The bellydancing librarian blearily slogs on...

The past 24 hours have been interesting. Let me just start off by saying that Cam and baby are doing well; she has the flu, which brought about a false labor alarm. He could still use to bake another week or two, so this is good news (except for poor flu-stricken Cam).

So, yesterday after I posted, I headed out of work early. I had some comp. time coming, and I had a bunch of errands to do. Off I rushed.

First stop, the public library to drop off some book donations. That went surprisingly without a hitch.

Second stop was JoAnn's. I simply needed 2 buttons. 25 or so minutes later, I emerge from JoAnn's, scowling porkily. Our JoAnn's is being remodeled, and in the mean time, I can't find a damn thing. I then spent far too long picking out buttons for Anne's new cardigan, and then waited in line for 10 full minutes to pay $1.25 for my buttons. Of 2 cashiers, one was being commandeered by a customer with a mystery problem and the other didn't move particularly quickly.

Third stop was a local grocery store for a small roaster chicken for dinner. Obviously, cooking was just not happening last night.

Fourth stop was very needed by the point I reached it: the liquor store. When I brought my 2 bottles of Chardonnay up to the register the woman working there asked to see my i.d.

*angels sing*

I thanked her profusely for asking and whipped it out excitedly. Yes, I am finally one of Those People that gets all happy when asked for photo identification. Because just maybe I actually look like I'm not yet 21 years old. *snorts*

I got home and unloaded the car. I tidied up the house and then called my mother-in-law to bring the kids home.

Much exhausting parenting work commenced. Mike got back from teaching, we ate. I got dressed for a private dance lesson I had scheduled with Claire to get started learning to play the zills (finger cymbals). Mike folded some laundry while I wrangled the children, and during this time Anne threw 2 temper tantrums. This is becoming A Thing with her all of a sudden, and I'm not enjoying it. Although I have to say, maybe it's because she's our second kid, but it doesn't bother me nearly as much as it did when we went through Terrible Two stuff with Hank. I used to get all stressed out and anxious when he threw temper tantrums. When Anne throws herself on the ground, screams, and flails, I just go about my business. Which makes her even madder, but oh well.

Around Anne's bedtime I kissed everyone goodbye and headed to the dance studio. I've been belly dancing for almost 5 years but I've never learned to play the zills. My instructor doesn't like to play them and doesn't teach them. I've always wanted to learn them, so she offered to teach me the basics so that I could see if I liked it.

I arrived feeling quite excited and ready to make tinkly music. I got the basic zill pattern down quickly. But...that excitement was tempered pretty quickly when I realized how difficult it is to play the zills *while dancing* at the same time.

Soooo...I'm not sure how I feel about them. Certainly, it's something that I will need to practice quite a lot if I want to become proficient at it (I'm sure Mike will just love this little foray in my dancing career). I have a few relevant DVD's and drum rhythm CD's on my Christmas wish list to continue my training. We'll see. I just like to dance and don't want anything to make my movements feel encumbered, and the zills are certainly doing that, at least so far.

I used to think that I HAD to learn the zills to really feel like a belly dancer, but I no longer feel that way. I know many dancers whom I admire and respect that choose not to play the zills. I also see dancers who do know how to play them who also dance beautifully without them. I do want to continue to work on it, but I don't feel any pressure to do so. Maybe it'll come together, maybe it won't, but I'm glad that I'm trying it.

After that, I went home to knit and crash. Was pooped.

This morning, ugh. Anne had me up at 1 am, and I had to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at work at 8 am for two back-to-back English Composition classes. I dragged myself to the classroom at 7:45 am, worried that I ALREADY felt exhausted.

Our instruction room gets hot really easily, so I didn't turn on the projector right away, since nobody was there yet. Everybody straggled in a little late, and I was feeling loopily "ON." Sometimes when I teach I can tell that everything is going along really great, and other times it falls flat. Just like dance performances, really. This morning all of the planets were in alignment. I had their attention, I was engaging, I was telling funny stories and they were laughing. I go to turn on the projector.

It doesn't work.

Sigh.

It's barely after 8 am and I'm already having to improvise even more than I usually do. Luckily, the class was very small, so I went to Plan B. I made them all navigate to the things I was going to show them and I wandered around among them while I talked, making sure that they were staying on track.

In the midst of all of this, I had a library school student there to observe me and the instructor is a new adjunct that I've never worked with before.  When it rains, it pours.

It actually went really great (thank you God.). Between that class and the next one I found an ominously out in the open plug that explained why the projector wasn't working. No, it wasn't the power plug, I'm not quite that ditzy. Although I wouldn't put it past me. It just wasn't properly hooked up to the instructor workstation, and since I didn't try to turn it on until after class had already started, I didn't exactly have lots of troubleshooting time to work with. But I did get it fixed prior to the next class.

The next class shockingly went just as well. I came up with different funny stories and they laughed at those too. I was on a roll, people. This doesn't happen all that often, so let's celebrate it. The instructor was very pleased with how the classes had gone and complimented me very nicely ("You handled that technical glitch so beautifully, I was so impressed!" It was all I could do not to exclaim: "Dude, I'm just as shocked as you are!").

*ties on Super Librarian cape*

I head back to my office to scarf down some food and prepare for a reference shift. It was only 10 am. We won't pause to reflect on how ridiculous it is that I ate lunch during this time.

11 am finds me at the reference desk where I am bombarded by needy students. I was still on a high from my classes and was quite enthusiastic in my assistance of them. I mean, I'm always nice to them, I'm just not always ENTHUSIASTIC about doing so. This included several technical forays into mysterious printing problems that I'm totally unqualified to deal with (but I did identify the problem and provide a solution for them) and an engineering student whose question I couldn't even come close to deciphering. But the Super Librarian spirit pervaded and brought her to a relevant database! I even located some print sources for a law review student and he gave me chocolate as a thank you. It was like a reference shift straight out of The Twilight Zone.

But here I am, ready to go home and feeling as though I could fall asleep right on my office floor. It's this working-in-a-coal-mine librarian workload, I tell you. Oh, and all the belly dancing. And getting up with a saucy toddler at 1 am. You know what I mean.