Our library "friend"

So. I work at the library, and part of my job at the library is putting books on the shelves and making sure that the books on the shelves are in the correct order. And so i'm usually the first one to notice when this one guy has come been there. It's obvious, see, because he is rabidly Republican, and when the library owns anything that is opposed to his worldview, he gets extremely upset about it.

The first time i noticed him was when we changed the way we did the shelves. Instead of just having all of the books spine-out, we started taking one book per shelf and facing it outwards so people could see the cover. One day i came in, and a book by Hilary Clinton had been hidden behind the shelved books. Other books that were possibly Democrat-leaning had been covered up or moved. I fixed everything and then mentioned it to the ladies who work behind the desk. One of them was all, "Oh. I know who that probably was. He's ... outspoken."

So every few weeks, i'll come in and find books moved and hidden. We all roll our eyes at him. A couple of days ago, after finding an unusually high number of the books being moved, i was up talking to the ladies at the desk again, and our new girl was all, "OH! I think i know who you mean! Yeah, he was complaining that James Comey's book should be in the fiction section." (He had moved the copies to the fiction section.) Apparently he was also very upset that so many of the picture books facing outward had black children on them. It was explained to him that that's because it's Black History month, and his response was, "Well. There should be an old white guy month!"

This is the guy who apparently had a huge problem with a board book named "A is for Activist." His response for that was to check out the book, bring it to the parking lot, throw it on the ground, and intentionally drive over it. Because he is mature.

This week when he was in our library, complaining about all of the "liberal" books, he mentioned to our (old white) guy working the desk that maybe he would just check some of them out and destroy them. He was all, "Oh, sure. You could do that. Of course, you'd be responsible for any damage, and if it's damaged enough to discard, the library would just buy a new copy, which would be good for the author...."

ANYHOW. The question that all of us keep asking each other is this: How angry and unreasonable do you have to be to continue going to the library just to move books around and complain about the ones you disagree with? I don't even understand.

It's February, and i'm done with winter now.

This February has been somewhat insane, weather-wise. After a couple of winter months with virtually no wintery weather, we suddenly got hammered with a couple of ice storms and a polar vortex. The kids had an entire week off of school for snow days, then went back for two days and then had another 3 days of snow days. A good portion of the city shut down - the schools and libraries were closed, the mail didn't run, the YMCA closed, and...other stuff, but it didn't actually affect me because we stayed home where it was warm. We watched movies and played games and read books and it was kind of awesome, honestly. (Of course i'm sure it'll suck if/when the kids have to go to school until July....)

In-between crazy weather days, we did manage to do a few things. Here are some of them.

On the 2nd, Beth and i had all of our youth group girls over to Beth's house to decorate cookies.

On the 4th, Zane got to go to the doctor for his yearly checkup. He's completely healthy and awesome and was completely thrilled that he didn't need to get any shots at all. (He just got all of his shots a couple of months ago.)

On the 5th, the kids and i all had dentist appointments. Nobody had any cavities. Yay!

On the 7th, we had book club at my house. Our book this month was "The Miniataurist," so we had all miniature food. And even though the weather was atrocious, nearly everybody was there. Fun!

On the 8th, we had pizza-movie night. Beth and my parents all came over, and it was super fun.

On the 9th, Katrina got a haircut. She got 5 inches cut off, and it's barely even noticeable.

On the 11th, the kids finally went back to school after almost two full weeks of snow days. Houston and Katrina actually had school every day this week. Zane had a snow day on Wednesday and then had a planned day off on Friday. He's going to die when he has to actually have a full week of school again.

On the 12th, we got another bout of terrible weather. The roads were horrible - that's a picture when i was sitting three cars back from my street, waiting and waiting and waiting to be able to just get home. There's a hill, though, and nobody could get up it going either direction. And yet, this was one day when all of the kids actually DID have school. I'm sure they would have had a snow day if they hadn't just had TEN SNOW DAYS in TWO WEEKS.

The 13th was Katrina's birthday! It was freezing cold and the snow was super deep, but she was a trooper and went out with me to take birthday pictures anyhow. Beth and my parents came over to celebrate her, and we had cake and ice cream, and she opened presents, and it was a really fun and laid-back birthday. And i really, really love this girl. She is just amazing and beautiful and just the sweetest girl in the history of the world. I keep waiting for her to become a typical bratty teenager, and she still hasn't.

And that brings us to today! It's Katrina's birthday weekend, so she has some friends over for the night. But tonight is also the school dance (Katrina's first real dance!), and so her friends all came over here to get ready and then came back afterwards to sleep, which is awesome, because that means that i get to take pictures beforehand and then hear all about the dance afterwards! Katrina was Very Unsure about going to the dance at all, and only decided to go after she found out that the friends she invited over were going and after i sort of totally pushed her to go.

But they just got home, and they all had lots of fun, and now they're all in their sleeping bags talking about everything, and they're close enough that i can hear, which is awesome because i'm nosy.