Day in the Life of an Idiot

 Not necessarily in that order.

Yesterday was a lot of picking up prescriptions for Shawn, doing laundry, and general "oh, you've been away, this needs doing" stuff. Including a trip out to our new vet in Maplewood to pick up more of Deliah's prescription for her pain meds. Considering all the cat illnesses we've had this year, Deliah is doing really well. She's on an antibiotic for any infection that the bone cancer may be causing, a steroid, and pain meds. Despite all this, she's limping around to all the places without a whole huge amount of trouble, demanding food and drink, and, because she gets what she wants because she's a sick kitty, supervised roams in the front yard on demand (though usually as a reward for taking her meds.) So, I mean, is it hard to watch her limp? Yes, but, if you didn't know she had cancer, you'd think she'd just injured her leg. In weirdly positive news, I noticed at the vet that they have her set to have refills for her meds until the end of September, which... I mean, isn't long from now, but also isn't DYING RIGHT NOW, either.

I also took Mason in to Washington for an appointment with his counselor. The way things work at Mason's school, the counselors are the ones who set schedules. He brought in the courses he'd signed up for already at St. Paul College (a history class and an English comp) and worked things out for himself so that he FINALLY HAS A DECENT START TIME.  Yes!  He's not going to have to be at school next year until almost 9 am (8:40 or something more like that, because of how classes are).

For Mason, this is ideal. 

As a teen and college-age adult, I craved the earliest morning classes. That's when my synapses are firing best. But, I was also never one to stay up until so far past midnight that it's technically the next day. 

But he got all his requirements sorted and decided to take AP (or CIS, "college in school," I can't remember which,) Statistics, since he didn't quite manage to test out of Calculus I and didn't feel like retaking it again right away. I think that was wise. He also may end up really enjoying statistics. 

That's all good news on the school front.

Meanwhile, Shawn texted me and said that she did NOT place at the State Fair for her rugs. Boo! Robbed!

As I predicted: suddenly, there was an influx of entries. Last year, there were only two (three ribbons are available) and other weavers must have noticed, because this year there were SEVEN entries. Shawn noted that the woman who won in BOTH categories (same woman, two separate size rugs) not only had been last year's winner, but also is what is known in the weaving business as an "art" weaver. Usually this means a smaller, hand loom. Not an industrial, working-class loom, like ours. We suspect we were dissed for being too "country" as it were. Shawn and I are going to make time to go, if only because we need to check out the competition. 

Last night I worked at Maplewood Library, which was strange on a lot of fronts. First off, I haven't worked in so long that I made a few rookie mistakes (the game CDs do not go on the shelf!) and generally felt like "what is work??? How done?" But, luckily, the people I was working with felt the same way as they hurried to get some of the end of the night stuff done on time so that they could watch "Big Brother" in the backroom. I have not seen an episode of "Big Brother" since it was first popular a thousand years ago; who knew it was still going? They were both super into it, though, which I found very charming. And, honestly? It was pretty dead. Yesterday was the first day of the State Fair and you could tell. Every place that wasn't the Fair Grounds was pretty slow.

Also I heard all sorts of stories about weird things that happen in libraries, including, last night, about the time that one of the circulation staff discovered a dead body. 

This is actually a sad story, as it involves a homeless person who probably OD'd. Apparently, the library used to have a small homeless camp sheltering UNDER their back deck. This is not surprising, as libraries are becoming the front lines for homelessness and other social work care. When I was working last night, three people came in for "care packages," which are just basics: a water bottle, a protein bar, some other stuff like that. But, they just come up to the information desk and ask for one and the staff puts them together in a plastic bag. I do not think this is standard. I think this is something that the Maplewood staff took on themselves. 

At any rate, the story of the dead body is basically that the staff person was taking her lunchtime walk, which brought her past the homeless camp, and a regular resident there had a "not home" sign on her camp for just too many days for the staff person to be comfortable with, so she got a social worker to investigate and sure enough, she was "home," just dead. The mystery is: who put up the sign? Speculation is that there was a boyfriend well known to the staff and that the boyfriend supplied the drugs, knew she might OD, and put up the sign. Not cool, boyfriend. But, that's it. I mean, Roseville, will get dirty diapers in their book box, but not so far as I know, dead bodies under their deck....

Maplewood, for all that it is a suburb, does have it's share of weirdness. I have worked there when fist fights have broken out and the police needed to be called. People muttering about Jesus is just background noise, so long as it doesn't disturb the other patrons....

So you know? If the staff want to hide in the backroom for an hour, who am I to point fingers?