8", 12"--what does it matter?
Once you get that much snow in October it's all just a pain in the neck. The trees are no more prepared for it than I am, they all bent way over to the ground under the weight of the heavy, wet snow. My theory on this is that, once the sap freezes the trees can handle the weight because (obviously) their trunks and branches are firmer and thus stronger. Right now the sap is not frozen so the trees are like rubber. When I drove down my driveway yesterday morning I had to drive through a jungle of branches dangling from 20' above and reaching to the ground.

We got at least 8 inches of snow by yesterday morning. Ken said we had a foot of snow. I don't think it was that much, but I guess you can trust a 91-year-old's estimate. Anyway, I started leaving for work at 7 a.m. I managed to get to the end of my driveway--no small task in a Honda Civic. Alas, my road had not been plowed. I gave it a shot, though--I consider an unplowed road a personal challenge. There's just the slightest hint of a hill about a third of the way to the hardtop and of course my car couldn't get up that. I tried twice, got stuck twice (once almost for good, skidding sideways to be nearly perpendicular to the roadway: the position of ultimate defeat). I backed up to my driveway, dejected, walked to the house and called the town garaged and begged them to plow my road. "Is that your camp, you mean?" No, it's my year-round house. "On the girls' camp road?" yes. "We can't plow that road, with all the rain we've been having it would ruin the road." But I need to get out. "I'll call the boss [the Highway Superintendent--an elected position, thankfully] and we'll call you back." I wait 15 minutes and "Bob" calls back. "We're sending someone right out there. You need a big plow or a small plow?" small plow is fine. "We're running about 2 hours late, is why we didn't get there." as if. I fall all over myself thanking him, praising him and promising him a huge raise and eternal life. I make another cup of coffee and wait what I think is a respectful period of time for a plow to get from town (15 miles away) to my road, then walk to my car. I sit in the car, listening to my book on CD for another 15-20 minutes. FINALLY the plow arrives, scraping about 4" of dirt from the surface of the road along with the snow. It takes him 10 minutes to make the perfect piles of snow at the end of my driveway (Oh for God's sake, just push it around, it'll all melt in a few days anyway!) and finally I can drive to work. Total amount of time it takes me to get to work from beginning to end: 2.5 hours. And no, it's not beautiful, not a winter wonderland, it's just a bunch of trees all bent over with snow on them.

Yesterday I had lunch with a member library director who has also become a good friend. She is having problems with one of her trustees, who is treating her much the way my former director treated me. I had lots of counseling and advice to offer her, plus lots of sage words of wisdom to share about boards in general. I felt good about what I said to her and she seemed to feel better after our hour and a half together. Boards are funny, they often act as a body and will do strange things together when they know one of them is acting like a lunatic. What they almost always want is to avoid confrontation, so they will sometimes do things that seem so obviously wrong or idiotic to the rest of us, all in the name of keeping the peace. That's what's happening to her right now. I told her this may pass, and a lot of what's going on is personal between this one board member and her, but not between the rest of the board and her. And that we always have to keep in mind that we really, truly enjoy doing our jobs and we are happy to have them and want to keep them. She agreed with that completely. That's what got me through the last 8 years: the love of my work. No, not that my work loves me, that I love my work.

I went to the doctor on Tuesday. Bad news all 'round. Gained four pounds. But surely winter shoes, corduroy pants and a cotton sweater weigh more than the clothes I was wearing 4 months ago? My cholesterol level is way up. Much speculation about what could have caused that. Finally the probable culprit was identified: the vanilla-flavored creamers I was putting in my coffee each morning at the Mobil station in Redford en route to work. Doctor's dictum: NO MORE CREAMERS. The choices have been Half & Half, cream or those little containers of flavored Half & Half. Now they put out milk so I've switched to that. Let's hope this does it. He's giving me 3 months to get the level down or he will increase the does of my Provachal. And he identified the mystery spot on my back as actinic keretosis, what my father had on his bald head. I was surprised by that: usually AK appears on faces, arms and hands which have been excessively exposed to the sun. He's going to talk to a dermatologist to see what to do next but his first inclination is to do nothing for now. These spots can turn into skin cancer so I'm a little concerned but will wait until my next appointment to see what he says. I adore this doctor and trust him a lot. Apparently there's no tremendous hurry to do anything if this is indeed AK.

My good friend Linda bought me a book and had it shipped directly from Amazon this week. I love opening my mailbox and finding treasures like that. It's called Marley and me : the story of the world's worst dog. Guess what kind of dog Marley is? Why, yes, a Labrador retriever. He looks just like Jackson, big and lunky and not particularly attractive. He behaves a lot like a cross between Tess and Chances at their worst. Overly affectionate, demanding and needy like Chances. Creatively destructive like Tess. Does that proud lizard body wiggle when he has forbidden treasures in his mouth. I sat right down and started reading the book, have been reading it every night since. My first thought was that this man wrote MY book, until I realized that, as a journalist he wrote a better book that I would. He remembered details I would have neglected to include. He has a nice style. He realized that a book needs more story lines than just details of a dog's life, so he's also including the story of the development of his family. Well, that would be hard for me--I didn't have a miscarriage and two children during the time I had my dogs. Only a divorce and development of learning the great joy of living a wonderful solitary life. So maybe someday I'll write a book, who knows. I'll have to figure out what I have to say that enough other people would want to read about. Anyway, I'm really enjoying this book.

And today I will finish the batch of CDs that was snuck into last week's delivery. They are all elevator music. Blissful Relaxation, Rejuvenation, Forest Floor Symphony, etc. Yegods.

I actually started writing our Collection Development Policy, which is supposed to be finished by the end of the year. Take a little from this library, a little from that library and bingo! There's our policy!