Greetings! I write to you this evening from my dining room where my precious laptop is housed. Now my laptop, well, it’s not in top-notch shape. It functions just fine, but it’s no beauty. If it were a car you’d say it was reliable, if it were a house you’d call it a fixer-upper, if it were a high school girl, you’d say it had a nice personality. Over a year ago Mike had it in the airplane in his backpack and a water bottle leaked on it. It filled the screen up and a project was born. In a time when maybe your husband or wife would have thrown in the towel and bought a new laptop, my husband purchased a fix-it kit and spent hours taking layer upon layer of screen off of it,(there are several layers in your laptop my friends) repaired it, and it was as good as new. Like a good plastic surgeon Mike managed to keep it looking good and working well. But what this plastic surgeon failed to mention to his graceless wife was that the laptop was a bit more fragile than it used to be.
I may be small, but you can hear me coming a mile away. The pounding of my feet, the accidental crashing of the door, the muffled cry as I once again stub my toe, catch my fingernail, step on a lego, trip on a shoelace, kick myself in the shin, you get the picture. Anyway, precision and grace aren’t my strongest suits, and when I am done with my computer for the night, the top gets slammed down and I’m off. Long story short, the top of this already fragile entity, was slammed one time too many and now I am the only girl on the planet who has a laptop held together on one side with two sets of nuts and bolts. Sometimes, even with the bolts in place, part of the screen will still pop out and I will push it in and go on with my day.
Being married to someone handy is amazing. If something breaks I guarantee you my husband can fix it. I always say if you can’t marry for money then for goodness sake, marry handy. Oh yes, and marrying for love might help, too. Lucky for me, I love my handyman. Whenever we see something cool at a store, Mike says, “Let’s not spend the money, I can make that.” And the truth is he can, now does he, well that's a blog for another time. To make matters even better for a scatterbrain like myself, my husband is also very, umm, frugal. This is great for a girl who is a little more lax with the spending…Mike keeps me from making dumb purchases and shady investments. He might say things like Do you really need those shoes or do you really want to invest all our money on a beach resort in Antarctica? So if marrying frugal is good and marrying handy is good, and marrying for love is the ultimate, then for goodness sake marrying someone handy and frugal who you love must be like winning a gold medal in life, right? Well, for the most part yes, but, you might want to re-read paragraph two here, and realize that I have a laptop that is BOLTED together! Rather than give up and dig up the funds to get a new computer my husband bolted the thing together and called it a day.
When our dog chewed through her leash for the 50th time, instead of spending $25 on a heavy duty chain Mike bought a bunch of rope and a clasp from Home Depot for a few bucks and made his own version of a chew-proof leash. When Madison complained that she was getting grease on her pant leg from the chain of her bike, Mike cut a piece of Velcro, fastened it to her sweat pants and they held tight, never to flap into the path of her chain again. Car sliding on ice? Mike will throw an engine block in the back for some added weight and you’re good to go. Pets eating from each others' bowls? Mike can rig something to fix that. Cables out? Car’s broken? Phone’s fallen into Lake Union? Fixed, fixed, fixed.
Don’t misunderstand it’s not all duct tape and Jeff Foxworthy here at the Allen house. Mike can be quite a craftsman, too. We have a beautiful fireplace in our bedroom, an awesome fire pit in our backyard, a huge hand-built shed on the back of our house and a beautiful dining room table that he refinished, and that’s just to name a few.
Even though it’s just a hobby and I will likely never be a real author; my blog gives me a little boost of adrenaline and the chance to be a writer. Mike knows this and supports me 100%. I like to have something posted at least every two weeks. When two weeks have gone by and I haven’t posted something, I start to worry about this self-imposed deadline. I sit down to write, whether I have a subject matter or not. I can really get caught up in wanting to make my blog just right and Mike knows that as well. This evening I was working on a blog about my less than savvy technological skills, but I just couldn’t make it work. Mike came into the kitchen and suggested I go for a kayak ride alone and just think for a bit. While I was out there, I realized I’d have to table the tech blog for another time. It just wasn’t in me.
Discouraged, I paddled to shore, tied the kayak up to a rusty crowbar that Mike has inserted into the ground as a temporary mooring and came into the house, being careful not to be hit by the wooden doorstop Mike invented to keep the dog from pawing open our sliding glass door. I sat down and started typing this blog. It might not be what I set out to achieve, and it might not be pretty, flowery and full of beautiful language, but it works. Looks like Mr. Fix It has done it again.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Bored? Read this...
Hi Friends,
This is an article I did for my school newsletter. It's not the typical Squeaky Voice material, but I thought you parents out there might like it. ;)
Bored To Tears
Understanding & Appreciating Boredom
By Aimee Allen
It was yet another rainy Saturday in the Pacific Northwest. One mild-mannered ten year old had hit her threshold for inactivity. She was tired of drawing, couldn’t bear to watch any more TV, had read every book on her bookshelf and had done and redone her dolls’ hair more times than even Vidal Sassoon himself could possibly fathom. With tears in her eyes she surveyed her living room; her mother was curled up on the couch with a glass of ginger ale nursing the stomach flu, her brother was lounged in the corner reading a Geronimo Stilton book and her dad, now a full-time student, was across the hall in the office studying for finals. It was at this moment that the sweet ten year old uttered the words that drive most parents crazy. “I’m sooooo bored.”
This of course roused her otherwise infirmed mother, who set her ginger ale down rather loudly on the window sill. This exasperated mother loudly asked “How on Earth in the year 2011, with all the toys, games, books, etc., can anyone claim to be bored?” Knowing as she said it that it wasn’t just the daughter’s declaration that bothered her, it was the whole connotation of boredom.
As parents we try to balance our children’s lives without making them too full or too dull. When our children say they are bored, we tend to take this personally. The whole idea of boredom makes us feel uneasy. No one sets out to host a boring dinner party, tell a boring story, go on a boring vacation, have a boring home or be a boring parent. In fact we most likely dread the idea. So when you are accused, and it does feel like an accusation, of any of these things, it hurts the ego. Still, if we take a step back, we might find that boredom isn’t always a detriment.
One of my professors from graduate school felt strongly that boredom in the right doses was a good thing for people. He noted that in such a fast-paced society with people almost always on the go, boredom forces us to sit with ourselves for a bit. Boredom allows us to quiet our minds, to introspect and to problem solve. For many people boredom can be the gateway to creativity. Many artists, inventors, musicians and writers have credited sheer boredom for their best works. The world-renowned artist and sculptor Anish Kapoor said, “It's precisely in those moments when I don't know what to do, boredom drives one to try a host of possibilities...”
Leonardo da Vinci was said to often be bored. I read somewhere that he was even bored in his sleep. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.” Certainly da Vinci was open to transforming his moments of boredom to moments of fascination. How lackluster the world would be if people like Kapoor and da Vinci were not able to embrace and then overcome boredom time and time again.
You don’t have to be a famous artist to embrace boredom. I grew up in an apartment complex where there were a lot of other children around to play with. On the rare occasion that I found myself outdoors alone, I would complain that I was bored. At those times I would often plop down in the courtyard and watch the ants. I found their lives quite fascinating. I could, and did, watch them march back and forth for hours. Other times I would start to pull the grass out of the ground and see how small I could shred each blade before going to the next. Shredding blades of grass can be pretty tedious work, but I had some of the best daydreams and fantasies as I worked those blades.
Daydreaming, a common companion to boredom, can really be a good thing, not just for creativity, but for brain activity as well. As I was researching for this article, I found some science to back this. In his blog “The Frontal Cortex”, writer/scientist Jonah Lehrer, explains “At first glance, these boring moments might seem like a great time for the brain to go quiet, to reduce metabolic activity and save some glucose for later. But that isn't what happens. The bored brain is actually incredibly active, as it generates daydreams and engages in mental time travel. In particular, there seems to be an elaborate electrical conversation between the front and rear parts of the mind, as the medial prefrontal cortex fires in sync with areas like the posterior cingulate and precuneus.” As anyone in the business world will tell you, it is a very good thing when all departments are communicating and working together. While we are lamenting over the tedium of our day the parts of our brain are working as a team, which they cannot to do when we are challenged, focused, or otherwise engaged.
I need to be careful about over-romanticizing boredom. We have all experienced boredom and we know it is an uncomfortable and frustrating feeling. Often when bored, children will occupy themselves with TV and video games. This certainly isn’t a brain-stimulating outlet. Even worse, boredom in large doses can be linked to a variety of negative things such as obesity, drug use, depression, dropping out of school, etc. In fact I just read that the number one reason high school drop-outs give for leaving school is boredom. They don’t have interest in the school subjects and have not made a connection with any of the adults in the school.
So no, we don’t want our children to be bored for long periods of time. The idea of moving from boredom to fascination means that there has to be some acknowledgment of our mental state, some time spent in this state and then a desire to move past the discomfort. Just like any other uncomfortable emotion, we need tools to get ourselves through. In the Montessori classroom we pride ourselves on having many materials that actively engage students’ brains. Children rarely come to us with the claim that they are bored, because there are so many appropriate choices to stimulate their minds. The beauty of the Montessori model is that we have been focusing on independence and problem solving since the children were toddlers. If children do find themselves in a situation where they feel bored, they can usually get through it without much interference on the part of the adult.
Taking this cue from the Montessori classroom, we as parents can encourage our children to utilize their problem solving and independent thinking skills. Conceivably the child will at some level say to him/herself I recognize this feeling, I’ve had it before. What can I do next? What interests me? What activities do I enjoy? What do I want to find out? What have I done in the past to get beyond this feeling? If I can’t come up with solutions on my own, who can I talk to who can help me? Just as it is with adults, for some children this is a natural process, other children might need some guidance. Perhaps this can be a topic at your next family meeting. By saying something as simple as “What do you do when you’re bored?” or “How do you get past feelings of boredom?” you can help your children develop strategies they can use for a lifetime.
On yet another rainy Saturday, I found that mild-mannered ten year old and her younger brother zipping around the house collecting items for a project. It started by putting stickers on a cardboard box. In no time the cardboard box evolved into a setting. Soon they were creating puppets from socks, complete with yarn hair, googly eyes, clothing and personalities. There was sewing involved, script writing and a lot of laughter, too. This provided hours and hours of engagement for both children. When asked where they got the idea for this elaborate project they simply answered, “Well we were just bored.”
References
Lehrer, J. (March 24, 2009). Boredom [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/03/boredom.php
Brainy quotes http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/arthur_schopenhauer.html
Brainy quotes http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/anishkapoo324857.html#ixzz1J9SuNYxq
This is an article I did for my school newsletter. It's not the typical Squeaky Voice material, but I thought you parents out there might like it. ;)
Bored To Tears
Understanding & Appreciating Boredom
By Aimee Allen
It was yet another rainy Saturday in the Pacific Northwest. One mild-mannered ten year old had hit her threshold for inactivity. She was tired of drawing, couldn’t bear to watch any more TV, had read every book on her bookshelf and had done and redone her dolls’ hair more times than even Vidal Sassoon himself could possibly fathom. With tears in her eyes she surveyed her living room; her mother was curled up on the couch with a glass of ginger ale nursing the stomach flu, her brother was lounged in the corner reading a Geronimo Stilton book and her dad, now a full-time student, was across the hall in the office studying for finals. It was at this moment that the sweet ten year old uttered the words that drive most parents crazy. “I’m sooooo bored.”
This of course roused her otherwise infirmed mother, who set her ginger ale down rather loudly on the window sill. This exasperated mother loudly asked “How on Earth in the year 2011, with all the toys, games, books, etc., can anyone claim to be bored?” Knowing as she said it that it wasn’t just the daughter’s declaration that bothered her, it was the whole connotation of boredom.
As parents we try to balance our children’s lives without making them too full or too dull. When our children say they are bored, we tend to take this personally. The whole idea of boredom makes us feel uneasy. No one sets out to host a boring dinner party, tell a boring story, go on a boring vacation, have a boring home or be a boring parent. In fact we most likely dread the idea. So when you are accused, and it does feel like an accusation, of any of these things, it hurts the ego. Still, if we take a step back, we might find that boredom isn’t always a detriment.
One of my professors from graduate school felt strongly that boredom in the right doses was a good thing for people. He noted that in such a fast-paced society with people almost always on the go, boredom forces us to sit with ourselves for a bit. Boredom allows us to quiet our minds, to introspect and to problem solve. For many people boredom can be the gateway to creativity. Many artists, inventors, musicians and writers have credited sheer boredom for their best works. The world-renowned artist and sculptor Anish Kapoor said, “It's precisely in those moments when I don't know what to do, boredom drives one to try a host of possibilities...”
Leonardo da Vinci was said to often be bored. I read somewhere that he was even bored in his sleep. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.” Certainly da Vinci was open to transforming his moments of boredom to moments of fascination. How lackluster the world would be if people like Kapoor and da Vinci were not able to embrace and then overcome boredom time and time again.
You don’t have to be a famous artist to embrace boredom. I grew up in an apartment complex where there were a lot of other children around to play with. On the rare occasion that I found myself outdoors alone, I would complain that I was bored. At those times I would often plop down in the courtyard and watch the ants. I found their lives quite fascinating. I could, and did, watch them march back and forth for hours. Other times I would start to pull the grass out of the ground and see how small I could shred each blade before going to the next. Shredding blades of grass can be pretty tedious work, but I had some of the best daydreams and fantasies as I worked those blades.
Daydreaming, a common companion to boredom, can really be a good thing, not just for creativity, but for brain activity as well. As I was researching for this article, I found some science to back this. In his blog “The Frontal Cortex”, writer/scientist Jonah Lehrer, explains “At first glance, these boring moments might seem like a great time for the brain to go quiet, to reduce metabolic activity and save some glucose for later. But that isn't what happens. The bored brain is actually incredibly active, as it generates daydreams and engages in mental time travel. In particular, there seems to be an elaborate electrical conversation between the front and rear parts of the mind, as the medial prefrontal cortex fires in sync with areas like the posterior cingulate and precuneus.” As anyone in the business world will tell you, it is a very good thing when all departments are communicating and working together. While we are lamenting over the tedium of our day the parts of our brain are working as a team, which they cannot to do when we are challenged, focused, or otherwise engaged.
I need to be careful about over-romanticizing boredom. We have all experienced boredom and we know it is an uncomfortable and frustrating feeling. Often when bored, children will occupy themselves with TV and video games. This certainly isn’t a brain-stimulating outlet. Even worse, boredom in large doses can be linked to a variety of negative things such as obesity, drug use, depression, dropping out of school, etc. In fact I just read that the number one reason high school drop-outs give for leaving school is boredom. They don’t have interest in the school subjects and have not made a connection with any of the adults in the school.
So no, we don’t want our children to be bored for long periods of time. The idea of moving from boredom to fascination means that there has to be some acknowledgment of our mental state, some time spent in this state and then a desire to move past the discomfort. Just like any other uncomfortable emotion, we need tools to get ourselves through. In the Montessori classroom we pride ourselves on having many materials that actively engage students’ brains. Children rarely come to us with the claim that they are bored, because there are so many appropriate choices to stimulate their minds. The beauty of the Montessori model is that we have been focusing on independence and problem solving since the children were toddlers. If children do find themselves in a situation where they feel bored, they can usually get through it without much interference on the part of the adult.
Taking this cue from the Montessori classroom, we as parents can encourage our children to utilize their problem solving and independent thinking skills. Conceivably the child will at some level say to him/herself I recognize this feeling, I’ve had it before. What can I do next? What interests me? What activities do I enjoy? What do I want to find out? What have I done in the past to get beyond this feeling? If I can’t come up with solutions on my own, who can I talk to who can help me? Just as it is with adults, for some children this is a natural process, other children might need some guidance. Perhaps this can be a topic at your next family meeting. By saying something as simple as “What do you do when you’re bored?” or “How do you get past feelings of boredom?” you can help your children develop strategies they can use for a lifetime.
On yet another rainy Saturday, I found that mild-mannered ten year old and her younger brother zipping around the house collecting items for a project. It started by putting stickers on a cardboard box. In no time the cardboard box evolved into a setting. Soon they were creating puppets from socks, complete with yarn hair, googly eyes, clothing and personalities. There was sewing involved, script writing and a lot of laughter, too. This provided hours and hours of engagement for both children. When asked where they got the idea for this elaborate project they simply answered, “Well we were just bored.”
References
Lehrer, J. (March 24, 2009). Boredom [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/03/boredom.php
Brainy quotes http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/arthur_schopenhauer.html
Brainy quotes http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/anishkapoo324857.html#ixzz1J9SuNYxq
Sunday, May 1, 2011
The Ghost of Five Owl Farm: How one nine year old single-handedly paid for the refurbishment of the Malden Public Library
Just yesterday I found myself cornered in the Queen Anne bookstore in Seattle by two eager, wide-eyed children. There was a small crowd looking on; two retired grandmas, one stay at home dad, one precocious two year old toddler and a middle aged woman who bore a strange resemblance to Dr. Teeth from the Muppets. I could feel the sentiment from the crowd, and they weren’t on my side. “Mom,” one of my children started bargaining, “If you let me buy this book, I will pay you three dollars toward it.” I broke into a sweat; I knew what the crowd was thinking, What’s wrong with this woman, why won’t she buy her children a couple of books? I retaliated rather loudly, “We just bought a bunch of books in Portland on Wednesday,” which happened to be 100% true. “But we already finished those books mom,” my other child chimed in, which also happened to be 100% true. Four or five chapter books purchased on Wednesday had been devoured in the course of a three hour train ride, a couple of hours of downtime and finally a forty minute ferry ride. Even with this new insight, the crowd, showed no mercy as they silently chided this low-class mom who refused to buy her children books. Still, I knew that by the time the weekend was over, my dear children would have read through the two books in hand and then what? If only there was a place that you could take a book, read it, and then bring it back when completed. But where on Earth would that be?
Oh come now, I know what you’re thinking. You are suggesting the library aren’t you? Well, believe me, I love the library, truly, I do. It’s just, well, things are complicated between us. There’s a long history between Aimee Decker Allen and the public libraries of the U.S.A. In hindsight it was a doomed relationship from the start, costly and filled with loss. Still we have had some fine moments, but let’s not play games; you aren’t interested in the good times. You are here to learn of the anguish. Here goes. The real heart ache began in 1982. The details are painful and you needn’t know everything, but let’s just say the incident consisted of, among other things, two unhappy parents, one extremely unkempt bedroom, one threatening yellow slip from the Malden Public Library, one bewildered nine year old and the callous judgment of Mr. Phil Collins transmitted via In The Air Of Night on the family record player.
Up until this point, I loved the library and frequented it often. It was, and still is, arguably the most beautiful building in my home town. It was built in the 1800s and housed thousands of books, encyclopedias and even art work. The library also catered to kids with a huge children’s section taking up the entire bottom floor. I loved that place. As a general rule when checking out books I was allowed two or three. I believe this was a library rule, but it could have been a parental one, not sure. One visit, for some reason, I chose to get only one book and that was a book called The Ghost of Five Owl Farm, even though it was a little dark for my usual taste. I can still see the cover, a purple book with some menacing owls on it. I brought the book home, but it didn’t keep my interest. I set it down in my room one afternoon and that was that. Who knows where the book journeyed after that. Perhaps, the toy box, under the bed, my closet, another room? No matter, in the Decker household The Ghost of Five Owl Farm was forgotten, that is until months later, the library notice… Let me cut to the chase, even after my dad, who has a talent of finding absolutely anything, combed through my bedroom and then the entire house, The Ghost of Five Owl Farm was nowhere to be found. A true mystery.
Remember I was nine when this happened so some details are sketchy, but what I know for sure is my library card was suspended. Though my parents and every other adult on Earth have refuted this claim, I am pretty sure I paid a nickel a day, plus interest, for the next 14 years, paying all my fines off just in time for the Malden Public Library to open their multi-million dollar addition in 1996. Coincidence? I think not. I’m a Gen Xer and I know a conspiracy when I see one.
My story should stop here, lesson learned. But it doesn’t. I just can’t seem to break the pattern. More libraries, more overdue books, more yellow slips, more revoked library cards, more shame, more shame, more shame! Yet I still go back- a new town, a new library. I applied for cards in many libraries and to my surprise each time, I was approved. But part of me always feels an imposter. I alternate library entrances, sometimes I go with the head tuck/eyes averted approach. Other times, I try to bluff them, making eye contact. But they know, oh those wise librarians know. They can spot a girl like me a mile away. Right before I push open the library doors they are probably saying things like “Hey Trudy, bolt down the classics, here comes another riff-raff.” The smart librarians, though, I’m talking the really shrewd ones, they welcome girls like me, they say things like “Never mind on that bake sale Franny, this little hot shot’s going to be paying for story hour for the next three years!” (Feel free to insert a cackle here, I know Trudy and Franny would). They’ve got my number. Oh yes they do, filed away in that covert code they call the Dewey Decimal System.
Nowadays things have gotten simpler. When I have an overdue book, I get a gentle reminder from the library. One of the libraries I belong to even allows you to renew on-line and pay your fines that way, too. Sure, I still have to face the Trudies and the Frannies of the world when I do finally return those books. That’s why whenever possible I return my books to the outside slot in the cover of night. It’s so peaceful at those times, just the quiet whirr of my car engine, the chirping songs of the crickets and the slightly haunting chorus of hoots coming from Five Owl Farm.
Oh come now, I know what you’re thinking. You are suggesting the library aren’t you? Well, believe me, I love the library, truly, I do. It’s just, well, things are complicated between us. There’s a long history between Aimee Decker Allen and the public libraries of the U.S.A. In hindsight it was a doomed relationship from the start, costly and filled with loss. Still we have had some fine moments, but let’s not play games; you aren’t interested in the good times. You are here to learn of the anguish. Here goes. The real heart ache began in 1982. The details are painful and you needn’t know everything, but let’s just say the incident consisted of, among other things, two unhappy parents, one extremely unkempt bedroom, one threatening yellow slip from the Malden Public Library, one bewildered nine year old and the callous judgment of Mr. Phil Collins transmitted via In The Air Of Night on the family record player.
Up until this point, I loved the library and frequented it often. It was, and still is, arguably the most beautiful building in my home town. It was built in the 1800s and housed thousands of books, encyclopedias and even art work. The library also catered to kids with a huge children’s section taking up the entire bottom floor. I loved that place. As a general rule when checking out books I was allowed two or three. I believe this was a library rule, but it could have been a parental one, not sure. One visit, for some reason, I chose to get only one book and that was a book called The Ghost of Five Owl Farm, even though it was a little dark for my usual taste. I can still see the cover, a purple book with some menacing owls on it. I brought the book home, but it didn’t keep my interest. I set it down in my room one afternoon and that was that. Who knows where the book journeyed after that. Perhaps, the toy box, under the bed, my closet, another room? No matter, in the Decker household The Ghost of Five Owl Farm was forgotten, that is until months later, the library notice… Let me cut to the chase, even after my dad, who has a talent of finding absolutely anything, combed through my bedroom and then the entire house, The Ghost of Five Owl Farm was nowhere to be found. A true mystery.
Remember I was nine when this happened so some details are sketchy, but what I know for sure is my library card was suspended. Though my parents and every other adult on Earth have refuted this claim, I am pretty sure I paid a nickel a day, plus interest, for the next 14 years, paying all my fines off just in time for the Malden Public Library to open their multi-million dollar addition in 1996. Coincidence? I think not. I’m a Gen Xer and I know a conspiracy when I see one.
My story should stop here, lesson learned. But it doesn’t. I just can’t seem to break the pattern. More libraries, more overdue books, more yellow slips, more revoked library cards, more shame, more shame, more shame! Yet I still go back- a new town, a new library. I applied for cards in many libraries and to my surprise each time, I was approved. But part of me always feels an imposter. I alternate library entrances, sometimes I go with the head tuck/eyes averted approach. Other times, I try to bluff them, making eye contact. But they know, oh those wise librarians know. They can spot a girl like me a mile away. Right before I push open the library doors they are probably saying things like “Hey Trudy, bolt down the classics, here comes another riff-raff.” The smart librarians, though, I’m talking the really shrewd ones, they welcome girls like me, they say things like “Never mind on that bake sale Franny, this little hot shot’s going to be paying for story hour for the next three years!” (Feel free to insert a cackle here, I know Trudy and Franny would). They’ve got my number. Oh yes they do, filed away in that covert code they call the Dewey Decimal System.
Nowadays things have gotten simpler. When I have an overdue book, I get a gentle reminder from the library. One of the libraries I belong to even allows you to renew on-line and pay your fines that way, too. Sure, I still have to face the Trudies and the Frannies of the world when I do finally return those books. That’s why whenever possible I return my books to the outside slot in the cover of night. It’s so peaceful at those times, just the quiet whirr of my car engine, the chirping songs of the crickets and the slightly haunting chorus of hoots coming from Five Owl Farm.
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