Catfish, anyone? Just when I thought I had Ken convinced that I really, truly don't like bullhead, he was thrilled to present me with farm-raised catfish to cook for dinner last night. "You'll never guess what I got us for dinner tonight." No, he was right, I never guessed. Well, I'm a good sport, I cooked up the fillets (at least they were fillets and not those horrible round bodies that his friend drops off when he goes giggin' for bullhead) and presented them to him. Mmmmmm, boy did he think they were good. I ate some but mostly ate the leftover chicken/farfalle combo from Sunday dinner.

Then he talked about the dance hall that was behind the church in Black Brook and all the dances they used to go to. I've heard about it before, but it's such a joyful memory for him ("That Wilfred LaHart--his feet never touched the ground, from the minute the fiddler picked up his bow"). Wilfred is now 90, so it's hard to imagine these people dancing the night away, but it was what there was to do then and they loved it.

Our trip to the doctor was fine, but we have 2 more weeks of antibiotics and treatment ahead of us. Every night I'll go there, have him soak his foot, apply Betadyne and band-aids and give him his pill with a glass of water. I guess it's healing ok but isn't healed completely yet. His circulation (or lack thereof) prevents a speedy recovery from this infection. I don't mind helping him, don't get tired of his company. Friday I'll be quite late because I have a negotiating session until 5 then a baby shower I should at least stop in at. A woman who used to work for me who was unpleasant when she left and told people she left because she couldn't stand working for me. Funny, when she worked for me she said she really liked it. She now works at the Plattsburgh Public Library, is newly-separated from her husband and is having a baby girl in April. Life is complex for us all, isn't it.

My sister is having her birthday today. If she's getting older I must be too. And it's all about me. I told my mother (mistakenly) that I felt a lot of pressure to stay alive because it would be hard for her if I died. "Oh don't feel that way, dear, I could handle it." As if. Funny thing when your parent gives you permission to die. I don't plan to die any time soon anyway so it's a mute point, as they say.

My friend Mary Frances is having her birthday tomorrow. She's moving to New York City soon, from Louisville Kentucky. Lots of people end up in NYC, don't they. Not me, I think it's safe to say I won't. Never say never, though. Picture my little Tess in NYC, though, I mean really.

I'm feeding my dogs tablets to make their poop unappealing (that sounds ridiculous, unless you know that Tess eats everyone else's poop)--they've got fermented vegetables in them. I would think that would make them even more delicious, but the plan seems to be working because I watched Tess turn her nose up at Chances' poop this morning, turning away very disappointed. She's usually very pleased to find fresh turds coming out of her friend, but not today! Hooray for modern veterinary science. All they had to do was let the right vegetables rot What do you suppose it was--okra? broccoli? spinach?

I have a huge stack of really old and disagreeable stuff to catalog for the most ridiculous collection in one of the libraries that's going online. They send us photocopies of their catalog cards and I have to find a record for the item. The cards are full of misspelled words, wrong copyright dates, incomplete information. It takes forever to find a record, then I have to key in the information in our database. And this is for books that were published at the turn of the 20th century that no one will ever want. Like, travel guides for Florence published in 1904. "Modern" history of Africa from 1910. They'd sell like hotcakes on eBay. I also have to add up a bunch of figures for our annual report. The totals never balance so I end up making up a bunch of stuff anyway. This is not one of my strengths.

But the sun is shining and over the weekend I heard a chickadee making its spring song. This morning it was -8 when I left home and I'm running out of dry wood. Spring needs to get here a little sooner, please.
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I've spent the morning talking to more than a dozen member library directors, asking them each the same questions about the money they get from their local school districts and the public vote that brings it to them. I need to collate the information by this afternoon and have gathered and collated all the information except stuff from one library. It's so entertaining to listen to each one of them. "How are you?" "Not good, having a bad day. My printer at home broke." "Great, now that the pain in my new knee is starting to feel better. If I'd known how bad it was going to be I never would have done it but my kneecap fell apart when they took it out so I guess it was time." (well, I asked how she was...) "OK, talk to me longer so I don't have to finish the training that's going on right now." They're a funny group but I've known them for as long as they've all been working in their jobs (except for the one with the fake knee--she's been a director for 40 years).

As Jenica did such a great job of describing, we had a really nice weekend. Dogs loved it, I loved it. Restful (too restful, I slept too late and hate doing that, makes me feel sickly), entertaining, lots of visiting and laughter, got to see the sparkling ring, got to talk to Molly. It was cold, -11 on Sat. and -8 on Sunday, but the sun came out on Sunday and it was a pretty day. I love walking on the lake and it was nice to have someone to share that with.

Tonight I go to the doctor with Ken for the follow-up visit. Annie Holt is a doctor and examined Ken's foot Sat. night, said the soaking had made a big difference and that it looked good, so I think the doctor will be pleased when he sees Ken tonight. Don't know if we'll have to continue our regimen or not but it will be ok if we do. Whatever I can do for Ken I will, he's a wonderful friend and an extraordinary person. After the doctor's appointment we're having dinner at Friendly's--not my kind of restaurant, but it's the place Ken picked and he's really looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to having a hot fudge sundae after dinner.
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UNDERSTAND WHY YOU THINK WHAT YOU THINK BY TAKING THIS POLITICAL TEST
Your Score
Your scored -3 on the Moral Order axis and 2.5 on the Moral Rules axis.
Matches
The following items best match your score:
System: Socialism
Variation: Moderate Socialism
Ideologies: Social Democratism
US Parties: No match.
Presidents: Jimmy Carter (88.10%)
2004 Election Candidates: Ralph Nader (85.18%), John Kerry (80.11%), George W. Bush (51.54%)
Statistics
Of the 35833 people who took the test:
1% had the same score as you.
10.6% were above you on the chart.
77.3% were below you on the chart.
71.8% were to your right on the chart.
20.4% were to your left on the chart


Well I always knew I was a socialist at heart but I'm surprised that I'm as close a match to GWB as that. yuck.

The downward slope of winter is what we're on now. Once February begins, you're securely in the second half of winter and you can actually entertain thoughts of spring. This morning it smelled like spring, where it was wet outside. There's still at least 10" of snow on the ground, left over from the 1' we got last week, and we're going to get at least 6" of new snow (probably more at my house--the storm is west of Plattsburgh) today and tonight. But I'm an optimist and I believe in spring. Plus I am totally sick of burning wood. Totally. I can't stand to strike another match but I don't keep my fire going anymore, I've been letting it burn out so that I have to restart it all the time, with kindling and smaller pieces of wood. Hard to believe I was so conscientious and always had huge piles of wood in my house for so many weeks not so long ago. Where has that girl gone? Now it's all I can do to carry in two armloads an evening and I let the fire go out every night. Shame on me.

Friday night I went to the doctor with Ken. This was really important to him as it was a new doctor and he was very apprehensive. He told me later he was dreading the appointment and almost didn't go. Turns out he has an infection in his foot and the doctor said that if we don't treat it "he could lose his foot." Who knows if that's really true but I repeated it enough times to make Ken believe it and take this all seriously. I went into the visit with Ken to act as interpreter and ask the doctor the right questions, etc. Ken looked so cute sitting on the exam table in his union suit. Anyway, now we soak the foot every day and I put Betadine and a band-aid on it, make sure he takes his antibiotics (he won't take his pill until I get there) and he only walks on the heel of the foot. He's not supposed to walk at all but of course he can't do that. I've got his walking down to a minimum, though. Friday night after the doctor's visit we went 4 places to wrap up loose ends, then had dinner in a nice seafood restaurant in Plattsburgh. It's a place that's our version of Champlin's and I had a lobster salad roll and an order of fried calamari. Saturday morning I took him to AuSable to the post office, got his prescription filled, did his grocery shopping for him (where I saw Jackson's former and chatted with her about her barking dog), then took him to Plattsburgh to get his truck, ending up at his house to soak and treat his foot. Now every night on my way home I stop at his house to treat his foot and have a drink with him. We both sort of like this routine, it's a nice social occasion and it gives me a chance to check on his health. The foot is better, mostly due to the antibiotics I'm sure. He had a cut on the bottom that was infected and the infection had spread throughout the foot. He had no pain, still has none, but was worried. Part of the toe nail fell off (he saved it to show me--this gives you an idea of how important my input is to him) but again, it didn't hurt and the doctor said all this was just fine. So now once again we're bonded by an experience. We go back to the doctor next Tuesday for a follow-up visit. This is a good, very nice doctor with a strong accent who treats a lot of older people. I'm happy to be doing this for Ken but wish people would stop making a fuss over it because of course I would do this, who wouldn't?

We were supposed to have a meeting after work today to discuss the characteristics we'd like to have in our new director--staff, member library staff and trustees, plus our trustees. It was postponed, though, because of the weather. The director leaves for Labrador on March 5, I think, but she seems to have told some people she's leaving on the 25th of Feb. Who knows with her, she's not here half the time right now anyway. We're still negotiating our contract and they're very eager to settle before she leaves. That should be interesting, they'll have to give up a lot in order to get us to settle so it might work to our advantage after all.

I watched part of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show on tv but fell asleep last night while it was on (those cocktails with Ken are killing me). During the day they had streaming videos of the breed judging so I could see the Labs. That was fun. They all looked like Chances (only better, of course) and were beautiful. I also watched the Sussex spaniels, which I really like, and the American water spaniels, which I think are cool dogs. There were only 3 of them in the class, since they're rare. New this year to the AKC is the Neapolitan Mastiff, an incredibly unattractive dog, but they're making a huge fuss over it. Huge dog with huge paws. I learned that the Bullmastiff is called a foundation breed because it's the foundation of so many other breeds (bulldog, Newfoundland, etc.). And that's what I learned in school today. Anyway I fell asleep before seeing the final round last night and had to wait until this morning to find out that a German short-haired pointer won Best in Show. Apparently she pointed during her 15 minutes of fame and really won over the crowd.

My dogs, non-show quality that they are, are just fine. Jackson is sound asleep every single morning when we get up. Tess pounces on him to wake him up. Some day he'll have a heart attack when she does this. Even if I beat her to him and gently pat him he awakes with a start. He's a good old boy. Chances is particularly cuddly these days. She goes through these phases when she just wants to be right next to me all the time. Tess is like that a lot of the time--in the evening she likes to sleep on the back of the couch, draped over me. Now Chances likes to be on my lap on the other side. So there we are, all 4 of us on a pretty small couch. Nearly 200 pounds of dog and me. No wonder the couch is ready for the dump.

Work is ok. The director is pretty cheerful, burning her time before she leaves. Her last day is April 29 but she'll be gone all of March. They've posted the position a few places but so far I haven't seen any national postings just yet. One of our clerks retired last week and there's lots of speculation about what the board will do about filling that position. We're desperate to have someone in that spot but they're thinking they might hire a paraprofessional and use part of the time as a fundraising function. Not a good plan from our perspective. We need a full-time clerk who DOES NOT work directly with the board.

I have to pull together lots of statistics for our annual report. Always a challenge, especially since the State changes what they ask for almost every year. They seem to have simplified it this year, but they've introduced a category called The Union Catalog--a physical list of our holdings. This is different from our Automated Library System, and we don't have one. So there's one category I don't have to worry about! A whole new section full of zeros.

Over the weekend I watched Ben Afleck and James Gandolfini in Surviving Christmas. It was actually pretty good. Light but entertaining and not as bad as I expected. I'm still waiting for the right moment to watch Garden State and have 2 other DVD's from blockbuster.com to watch. Can't remember what they are, and will be receiving another one this week as well. I love having a bunch of stuff in my queue. One of my friends has 250 titles in her queue. Yikes.

Magic Stick
1) Total amount of music files on your computer:I don't have music on my computer but I have the chirping of a bird, which comes on at odd times. I really like it but I'm sure it drives other people crazy.
2) The last CD you bought was:Two, actually, Bruce Springstein's The Rising and Talking Heads' Sand in the Vaseline to replace the copy that was broken when I rolled my car. Both are must-haves. Molly reminded me of how much I love love love David Byrne and Jenica reminded me of how fantastic that Springstein CD is.
3) What is the song you last listened to before reading this message? "Let's get it started," by Black-eyed Peas. But that probably doesn't really count because it was only in my head. I haven't been listening to much music, really, I've been listening to books on tape as I commute. Last book I listened to was an odd one called Aloft, by Chang-Rae. Now I'm listening to a wonderful novel by Fannie Flagg, read by her in her lilting southern accent, about life in a very small town in Alabama along a crystal clear river. I long to be there, especially today as we expect 6" (at least) of snow. It sounds like the perfect town to live in.
4) Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you:5 is a lot but I can do 2 really easily: "The end of the Innocence," by Don Henley, and "Unknown Legend," by Neil Young. I like to think of myself as an unknow legend, and there are lines in each of those songs that I love. "Her long blonde hair flying in the breeze...colliding with the very air she breathes." And Don Henley--how could you not like that song? I really like the reference to "The tired old man that we elected king." Those are my all time favorites that I could listen to forever. In terms of my life, my courting songs by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young have great meaning to me for the time in my life when I listened to them--a time of discovery, and I can be swept back there immediately when I hear those voices. There are magic voices I love to here--Eric Clapton's makes me swoon, Elton John's makes me smile, Levon Helm gives me goose bumps. Almost all of my music is old, so old.
5) Who are you going to pass this stick to and why? Martha? are you ready for this?

AND WOW WHAT A WEEKEND! Sunny, 50 degrees and really beautiful. I walked the dogs both days. Yesterday we walked to the end of the road--to what used to be the tennis courts for the girls' camp. I didn't wear a coat and it was wonderful. The dogs loved it, but got separated from me when I walked down to the shore to check on my friends' camp. They all started back to the house and when I yelled for them only two came back to me. Little Tess went all the way home, impetuous fool, and didn't rejoin the group until we were almost home. Then she came barreling down the hill, vastly relieved that we hadn't disappeared forever. I love it when they come running toward me as fast as they can, except of course with Chances Are I always run the risk of being run down because she can't see very well. But yesterday she saw me just fine against the blindingly white backdrop of snow. It was a beautiful day.

I spent part of the afternoon steam cleaning the rug on Ken's front porch with my portable carpet cleaner. When I got to his house Friday evening he was anxiously waiting for me to show me that a hawk had flown through a window on the porch, spent at least a few days there and had pooped all over the floor. His conundrum was how to get the white poop stains out of the rug. Replacing the window is something that presents a minimal problem for him but getting stains out of a rug is more complicated. I wasn't sure my little machine would work but thankfully it did. He'd been scrubbing away with PineSol (the smell of which reminded me of Eugene Santor, who only Molly will remember, and who always smelled of Lestoil and sweat). It's really hard for him to get down on his hands and knees like that so it was great that Bill and I could get the white-paint spots which were all over the floor removed for him. I was really happy that I could finally do something to help him. We sat on the front porch, with its missing window, and it was HOT on February 6th. Lovely.

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday. I don't get the channel that carried the football game so I missed Paul McCartney playing at halftime and I missed the New England Patriots' victory. Instead I watched Animal Planets' Puppy Bowl. This lasted all afternoon (I didn't watch it all afternoon). It was hours and hours of 10 puppies in an enclosure together, playing, barking, sitting and just doing what puppies do. It was just footage, no narration. Quiet guitar music in the background. There was instant replay of particularly cute stuff, like a small dog tackling a big dog. There was a glass bowl of water flush with the floor that had a camera in the bottom of it, called Bowl Cam. You could see their incredibly cute paw pads as they dug and dug at the water the way puppies do, and their little pink tongues as they lapped up the water. They were all mutts but there were two mostly-golden retrievers who were litter mates and played together constantly and were obsessed with the water. They had spotted pawpads and were really cute. There was a little rat terrier pup who was an instigator and barked at all the playing pairs, egging them on. Tess watched it for a long time, at one point walking up to the tv, putting her face about 8" from the screen. She never watches tv but she seemed to see what was going on. Who knows, I never really believe dogs can see what's on tv but she stared and stared at it for about half an hour. I stared at it for longer than that, I confess (saying to myself the whole time "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" but at the same time, studying the behavior of each puppy--wouldn't want the beagle, she doesn't play much with the others; don't want THAT golden, she's too bossy; that lab-mix only wants to be with people, that's the one to have, etc.).

And now I'm at work and my clerk is obsessed with her impending divorce and can't stop talking about it. I feel for her, her situation is so much like mine was 10 years ago it's uncanny. I kept it all to myself at work, refused to share any of it here. Didn't want a soul to know it was going on. She's just the opposite, won't stop talking about it. "Does anyone have anything else to go to the dump?" Bob asks. "165 pounds of shit," she replies. He was being very conciliatory and cooperative about it all, the child support, when he would move out, etc. (it's all his idea) until he talked to his brother over the weekend, now he's getting really nasty about it. I feel for her, I really do, but I'm getting tired of hearing about it. I'm very supportive and sympathetic, a good boss.

And the search for a new director has begun. I just saw the posting on the statewide listserv. YES! Let's get this party started. There's a meeting next week that includes staff, member library staff and trustees and the search committee to discuss characteristics we'd all like to see in a new director. Dignity is one thing I'd like to see. Treating staff with respect, that's another. We have to figure out how to say what we want without making it obvious that we're pointing out what's lacking in the present director. I'm assuming she won't be at the meeting. But never assume anything, right?

This will be a busy week. Tonight is book group. Two nights of negotiations, both will be disagreeable. No one is willing to change HMO's to save the library system money. That will cause some real problems and will cost us our raises. And will piss me off. No one is willing to make a sacrifice.

Friday I leave work early to go to the doctor with Ken. He's seeing a new doctor and is nervous about it. I finally figured out that he wanted me to go with him--duh. He must have asked me 5 times exactly where the doctor's office was, and I explained it to him carefully and precisely each time. Then it dawned on me. "Do you want me to meet you there?" "You could do that." "Do you want to meet me at the library?" "I could do that." "Do you want to meet at Bill's house?" "Could you do that?" So that's what we'll do--meet at a place he knows how to get to and I'll drive him to the doctor's. Then he realized that I often do my grocery shopping Friday after work. "Don't worry, I can shop another time." Well, no, I can't--I'm broke and get paid on Friday. So I'll leave work earlier and go shopping before I meet him.

Supposed to RAIN tomorrow, wonder of wonders. Then get colder and snow. If the Nor'easter that's happening later in the week comes this way we might get "significant amounts" of snow. That would just be a shame. Right now we have so little snow that I didn't even wear boots yesterday on my walk, just my low-cut hikers.