Ohemgee, y'all. I had several short yet hilarious mini posts I planned to combine in one. And coworker R said something so profoundly true and witty and fab that Oscar Wilde would have bowed in awe. And I was going to add it, with proper credit to R, to the other minis.
And then the first storytime of summer reading ended.
It's an hour later. The other librarians and I set up I don't know how many new library accounts, which is not a speedy process let me tell you. And then checked out mountains of books to those new cards. And checked in books from the families who already had library cards. And checked out more books to them. And explained the online registration/tracking for summer reading to everyone, including several callers. And almost everyone was super polite about the long wait because it gave them time to find even more nifty stuff to check out.
And then put away all of the books we'd checked in.
And now it's an hour later. Wait. I already said that. Too bad. Back spacing seems too difficult right now. Keep moving forward or die. Like a shark. A sweaty tired library shark.
God, I'd love to be on a beach right now.
Summer reading is great. It's the best way to combat learning slump for kids and adults. The public library year revolves around summer reading. Check out your what your local library offers, especially if you have kids you want to keep entertained and engaged over the next two months. The quality of the programs will astound you. The reading prizes will astound you. And remember how awesome it all was when it's over and the kids are back in school and the weather turns and suddenly there's a referendum on the ballot to cut public library funding or change how library boards are organized or give control of the library budget to another completely unrelated local politician.
Okay, when I started writing I didn't intend to go off on a political tangent. Kentucky has been cutting into public libraries over the last few years. Money was moved from libraries to emergency services. And, yes, emergency services need to be funded. 9-1-1 staff and systems need consistent funding, which is where the state sort of screwed up and why the politicians looked around for any other public service that could tap to cover what should have been a regular and absolute line in the budget. And then gave county Judge Executives oversight of their libraries' budgets. Because what do libraries need all of this money for, anyway?
This, y'all. Two dibrarians running storytime. Then add another librarian and a library staff person to add new accounts and update existing accounts and check in and check out and collect fines and balance the till and prepare the bank deposit and help parents and grandparents sign kids up for summer reading and answer questions about summer reading and answer questions about other programs and reset PINs so people can access ebooks and digital audiobooks and help teens print whatever they need to print to take the ACT (thank God I took that back in the old fill-in-the-circle-completely-with-a-number-2-pencil-and-erase-any-stray-marks days) and disinfect the keyboards and the mouses and the counters over and over and over . . . while the director updates the budget and prepares all of the documentation for the library board and submits the we've-had-the-money-for-three-months-this-is-what-we've-done-so-far grant review and the assistant director/technology librarian replaces a damaged computer awaiting backordered parts with a (hopefully) working computer and installs all of the usual programs and the print system program and required filters and extra firewalls and possibly a virtual cerberus guard dog.
All before noon.
p.s. I want to embed a very very short clip from The Avengers where Cap, Hawkeye, and Black Widow commandeer a fighter plane and a crewman questions them and Cap, worn out from a pretty rough morning, says, "Son . . . just don't," except the embedding from YouTube doesn't look right so I'll just describe it and not to be rude or anything but if you don't know exactly the moment in the film I mean why are you even here?
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