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December 20, 2000
Relief...
My mom had her surgery today -- everything went fine, except for one small hitch: they took her appendix out too, because it seemed to have wandered down to check out the hernia action, and was looking a little funny. Other than that, she's okay -- she's all tucked into bed now, having eaten the lovely dinner I cooked for her, and taken a pain pill.
The last couple of days were weird. The weather on Sunday was freaky, at least for this time of year -- warm, (about 60 degrees or so) with heavy rain and loud thunderstorms. Not Christmas weather at all. Lee and I went out for dinner, which turned out to be a bad idea when her car started acting funny -- the speedometer was flailing around like mad, the check engine light was on, and the headlights kept flickering in and out. We stopped at a very scary gas station, where the attendent told her that her alternator was probably wet. We got dinner, and them drove back to her place, cringing and swearing whenever we had to drive through a large puddle -- which was pretty much constant, as roads were flooding everywhere. We didn't get washed away, though, and the car didn't die, so we lived to exchange early Christmas presents (A Nick Hornby novel and a Blur CD for me, woo hoo, and a DVD for her).
Monday... well, as far as I can remember, Monday was pretty uneventful. Yesterday, though, was liberally sprinkled with weirdness. Right after I arrived at work, I had the joy of arguing with a student about why he had to pay the fines on the books he'd returned late -- his argument was, essentially, his friends had had fines waived before, so he should have his waived, even though he knew the books were late, and blah blah blah. Very few things in life annoy me more than having to have these arguments with people -- it's not like I get to keep the fine money, folks. He finally ran out of steam, and went away. Next was a phone call from a man who wanted a book we didn't own. He had a very thick accent, and spoke really fast, so I had a tough time understanding what he wanted. Once I figured that out, and found that we didn't have the book, I referred him to the Boston Public Library. He thanked me, then said "I'm from Haiti!" Me: "Oh, really?" Him: "I'm from Haiti!" Me: "Um... okay..." Him: "I'm from Haiti!" Me: "Yeah... so is there anything else I can help you with?" Him: "I'm from Haiti!" And then he hung up. A few minutes later, the phone rings again -- this time it's a woman. "I have a question," she says. "I'm trying to settle a bet. My friends and I were watching a Disney movie, and it had little animals in it. You know that movie?" Ummm... Disney, animals, that really narrows it down... "It had these animals that looked like ferrets, and they were standing on thier hind legs. I want to know if ferrets can really do that." I wanted to ask her if she was aware that the animals in Disney movies do a lot of things that real animals don't do... things like talk, and sing and dance, and wear pants... instead I told her that our library doesn't have a whole lot of information of ferrets, and that she should probably call Petco or something... I also told her that I knew someone who'd owned a ferret, and it had sort of stood on its hind legs occasionally, but not often. "And it didn't wear clothes or sing, either," I wanted to add. She seemed somewhat satisfied with that... why she called me, I don't know, since I don't work in a general library. It's a fairly specific collection, and has nothing whatsoever to do with ferrets. Or pants-wearing Disney animals.
After the weirdness of work, I sat on a bus for five hours, headed to Vermont, to nurse my poor mom. There's snow all over the place here, four or five inches deep, and it's damn cold. But it's pretty, what with the clear, clear skies (the stars are so bright, it's amazing) and the twinkly Christmas lights and all. My mom put up a little tiny tree, and I fell asleep looking at it last night.
Posted by Mary Ellen at December 20, 2000 08:09 PM