With the morning I've had...

Ugh.

This morning has been murder. And I mean it.

Not my murder, but almost someone else's. The someone that is keeping me from my needles. And if I knew exactly who that someone was, there would be several calls to the police, a tranquilizer gun, and a long stint at a cozy little mental institution in my future.

I don't think I would have really hurt anyone, just chased them with my half-finished sweater, all around the library. Until my mind completely snapped free of the restraints sanity brings, when I would tear the sweater off the needles, throw back by head, scream unintelligibly, and frog my perfect sweater, running madly out into the rain without my coat, and felting wool as I went.

I woke up to my father leaning over me, whispering not-so-quietly, "Don't you have work this morning?"

Angrily, I muttered "no," and sent him away from me, where he belonged that early in the morning. I need a good hour before I'm ready for Dad and his sense of humor. I need coffee first.

Then, rolling over, I wondered...was he right.

And of course, he was. I was at that moment running 40 minutes late for work, which started at eight, and the library couldn't open without me. At least, not really. It would open without me when they fired me and hired someone else to take my place. It would open without me plenty then.

I raced about the house, throwing on clothes and eating a PBJ as I raced out the door, thundered down the road going--the speed limit--and arrived at 8:00 am at the Wabash Carnegie Public Library. Sigh.

But I knew even as I did this that I may have been scheduled 8-5, but I was going to end up working 8-7, because I had agreed to help out setting up for the conference, and I hadn't told Nancy or April so we could fix my schedule to a not-ten hour day. Nice.

I talked to our director, and told him about the mix up, and that I would be taking off for a longer lunch to make up for the extended day.

I wanted to do this because I'd made plans for that morning, back when I thought I had the morning off, but I really didn't. I need needles. I was going to the yarn store for my needles that morning. But I couldn't because I was dumb and didn't read my own schedule. Dumb. I was dumb.

Our director agreed, but Nancy said no, I could just go home at five. But I couldn't go home at five. There was no possible way for me to get to the yarn store before five if I worked until five. That is the kind of thing that even an advanced degree in quantum mechanics from Starfleet Academy can't fix, on a good day.

So no needles for Laura.

Then I learned that I would have a class of twenty second-graders that I would need to entertain (read to) and help find books while Nancy was eating her lunch. I would be alone at this time, which wouldn't have mattered except some kid at Wabash High School got a cold, so of course, everyone assumed he had Swine Flu, and the district cancelled the high school and middle school for the rest of the week.

With no where to go, the possibly infected children had only one alternative.

They all came to the library to cough on our computers, swear at each other, and try to look at porn. All while I had a huge group of second graders wanting my attention.

Did I mention it was raining?

So while all this was happening, water was coursing into my car via the invisible hole somewhere in the roof, plastic seal, or rubber seal, before streaming down the invisible spout and out into the interior of the car where it landed on my driver's seat, directly where my right thigh/bum would be placed a few minutes later.

Fortunately I know my car and have a genius plan to prevent this issue, the genius plan consists of The Plastic Bag and The Towel. Unfortunately, my family had yet again done me the favor of "cleaning" my car by removing The Towel and The Plastic Bag. Fortunately again, I found another bag in the trunk of my car that I positioned directly where my thigh/bum would be. Then I drove to another place, ate (because I forgot my lunch), and came back.

When I arrived, I found several more hacking kids, Nancy, and a few baskets full of books that had been dropped off and needed checked in. While I was checking in the books, another co-worker came down and found the three books that had been over dues we were looking for, right where they were supposed to be. I had looked all over for those. The only thing I can think of is that someone did shelf reading and found them misplaced somewhere and put them right.

Meanwhile, our director had me packing bags for the conference, which I did happily. I then found he needed me to stuff bags of death (potpourri) in the bags for the conference, after which I had an asthma attack.

Then, I shelved books, made labels, and finished the YA Summer Brochure. Then April came in and had me do more labels to fix the ones we'd done a few days earlier. But she didn't tell me that she needed all of the labels on the page but wanted the other labels fixed and printed separately, so I put the old ones in the scrap paper bin and we got confused later when she was ticked that we didn't have them.

Then I went home, needle-less, exposed to (at best) some kind of freaky chronic cough of lung decay endemic throughout the area or (at worst) swine flu (yeah, right), and wet from the windshield drips.

When I arrived at home, I was exhausted. Mom had made tortellini with alfredo sauce, which was filled with chicken and prosciutto. It tasted like it was filled with braunschweiger (liverwurst) and gristle. She served it with hot dogs that she called Italian Hot Dogs because they were served along tortellini and alfredo sauce and because she hadn't felt well enough to go to the grocery store and get something else for dinner. No one wanted the hot dogs right away, because hot dogs with ketchup, mustard, and relish don't go with tortellini and alfredo sauce (does anything?) but they were soon in high demand as we realized how much the "chicken" tasted like what we thought the cat's food might taste like if any of us had had the guts to try it.

Poor Mom. It wasn't her fault.

I turned to the olives, the green spanish ones with the red middles, for solace because olives always make me feel better. I reached inside the jar to find one and stopped, because instead of being green with red middles, they were green and blue, with red and blue middles.

Because they were covered with mold. Cat food tortellini and alfredo served with hot dogs and mold-ives. Mmmm...yum...

I stated that the olives had turned blue. Mom, shocked, asked if I was serious. "Yes," I said. "These olives are Mold-ives."

"I've just eaten, like, six of them," Mom said, her eyes wide with the terror of newfound knowledge. "Do you think I should go make myself throw up?"

"What?" I asked, kind of grossed out from the mental picture of cat food tortellini, alfredo, hot dog (with ketchup, mustard, and relish), and Mold-ives churned together and departing my mother's body at alarmingly high speeds.

"Do I need to, am I going to get sick?"

"Mold will either make you better, do nothing, or kill you," I said. I had been having a bad day. And I thought this was all very gross/hilarious.

Dad and I proceeded to make fun of Mom until she was freaked but not convinced of her upcoming death (just a stomach ache which was mostly psychosomatic).

I then sat down to watch Buffy, because a college student in high heels and a halter top setting vampires on fire was the only thing that could make me feel better.

How sad is that?