Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.

-Oprah Winfrey

Christmas Past

When children are very small they do not remember things that happen from year to year too well. Each Christmas is a new experience to them for at least the first four or five years of their lives. I had forgotten this fact until my niece came over to my house at Christmas when she was three-years-old. At the time her mother was a Jehovah's Witness which, as you know, meant my sister did not celebrate Christmas.

When my niece first saw my tree that year she stopped dead in her tracks and just stared at it in wonder. It was seven feet tall and must have seem huge to her. From her point of view it must have been an impressive tree what with all the tinsel, ornaments, and colored lights I had put on it. She stood in front of it with her head tilted back and eyes opened wide. She stayed where she was for a minute and then noticed the nativity scene I had set-up under the tree and squatted down to examine Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, the donkey, the lamb, the shepherd carrying the baby lamb, and the three wise men. Those must have been more interesting than the tree because she studied them all very carefully.

After a bit she turned her head to look up at me and then turned back to the figurines. Without taking her eyes off the small grouping under the tree she slowly got up and started inching backward toward me. When her back pressed against my leg she reached her hand around to grab my pant leg and asked, "Aunt Colleen, can I play with your Jehovah toys?"

Happy Holiday

Happy holiday, happy holiday
While the merry bells keep ringing
May your ev'ry wish come true

Happy holiday, happy holiday
May the calendar keep bringing
Happy holidays to you


Guess what I got for Christmas?




Hint: Go to Friday, December 16th, and click on link.

On The First Day Of Christmas...

It is also the begining of Chanukah.

Happy Chanukah

I have a little dreidel
I made it out of clay
And when it's dry and ready
Then, dreidel I shall play.

Oh, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel
I made it out of clay
Oh, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel
Now dreidel we shall play.

It has a lovely body
With legs so short and thin
And when it gets all tired
It drops and then I win.

My dreidel is so playful
It loves to dance and spin
A happy game of dreidel

Come play, now let's begin.
I made it out of clay
And when it's dry and ready
Then, dreidel I shall play.

Oh, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel
I made it out of clay
Oh, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel
Now dreidel we shall play.

It has a lovely body
With legs so short and thin
And when it gets all tired
It drops and then I win

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yule-tide gay
From now on
our troubles will be miles away

Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more

Through the years
We all will be together
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself
A merry little Christmas now

In Hopes That Saint Nicholas Soon Will Be Here

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Time And Tide...

wait for no man.
-English proverb

Or woman. I just realized that Tuesday, December 20th was the third anniversary of my blog. ("I've be doing this that long?") Today I scanned my archives and am surprised my the number of different things I wrote about over these last three years; politics, news, weather, family, friends, people, growing up in Denver, memes, vacations, books, and my trip to Spain. There is more variety there than I thought. I also discovered a few things I wrote about that I did not finish or did not update in future posts. I owe you stories about:

1. How my dog Duke is settling in and what Emma has to do with it.
2. The rest of "All My Children Do The Best They Can."
3. What happened to the dogs that were living across the alley from me.
4. And one more angel story.
5. What happened to Lisa and rest of her Hurricane Katrina story.*

I will try to get these done after the holidays.

* Later Addition

Why I Won't Be Letting Santa Inside My House This Year

He scares me.

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE

Free Day

I am doing my pre-Christmas house cleaning today. So no real post just pictures and a question. When did U.S. postage stamps start looking like stickers for a kid's sticker book?


(Left to right, top to bottom: 1953 Studebaker Starliner, 1955 Ford Thunderbird, 1954 Kaiser Darrin, 1953 Chevrolet Corvette, 1955 Ford Thunderbird, 1952 Nash Healey, 1953 Chevrolet Corvette, 1953 Studebaker Starliner, and large 1953 Chevrolet Corvette)

Note:Go to the Postal Service site and click on any one of the stamps to see a larger photo.

It's Meme Time

What time did you get up this morning?

Seven o'clock, when the morning siren went off. No, when the dogs next door started barking when the morning siren went off.

Diamonds or pearls?

I know diamonds are a girl's best friend but after reading an article in National Geographic about how diamonds are mined, I'll say pearls.

What was the last film you saw at the cinema?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

What is your favourite TV show?

I guess that would be the ones I record; Cold Case, CSI, and ER.

What do you usually have for breakfast?

Food

Favourite cuisine?

Food

What food do you dislike?

Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, yuck!

What is your favourite CD at the moment?

Holiday Legends: Merry Christmas, Baby

Morning or night person?

Well, I love early morning but I hate getting up for it. What does that tell you?

Favourite sandwich?

Tuna salad on toast with lettuce, tomato, avocado, and mayo.

What characteristic do you despise?

In what, a car? If so, the way they pollute.

Favourite item of clothing?

Depends on the weather. Right now it is my goosedown parka.

If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would it be?

Australia

What colour is your bathroom?

White with white accents.

Favourite brand of clothing?

I don't have one but I always buy Levi jeans.

Where would you retire to?

My plan is to travel the world living in a different major city each year.

What was your most memorable birthday?

Either the year I got a tattoo or the year I jumped out of an airplane.

Favourite sport to watch?

American football when they are playing outside and it is either snowing or raining or very windy or very cold. I like those guys to earn their money.

When is your birthday?

June 9th.

What is your shoe size?

A seven in America and a 37 1/2 in Europe.

Pets?

No, thank you, I already have two.

Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with us?

Can't think of anything right now.

What did you want to be when you were little?

Bigger. I was the smallest kid in all my classes until I reached junior high school.

What is your favourite flower?

The sunflower.

What date on the calendar you are looking forward to?

January 20th, 2009, when Bush will no longer be president.

One word to describe the person who you snaffled this from?

Witchy.

Do Not Seek Death

Death will find you.
-Dag Hammarskjold

Today is the anniversary of my father's death. I would not be thinking about it if my younger sister had not called yesterday and asked me what date our father had died. I could not remember and said it had to be sometime soon because I did remember that his body had been found on our older sister's birthday.

My father spent his life running away from things. He ran away from home and joined the Navy at sixteen. He ran away (went AWOL) many, many times while in the Navy. He ran away from his first wife. He ran away from is second wife, my mother. He ran away from us, his children. He ran away from his third family after it became apparent that he had never divorced my mother before remarrying again. Then finally, at the age of 46, he ran away from life.

That was not his first attempt at suicide, just the last. My first memory is linked to one of his attempts. It's not a conscious memory and I did not know it was there until my sister told me this story that our mother had told her.

When my mother was pregnant with my brother she and my father were living with my father's mother. One day my father was arguing with his mother and lost it. He struck both her and my mother and then forced them out of the house. My mother managed to grab my older sister and me on the way out. She and my grandmother stood outside the house listening to the sound of glass breaking. Over my grandmother's objections my mother went to the house next door and called the police. When the police arrived and entered the house they found it empty with every mirror broken. It seems my father had put his fist through them all before running away. They started searching for my father and found him lying in a nearby field. He had tried to kill himself.

As my sister told me this story I could feel my body tense up and my heart beat faster. I felt light headed and a sense of dread, anxiety, sorrow, and confusion washed over me. I thought, "Oh, God, I remember this," but the memory wasn't in my brain. It was in my body. I tried to think how old I would have been when this happened and, depending on how far alone my mother was in her pregnancy, I realized I could not have been more than eighteen-months-old.

There were many attempts after that but only a few stick in my memory. I remember walking home from school one day at the age of ten and seeing an ambulance parked in front of my house. The ambulance attendants were carrying a gurney with my father on it down the front steps. I knew in an instant what was happening and slowed down to a crawl, hoping my father and the ambulance would be gone before I reached home. The next memory was three years later. My father decide to try and kill himself while my mother was in the hospital having surgery. I remember saying to the policeman putting my brother, sisters, and me into a squadcar to take us to a foster home, "No, you don't understand. I can take care of them." I was the one who did not understand. There was no way that they were going to leave three children ages eleven, eight, and two in the care of their thirteen-year-old sister.

In all the attempts before the last one my father always made sure someone was around to find him before it was to late. On the day he died he checked into a room with a kitchenette in a cheap motel somewhere in Los Angeles, far away from his home near Seattle, Washington. Inside that room he got drunk, took pills, and turned on the oven gas. His body was found two days later.

When I heard my father was dead I said,"Good. He can't hurt anyone, including himself, any more," but now, I feel sorry for the poor son-of-a-bitch. Nobody deserves to die the way he did- spiritually lost, forgotten, and all alone.

Books I Have Read More Than Once (7)

Cherry Ames Nursing series by Helen Wells and Julie Tatham

I remember going to the Goodwill store that used to be in an old warehouse on the corner of Blake Street and Park Avenue in lower downtown Denver with my mother to shop. One day I found a book with the title, Cherry Ames Senior Nurse. On the title page were the words:

This book, while produced under wartime conditions, in full compliance with government regulations for the conservation of paper and other essential materials, is COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED

The pages were yellow and the book had the musty, dirty smell that only very old books get but I decided I wanted to read it and asked my mother if she would buy it for me. Since it was only a quarter she said yes.

When I finished reading the book I knew I wanted to read the other books in the series. I was interested in medicine and the archaic world that Cherry lived in fascinated me. I read most of the Cherry Ames books; some were good, some were just so-so. It wasn't until later that I found out that the ones I found to be so-so were written by Julie Tatham.

I used the cover from Cherry Ames Department Store Nurse here because it is a good example of what I mean about the archaic world Cherry lives in. What department store has a nurse on duty these days? What nurse would be caught dead in that uniform today? You just know she is wearing white stockings and shoes with it.

When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me
-Jenny Joseph

I don't know whether or not you have heard of the poem When I Am Old, but a lot of woman have and it has touched them deeply. The poem is one woman's musings about how she will live her life when she is old and has reached the "I don't give a damn, I'm doing what I want" stage of her life. This poem has struck a cord with so many women over the age of 50 that a club called The Redhat Society (aka Red Hatters) has been formed with chapters all over the world.

My dog Kate is old. In people years she is about 65 and when I look closely at her face I can see that the white fur of age on her muzzle is creeping up her cheeks and getting closer to her eyes. She is slightly deaf and her eyes are starting to cloud over with the beginning signs of cataracts. She has a hard time getting to her feet after hunting hard and wakes up kind of stiff each morning. She moves a little slower now and her favorite pass time when not hunting is lying on an old pink and purple comforter just inside the garage door watching the squirrels run up and down the telephone pole that stands just on the other side of the alley wall.

She also seems not to listen very well anymore and at first I thought it was because of her slight hearing loss. One day on a walk she found something frozen and what she thought was tasty in an alley and rushed over to pick it up and chew on it. I made her drop it and come back to me and we continue on our way. The next day, on another walk, Kate was walking sedately beside as we headed back home when she suddenly took off down the sidewalk and ran into the street. I chased after her yelling at her to stop but she kept running and disappeared between two houses. I ran after her and just when I reached the first house she came racing back out and stopped in the middle of the street. She had something in her mouth and dropped part of it on the ground. It was that tasty frozen thing she had found in the alley the day before. I again told her no and made her spit out the rest and we continued home. I was shocked and surprised that she ran off like that, she had never done anything like this in her life.

Now I see the problem is her attitude. She has reached the "I don't give a damn, I'm doing what I want" stage of her life. Is there a doggie chapter of the Red Hatters?

Can You Skate?

"Oh, just a little." Clunk, clunk,clunk...CRASH, clunk,clunk,clunk.
-Sonja Henie in all her movies.

Writing about John Lennon's death got me thinking about that apartment my sister lived in on West 53th Street. I remember when she moved into the building it was not completely finished. Some of the apartments where still being worked on and all the hallway floors were cement because no carpeting had been put down yet. One Sunday we took a tour of the building and noticed that most of the unoccupied apartments on the upper floors were unlocked so we decided to check them out. We walked through a few looking at how they were laid-out, what the views were, how many bedrooms they had, and how big they were.

Note: This was the beginning of the Eighties and roller skating was very big. My sister and I both had skates and every once in a while we would put them on and skate over to Central Park. This was before inline skates. The ones we had were like figure skates with four skateboard wheels on them. The kind of skates that you lace up. The kind that always made your feet go numb if you laced them tight enough to feel secure in them.

While we were walking around we also noticed that all the apartments had nice, new wood floors. Nice, new, smooth wood floors. Nice, new, smooth wood floors in every empty room of every empty apartment. Nice, new, smooth wood floors that we knew would be great to skate on.

We went back to my sister's apartment, put our skates on, and then took the elevator to the top floor. We started at the south end of the building on each floor. We would put our ear to the door of an apartment and if we did not her any noise coming from inside we would quietly turn the doornob and push the door open. If the apartment was unoccupied, and most were, we skated inside and through all the rooms including the bathrooms. When we closed the door to the last apartment on a floor we would skate back to the elevator and ride down to the next floor. We skated our way through and down the building. When we reached the basement we skated around the laundry room. Then we rode the elevator back up to my sister's apartment and called it a day.

(Ah, to be young and stupid again.)

Books I Have Read More Than Once (6)

The First Third by Neal Cassady and On The Road by Jack Kerouac

The First Third, back cover:

Before he died in Mexico in 1968, just four days short of his 44th birthday, Neal Cassady had written the jacket blurb for this book: "Seldom has there been a story of a man so balled up. No doubt many reader will not believe the veracity of the author, but I assure these doubting Thomases that every incident, as such, is true..."

I read this book before I read On The Road. When I bought the book I thought of it as just a book about growing-up in Denver. I had no idea that Neal Cassady was a cult figure and one of the main characters in Jack Kerouac's book. Cassady spent most of his younger childhood in lower downtown Denver living with his father on Larimer Street; which at the time was Denver's skidrow. Most of that area had been torn down in a major urban renewal project when I was a kid but enough remained that I could follow young Neal as he made his mad dash through the streets of Denver.

On The Road, back cover:

"Jack Kerouac's On the Road was the Huckleberry Finn of the mid-twentieth century. Kerouac substituted the road for the river, the fast car for the slow raft, the hipster in search of freedom for the black slave in search of freedom....While Huck and Jim were floating down America's mile-wide aorta, while Sal Paradise and Dean Moriaarty were roaring across America's heart, they were helping to change the course of American prose."
-Aaron Latham, The New York Time Book Review

On The Road is a strange book for me. I've read it about four times but I can not give you a summary of the basic storyline because I don't really remember it. I can only repeat a line from the movie Animal House,"Road trip." For me Jack Kerouac is like Ernest Hemingway, someone I am told is a great writer but who's works mostly leave me cold. I think I keep rereading On The Road hoping that someday I will stumble across the reason why Kerouac is held in such reverence.

Books I Have Read More Than Once (5)

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

This is the story of the Battle of Gettysburg told from the viewpoints of Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet and some of the other men who fought there.

Stephen Crane once said that he wrote The Red Badge Of Courage because reading the cold history was not enough; he wanted to know what it was like to be there, what the weather was like, what men's faces looked like. In order to live it he had to write it. This book was written for much the same reason
-Michael Shaara

The cover of this copy of the book has a quote from General H. Norman Schwarzkopf:"The best and most realistic historical novel about war I have ever read." Well, I could not say if it is or is not the most realistic historical novel about war but I can say it is one of the most realistic historical novels I've ever read. Before reading this novel I read a few non-fiction books about the Battle of Gettysburg so I understood why this battle is considered the turning point of the American Civil War. It wasn't until after I read this book that I understood why one person has called that battle "America's Armageddon."

Books I Have Read More Than Once (4)

The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger and Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella

The Catcher In The Rye, back cover:

This is one of the most remarkable books published in years. It is the story of sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, who wants desperately to find himself, but who goes underground in New York for forth-eight hours when he is overwhelmed by the perplexing circumstances of his life.

I first read The Catcher In The Rye when I was in the eighth grade. I was so caught up in the book I started reading it at school. I would read it at lunch and squeeze a page or two in while waiting for each one of my seven classes to start. It's funny how a book changes as you change. When I first read the book at thirteen I thought Holden was so cool and mature. When I read it again in my twenties I thought he was an obnoxious, pretentious, little twerp. I reread it again about five years ago and felt only pity for this lost young man trying to find his way in an adult world that had let him down.


Shoeless Joe, front flap of book:

One summer evening while sitting on his porch, Ray hears the disembodied voice of a baseball announcer saying, "If you build it, he will come." "He," Ray somehow knows is Shoeless Joe Jackson, his hero, who was thrown out of profession baseball as a result of the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal. "It" is a baseball stadium, to be built in Ray's cornfield. He builds the stadium and anxiously awaits Shoeless Joe's appearance.

But Ray's adventures have just begun. Next, the voice tells him to "ease his pain," and he knows the pain is that of J.D. Salinger, the famous reclusive author.

Shoeless Joe is a beautifully written and descriptive book. Each time I read it I wonder just who the voice is talking about when he says, "If you build it, he will come." Is he talking about Shoeless Joe, J.D. Salinger, or someone else? When the voice tells Ray to "ease his pain," again I wonder, is he talking about Shoeless Joe, J.D. Salinger, or someone else? Is it possible the voice means Ray himself?

Beautiful, Beautiful Boy

Today is the 25th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. I had forgotten this until I visited Blue Witch's blog this morning. Her entry today is about John Lennon's death and tells where she was and how she felt when she heard he had been murdered. She then asked her readers if they remembered what they were doing on that day. I started to add my comment to the others when I realized it was turning into a novel so I decided to move my reply over here to my own blog.

I was going to school in New York and staying with my sister at her apartment on West 53 Street and 8th Avenue when John Lennon died. My sister's apartment was on the westside of the building facing 9th Avenue and up high. I remember that we were always hearing the wail of a police car or an ambulance siren whenever one raced to Roosevelt Hospital up on West 59th Street and 10 Avenue. In fact, the sound of sirens was such a part of living in the apartment, I quickly got to the point where the sound of them failed to register in my conscious mind.

I heard about the shooting from the television soon after John Lennon was shot and then, not much later, the news of his death. The news reports were being done from outside of Roosevelt Hospital and as I watched I knew I had probably heard the siren of the police car that brought him there but that, as usually, the sound of it had not gotten past my subconscious mind. I remember being shocked by the news that John Lennon had died but at the same time I felt removed from it.

The next day I heard that people were gathering in front of the Dakota apartment building and toyed with the idea of going up there myself but in the end decided not to because it didn't feel like the right thing to do. Years later I read an article on John Lennon's death and in it Yoko Ono said one of the hardest thing for her in the days after her husband's murder was hearing the sound of his voice floating up from the radios being played loudly by the people gathered in the street below.

In the early Eighties cable television was fairly new and some channels just transmitted blue screens with text scrolling down it. For sound they tapped into some radio station's broadcast. The night following Lennon's death I had the TV on one of those channels while reading and I heard the announcer say that the next song was being played in memory of John Lennon. That was the first time I ever heard Beautiful, Beautiful Boy and as Lennon's voice filled the room I felt an overwhelming sense of lost and sadness. At the end of the song I heard John Lennon whisper, "Goodnight, Sean, see you in the morning," and my heart shattered. At that moment I knew if John Lennon wasn't safe in this world then none of us were, and I broke down into deep heart wrenching sobs; grieving my loss, a little boy's loss, and the world's loss.

Close your eyes, have no fear,
The monster's gone, he's on the run,
And your daddy's here.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.

Before you go to sleep, say a little prayer,
Every day, in every way
It's getting better and better.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.

Out on the ocean, sailing away,
I can hardly wait to see you come of age
But I guess we'll both just have to be patient.
'Cause it's a long way to go,
A hard row to hoe,
Yes, it's a long way to go but in the meantime.

Before you cross the street, take my hand,
Life is what happens to you
While you're busy making other plans.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.

Before you go to sleep, say a little prayer,
Every day, in every way
It's getting better and better.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.
Darling, darling, darling, darling, Sean.

Good night, Sean,
See you in the morning.

Books I Have Read More Than Once (3)

Brian Wildsmith's Mother Goose: A collection of nursery rhymes

Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, What a good boy am I!

I don't know how many times I read this book to my niece when she was just a small fry. She enjoyed the rhymes and we both enjoyed the art work that Mr. Wildsmith created to illustrate them.

Book I Have Read More Than Once (2)

Seeing is Believing:How Hollywood taught us to stop worrying and love the Fifties by Peter Biskind

From back cover:

Reading Biskind's book is like putting on 3-D glasses: we see a different and exhilarating image of movies we thought we knew. A fascinating and incisive analysis of how the political and social ideas of the Eisenhower-Stevenson decade were reflected in movies audiences thought of as merely entertainments.
-Aljean Harmetz, author and Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times

That's just what I was going to write! I'm the kind of person who always watches DVD's twice, once to see the movie and a second time to see it with the audio commentary track on. Reading this book is like doing the same thing in print.

Books I've Read More Than Once

Time And Again:An illustrated novel by Jack Finney

Einstein's theory of time was that we are like people in a boat drifting along a winding river. We see the present, but the past and the future are hidden around the curves. Still, they are there. How would it be if one could step out of the boat and walk back around the bend to the past? This is what Si Morley does in Time and Again.

-front flap

This is my second copy of the book. I lost the first copy when I gave it to one of the pilots at Pioneer Airways. He was doing an overnight and realized he had nothing to read. Soon after this the airline went under and I never got the book back. I found this copy at the Old Algonquin Bookstore out on East Colfax. The author John Dunning owned the store and when I brought the book up to the counter to pay for it he told me that Time And Again was the only book by another author that he wished he had written himself.

I have always been fascinated by the concept of time travel. Finney's premise is that Einstein is right, we can step out of the boat and on to the shore. The only thing keeping us in the present is the billions of invisible threads of fact that bind us to "now." Cut these threads and time travel is possible. Simon Morley goes back to 1882 New York City and becomes involved in something he doesn't really understand until it's almost to late.

It's a wonderful book. Each time I read it I get lost in the past that Finney has recreated. It may be time to read it again.

Mekka Lekka Hi, Mekka Hiney Ho

-Jambi, the Genie on Pee-wee's Playhouse.

This has been a long, long week. Driving home from Denver was nerve racking because of the high winds. When we stopped at Limon, Co to walk the dogs my husband overheard some truckers say they thought the highway was going to be closed again because it was getting too dangerous to drive. They were wrong. Even though the trip home took a lot longer because of the winds we made it safely.

When we did reach town we found very little snow but signs that a storm had been through the area. The most interesting aftermath was the four inch wide snow/ice stripe down the northside of any telephone pole, street light, or tree that was in the direct path of the 30 to 50 mile-an-hour winds. We also learned that at least 200 people where stranded in town for the two days that the highways were closed. They put them up in the high school gym and in homes throughout town. The storm closed our schools and most business but the grocery store was opened so people could get food and the movie theater ran the movie Chicken Little to give people something to do while they waited for the highway to open.

Yesterday I worked all day at the library and had one of those "woooo" moments. A woman walked in and handed me one of our children's book and ask if it was over due. I flipped it open and saw it was stamped December 13th and told her this, wondering why she even asked. Looking kind of confused she said fine and then walked away. I closed the book and glanced down at the cover as I started to toss it into the book drop and froze with the book in my hand.

Last year, right after my brother-in-law's parents were killed, I told the story of opening a children's book and seeing the name of my brother-in-law's mother typed inside. Yesterday the same thing happened, only her name (really the author's name) was written across the front of the book. You may think this is not too strange since I do work at a library and I do check books in and out and you would be right except for two things. First, I am a substitute librarian and only work about 30 days spread though out the year. Second, we have about 500 children's books and most of those books are checked-out on Tuesdays and Thursdays during Story Hour. The way the four and five year olds pick out their books is to run over to stacks and just grab two book from somewhere off the shelves and then bring them over to the counter to be stamped. All the books checked out on Story Hour day usually come back in the following Tuesday or Thursday. So the chances of me being there when a book with my sister's mother-in-law's name on it is checked out or in are very slim. Maybe she was just saying hello.

Oh, and about Jambi the Genie- I had a disturbing dream the other night that I cannot remember much of except that Jambi was in it and protecting me. In the dream I did not realize it was Jambi until right before I woke up because, unlike in the show, he had a body and was not just a head in a box. I wonder what the heck that was all about.