No Help

college kid: Can you help me find something?
me: I can try. What are you looking for?
ck: Well, I'm not sure exactly what is it, my teacher said something about it. It may be a book or a movie.
me: Is this a course reserve maybe?
ck: Maybe? Do they have anything on reserve?
me: I'll check, who's your teacher?
ck: Uh, crap, I don't know their name.
me: That's ok. We can try to find it another way. What's the title of what you're looking for?
ck: Um, I don't really know.
me: Author?
ck: Um, no.
me: A keyword? Anything?
ck: Um, not really.
me: Yeah, I can't help you.

Stereotype

me: I put it off as long as possible. But I had to do an image search for "naughty librarian." Ugh, people are disgusting.
mike: Um, why?
me: Project 2 for class was information spaces or librarian stereotypes  I chose librarian stereotypes, and unfortunately, one of those stereotypes is dirty. I mean, when I say librarian, what's the image that comes to your mind?
mike: (smiling) Glasses and sexy as hell.
me: Nice. But before you married one.*
mike: (smiling sheepishly) Ok, yeah, glasses and old.
me: Yep.
mike: Interesting. So, what you get when you enter librarian into google?
me:  Old ladies with glasses shushing. Or slutty women in glasses in a short skirt. I guess it's hard to read if you have on pants.    

*Ok, one in training. Still counts enough for this conversation.

Vocab

We have laptops for people (students, staff and faculty) to check out for 24 hours at my academic library. Awesome right? Well not always, because sometimes all we have left are the older, slower computers and college kids can be so incredibly whiny.

A freshman turns in an older slower laptop, but before he turns it in he first asks if we have any macs. You have to wait 4 hours between laptop check ins and outs, so even if we did have any macs in he wouldn't have been able to have it at the moment anyway.  Instead of understanding the rules and just leaving it at that, he wanted to make it clear to me that macs are a far superior computer. So he says: Mac's aren't slow. Dells are though. This dell was abysmally slow.

I just shrugged my shoulders and said: Oh well.
But what I wanted to say was: Look at you using your SAT words like a big boy!

Next Year

My husband is a die hard (long suffering) Browns fan.  And since I love my husband, I cheer right along side of him, unless they are playing Panthers. All bets are off when they are playing my Panthers, but that is   unlikely since they are in different conferences.

Anyway, one of the first things I learned as a Browns fan is the phrase "there's always next year." After watching my husband cringe and shake his head while watching games, I've used it a decent amount. But it can only go so far as to comforting, especially if it is the beginning of the season..

The other day were watching a game and the Browns were, well, the Browns. 

me: It's ok honey, there's always next year.
mike: It IS next year!

So it looks like I have a few more things to lean as a Browns fan. Like, that "there's always next year" is a 2nd half of the season phrase. Duly noted.

Heal

Healing can take a very long time. Not only physically, but also emotionally.
The dogs were at the sitter's last weekend and they got into a fight. They have gotten into fights before, but this is the first time one of the dogs had to go to the emergency vet, and the first time we weren't there to stop it. Before we've been able to pull them apart before either dog got harmed. If we don't break it up soon enough Bailey will try to run away, but Jules has a scrappy/feisty streak and will keep going after Bailey. This fight Bailey fought back, chomped Jules' neck and Jules went to the emergency vet with some deep puncture wounds. It was incredibly lucky that while the wounds are deep, none of them needed stitches and there doesn't seem to be tissue damage either. While Jules was shaken up for a while, her spirits have mostly returned to normal.  And we're also lucky that Jules didn't hurt Bailey either. Despite their size difference  it could only take one well (or ill) placed bite to take a dog down or cause some serious harm.

But.

Jules looks really bad. They had to shave her neck to get a better look at things, so you can see all the wounds and scratches and they are ugly. It's hard to see Jules with her wounds and know how lucky she was. It's also hard to look at Bailey knowing that she did that.  We honestly don't know who started the fight to begin with, but it doesn't matter. It's hard to come to terms that if the unthinkable had happened, we would have lost not one, but both our girls.

All four of us are hurting from this.  Jules is hurting from her wounds but she's also a smidgen more timid now. Bailey is confused because she's being treated as a problem dog and being blamed for everything again. It hurts my husband to see Jules hurt and Bailey's to blame. And I hurt for the same thing, but also because I'm back to being on defense for Bailey, but also completely scared I'm going to loose not just her but possibly both my dogs.    

It's so much bigger than me and Bailey anymore. I know that Bailey and Jules are just dogs, but they are my family. And I would do almost anything in the world to save my family except give up on them. Someone I work with's daughter is a miracle worker dog trainer, and we're going to start some hard core expensive training for all 4 of us. We could have sent them away for a few weeks but miracle worker is booked until mid-December (probably because she's a miracle worker), so we're opting to start the private lessons sooner. Plus that option is much more hands on for us humans which is something I think we all need. Jules' physical wounds are more than likely going to take a fairly long time to heal and that's just something we're going to have to be patient with. But I'm really hopeful that this training will help heal our little family up too.  

Desperato

Never tell a 20 year old college student that you met your husband on eharmony. 

Because their response will be: Really? Yeah, maybe I'll do that one day, you know, if I was, like desperate. 

Yep. 

Proud

So. Like I said in my last post, I'm in grad school and I'm busy.  But the work isn't hard, it's just time consuming. I don't have tests, just lots of projects.  The most recent one I just turned in was 2 short videos of me talking and demonstrating how to use a database for one of my classes. My husband was asking about them, and as I started to explain them, I realized it would be easier to just show them to him. So without any hesitation I pulled them up and he watched my presentations.

And I realized after he viewed them that I would have never done that with my design work. I was never really that proud of my work in general, and certainly never proud enough of my work to show it to anyone, let alone to anyone I love.  And while these two five minute presentations aren't exactly the same thing as a quarter long project, there I was, perfectly comfortable showing my work to the one of the people that I love most in to world.

I'm proud of my work. I've found what I want to do. I'm really happy I'm there.

Overwhelmed

I don't know how and even if I'm handling everything. Between the two jobs (almost full time work), and full time grad school, I'm tired. A lot. And I'm just getting more and more tired as the semester continues.

First let me say I love what I'm doing. I love both my library jobs. I can even get a little bit (I do mean little) of reading done for school at one of them, which is awesome. I mean, I'm getting paid while doing my school work, not to mention I just like being in the library in general. I love what I'm going to grad school, and the career that I'll have. I like my classes, everything is really applicable so I understand things, and part of me wishes I could be in classes forever if it meant that I would always be learning. (minus the debt and no free time thing)

But it's still a balancing act.  Keeping up with my reading and due dates. Trying (and quite honestly failing) to fit a run in (god this half* is going to hurt). Walking the dogs so they loose the extra weight (the good news though is that Jules is down almost a full lb, so the walks are working). I've realized that there is always something to be done, some reading, some project, and I'm just going to have to push past the tiredness and work my ass off for the next 2 years.

But the overwhelmed feeling comes pretty quickly. An upcoming deadline and getting little work done before it stresses me out. Knowing I have to work ahead when I'm already behind. And what used to be a simple task, such as starting a load of laundry before I head off to work, or even what to make for dinner, throws me into a complete tail spin of stress and woe. And whenever someone mentions anything fun that I want to do, my first thought is sadly, I won't have the time for that. But oh well, that's life for me this moment. I just have to get over being overwhelmed and just soldier through like every other person trying to make it through life.

*I dropped to the half marathon in Savannah instead of the full marathon since I wasn't getting in the runs for a full.  But I still have to train for the half regardless.

Fatten Up

Mike and I were watching the Panthers/Falcons game at a sports bar with some friends, and the Panthers made a play that the whole place started cheering and clapping, ourselves included. Then I hear this loud "PING" of some kind of metal hitting the floor, and out of the corner of my eye I see that that ping was Mike's wedding band FLYING OFF HIS HAND.

I see my husband leap up, his ring land under a bar stool, so I stand there and be helpful by pointing at it my mouth agape and clutching my chest. Within a matter of 30 seconds he has his ring back on his finger and he's back to sitting down, meanwhile, I'm still clutching my chest and nearly hyperventilating breathing a billion sighs of relief.

If this happens again we'll have to get his ring re-sized. Or I could just try to fatten him up by using more butter.  Either way it better not come off again!