I went home to bed. Pheeeewwwww.

Tuesday

• I was dreamily rooting through the pile of papers on my desk around 11:30 when one of our circ staff stuck their head back and said "were you expecting a school visit? because we can see a line of kids coming up the side of the building". My mind instantly leapt to the third grade classes with whom I am trying to negotiate visits and I went into UNEXPECTED VISIT OF 50 THIRD GRADERS panic mode. My aide started whipping out die cut butterfly masks and I dived into our program room to clean up from storytime and put out markers, crayons, popsicle sticks, and tape.
• Then circ staff updated me "hey, they're all little kids". Wha...?? I talked to Miss Pattie about Headstart visiting regularly, but I hadn't expected them 20 minutes later and..."hey, they're all going across the hall into the community room."
• Turns out, Miss Pattie was having a little celebration for Week of the Young Child. Since I had butterfly masks out anyways, they came over afterwards and had a little storytime and made masks. And there were only 18 of them. Oh well. I was prepared for the worst though!
• Oh, and we had Wii gaming. And I popped over to an after school group a local church has set up in an old storefront. I wanted to see what it was before I sent any kids over. Looks pretty good - definitely a destination for our aimless migrators.

Wednesday

• Our messy art project was "string painting" which I kind of expanded to be "painting without paintbrushes". Some of the kids liked the mess, some of the parents couldn't resist making guidelines for the art experience, and some of the kids freaked out without something definite. We had yarn, feathers, various shapes and sizes of popsicle sticks, and straws. I should have put the scissors somewhere else b/c parents and kids got hung up on using the scissors to make more definite shapes for their art. Some of the kids figured out how to make a paintbrush out of a straw and feathers, which was cool, but not really the point. I was hoping to get more patterns and textures, but it didn't work out that way.
• Pattie brought over the eggs and incubators that evening. We talked about raising eggs earlier this year and now they're here! Not something I've ever done and I admit to being rather taken aback at how often you have to turn the dang things over. I was thinking, like, once a day maybe? But no....

Thursday

• A volunteer from the Ice Age Trail came to do a presentation at storytime and the kids were amazingly attentive! They really loved looking at all her camping and hiking things and one small boy was completely in love with her compass - and he actually KNEW WHAT IT WAS. How many 4 year old boys, when shown a compass, can say "that's a compass - it tells you where to go?" I was amazed. We only had time for one quick story by the time she was finished, so I just read Vipont's Elephant and the bad baby since the theme was elephants. I had elephants cut out of paper and they decorated them with crayons and markers and then attached clothespins to the feet so they stood up, which was a great hit.
• I had a youth services meeting and a couple hours on the desk and lots of annoying and frustrating things which I can't talk about also happened today, but happily I have Friday off so I am going to try to empty my brain of all work thoughts and just concentrate on cleaning....

Oh, and annoying and frustrating things I CAN talk about would include my realization that someone has STOLEN EVERY DANG TITLE in John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice series. Some of them shortly after they were put on the shelf. I am so.... *grinds teeth*. Argh! What's the point of squeezing and scrimping and saving my budget and buying high circulating items if the dang kids just STEAL THEM? And I didn't even have the whole series yet! I was working on it! Somebody else wanted to read those you little twits! When we get security cameras we are going to be glued to those suckers and we are going to catch the thieves and and and...go library ninja on them or something! Ban them for life!