No One Gets Out Alive

My sister has done her own blog about grief, sorrow, losing someone close to you. I just read it, and it brought a burning lump into my throat and nasty, stinging tears into my eyes. But it doesn't bring me any closer to really grappling with it myself, or writing anything emotional (as opposed to matter-of-fact), or really even acknowledging it.

Our grandmother, our Mawga is not well. It's been a long time since I gave up on the idea of her getting better, the pain in her knees going away, of a miraculous recovery restoring her to her former, more energetic, mobile self. At 80-something, you just don't get better. I accept that. But what I haven't accepted, what I don't really like to think about, is her getting worse.

But my Mawga, my grandmother, my first friend in life, is getting worse.

When I was still very, very young--six, seven, eight, nine, ten--I would get very scared of Mawga dying, especially in her sleep. Before falling asleep at night, I would say to her "See you in the morning!" and wait for her to say yes, she would, as if somehow, this mundane exchange would make it true. Sometimes I would cry myself to sleep at night, thinking about Mawga not being there. Sometimes, I would have dreams where she had died, and in my dreams, I would sense the finality, the hollowness of a world with no Mawga.

If, at six, I could know that Mawga would be in my life for many, many years, I imagine my anxieties and premature grief would have been assauged. If I had known that I would have spent so many of those years growing away from Mawga, taking her for granted, and generally just being a shitty granddaughter, I imagine--I hope--that I probably would have wept with shame.

Mawga's not gone yet. She's very sick, I think, and a part of me--a tiny, little-girl part of me--is scared. The majority of me is detached, operating on an intellectual level, perhaps just acknowledging that none of us get out alive, but not yet feeling how that affects me.
I'll be going home this coming weekend to spend a tiny, tiny period of time with my grandparents, because every effing second must count, every second that I can spend with them should be the best moment I ever have. And I want as many as them as possible.

Work Hard, Play Hard

I've always loved that phrase..."Work hard, play hard." It makes me think that if you do that, you are living hard, taking on life whole-heartedly, going full-steam ahead. Not sure that's what I am doing, but I certainly had a week like that. Seven straight days of work, and then today was my first day off. One of my partners in crime, Kristin (code name: Kissy-fur) willingly aided and abetted in the play aspect of my week, and so today we ventured down to Orange County.

Highlights of our (mis)adventures included:

• Shopping at a discount mattress store, where we discussed the merits and drawbacks of sleigh beds. (Advantage? Very dignified. Disadvantage: very difficult to perform acts of sexual bondage without bedposts. Major disadvantage, but as I pointed out, one can circumvent this by using the specially-made restraints that run under the mattress. I'm not speaking from experience, people! I had friends in Bloomington that used 'em. REALLY. I actually am telling the truth here.)
• Eating lobster taquitos as we watched sailboats fly past on Newport Harbor
• Watching the sun set over the Pacific (well, actually, over Long Beach), and then watching several pods of porpoises gamboling through the waters)
• Visiting Madame Cleo a palm reader and listening to her inform me that I would change careers, be stuck in California a long time, have twins and a Cesarian, and be fulfilled by a very strong marriage to a tall, light-haired man
• Eating funnel cakes, and contemplating our future heart attacks

Now Kissy-fur and I are back in Corona; she's finishing some work, I'm tapping away on her laptop, we're both nursing a bottle of pinot grigio and listening to Dido in the background. It's not a bad end to the day. I worked hard all week, I played hard all day, and I am going to sleep hard tonight. Not in a sleigh bed, alas. :)

LSSI: Library Services That Suck Immensely

Just in case it isn't clear: yeah, LSSI, I'm talking 'bout you. These are fightin' words.

I don't do a lot of blogging about my profession. Possibly this stems from a desire to not sound too boring, or maybe it's just because I want to leave work at work. But this is something I feel very passionately about, and I want to do my bit to fight it, so there.

Outsourcing is a library issue, too. No, we don't send our libraries to India, but a lot of libraries are starting to outsource their services and management to outside agencies. One of the big ones is LSSI, Library Systems and Services, Inc., but that is really misleading, and I think LSSI is more accurately represented as Library Services that Suck Immensely.

See, here's the thing: a lot of libraries (or counties, or cities) end up contracting with LSSI because it saves them money. And in these days when tax dollars are as grudgingly given as an honest statement from a politician, money talks. But here's the really obvious thing: YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. And when you're paying less, you are going to get shitty services. I will concede that maybe there's some good to them, but I haven't heard a lot of it. I will also concede that maybe I'm only hearing the evil side, and that it is not entirely accurate, but what I can tell is that collection development is taken away from the local libraries, that they pay their employees disgraceful wages, and that many of the employees they hire to fill the librarian duties are not degreed librarians. This is dangerous to the new generation of librarians coming out of grad school--those of us who have invested thousands of dollars in our educations might find 10 years down the road that our degrees are rendered irrelevant, make us too expensive, and that there might no longer be a place for us. This is dangerous to our profession, because the people that are filling the roles of librarians are not, will not be degreed librarians, and the library services that these staff provide will not be equal to those that librarians offer. Remember, taxpayers and government officials, you get what you pay for. If you want to do something smart with the tax money you have, invest it wisely--don't throw it away on an outsourcing agency that will provide library sources that suck immensely, and that will undermine the vital and important role that libraries continue to play in society.
According to LSSI's website, they claim that the ALA conducted research and concluded that "….the evidence supports the conclusion that outsourcing has been an effective managerial tool, and when used carefully and judiciously it has resulted in enhanced library services and improved library management."

This disturbs me for mainly one reason: it's the ALA who has been crying for librarians for the past ten years, begging young college graduates to get a Master's in Library Science and join a thriving profession. And yet if LSSI's portrayal is accurate, the ALA is signing its name to something that will be the death warrant of degreed librarians, and that means tells me that either the ALA is trying to play every side to serve itself, or that they are duping us. Which do you think?

Any librarians out there who might be reading this blog (there might be what? 2 of you?) please respond here. Give me feedback. Educate me, inform me, say what you think about LSSI and outsourcing. Start talking!

It Is What It Is...

Another year has passed.

Today was the 2-year mark. Today, 2 years ago, the man I thought would one day be my husband broke my heart in a very public place. In the middle of the Student Union, I fell apart and watched, helplessly, as my boyfriend took a sledgehammer to all that I had worked for, hoped for. Of course, in hindsight I can see that both he and I had been sledge-hammering the relationship for a good long while, but I was blind to it at the time.

So, it was 2 ygpears ago today. 2 years ago, I watched Michael get up and start to leave the student union. I got up, too.

"Where are you going?" he asked me.

"I'm going to follow you," I answered.

"Why?"

"Because that's what I've always done."

And indeed, I followed him out of the student union, down the street, stumbling along, not really seeing. He was on his way to the apartment complex where all his friends lived. Outside the apartment, he turned to me. "You can't come in."

"Why not?"

"You're not welcome there."

Cruel words, but perhaps I needed to hear them. Perhaps it took cruelty to penetrate my shocked brain and make me realize that it was over.

That was 2 years ago today. And then I stumbled home and spent the next 12 hours on the futon, waiting for Michael to come home. He never did. Instead, everyone who loved me called me, tried to help me. Finally, my friend Eric simply came over and took me to his home.

It would be nice if, during moments of awfulness and angst and over-blown despair, when we are suicidal and numb with misery, we could look forward and see a future day in our lives, in which the present pain has simply become a bad memory, and not the crippling entity that it is at that moment. It would have been nice to have a vision of the future, to see me two years down the road (now), house-sitting for friends, living in Southern California, working at a job that I love, planning to move to Palm Springs, having the courage to love again. It would be so nice if I could have had that vision to comfort me as I sat there in Indiana and truly believed that my life was over.

Every heartbreak seems to be the worst, the most wretched. And when we recover, we remember the pain, but in a muted way, much like childbirth, and think we can handle it again in the future. And then when the next heartache comes, you forget for a while how resiliant and brave you can be.

Well, now I am in between heartbreaks. But I remember the last one, I remember Indiana and the life I had there, and I look around at the life I have built here, and I remind myself:

It is possible to rejoice in where you are in your life, but mourn how you got there.

Is There a Name for This Kind of Phobia?

I will be the first to admit it. I'm superstitious.

Last month, my City threw a big ol' Christmas Winter Holiday dinner. I brought Arash along for it, and donned a lovely red dress. I got a lot of compliments on it--and my response?

"Thank you. But stay away from it. It's cursed."

Each time, the person to whom I was speaking would give me a querying look, an uneasy smile, before inching away from that whacky weird new reference librarian. One did ask why, but my answer, I'm sure, left much to the imagination: "The last time I wore this to a work dinner party, my life went to crap shortly thereafter."

So stay away, folks, that dress is cursed.

The work dinner party of which I spoke? The Wooden and McLaughlin Law Firm Christmas Dinner, in December of 2005. I scoured stores during Thanksgiving break, looking for just the right gown to set the tone for the first of many, many Christmas parties with these people. And I found it, a lovely gown, flared and swishing from the hips down, a beautiful holly red that just slipped onto my body and conformed to my curves in the best possible way. So I bought it, and some silver strappy heels, and wore it to the Christmas dinner. It was bitterly cold in Indianapolis that night, but I didn't care. The chill just made my heart race all the more excitedly, in anticipation of the many cold, cozy winters in store for Michael and me.

On the way home, we drove down Meridian Street, past all the grand old mansions, down to the Circle, where the war monument was all lit up against the black, vast Midwestern sky. I was literally bouncing in my seat with excitement, with glee. So many happy years ahead, prosperous years to be spent there in Indiana.

And then? 6 weeks later, at the end of January, I met up with Michael in the Student Union one Friday afternoon; I wanted his help finding some computer software at the bookstore. When we met up, he suggested we take a stroll through the Union. He paused outside the Burger King. "You want anything?"

I said no, and figured we would resume our walk, but to my surprise, Michael sat down there, right outside the Burger King. "We need to talk about something."

And that was the afternoon all my dreams turned to ashes. Cry cry wah blah cry cry, the end. Or the beginning. Or both.

So? Beware of that dress, it's cursed.

And now, almost two years later, I am feeling a little nervous. For I am beset with a sinus infection, just like I had in the weeks coming up to that horrible January afternoon. I am remembering our Caribbean trip that we went on just three weeks before. These little similarities (so minor!) are making me very superstitious and nervous. It's just the time of the year...I am coming up on the two year mark, and completely aside from "Holy shit! How has it been two years?" there's not a lot I can say about it. The trauma is still there, yes. When I remember that time too often, or for too long, I have the very strong urge to hide under the bed. Real mature. Unresolved trauma, perhaps?

Really, there's very little to say other than this: Men, please, DO NOT dump your girls in a public area. That's just not cool.

And women, if they do dump you in the Student Union, it's okay not to forgive them. It's nice if you can, but not mandatory. Just don't hide under the bed.

Freaky Friday

So, the most interesting thing happened at work today. The Internets died.

No kidding! I've often wondered what would happen if the Internets broke down while I was at work--in fact, earlier this week I was talking to the personnel director about it, and then, whoops! No Internets. I'm not sure we'll have it tomorrow, either.

And did the earth stop spinning? Did we all huddle into a corner and beg for Mommy? Were there mass riots? Did we become completely incompetent reference librarians? The answer to all of this is, of course, no. Some patrons got a little grumpy when they realized that they could not get their internet fix, but that was all. Thank goodness, our workflows program was still working, so we could at least look up books in our collection for the patrons, so we were not completely crippled. Honestly, though, I'm a little ambivalent. I LOVE the Internet, and cell phones, and technology, but it really scares me how deeply dependent we are on technology. I always ask the reference librarians with whom I work, "Okay, if you had gotten such-and-such a question fifteen years ago, how would you have answered it? What sources would you have consulted?" I envy my colleagues the years of reference experience they had without being able to rely on the Internet; I envy them the resourcefulness and knowledge they cultivated that I suspect that I, and most other librarians of my generation, completely lack. So a part of me actually rejoiced (very quietly) when the Internets went away. It was a great excuse for me to be thrown back on my own resources and print-knowledge. Of course, I had a lot of things working in my favor: our workflows program was still running, I was working with a seasoned and very good-natured librarian, and business slowed down A LOT once people realized the Internet gnomes were striking, and so there weren't a lot of demands or pressures.

But who knows? Tomorrow's another day, and the Internets might still be down. Either way, it's all good...but then, the patrons might not see it like that. Maybe I should don a kevlar vest, just in case!

Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Manderly Again...

Okay, maybe not Manderley. More like Indiana-ley. It was a sad dream; in it I was still living in Indiana, as I was in 2006, and I was packing up to leave for California. It was one of those weirdo dreams when things were very complicated--I didn't have a job in California, in my dream, but I was moving there anyway. And then it occurred to me: Why the hell would I want to move to California? Doing that would be a very bad idea.

I was basically re-living the reluctance, the dread, the unhappiness that I experienced before I moved out here in June of '06. That was a move I absolutely did not want to make, and I think a part of me tried to delay it as much as possible. A part of me was immersed in misery, when I prepared for that move. It was a time filled with partings, and it was a time that I don't like to think on too much. I loved my time in Indianapolis--I had my dream life there after all, if only for three or four weeks--but it was clouded by California looming overhead. I don't like remembering it--so why the heck did I have to dream about it? Sometimes dreams are more vivid than memories, and more painful too.