Please, No Wintry Re-Mix

It's snowing in the Pacific Northwest. Snowing and sleeting and icing up, actually. On Yahoo Weather, it actually listed the weather here as being "Mostly cloudy with a wintry mix." Whoever you are, working over there at Yahoo Weather, I thank you for that. Wintry Mix! It sounds like something with mini-pretzels and roasted cashews will be falling from the sky, instead of small shards of ice that try to pierce your skull as you walk to work, like I was thinking.

So yesterday, lots of people couldn't make it to work in Libraryland because of the shambles that my city was in due to the Wintry Mix. (I know what all you east coast/midwesterners are thinking. A shambles? Just because of a couple of inches of Wintry Mix? Look, snow and sleet here is not the same as it is over there. I, as a midwest girl, could certainly choose to make fun of the chaos that happens when snow starts to fall here. And ok, so maybe I do make fun of it. But the truth is, this only happens for one or two days a year here. And so we don't have snow plows, or salt trucks, or people who know how to do brodies only when they want to. So cut us some Wintry Slack, will you?)

As I was saying. Lots of people couldn't make it in to work yesterday. And my library is the busiest neighborhood branch in the city, so when you're working with a skeleton crew, it's even more hectic than usual. For my part, I spent much of my day back in the workroom, helping to check in mounds and mounds of items from the book drops and trying to get them all re-shelved. Let me tell you this. Shelvers and clerks have GOT to be buff, people. Because after my day shelving and emptying book drops? I am sore! Next time you see one of your friendly neighborhood shelvers or clerks, just know that under their unassuming ways, they are hiding asses of steel. I am now convinced that this could be the new trendy workout for Paris, Britney, and Lindsay to do before a night on the town. Have them come in to a very busy branch and shelve a couple thousand books. I'm pretty sure that going without underwear and flashing their hoo-hahs all around might violate our Rules of Conduct in the library, though, so maybe not.

In other news, even though you all know me as the graceful and sure-of-foot librarian, I fell on my ass last night, making the times I have fallen down this month add up to TWO. Am I turning into Chevy Chase? Me, falling down! Even though I never fall down, ever. I am the one who is known to wear impossible heels that don't at all feel impossible to me. I watch movies where female heroines run fast in high heels and I'm the only one who doesn't find that ridiculous and unrealistic. But yet, there I was, innocently walking up to my house, and ka-slam. All of a sudden I am flat on my back. Snow angels position. I wonder if any of my neighbors saw me.

This was still not as bad as Fall Number One, which took place at my local supermarket. I was running in to get some cheese and cookie dough (these are the things that run low in my house), and I didn't wipe my feet properly in my hurry. Before I knew it, I had slipped and fallen, layout-style. Arms out in front of me, belly to the floor, treating Aisle Two like it was my own personal Slip N Slide. Not only did I do this fall in Superman position, the force of the slide combined with the trajectory induced by the slipperyness of the floor caused me to roll over twice. Let's just say that again. Roll over twice. Like a fashionably dressed log. And, in the moments afterward when I was lying on the floor in stunned silence, my supermarket comrades (of whom there were MANY) kept right on shopping. It was like it didn't even happen. Is this a kindness? Were they all trying to be nice to me in pretending that they hadn't seen that? I mean, I remember when Patty Bogard rolled all the way down a flight of stairs in 9th grade, spewing papers out of her backpack the entire way. She picked herself up off the landing, gathered up her papers, and then proceeded to trip AGAIN and roll all the way down the next flight of stairs. (And I swear to Lauren Bacall that is a true story. Poor Patty). In 9th grade, everyone pointed and laughed and called her Patty Roll for the rest of the year. So I'm choosing to think that those effers in the supermarket just wanted to spare me further humiliation, rather than them just being Wintry Dicks. An "are you ok?" would have been nice. I'm just saying.

Kiss the rings, I'm out.
Librarian Girl