My Addiction: Libraries

A move always means adjustments. And no matter how often you move, those adjustments don’t come easy. But some are wonderful.

I still think Connecticut has the best library system of any of the places I live. I mean, who can beat having one card that gets you into any library in the state? But Minnesota is a close second. I can’t get into any library in the state, but I can get into 32 of them. Even better, all 32 come to me.

I can get on the Great River Library System’s website (thus named for the Mississippi River which I cross at least twice a week going to and from church), put any book I want on hold and it gets delivered to my local library which is not even a half mile down the street from my apartment. Can’t get much better than that!

In fact, I get carried away. I have several lists under my account number on the website: DVDs, mysteries, children’s book and a “catch all”. I don’t know how many items are on them – 100 or so I guess. For if I find anything I’ve wanted to read or watch, I put it on a list. And when I’m ready to have it delivered to me, I put it on reserve. Depending on what number I am in line, I’ll have it in a couple of days.

So, the other day I was looking for some picture books to give me new ideas for birthday presents. I had a long list from a particular book publisher which publishes mostly good books. As I looked them up on the library’s website, I couldn’t help myself. I put six to eight on hold in a matter of moments. I had to hold myself back from putting them all on hold, putting the rest on a list for later. This past Wednesday, as I was off from work, I walked down to the library and picked them all up – lugging back a pile of maybe ten books. It was just like I always dreamed – living so close to a library I could walk there and lug home books. A childhood dream it took three decades to accomplish – like most things in my life.

So, it would seem I don’t actually have to go to a library to take home much more than I can read in three weeks. But there are certainly worse addictions than that.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Happy 27^th Birthday, Daniel!

 Guess you’re probably too old for a train cake now…

Pies in the Face and the FBA

Super Kids 2 ended Thursday. Nearly 200 kids ages 9 to 12 had been running about camp last week. It was a busy week – lots of activity. And with the warmer weather (around 90 for two days in a row), they kept mostly to the water. With that many children, I was quite ready for a busy Thursday morning as they all left. And busy it was.

The phone rang every five minutes, which makes getting other things done rather difficult. And it’s not easy to keep one ear on the phone conversation and the walkie-talkie. But the phone calls saved me when I heard my name over the radio.

At closing assembly, some staff member gets a pie in the face. I’m not 100% sure how it happens. I don’t have time to go to a closing assembly. I think it has something to do with memory verses. All I know is, I’ve had a target on my back (or face) since the summer started. They call it an initiation, but I think they’re just out to see if they can get me for Marc has worked at camp well over 15 years and never had a pie in the face. Well, my number came up on Thursday. Only I was on the phone with a mother who had a lot of questions. So, I was spared. While Andrea took my “dessert”.

The kids were released soon after and I had more than one little visitor from the FBA with their mother who told me she had left over canteen money that didn’t get returned to her.

“I had $12.25,” one girl told me.

She was right. Somehow, the money didn’t get put in a bag for her, so I gave her the money.

“I had $8.75,” said another little girl.

She, too, was right except it was a green card which his bonus money, so I sent her to the store to spend it before she left.

I expect to meet quite a few members of the FFA in Minnesota, but I was surprised at the amount of the FBA (Future Bankers of America) I met on Thursday – little girls who keep better tabs on their money than any of the teenagers who have been around camp this summer and some of the adults. If you ask me, we should put the government in their hands. Give them a few years, and we’d be right as rain!

Show Some Respect, Please

Okay, yes. When I was a kid I thought my parents a little over the top with the whole respect thing. Especially as I spent half my youth in New England. Up there I had adults tell me all the time when I obeyed my parents and addressed them as “Mrs. Smith”, “Oh, just call me ‘Margie’.” All the other kids certainly did. But when I told my parents Mrs. Smith said it was okay to call her “Margie”, I was soundly told, “You will call her ‘Mrs. Smith’.” I swore I would never make my children do that.

As if that didn’t make me weird enough to my peers, I was also carefully instructed to answer “Yes, ma’am”, “No. ma’am”, “Yes, sir” and “No, sir”. In fact, we had a jar of coins in the house we were saving to take a trip to Chuck E. Cheeses (a HUGE treat for us). Every time we failed to answer with the proper “Yes, ma’am” or “No, sir”, out came a coin. Let’s just say it took us a little while to save up…

After a while, I just got use to being weird. Years went by and it became so ingrained, you thought nothing of it. Until I got my first adult job. Let’s just say it took me a while to stop trying to figure out my co-workers last names so I could show proper respect. Although, with some, I still added “Mr.” or “Mrs.” and I couldn’t quite get over the “Yes, ma’am” or “No, sir”.

Of course, when I did live or work in the South, it was no big deal. In fact, it became even more ingrained because everyone did it. And during my last three years in Texas, I was quite used to being referred to as “Miss Melissa” and even learned to tolerate “Yes, ma’am.” Then I moved back North.

And the oath I took as a child has done a full 180 reversal. My children will show proper respect, I don’t care where they live. They will say “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir”. And they will call adults “Mr.” or “Mrs.” or, at least, “Miss”. Because there is something very wrong about a three-year-old coming up to me and saying, “Hi, Melissa!” I haven’t yet, but I’ve come very close to telling one of them, “It’s ‘Miss Melissa’.”

Most people find my “Southern lingo” charming. Others, who are older than my parents, have said, “Don’t call me ‘Mr. Ackerman’. It makes me old.” (I still call him Mr. Ackerman and today he teasingly replied, “Hello, Miss Melissa” as if I would be insulted – which I wasn’t.) It’s a little awkward, but I don’t plan on calling a 60-something-year-old-man “Ken” anytime soon.

It’s not that I think I’m oh-so-wise and deserve respect at the age of 33. I haven’t done that much nor have that much wisdom to have earned some kind of obeisance. But the fact that I am old enough to be an 8-year-old’s mother is the only requirement needed to be called “Miss Melissa”. It’s not so much for me but for the child. It is Biblical truth that a young person should show respect to one that is older. Outside of that, it’s just plain rude to be called by my first name as if I were as much a 5-year-old as the 3-foot little person looking up at me.

I’d venture to say the North lost all proper show of respect when they bombed Fort Sumter and started the War Between the States. The war wasn’t over slavery. It was over state’s rights…and a way for the North to stomp all over the values of Southerners. I’m happy to say they didn’t completely succeed. But they’re still trying. Happily, I can be just as stubborn as my Southern forebears. And maybe teach these Yankees a thing or two along the way.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

It’s funny what sparks your memories – memories that have lain dead and forgotten for years. Blurry memories, almost as if they were dreams. Happy memories of when the hardest thing in your life was a spelling test on Fridays. The kind of memories that make you wish you could go back to them.

I had one of those moments this week when Aaron was telling me he got his son Hudson one of those John Deere tractors you can pedal for Hudson’s birthday. With Aaron the triumph was getting it on Craig’s list for $40, although he’ll enjoy watching his son play with it for hours. For me, it was a memory…

I wasn’t a whole lot older than Hudson and though I’m a girl, I liked those toy tractors you could pedal, too. But the one I pedaled wasn’t a John Deere. It wasn’t green. It wasn’t even plastic. It was completely metal and who knows what color it had been – red, probably. By the time I pedaled around on it, it was a bit rusty. If I had fallen and scratched myself on it, it would have required a trip to the doctor and a tetanus shot. Except my parents weren’t those kind of people (and, what do you know, I’m perfectly healthy anyhow). So, my sister and I were allowed to ride it with pleasure down the broken sidewalk in the old neighborhood out in the middle of no-where in Tennessee. I’ll even confess, I hogged it. That was easy to do when Katey was just a toddler and I was old enough to go to school.

It belonged to Aunt Brownie. And, yes, that was her real name. (I thought the dessert was named after her.) As a little girl of five or six, I thought Aunt Brownie was at least 200 years old and had probably known Robert E. Lee if not George Washington. I couldn’t have been far from wrong because even though I didn’t yet understand all the layers of family relations, I knew she was a greater aunt than any other aunt anyone else had. Meaning, she was my grandmother’s aunt. Actually, Aunt Brownie was 73 years older than me almost to the day. I was born the day after her 73^rd birthday. Because of that, she never forgot my birthday and I had a special kinship with her.

Aunt Brownie had married. I knew that man’s name was Jack, but he died before I was born so I never knew him. They were unable to have children, so Aunt Brownie’s nieces and nephews, great nieces and nephews and great-great nieces and nephews were her kids. So, I was not the first five-year-old to cheat her sister out of a ride on that wonderful pedaled tractor. Aunt Brownie lived in an old house in a neighborhood out somewhere probably not far from my own home in Tennessee, but when you’re five it takes “forever” to get anywhere. I have faint memories of the house. What I remember the most is you drove past woods where a sinkhole was located to get there. I never could grasp the idea of a hole in the ground with no bottom. Surely there had to be a bottom. Why did no one tried to find it? Or, would you just keep falling until you popped up in China? Sinkholes are scary things…

As for Aunt Brownie herself, I thought she lived up her to her name. She was sweet. She loved having us visit. She gave me a cloth stuffed rabbit I still have. She sent me birthday cards even when I moved away. And when she died when I was thirteen years old, I cried. And I wondered if she still had that pedaled tractor.

This fall it will be twenty years since Aunt Brownie died, but she is still remembered. Happy memories. A thing to be truly grateful for.

Routine

We all know addictions are harmful. Of course, when we think of addictions we think of drugs, alcohol, gambling, smoking, etc. But there are all kinds of addictions and all of them can be harmful in some way. I, for one, am addicted to routine.

If I was lounging on a sofa in a psychologist’s office, I’m sure I would discover I can blame this addiction on my parents. First, I was born a military brat. And surely a Naval officer demands order and routine. Second, my mother is of Scottish blood. And have you ever met a Scot who doesn’t do things in an orderly manner? But, ultimately, it was just the way I was born. Ask my sister Katey. I had to put everything in order before we could play with our toys. And Mom tells the story of when I wasn’t quite two, we had moved to Texas and our furniture had yet to catch up with us. So I wouldn’t get crumbs all over the house, I was told to sit in one spot on the floor when I ate my meals. Even when the table did arrive, I took my plate to my spot on the floor.

Of course, like anything that’s new, it takes a little while to get into a routine. When I arrived at camp in February, it felt like chaos. Truthfully I’m not sure if that’s because it was all so new to me or quilt retreats are that way…I’ll find out this fall when round two hits. And while I was trying to get a handle on the event taking place, I was constantly learning to look three or four months into the future at the events coming up. There was more than one thing I forgot to do until the last minute and that always throws me for a loop. In February, I was gazing at the summer with not a little trepidation…

I have since discovered that the summer brings routine. And that is where I thrive. On Sunday, the kids arrive and I work nearly a full day with registration. On Monday, I clean up from Sunday and tidy that event up, finalizing my reports even though the event has just started, but those reports aren’t going to change so I can finish it off. On Tuesday, I have a staff meeting, prepare the mailing for what week (which Brittany’s junior program staff stuff in envelopes for me) and pull the last reports for the present week of camp: numbers on how many photos to order, list of who is authorized to pick up the kids at the end of the week, and prepare cash party labels (for the money the kids don’t use that week). Wednesday is my day off. On Thursday during Super Kids (ages 8 to 11), chaos erupts as the kids leave. I also prepare my report to do the mailing for next week, make sure things are in order to put my cabins together for next week and tidy up loose ends. Fridays are last days of camp for Junior High and Senior High weeks and sometimes I go home early. Although I work at home spread out on my living room floor actually doing the cabin assignments (my favorite part of summer camp!). On Saturday, I’m up at camp for a few hours putting my reports together for Sunday. In the midst of all that; the phone rings, e-mails need to be answered and summer registrations continue to trickle in a few at a time. I am thoroughly enjoying my summer.

Last week, however, was family camp. And my routine came to a screeching halt. In all honesty, I hardly knew what I was doing with myself. Although some things had to be done as normal, so many things didn’t have to happen that I felt a little lost, and off kilter and, therefore, frustrated. There is nothing more annoying to me than lack of routine. Thankfully, I’m not a forthright person most of the time because I felt quite short tempered and easily irritated by people who were only adding to my lack of routine. By Saturday, as I processed my reports (and there are nearly 15 of them I have to piece together), I felt much better. I don’t know what I’m going to do when camp ends the middle of August…

Actually, my routine will be shortly in transition. My last mailings (aside for two family camps) go out next week. I hardly see any summer registrations any longer. My database is about to be shifted from summer-looking to quilt-looking. We hope to launch Men’s Retreat and Dads ‘n Daughters online registration for September next week. Women’s retreat registrations are pouring in. The first week of quilt in November already has 75 attendees (and the mailing only went out last week). Lisa is working on those registrations right now, but they will appear on my desk on today. I need to gather graphic artwork for the retreats, get out my folders and start thinking cooler weather, colorful leaves and apple cider. And then take a deep breath…and work on settling into another routine. 

MN: From the Perspective of a Nomad, Part 6

Most people know that Minnesota is the “Land of 1,000 Lakes”. After all, it does say that on their license plates. I think they put that on the plates because it’s much more romantic than saying “Land of 10,000,000 Boats”.

The truth is, I’m surprised they didn’t stop me at the border and demand to know where my boat was. Or expect me to purchase one within 60 days of my arrival. Everybody in this state has a boat. Rich or poor, sick or well – you have a boat. Might not have much of a car, but you must have a boat.

Camp itself has boats. The 3 pontoons are the only ones with motors. But we have sailboats, and paddleboats, and canoes, and kayaks. And when there’s family camp or weekend groups, they bring their own boats. Where I’m from, it’s the slightly wealthy or handful of avid fishers that have boats. Not here. Minimum wage is enough for a boat. As for avid fishers…

On Sunday, a little boy barely tall enough to see over my counter came into my office with his family as they checked in for Family Week. First, he had to show me his rocks (which he also shared). Then he started telling me about his fishing adventures. I was informed that fishing in Wisconsin is not worth one’s time or energy. If you wish to fish, do it in Minnesota. And wear a bright red t-shirt with a fish on it. 

“I’ve been fishing since I was three years old!” he told me.

He was probably all of five now. But that’s the way they train them here. I would even dare to say that three is a little old to be starting them. (Although Aaron’s three-year-old Hudson caught his first fish this past weekend.) In Minnesota, I think kids are born with fishing poles in their hands. If you have never been fishing, they would think you were from a different planet. And probably send you packing.

I have to confess, I don’t even own a fishing pole…let alone a boat. So, the jury is still out if I’m going to be allowed to stay. I wonder if getting a boat for my bathtub will count…

America

Tomorrow is the birthday of one of the greatest nations that this world has ever seen. Why? I don’t know. When one stops to consider, the fact that America exists is a miracle. It’s a well-known fact that parliamentary bodies never agree. We don’t expect them to. Even if they manage to pass some bills and laws, the fight is long, bitter and never unanimous. And yet in 1776, a Congress gathered, argued and united to sign a Declaration of Independence that – to this day – astounds a world. Did they all agree? No. The exact words Thomas Jefferson wrote were not the ones that were signed. But on July 2, 1776; ???? men agreed to disagree for a higher cause. A feat no other nation has ever accomplished. Truly, America, God has shed His grace on thee.

And yet today, people all over this nation will enjoy firework shows in celebration of the 4^th of July. Yes, today. July 3^rd. Not because any of them have any idea that if we wanted to be 100% accurate we should actually celebrate the 2^nd of July and so compromise with a happy medium. Or because the 4^th falls in the middle of week instead of a nice weekend (and so we should celebrate on the 5^th or 6^th of July). No, the reason so many large (and small) cities in America will set off their fireworks today is because the 4^th is a holiday and heaven forbid that we should pay city employees overtime to work it.

Really? We come to celebrate the birthday of the greatest of all nations and we worry about paying overtime. Or worse, the citizens of this nation demand to get paid overtime for celebrating their freedom. Maybe somebody should tell that to our soldiers overseas who not only work overtime but do it everyday of the week – unpaid – to protect the freedoms we’re celebrating. Could we be any more selfish?

Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised. Do we not live in a nation where we think privileges are our right? It doesn’t matter if we can’t afford it. It’s our right to have nice vacations, big homes, more than one car and so many clothes we don’t even know what’s in the back of our closets. That’s the American way. Right up there with social security, debt, abortion, broken homes, illegal immigrants, public education and turning a blind eye to evil – especially the evil of those who lead this nation. Americans don’t do anything for nothing. If we’re going to celebrate our nation’s birthday on it’s birthday, then we need to get paid overtime.

In all honesty, I am disgusted by most Americans. People who don’t know the sacrifices of their history and certainly don’t care.  But I love this nation. I thank our soldiers, I pledge our beautiful flag and I read of the biographies of great men and women who gave so much for her with humility. And even if I don’t grill hamburgers or see fireworks on the 4^th, I will give my God thanks for His longsuffering and mercy.  And pray for another miracle…