There are 2 kinds of bad days: the legitmately bad (car accidents you can't drive away from, deaths in the family, that sort of thing) and the stupid bad. On stupid bad days, everything just irritates me so much, I feel like Holden Caulfield. And then I get annoyed at myself for associating yet another emotion with a JD Salinger story.
Some stupid bad days I'm annoyed for no reason (see above Holden reference); others, there's just a series of tiny little unfortunate events that seem to never end.
Saturday was one of those days.*
I woke up in a crappy mood: plans fell through the night before, (probably) some sort of leftover weirdness from seeing on a big screen what had been in my head since I was about 7, and, most of all, the fact that I was up at 6:30 (give or take--god bless you, snooze button) on a Saturday because I had to work.
Due to the snooze button, and the book I was reading, and the cats, and my general lazy-assedness, I was running late. It takes me about 1/2 an hour to get to my library from my apartment. I had to be there at 8:30. At 8:10, I realized I had no sandwich fillings in my apartment, shook Legs off my scarf, and ran out the door, skidding a bit on my icy steps, because I keep forgetting to buy salt.
Only to find my car doors frozen shut.
The only person I know who would be up at 8:30 on a Saturday morning and have advice on how to get a frozen car door open is my dad, so I call home. Unfortunately, my dad is also one of the slowest and most methodical advice givers I know.
This is useful when I need indepth advice, but indepth advice isn't what a girl needs at 8:20, standing outside her frozen car.
Then follows a conversation between a sensible man and a short-tempered, impatient girl, about how said girl owns neither an extention cord or a hair-dryer to plug into an extention cord and warm up the ice around her car door. Then he tells me to get some lukewarm water and try to get it where the door is frozen,
not on the glass, because of course then the glass would crack.
This is my car, minus the sun roof. See how much glass?
(Don't worry, I'm not foreshadowing. No glass was broken on Saturday, even though I did have to pick up some Christmas ornament shards. My cats are such assholes.)
The water (plus, I'm betting, the exhaust from my neighbors' ghettomobile, warming up in front of Junior) did the trick, and I peeled out of the as quickly as my somewhat unplowed street and completely unplowed side streets would allow.
Fast forward several hours. I'm at work, la la la, usual Saturday-ness, comics to add to the work blog, etc.
Then 2:30 hits, and it's time to set up for the anime club. Set-up goes fine, if a little more slowly than usual. I don't have time to mess with the remote mouse-thing for the projector, but that always works, anyway.
(That
was foreshadowing, ladies and gentlemen.)
Everyone shows up, many of them bringing younger siblings. I look the other way at this, since it's never been a problem before, and I know a lot of these kids probably couldn't come themselves if they couldn't bring their charges.
Most people drag their chairs to the very back of the room. Again, not a problem: I figure the kids who want to chat and watch separate from the ones who only want to pay attention the the screen is a good idea, right?
And then I try to move the remote mouse to play the first episode on the dvd.
(A quick aside about ADV's Advance club thing: they send me a dvd of upcoming stuff once a month. I signed up at ALA, so there's been a minimum of work I put in for this incredibly popular once-a-month thing. The dvds are the kind without a "play all" feature, so each episode has to be chosen. There are four episodes, usually, to a dvd.)
(B quick aside about our projector/dvd showing set-up: there's a laptop in the AV closety thing along with a VCR, sound stuff, etc. You play the dvd on the laptop, hit function and F4 together, usually several times until it actually works, and then go outside into the meeting room to watch the dvd. The cables connecting the laptop to everything else important aren't long enough to take it out into the meeting room.)
So, we've got a dvd that needs a remote or a mouse, a laptop that can't be taken where you can see the screen, a temperamental screen-projector switch, and, suddenly, a remote mouse-thing that will not work.
The remote keyboard thing you use with the projector won't work, either.
I switched the batteries from the (working) projector remote into the mouse-thing. No dice.
I try to switch back to viewing the dvd on the laptop screen, and it got cranky at me.
While this is going on, incidentally, I've got a room full of caffiene-and-sugared up anime fans, ages ranging from 7-20 (give or take).
At one point, we're playing "hot or cold", with me in the AV closet moving my fingers along the laptop mouse thing and listening for Jamie's calls of, "Up!", "Down", and "To your left!"
No one seems to be interested enough in the anime to stop their conversations from the technical difficulties portion of the day. So there's a steady level of volume, which doesn't seem to be bothering anyone else, so I let it be.
That doesn't mean it's not getting on your friendly neighborhood librarian's last nerve, however.
OK, I should back up a second and tell you about this group of little girls who never listen to their librarians when they say things like, Can you please quiet down, or, Don't run in the library. Then these very same little girls, the second one of them turns on another, and this is more common than breathing for most 8yrold girls, the librarian is suddenly their teacher/mommy/babysitter, and they come tell on the mean one.
Here's the thing, if I could be the World's Meanest Librarian for a second: I DON'T CARE.
You know, I never thought I'd be the sort of adult who would have this reaction to a friend-bullied 8yrold, but, cmon, Just Walk Away.
Why, again?
Because I just DON'T CARE.
If she hits you in the library, will I kick her out? Yes.
If there's some sort of legitimate complaint, will I give my Mean Librarian lecture and, if necessary, call the police? Absolutely.
Will I tell you all to play nicely like good little children? No, because when I've been telling you that exact thing for the last 20 minutes, you haven't been listening. And there's a mean, mean girl inside me that thinks it serves you right.
(Don't worry, I'm successful at keeping that mean girl under wraps. She just surfaces when I talk about work, not when I'm actually there.)
Of course, one of the younger siblings at anime club is one of these girls.
And when her big brother is getting teased by another kid, she comes running over to me.
You know, I don't even remember how I handled it, what I did. It was just annoying. I did, however, explain to the "bully" on Sunday that, if he didn't start teasing only those who could take it, I'd be forced to treat him like a 7yrold. And I don't want to do that. (I suppose I should also say that this guy is one of my regulars, who I tease a lot. So it feels weird to be reprimanding him for picking at someone, when he's kind of a frequent target of the Jessy Fake Mean.)
So anime club FINALLY ends and I herd everyone out. It's past 5, so the library is closed. Not to worry, my coworkers have left me the circ desk keys, so I can get through the closed door between the public part of the library and the staff part.
Except, some of our keys? They don't work in every lock.
Like mine, and the door between the public and staff parts.
Like the circ desk copy, and the door between the public and staff parts.
Then I kinda forgot about the side door and just walk outside and around to the back entrance, in my sweater and scarf.
I'm exhausted and cranky, so I decide to grab a stupid movie. While I'm over by the dvds, my phone rings.
Remember
this post, and how many of the "equations" seemed to be related to a specific, non-calling boy?
Yeah, call was from him.
And he didn't leave a message. Despite the fact that the last time I called him, 4 weeks ago, was specifically because I needed the phone number of a mutual friend.
Annoying!
Luckily,
Cara called, and we had a nice co-bitching session, all about librarianing, boys, neuroscience, families, and the incompatability of morning sex and a caffiene addiction.
Then I danced for a bit with
my usual partner in crimes-against-choreography and woke up the next morning, tired but at least less cranky.
Until I had to liontamer a chair and whip against all the internet users at work on Sunday.
But, you know, I'm pretty much in a better mood now. So that's nice.
*Ever notice how I never use the "former, latter" school of overly wordy narration? That's because, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, I can never fucking remember which is which.
God, I hate that.
. How could he steer me wrong?
