Mishmash: Frigid night edition

It's been pretty chilly around here this week, for New Jersey anyway; I'm not giving out actual temperatures for fear my Midwestern friends would laugh me off the Internets; but tonight is the coldest yet and I am NOT going outside to clean out my car as I had intended to, nor am I taking down the pathetic-looking Christmas wreath that still adorns our door.

I have been working on Prayer Quilts this week, since Irene put a note in the church bulletin that we are running extremely low on them and CALLING ALL SEWING MACHINE OPERATORS, could we please make some more. I turned out two moderately acceptable quilts that are ready for tying at the meeting Tuesday night. I have a third one cut out but I think I'll wait on that since I have so many other projects churning. I wish I could say I was proud of these quilts, but they're not really my best work; I tried, but I rushed them and it shows.

As far as the other projects go, I don't want to say too much about them because some of them are intended to be a surprise for a particular reader -- more on that later. I do want to make a new ironing board cover to replace the one that disintegrated last week; ever since I saw the idea for that in one of my sewing books I can't get out of my head the notion that I must not, MUST NOT purchase one.

The volunteering at K's school has kind of piffled out. I keep trying to make myself go, but then I think about spending two hours cataloging Magic Treehouse books incorrectly and putting scotch tape over spine labels, and I think -- and maybe this is snotty, but I think it anyway -- "What a waste of my time." I would much rather be making things with fabric, or even working on the church's music library, which I've been further encouraged to do by the new music director. I suppose I just want more of a challenge.

Speaking of challenges, this weekend is going to be one -- K has yet another long weekend, and with the freezing temperatures even she doesn't want to play outside, so we've had to think creatively about how we're going to spend the time. Today we're going to do an afternoon movie double-feature with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (which we read most of on our recent trip to Wisconsin) and Prince Caspian. Tomorrow we're thinking of doing a game day, which K has specifically asked for recently -- board games, card games, hide and seek, you name it. And for Monday either D and K will join the school's "Day of Service" efforts or, if that doesn't pan out, we'll do and arts-and-crafts day. Tuesday, thank Heaven, she'll be with her grandparents!

Oh! One more thing -- I saw my friend who asked for the felt pencil rolls yesterday and gave them to her, and she was very pleased. She asked me, "How much?' but we were with a crowd and I didn't want to talk about money then, so we agreed that she would call me later. When she did, I told her how much they had cost to make (around $5) and she said, "Let me give you $12 apiece," and I told her that $10 was plenty, but she said she'd feel better giving me $12. I thought about what a commenter on my other blog said:

I would feel guilty if I asked a friend to make me something for pay, and she made it for me and insisted on giving it to me unreimbursed. At the very least, if I'd explicitly asked for whatever it was, I'd want to cover the cost of materials.

So I decided that I'd let her give me what she felt comfortable giving me. I have to admit I'm pleased to have earned some money doing what I love to do. I think when I have time I'll make more pencil rolls to have on hand.

A new era

Our choir director and organist at church recently retired, and though I will miss her, I am blown away by her replacement. I think my excitement has something to do with the anthem he chose for his first Sunday with us, "My Dancing Day," a traditional English carol that fit perfectly with the lessons and allowed us to sing with a joy and freedom that I, personally, have not experienced in a long time. It's amazing how the right kind of music can enhance worship, and how music chosen or performed poorly can completely flatten it.

I'm also excited because the new organist found out about the major cataloging project I took on in the music library years ago, way before K was born, and wants me to finish it and presumably take on the role of music librarian. (D had cooked up a database for me to make the music library (SMML) more accessible -- at the time the only access was through a set of notecards that covered about 1/10 of the music we had on file -- and I had gone through the music files one by one and counted, repaired and cataloged them. I had gotten through about 2/3 of the files when I realized that no one was going to actually use the data I was collecting -- so I stopped.) I'm thrilled that our SMML database will finally be put to use, and that our efforts will be appreciated.

Creative cataloging

Yesterday I volunteered at K's school, helping to enter new books into the brand-new library's database so they could go on the nearly-empty shelves for the children to check out. I was working with a bona fide, veteran children's librarian, henceforth known as CL, and I learned a number of reasons why I am not a children's librarian. It's taking a great deal of effort on my part not to rant about those things now; I did, in fact, rant about those things to my children's-librarian-mother-in-law last night; but she understood that I was just venting, and if I ranted again here I would just sound like a witch; so I will just mention the issue I had that relates to creativity:

Creative cataloging.

That is to say, choosing a cataloging record for the book you have in your hand based on what you'd like to have in your database, rather than choosing (or creating!) a record for the book you have in your hand based on the book you have in your hand.

Case in point:

Me: "There's no record for this book."

CL: "Oh, that's okay. There's one with a picture of the book."

Me: "But that's a different publisher, and the date's not the same."

CL: "Oh, that's okay. We decided it was more important that the kids see a picture of the book."

Okay. Who am I to argue? I haven't worked in a library for ten years. I don't even remember the Dewey Decimal System, which clearly renders me an idiot to CL. (Note to self: brush up on that.) If that's the way they want their catalog to be, I'll go along with it. They'll still be able to find the book by its barcode. Chances are the only one whose sensibilities will be offended is me. And the answer to that is obvious: go get a job in Technical Services, honey. You don't belong here.

On the bright side, I did get to create a couple of records from scratch -- for board books that no one else would have bothered to catalog because no one else would have bothered to circulate them, because no one in their right mind would have accepted them as gifts to their library, they were so atrocious. (And, just to rub salt in it, they were Tweety Bird books that I was told to place in the Disney genre, which don't even get me started on.)

In the end, though, I did enjoy working as a sort of "sub-librarian" and am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. Ten years is a long time to be out of it. I think, though, that I can work my way back and gain some credibility before too long, especially as neither CL nor the woman who is serving as the school librarian (and who is not, technically, a librarian) is particularly computer-savvy. Perhaps I can bring some skills to the mix that would be valuable and useful. I hope so.