untitled

i entitled this picture "cock and cupcakes," but i'm not sure if that would be a proper name for this post. we'll see.
ms. b cakes had listed a recipe for pumpkin caramel cupcakes on her website. if your follow the recipe they will be "guilt free:" low calories, low fat, low ww points blah blah blah. but i decided to replace all the healthy stuff with the fattening stuff. i think it was the right move.
tonight i sat in my apartment, eating leftovers from the meal i cooked friday, watching the last of the 90210 episodes, and baking cupcakes. i am just a regular suzie homemaker. and i waited for a phone call that seems like it will never come. i tell myself that eventually this will work out for me (i mean it has to right?), but honestly i just see no evidence of that. none at all. and for the longest time i blamed others, but now i can only blame myself. as cliche as it is ... it is me. it's not you ... its me. i can't pinpoint exactly what it is about me, but it's me.

apparently, you can just accuse people of running red lights willy nilly

New York City Department of Finance
Red Light Camera Monitoring Program

To Whom It May Concern:

I recently received a Notice of Judgment Enforcement, regarding a supposed violation on February 26 at 8:12 PM. This noticed stated that I had “failed to respond to previous notices.” However this notice, dated June, was the first notice I had received regarding this matter.

I would like to plead Not Guilty to this liability. According to the notice, I am being accused of running a red light on 2/26/2008 at Canal Street and 6th Ave. I happen to know that I was nowhere near that area on the date and time in question. On Tuesday February 26th I was at my biweekly therapist appointment in Williamsburg Brooklyn. This appointment took place from 7 pm to 8 pm. I have enclosed my invoice for the month of February 2008, listing that I was at my appointment at this time. After my appointment I returned home. Unfortunately, I do not have any means of proving my whereabouts for the entire evening of 2/26/08, but I can assure you that I at no time was on Canal Street.

I looked it up using Google Maps, and if I were to attempt to get to the intersection of Canal and 6th from Bedford Ave Brooklyn (where my appointment took place) it would take approximately 16 minutes. Now, that is without taking traffic conditions into consideration, and at that time traffic over the Williamsburg Bridge and crosstown on Canal Street would be notably congested. I do not see how I could possibly have left Williamsburg at 8 pm and made it to Canal Street by 8:12. Also, even though my appointment ended at 8 pm, I would have had to: pay for the services rendered, walk to my car, sit in my car for several minutes to let it warm up (my car is over 10 years old). There is no possible way for me to have gotten from Brooklyn to Canal & 6th in this 12 minute window period.

I would also like to state that I am the sole driver of this car, so there is no possibility that someone else was driving it on the night in question. I typically drive to my appointments, especially during winter, so the car would have been in my possession on 2/26.

I have received absolutely no evidence that I have committed any infraction, nor have I seen any proof that I was even remotely near the area that the supposed violation took place. I feel that I have provided sufficient evidence proving that I was not at the scene of the violation on 2/26/08 at 8:12 PM. I would greatly appreciate it if this matter were dropped.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Miss Dewey Decimal

lunch and laserdiscs

last night i was feeling tired and lazy, and i knew i had to work today so i decided i would do nothing. but i did not do nothing. oh no. i did so much more. inspired by a blog post by Ms. B Cakes, i decided to go to this large store where they sell all this food. maybe you have been to one of these? and then i purchased some food and brought it to my home. then i cut up stuff and sauteed things and baked stuff and lo and behold, when i was done i had prepared my own dinner! in my own home! pretty incredible, no?

then i drank wine and ate my yummy homemade meal while watching disc one of season 4 of 90210. donna, kelly and david moved into a beach house instead of the dorms! mrs. martin will not be pleased! donna and david bickered while setting up their fancy pants laser disc player! then andrea was the victim of anti-semitism when she tried to join a sorority. apparently, they don't have jews in california. really. in beverly hills. no jews. best not to ask questions. just go with it ... oh, what types of hijinks will these kids get into next?!

so this morning i was very excited to bring my own lunch to work. (did i mention i gained 5 pounds from my camping trip? five pounds! i was barely gone 48 hours!) so i packed a tupperware full of my delicious vegetarian enchilada casserole and i packed another tupperware full of strawberries. and i put it in a large plastic bag and placed it RIGHT NEXT TO MY PURSE so that i wouldn't forget it. i even said to myself, "self, do NOT forget this plastic bag which you have strategically placed right next to your purse." i think you can see where i am going with this.

anyway, i was running early so i decided to stop at this new gas station in the hood in hopes of getting tea. (they do not have coffee or tea anywhere in the vicinity of library in the hood). anyway, this gas station was like a desert oasis. there was coffee and tea and drinks and fresh baked bread. and the two middle eastern guys who ran it were kinda cute in a just-got-out-of-the-israeli-army sorta way. so i bought a tea and a bottle of water to go with my fabulous nutritious lunch and that is when i realized that my fabulous lunch was not in my car with my purse, but was instead sitting on the floor of my bedroom, most likely already rotting in the 90 degree heat. grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

secret post OR you're lucky if you know me

this is a little blog experiment ... i wrote a post. it's damned funny. but i cannot post it here. so if you know me in real life, please feel free to email me and i will send you the post privately.

indoor playground: day 1

i woke up a little sad today, even though i had spent the evening drinking free newcastle at shangri-la, watching my friends the naked heroes rocking out. alas, i woke up despondent. why, miss dewey decimal? why were you so sad?
well let me tell you a story ... i was having a conversation with my therapist and i was talking about whether or not i want to transfer to a different branch. of course a few months ago i was dying to go to a new branch, but with the new found pleasantness i think i'd like to stay. and i was telling her how much the kids need me, and how they are so tough on new people. they've been burned so much in their lives that they don't trust anyone and it takes months of dedication to prove yourself to them. if i left, what would be the likelihood that anyone would stick around this ragtag bunch long enough to get through to them? the likelihood is low. and then dear blog readers i had an amazing revelation ... i am exactly like these kids.
so this morning i awoke anxious with fear that the tough exterior which i have created to protect myself may have, yet again, inadvertently pushed someone decent away. and after receiving some good advice i decided to take a risk and allow myself to be vulnerable to another person. and so far i think that taking this emotional risk may have paid off.
and once that was settled i had a glorious day ...
first i had my kindergartners in for storytime. i totally love these kids now. they just eat up everything i do. and they know all the words to the songs now, so they all sing along. it's so cute.
then the three books i ordered on games came in and i came up with a variety of games to play for my first ever indoor playground program.
1. human knot - the kids stand around in a circle and grab each others hands (you cannot hold hands with the person on either side of you, and you must hold hands with two different people). then once you're all knotted up and you have to untangle yourself without letting go of anyone's hand.
2. crawl tag - the person who is "it" has to crawl around and catch the other players. the other players walk from one end of the room to the other, each end of the room being base. if the players are tagged, they have to keep their hand on the place where they were tagged. so if someone gets tagged on the ankle they have to hobble around holding their ankle. once you're tagged three times you become it.
3. bowling bridges - the kids break up into two teams and they each stand in a line red rover style with feet apart. the members of the opposite team have to try to bowl a ball through the legs of a member of the opposite team. you are not allowed to move or block the ball. if the ball goes through your legs you're out.
then we played a few rounds of telephone, which was quite amusing when we got to the kid with the stuttering problem. i know that's mean to say, but i couldn't help laughing at the girl who had to relay the message after him.
anyway, the kids had a blast and they were very excited to hear that this is something that we'll be doing weekly.
so in conclusion:
mood - good
job - fulfilling
novel - in progress
gas prices - too high

busy as a bee

oh, i am so busy with my clever cleverness. how can you stand to be in the presence of such greatness?

summer reading is upon us and let me tell you that all too often the fun is sucked out of summer reading when you have to "perform" and get high "numbers." number schmumbers. i'm more interested in facts and actions than numbers.

but here is the loophole that i am enjoying ... the powers that be come up with a number that they feel each branch should hit. this number is based on the number of registrations the branch got last summer. now, we were closed last summer. miraculously, i was still able to get kids to sign up for the summer reading program. but since we were closed our numbers were very low. so i've been told that we have already surpassed our number requirement for this summer. and summer has barely started!

so no need for little old me to worry about such useless things as statistics. i am free to concentrate on important things, like actually creating a fun and enriching summer reading program. yay!

so here's what we have brewing:

All About Butterflies - as i mentioned before, the children and i will be raising caterpillars and then releasing them into the wilds of the hood when they become butterflies. today we had our first butterfly meeting in which we discussed the butterfly life cycle and talked about proper caterpillar care, ie do not shake your caterpillar. then we colored in pictures of caterpillars and butterflies and decorated them with glitter glue. glitter glue! so much neater than regular glitter!

Indoor Playground - this week i went to a really interesting meeting about the importance of play. it was fascinating. all about how kids are losing their imaginations and their ability to think and reason because they are being robbed of their playtime. so i came up with this idea to play outdoor games inside. we will make masking tape hopscotch boards, play soda bottle bowling, etc etc. i've ordered several books on school yard games and i'm sure i can think of one activity per week for this. oh i am so brilliant.

Book Buddies - now, i will not try to take credit for coming up with the idea of book buddies. but i have this one teen who is really great (he wrote the Welcome to the Library section of the newsletter) and when he saw that i had story times on the summer calendar he asked if he could read to the kids. and i said, "that would be awesome. but i do the storytimes." but i told him i would figure something out. then i quickly made up a book buddy flyer and decided that we will have older kids read to the younger kids as part of the Jr. Summer Reading Club (grades K-3). then i showed him the flyer and he got all excited that i took his idea seriously and implemented it so quickly.
damned i'm good.

why on earth indeed

a woman walks into the library. she approaches the desk and says, "the book is called love on trial."
there's no "i'm looking for a book" or "hi, i was hoping you could help me find this book"
we are living in a society people. let's try to be polite.
anyway, we do not have the book but they do have it at the central library which is very very close to us. but no, she gaffaws at the idea of going to central. as though it is terribly far away. as if she might have to travel to, oh i don't know, some far off distant place like brooklyn. wait a tic, i do that every day. anyway, i find another library that has it and she says she will go there. then i check and i see that the book hasn't circulated since 2006. so i tell her that it is very possible that the book isn't really there since it hasn't gone out in 2 years. then she says that one time someone once told her that and then .... get this ... when she went to the library the book WAS there. yeah, i say. i have no idea if the book is really there or not. i'm just saying that it might not. you should probably call. so then i begin to write down the number for her and she asks me if i could call for her. no prob. we do that all the time.
so as i am dialing the number she says, "i just don't know why on earth anyone would want to work in a library."
what kind of thing is that to say to a librarian? especially a librarian helping you get the book you want? and this library is actually very nice. it's no hell's library (where bits of the ceiling fall on you OR you get asthma from the air vents that have never been cleaned OR several employees get ringworm and no one does anything about it). it is clean and new and modern and before 3 pm it's very quiet and peaceful. no crazies or homeless psychos. we do have a resident crack addict but she's actually very pleasant. anyway, point being, this is a fine place to be. so i say to her ... "well i did make my career out of this. you know, spending $40,000 on a master degree and all. so i kind of like it." seriously, who says that to a person? so after i said that she kind of backpedalled and said oh yeah studying library science blah blah blah.
people need to get some manners.

it's about to get serious

ok, so now there is a family sitting in the children's room. i'm not sure where they are from but they barely speak english. after being here only a few minutes one boy, maybe about ten years old, walks up to the pencil sharpener WITH A CRAYON! what the hell is going on here? and then i shout, probably louder than neccessary, DO NOT PUT CRAYONS IN THE PENCIL SHARPENER! he of course had no idea what i was saying. but he did stop. and then i picked up and pencil and tried to mime that only pencils could go in the sharpener. not crayons. sheesh.
but here, for your viewing pleasure, is a video from sesame street about the making of crayons. it used to be one of my faves. sadly, i do not have speakers on my computer so i have no idea if this video has the original sound or some strange dubbing going on. let's just cross our fingers and hope for the best.

the crayon bandit strikes again

here it is, by popular demand ... my fabulous "pencils only" sign. so far, so good.
in other news we've had some fab programs here. we played a special "grammar edition" of Word Up! (the dictionary racing game i created). in this new version, players from each team had to come up to the board and fill in the blanks with the appropriate tense of a word. we went over such things as "when is it grammatically correct to start a sentence with 'I be?'" or "when should you say 'gots' instead of 'got?'" or when should you say "that is mines instead of that is mine?" the answer being NEVER! you NEVER SAY THESE THINGS. and then we went on to some fabulous subject verb agreement exercises. this just proves, yet again, that the children will compete in just about anything if i promise to reward them with prizes. but it was very educational. and for a while i had kind of given up on correcting grammar because the grammar was so bad, but now i have a renewed passion for grammar correction.
then on monday we had yet another rousing game of Are You Smarter Than a Librarian (yet another fab game created by ME). now, last time i blogged about this there was some hub bub about how the children could possibly beat me. well, let me explain to you the cardinal difference between my game and the game "are you smarter than a 5th grader." the reason the children are able to beat me is that i ask them children's questions and they ask me REAL TRIVIA QUESTIONS. you know, the kind that are meant for grown-ups. of course i would beat them if i was answering the children's questions. i have a masters degree. c'mon now. but anyway, they got super competitive and tried to stump me with the hardest questions. in the end they wound up beating me by 2 points. some might say, "miss dewey decimal, shouldn't you just let them win?" to that i say ... hell no! i fight to the death on these trivia games. oh, i'll beat them next time.
oh man ... i just caught boy 5 trying to put a crayon in the pencil sharpener again. i gave him a stern talking to, telling him that he can NEVER use the pencil sharpener. EVER. he then proceeded to walk away in the middle of my tirade. grrrrrr.

things they don't teach you in library school (yes, you have to go to school for this)

1. they do not teach you how to remove crayons from pencil sharpeners

remember those old fashioned metal pencil sharpeners they had bolted to the wall of your elementary school classroom? we have those. now, common sense might tell you that a pencil sharpener is for pencils. it is not a general sharpener of all dulled objects. for instance, you cannot sharpen knives with a pencil sharpener. it is for pencils only. i could go on and on and list the various things you should not put into a pencil sharpener, but i won't. however, aside from knives, you also shouldn't put crayons in pencil sharpeners.

we have these three siblings that come into the library. there is a 5-year old, a 9-year old, and a 13-year old. girls 9 and 13 are supposed to be looking after boy 5. but they do not like looking after boy 5. so instead they ignore boy 5 completely and allow him to run amok around the library while they socialize with older boys. lovely. here are some various predicaments which have arose from this custodial situation: boy 5 stood outside by himself in a downpour and got soaking wet, boy 5 ran outside during the heat wave and began picking up various discarded soda bottles on the ground and drank from them, boy 5 filled up a watergun in the library bathroom and was very close to going on a shooting spree, etc etc.

i have, on several occasions, told the older sisters that they must watch boy 5 AT ALL TIMES. and when i say this they usually roll their eyes at me and/or suck their teeth at me. so charming.

boy 5 happens to be very preoccupied with the pencil sharpener. on many occasions i have caught him taking apart the pencil sharpener and sticking his fingers between the various gears. i have also caught him shoving crayons up there. now, one would think that if you shoved a crayon into a pencil sharpener you would see that it didn't fit and you would cease and desist this activity. but oh no. instead he jams the entire crayon in there so that it is so deeply lodged in the pencil sharpener that it cannot be removed.

i wound up leaving it in there a few days so that the other children could learn the valuable lesson of "listen to miss dewey decimal when she says no crayons in the pencil sharpener."

so today i decided it would be my saturday mission to fix the pencil sharpener. it took 45 whole minutes. first, using a paper clip i tried to bore wholes into the mass of crayon. i coupled this technique with using the thin end of a pen cap to dig out crayon. then large chunks of crayon would be dislodged from the sharpener only to re-lodge themselves in the gears. then i would have to use said paper clip and pen cap all over again. the whole process was very painstaking, but eventually i got all the crayon out and now pencils can again be put into the pencil sharpener. and i made a cute little sign saying "pencils only" with a picture of a crayon with a big red line through it. ahhh, another action packed saturday in the children's room.

a day in the life of a gotham librarian

this morning i woke up confused due to a strange feeling of contentment. what is going on here? what is this feeling? is this genuine happiness? what gives?

job: satisfying. the kids are improving leaps and bounds, and my co-workers and i are just one little happy family.

writing: going well. everyone loves what i'm working on, which leaves me with a feeling of accomplishment.

socialness: i am just a regular social butterfly. you most likely will run into me while i'm out and about in the nabe.

romance: looking up. things are brewing. can i be more vague?

anyway, i woke up this morning feeling good despite the fact that it was SIX AM. you are most likely asking yourself, "why? why, miss dewey decimal? why would you wake up at that ungodly hour?" well, it was so that i could have a starring role (this is a huge exaggeration) in the upcoming punk rope dvd. so i made my way to one of greenpoint's finer drinking establishments where the punk rope dvd was being filmed. there i was, thank god, greeted with coffee and bagels. and i had my fourth cup of coffee EVER. (for those of you not keeping strict count of my lifetime coffee consumption it goes as follows: 1. accidental coffee from bodega, 2. coffee with my friend from england to prove to him that i can drink coffee, 3. coffee out of desperation at a meeting that didn't serve tea, and finally 4. punk rope dvd)

anyhoo, the first "scene" i am in was a warm up song where i show various stretches. i got to be right in front (i do love attention) and i looked pretty fab if i do say so myself. i was wearing my black skort from american apparel (possibly the only item of clothing that they sell that does not make me look like a fat whore) and my black and pink punk rope tank top. this ensemble was accessorized with my black and pink pumas, and my black and fuscia striped skull sock-it-to-me socks (which i blogged about previously here). super cute.

then after the warm-up scene i had a "librarian cameo" in which i had to look like a librarian. big stretch. but it did require a wardrobe change into a black knee length fitted skirt with this super cute gray blouse i bought with my mom on our last shopping trip. anyway, there were two people jumping rope: one jumping properly, and one jumping improperly. if your feet make noise when you jump rope then you are jumping improperly. so i walk behind the man jumping loudly (while holding a goldie hawn biography and a copy of love in the time of cholera) and i look at him with librarian scorn and then .... then dear blog readers i got to shush him! i was told by the crew that i needed to shush louder, which of course defeats the whole point of shushing, but whatevs.

then it was coming up on 9 am and i needed to leave to go to work. that's right, after spending two hours at a dvd shoot i then went to library in the hood. luckily i was already dressed as a librarian so i was good to go.

so now i am here on a saturday. it's so very very quiet here on saturdays. which is usually boring but today it is good as i am oh so tired (why did i stay up til 2:30 last night ... oh yeah, that's why. he he he) must nap before going out to punk rope post production party. sometimes its exhausting being me.

bringing a tear to your eye, one burly biker man at a time

so i have to kvell a little bit ... i just read this article from kexp reviewing my dear friends The Naked Heroes who recently played at williamsburg music hall. and i am just oh so proud of them for being such a kick ass rockin' band. i wish you could see merica's hair better in this pic. it really is a sight to behold. anyway, that's all for now. shameless plug for my friend's band.

oh my breeders

so the mccarren pool site still hasn't announced their secret headliner on july 13th, and my computer seems to be refusing to load the new jellynyc site. but in the listing of free summer shows on ohmyrockness they are listing THE BREEDERS as the main act. and if ohmyrockness says it's true, then that's as good as gospel to me. thank you ohmyrockness, thank you.

hot off the presses

so i have had several requests to post the fabulous newsletter that my beloved children write. we typically have newsletter meetings twice a month and the kids come up with things they want to write about. with some prodding from me and my lovely assistant. then i begrudgingly type the entire thing up and correct as much grammar as i can without compromising the integrity of their work. oh, and typically i add some accidental typos. look, i'm not perfect, ok. i know i appear to be, but it is merely a facade.
now, there was much discussion about how i would upload these. would i save them as a pdf? or a .ps file? would i scan them? then i had to sadly admit that i do not know how to use my scanner. i've tried. the damned thing doesn't work. part of the problem is that it is no longer hooked up. but i swear, if this thing was hooked up it probably still wouldn't work.
but i digress. we had our final newsletter meeting this week. during this meeting instead of writing i had the kids assemble the freshly printed pages of the newsletter, teaching them what it means to be in an "assembly line." there was some collective groaning about the tediousness of an assembly line and my assistant helpfully pointed out that if the kids didn't do well in school they could end up working on an assembly line as their full time job. that's right. we're scaring 'em straight. and then i did something unprecedented and oh so clever. i made the kids READ the newsletter. wow, it was so amazing. all of a sudden they were reading the entire newsletter (as opposed to only looking at the part they wrote) and discussing which parts they like and what they don't like and which poems are well-written and what advice is good advice. so when we start up the newsletter again in the fall i think i will add reading the newsletter to our newsletter meeting activities.
reading. whodathunkit?

master baker

so these are the fabulous cupcakes i made for my friend merica. please note that the bottom pan of cupcakes are decorated with the led zeppelin zoso symbols. it isn't easy trying to represent led zeppelin in icing, but i think i did a damned good job. nothing says rock n' roll like multi-colored cupcakes.

p.s. the secret ingredient is buttermilk. and cocoa.

i heart free stuff

back in the day i actually was very politically active. i used to listen to NPR daily and read british newspapers online, sign petitions and go to protests. but then one fateful day in early november 2004 i sort of just gave up completely and hid myself away, ignoring all forms of news media. FOREVER. but now that obama has won the nomination, maybe i can come out of my news-free cave.
turns out i am still on the moveon.org mailing list and they are offering free obama bumper stickers. yes free! completely free! all you have to do is fill out a little form with your name and address. most likely you will get lots of annoying emails from moveon, pestering you to become politically active. but you can just ignore those as i have for the past four years. that is, until they offer something free again.

just my two cents, i'd like to see john edwards as VP. see that? i'm back!

the breeders are coming! the breeders are coming!

oh god, can it be true? will the breeders be playing a free show at mccarren pool? please, let the unfounded rumors be true.

jellynyc hasn't announced who their "super secret headliner" will be on sunday july 13th, but last fm is boldly stating that it will in fact be THE BREEDERS! oh please let it be so! i hope this isn't some mean hipster practical joke.

terminated

so ... i kinda got someone fired today. i feel bad about it. but its not my fault (well, actually it is entirely my doing) but its not my fault because this person deserved to be fired. right? i mean, i can't be blamed for accurately describing the work performance of one of my employees. i shouldn't have to lie. and that is what i would have had to do to stop the firing process. and actually there are always other options besides firing. firing is just the option They have chosen. so there you have it. i am absolved of all guilt. except i'm not. and tomorrow i will have to face said employee as he/she is informed that this is the end.