An hour at the Reference Desk

It was a wholly unexpected hour due to Headache Woman's upstairs neighbor's toilet springing a leak. So once again we're leaping around because of her psychoses....nothing unusual there.

The first clue that this hour would be stranger than normal is the woman asking for more time on the Internet; she is told we only do that for people doing job applications. Is she doing that? "OK, sure!" she says.

Next, the fellow who smacked into the concrete outside the building a couple of weeks ago comes past and says to me, "There's never a dull moment at the library." At that particular moment, I'm glazing over with repetitive-task hypnosis (deleting fields in Excel) so I just smile and agree with him. He's almost not bruised anymore; just some yellowish tint and what he says is nerve damage.

Not too long after that comment I notice the Job Woman talking to herself, rather as if she is on a cell phone. Except she couldn't be--she's wearing earmuffs. And no one is sitting next to her. I clearly hear her tell Whoever-It-Is to "go to hell" and "I'll see you in court." OOOO-kay then.

I walk past to see if there really is someone there for her to talk to. Nope. There is, however, a cop in the building. Apparently someone in the parking lot was hit while backing out of her parking spot. The car that hit her left. So she wanted to file a police report. And the police officer is now trying to figure out our CATV so see if he can enlarge the vehicle's license plate number. I'm no help here.

I return to the Reference Desk. The newest page appears and asks me for more shelves (she's shifting the nonfiction). So we commence scouring storage areas for shelves. The director doesn't know exactly where to look either. We find a lot of bookends (probably 6 dozen), but no shelves in the first storeroom.

As I pass the circulation area they wave me down. I have a call from school: Sparky has a stomache-ache. No fever, just cramps. Conveniently, he's missing Language Arts, and once I pass along the news to Beast he reminds me that Sparky has to do some after-school detention for the Lang. Arts teacher today and tomorrow. A-ha.

Back to searching for shelves. We find them...buried under 70 pounds of other shelving pieces. I'll ask the janitor to dig out a few for tomorrow.

When I can finally call the school back and talk to Sparky, I tell him that I will come get him in a half an hour, but then we're going straight home: NO ANIME CLUB.

I think we can safely expect a miracle-cure. I am the meanest mom in the world. Yeppers.

All this in one hour. The guy was right: dull moments should be treasured!

Update, 3:00: Sparky is back in class. {{smirk}}