Ladies, start your engines
I stopped at Lamoys last night and spent up a storm. I got a medical reimbursement check and was sure all the good plants would be gone soon so I rushed right over there and spent $50 on annuals (and $2.29 on 4 grape tomato plants). Some years I have tried to limit my spending--one year I said I wouldn't spend more than $100 on plants and it almost worked. I think I've spent that much so far and have barely started. Next to shoes, garden plants are my big vice. Who can resist the little darlings? There they sit in their new home, ready to go into the ground or into their lovely pots with their new neighbors.

Things are getting back to normal at my house. When I got home Friday night, after stopping at Ken's my pump was running--a very bad sign. I knew what it meant but had to turn on the faucet anyway, hoping against hope. Of course no water came out because the well had run dry. I don't know how long the pump had been running but I'm lucky it didn't burn out. I shut the pump off and didn't use any water until Saturday afternoon. My well and I are very well acquainted, and it's been a wet enough spring so I was confident there would be water in it and of course I was right. Now there's water for flushing, doing dishes and showering, but I went to the laundromat Monday night and washed 3 loads. It's not bad when you only have to wash, that only takes 25 minutes or so.

I tried a new laundromat--a few years ago I was going to one regularly and had one I really liked, they had a couch and tv set up just for me--no one else used the room. Bill suggested I try this one, but he drops his clothes off there and has the woman do his laundry for him. I marched in with my overloaded basket, looked at the machines and said, "How much does it cost to do a load?" She sized me up and said, "Those are dryers." Huh. She pointed at the washers, at the other end of the room. OK, OK, it's been a while and I thought they were front end loaders. I explained to her that, in spite of all this rain my well still ran dry. That made her sympathetic but I'm sure she still thought I was dumber than a box of hair. I asked if there were a place to sit and wait and she pointed to 2 folding chairs and a card table. Not what I had in mind, but I read for longer than it took for my clothes to wash. The really nice thing about that place is that there was no one else in there.

I only stood on my deck for a few minutes last night and the black flies were thick and hungry. Good, let's get this over with! I doubt they'll be gone completely by next weekend (Memorial Day), but if we could at least get started with black fly season we could move on.

Work is really slow right now. I guess I should be working on the collection development policy. Or more important, my goals for 2006, one of which is to work on the collection development policy. And I should finish weeding the holiday collection and start the professional collection. Another goal. I'm on hiatus from anything more serious than cataloging, I don't have the energy.

It's been raining since Thursday and is supposed to rain through at least Saturday. I should be pleased--my sump pump is running and my well must be filling, but I'm really sick of this. By the time I'll be able to mow my lawn it will be knee high and the bugs will be as thick as ticks on a sow. Complain complain complain. And my director just told me I should be adding the awards field to records for Pulitzer Prize winners, Newberry & Caldecott winners, and any other winners I come across. GIVE ME A BREAK! I told her the sys admin doesn't display those fields in our public access catalog and she told me "You're the cataloger, you tell her which fields to display." AS IF!!! This should be interesting. The admin doesn't think any 500 (descriptive) fields should show because "that's just too much information for the public and it confuses them." Silly me I continue to add those fields to the records, believing in what I do. Maybe it's time to call those chickens in to roost.

For now I'll just stare out my window (which faces the brick wall of the public library next door) into the gloom and rain and dream of dirt.