I Think My Bathroom Is Trying to Destroy Me

Hey, Friends.

Did you have a good day yesterday? Good, good.

I did, too.  In fact it was quite lovely until last night. I made the mistake of thinking a nice, relaxing shower before going to bed was just what I needed.

I was so, so wrong.

I'm pretty sure my bathroom is trying to destroy me.  I won't go so far as to call it the Vortex of Doom, but it's pretty close.

Let's examine the evidence, shall we?  Awesome.

First, it was the middle of the night repair job. Not fun, but I managed to handle it.  Still a bit proud of my latent plumbing skills on that one.

Then it was the sizzling sink.  I maintain that the sink should never make noises like that.

Then it was the spiders.  The giant, creepy, ninja-spiders that will totally show up as an unwanted guest when you are in the shower.  I really hate spiders.  I cannot stress that enough. And yes, I am still paranoid that another one will show up and try to attack me.

Last night the bathroom apparently decided that sleep deprivation would be a fun new twist to bring to its little torture game.  Why yes, I am talking about my bathroom as if it is a person.  I'm starting to believe that the room has a mind of it's own, and it is filled with evil intent.  It would explain why the previous owner of the house left a couple of rosaries hanging in the basement.

I wish I was kidding.  And yes, I left them right where they were.

So, I decided to take a nice, hot, relaxing shower last night before bed.  It seemed like a great idea. Just ease on into the work week on a good note.  Totally normal, right Friends?

The bathroom thought otherwise.  

I got out and was in my pjs, ready to toddle on off to bed, and I could not get the door to open. Apparently the bathroom decided that we had not spent enough quality time together that evening, and it wanted to prolong my stay a bit.

At first I thought maybe the door knob was just slippery, and maybe  I hadn't really turned it enough. I dried off the knob and gave it another try.  No dice.

What the heck?  This has never happened before.  The door doesn't even have a lock, so it's not like I accidentally locked myself in.

I tried giving it a harder tug.  Nothing.  It creaked, but that was about it.

What the heck is wrong with the door?!

Have I mentioned that I live alone, Friends?  Yeah.  There is no use even attempting to pound on the door and call for help.  Only the two cats would hear me, and of the two only Jazz-kitty would actually show any interest in the noise.  Unless she has gained some dazzling physical and mental prowess that has heretofore gone unnoticed -- she is not going to be much help.  

I decided that the door must have swollen up from the humidity in the bathroom.  That's the only thing I can come up with.  Maybe there was enough difference in the temperature and humidity between the bathroom and the rest of the house that it just stuck shut.

I couldn't call anyone.  For a start, my phone was not in the bathroom with me.  Kind of kills the whole idea right off the bat.  Even if it was, who the heck was I going to call?  My parents?  They are the only ones with a spare key to even get into my house.  It was literally midnight by this point. Even if I had my phone I wouldn't call them at that hour unless it was a dire emergency.

Do you know how long I was trapped in my bathroom, Friends?  A little over an hour.

Do you know how boring it is to be trapped in your bathroom?  No phone.  No music.  No way to entertain yourself.  Just you in a steamy bathroom, randomly tugging on a door and praying that this will be the time that it opens.  

Why not climb out the window?  That's an excellent thought, Friends.  It would at least have given the window in the shower a purpose. 

 **Side note: why the heck do they always put the window in the shower right next to the shower head?  I mean, I'm all for letting in the natural light, but does it really have to be placed right where you are going to be standing naked in the shower?  It could at least be at the other end to pretend that privacy exists. My window opens onto my driveway, and my neighbor's house is like 15 feet away. We don't need to know that much about each other.  Ever.**

I digress.  I had a lot of time to contemplate the mysteries of the universe, as you can imagine.  Back to the point: climbing out the window would be useless as the doors and windows were all locked, and I did not bring my house keys into the shower with me.  Silly me. I did contemplate just opening the window, but it was cold out and I didn't want to get sick.  Everyone at work is already getting sick, and I did not want to weaken my defenses against whatever plague-like germs they have been spreading around.

I did briefly toy with the idea of trying to unscrew the hinges using my nail file.  MacGyver would totally be able to pull that shit off.  Of course, he probably never would have been trapped in his bathroom to begin with.  I decided that was way too much effort for the middle of the night.

Finally, mercifully, the door opened. I may never latch it all the way again.  At the very least I may start bringing my phone in with me so that I have a source of amusement if I should be stuck again.

And that is why I think my bathroom is trying to destroy me.  Just when I think nothing else could possibly go wrong in there, it does.

Oh well.  Gave me time to go through all of my nail polish and weed out the old ones.  Maybe it also acted as a giant full-body steam treatment.  Silver lining, I guess.

There's a Hole in the Wall

Hey Friends.

Let's start with the boring back story first, shall we?  Fantastic.

We had to move a fire extinguisher at work yesterday.  It was built into the wall in the Children's area near the activity wall.  Even though it was in a case with a lock on it, we couldn't actually keep it locked. If a fire were to break out it would be silly to have to find the key to be able to put it out. Needless to say, little patrons with small fingers found it intensely interesting.  Obviously, it had to be moved.

I knew maintenance had been doing some work over there, but since it is all the way across the building I hadn't really been paying attention to it.  It wasn't until a coworker told me it looked we cut a hole in the wall, changed our minds, and then patched it up that I wondered what the heck was going on.  Another coworker then explained what had happened.

Being a curious person, I had to see what exactly they were talking about.  This is what I found:

Very attractive.  Not noticeable at all.

We started discussing that we were really missing an opportunity to get creative by just patching it up and making it a boring old wall again.  Someone said we should have a Library Elf who lived in there, and we could make it his little house.  Another person said we should make it a cabinet of interesting things for little kids to play with or touch.  Both very sweet ideas which will never happen.  I took it in a different direction.

**Friends:  I feel the need to explain here that none of my following suggestions are to be taken seriously.  They are jokes.  Maybe not funny if you don't work in a library, but they are jokes. People misinterpret shit all of the time on the internet, so before anyone starts freaking out about child endangerment or the likes let me be very clear:  NOT SERIOUS.  JOKING!  I WOULD NEVER HURT OR ENDANGER A CHILD IN ANY WAY.  We clear?  Excellent.**

I thought they were missing an excellent opportunity for a way to control story time behavior. It could be a teaching tool.  Just think of the possibilities!

Idea #1:  For the child who cannot control their frustration/anger

"Jimmy.  Jimmy!  You cannot hit other children during story time!  That's it, young man.  Now you have to sit in the hole in the wall for the rest of story time and think about what you've done."

Idea #2:  To encourage parent participation

"I don't know, Jane.  I don't think your Mommy was really singing along today.  I'm pretty sure she was just lip-synching.  Sorry, kiddo.  Looks like you have to go in the hole.  Maybe Mommy will learn how to participate better by next week."

Idea #3:  For the over-zealous participants

"Bobby!  This is Toot & Scoot, not a demolition derby!  Smash into one more kid on purpose and it's off to the hole with you."

It would work for the older kids as well.  It might be a tight fit, but I think it would still be doable.

Idea #4:  For the kids who like to push the boundaries

"Look, Elena.  I know you know the rules about using the computers, but you choose to keep trying to skirt around them to stay on longer.  Keep it up and you're going in the wall.  You think Harry Potter had it rough?  His cupboard under the stairs was freaking cozy compared to what you'll find in the hole."

The beauty part is you wouldn't even have to do any of them -- just the threat should be enough to deter any problems.  Make that hole in the wall look creepy as hell and no one will ever want to be sent there.

Idea #5:  On a less traumatizing note, it could be made into a game.

Put a little door knob on it.  Every few days you switch what is behind the door when you open it:  it could be a picture, a toy, a book -- anything that would fit inside.  You make up a little bingo card and each square has an item that could potentially be behind the door.  The kids can pick up a card, and every time they come to the library they have to check what is behind the door.  They get a staff member to initial the correct square verifying that they really checked the door on the proper day. (There are a lot of cheaters out there.  Trust me.)  When they get a Bingo they get a prize.  Like a reward for coming to the library regularly.

What?  I'm full of all kinds of ideas, Friends.  I'm not an evil person.  My sense of humor just skews toward the dark side at times.  It was a long week.

It's all highly irrelevant, however.  Soon it will just be a boring yellow wall once again, although it did make that last hour of the work week a lot more amusing.  

Note:  None of the names used in the examples are actual specific patrons.  They just popped into my head as random names to use.  

Phone Notes Part III

Hey, Friends.

I've been neglecting you, I know.  I'm a terrible person.  I feel bad.  Promise.

Worse yet, this isn't even a real post.  I mean it is a post, but it really isn't because it is more phone notes -- drivel I saved in my phone with every intention of expanding on it here, but then I got too busy or distracted by something and didn't ever get around to doing anything with it.  If you been hanging around here for a while you know the drill.  If you are just finding your way here?  You can check out my earlier installments of blathering here and over here.

I wasn't really sure about doing yet another set of phone notes, but I've got to get this stuff off my phone.  The poor thing needs to be coddled and it's storage space needs to be respected.  We're trying to save the life of my iPhone, Friends.

So, without further ado, please enjoy the things I thought were amusing and/or interesting at one point, and then chose to forget about entirely.

1) When someone refers to a coworker as your "work husband": sometimes that is okay.  In certain cases you have to bite your tongue to keep from explaining -- in great detail -- why there is no way in hell that is true, and how you never want to hear a reference to said person being your "husband" in any way, shape, or form ever again.

2) I think there should be a television show set in a public library -- like The Office or Parks & Recreation. (If such a thing already exists, someone please point me to it!) It would need a snazzy theme song, though.  On more than one occasion I have found myself pondering the possibilities.  I'm not a composer myself, so it has to be an existing song.  My favorite of the moment is this one:

3) Just missed a call that my phone tells me came from Tonganoxie, Kansas.  To the best of my knowledge I don't know anyone from Tonganoxie, but I do like the name.  

4) The Christmas season brings many gifts.  Among them (depending on how you look at it) is the gift of learning which of your friends/family/associates have no idea of the difference between Merry, Marry, and Mary.

5) Have you ever been in the line at the grocery store, started reading the headlines on the scandal/gossip magazines, and felt like a loser?  Forget the truth or accuracy of said reporting, because a lot most of it is completely made-up crap.  (I really don't understand how some of these things haven't been sued into non-existence, but I digress.)  According to the headlines, this one celebrity has gotten divorced, started dating, and gotten pregnant in the same amount of time that I have been on two dates that went nowhere.  I seriously begin to question what is fundamentally wrong with me and have to remind myself that most of this shit isn't true. Plus, it must totally suck if you are the person this stuff is being written about.  How must the people in those headlines feel when they are waiting in line at the grocery store?

6) Just overheard a coworker tell someone that they should refer all the "Big, scary people with lots of tattoos" to me because "She's fine with it, and they seem to like her better." -- Honestly, this explains so much. I can't even begin to describe how much sense this makes of my life at work.

7)    

I have issues sending flowers to Texas.  Click here if you want the story.

I think I have wasted enough of your time now, Friends.  I'm honestly kind of surprised if you made it this far. Thanks for reading...you know, assuming you still are at this point.