wideeyedfunk

Tag: Buffalo Central Library

  • Not cold in the library.

    I don’t get out much and when I am out and about my interactions with Other People are confusing. Confusing for me because these days I’m not super great at tracking communications unrelated to my work. Confusing for them because I am entirely unpredictable in my responses. For me the Other People seem like a radio station fritzing in and out. I respond to the portions I comprehend. Recipe for weirdness.

    But. Sometimes my difficulties are surpassed.

    The WideEyedSpouse and I were at the Central Library downtown on New Year’s Eve (Friends, this is how I ring in the New Year. With books.) The Central Library is a tricksy place filled with lunching corporate workers, homeless people in from the cold, retired people, people on long bus layovers, and kids. I keep my eyes to myself and my hand on my wallet – always good business in any city or university library.

    I waited for about three-fifths of my lifetime for the person ahead of me to do the self check out. He kept getting his two books and library card out of his library sack and checking out first one, then the other book. He’d pick up the sack handles and start to move away. Pause for thought. Rescan library card. Check out one, then the other. The first two times I was fooled but I’m a quick learner and I stood patiently waiting for him to work through his OCD. I gazed into the middle distance and listened to the whir of the escalator behind me.

    The OCD patron got through his cycle and I stepped up with my stack of sci-fi, romance, memoirs… I set them on the gray check out reader pad and scanned my library card. Beep. The air to my left moved in an unexpected way and I looked up swiftly but not, I assure you, like prey –  “Hi. I’m Matt,” announced a youngish male-person with a dark blue stocking cap. His voice was a little breathy, he was nervy about something. He smiled and tilted his head, maybe showing me his swirly neck tattoo. He had agreeable teeth. Not at all crystal methy. So I answered. “Hi Matt, what can I do for you?”

    “Are you cold?” he asked me. I wasn’t. In fact I was wearing a heavy wool coat, snow boots, and a scarf. Interesting, I thought to myself. “No. Not particularly. Why do you ask?”

    Young Matt looked at me like I wasn’t super bright and said, “You’re wearing a skirt. You’re the only girl in here wearing a skirt today and it’s cold outside.” I looked at him while I thought about my answer. Maybe Matt was a young anthropologist from another time or place (in human disguise?) and he was interviewing to understand Downtown Buffalo (Earth?) cultures. Maybe Young Matt was often cold himself and just had to know how I could stand it. Maybe Nefarious Matt’s buddies were circling around to grab my purse or, longshot, maybe he was hitting on me. It was impossible to interpret from his open and cheery attitude. So I answered him, “It isn’t too bad today. It gets uncomfortable on super windy days, so I don’t wear a skirt then,” I smiled at him and gathered up my checked out books.  “Oh,” he started, and then was gone. I didn’t see him leave – I looked to my right to see if he had moved around the book check station and there was the WideEyedSpouse, approaching with big booted strides, looking even taller and bigger than usual in his winter boots and coat.

    The Spouse pretty clearly scared off Curious Matt. I was happy to see the Spouse, as always, but now I’ll never know what was happening in that conversation.

  • Saturday morning along some Buffalo roadways.

    HamishGrillHamish the Corgi supervised the assembly of the new Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker last night. Miss Tibbit broke the packing material down into pieces small enough to fit into the recycling bin. They waited at home today while their WideEyedHumans drove out to Adventures in Heat in the suburbs for hardwood charcoal and some black cherry and apple wood chunks.

    The world between the house and the shop teemed with life. Two security guards in Buffalo Central Library lamented the arrest of a regular patron. He was caught with 20 grains or grams of something.  That’ll get him 20 years in prison, one guard said.

    A Princess (her license plate told us so) in an elderly Nissan Altima hocked a wad of gum into the shrubs in the Tim Horton’s Coffee drive through. Across the street jets lifted off at the airport, taking people somewhere else. For once, on this rainy Saturday morning, I didn’t feel the wanderlust.

    A few miles down the road, a Dad opened the rear door of a limousine and helped his daughter bride into a tiny white church. We rolled passed the intersection where an 18 year old on a motorcycle blasted himself to a 100 mile an hour oblivion on the front of a BMW last Wednesday. I expected it to look different there now, but it didn’t.

    A senior citizen hauling her groceries in a rolling bin stopped for a smoke break in an empty bank parking lot. Brindled and shaking, a tiny dog stared at me from the next car over when we arrived at the bbq shop.

    On the way home we stopped at Fairy Cakes Cupcakery for a couple of treats: orange-chocolate and oatmeal cookie cupcakes. The WideEyedSpouse has a birthday tomorrow. Two delicately oversized giraffes living at the Buffalo Zoo peered over their oversized wrought iron fence at passing events. I saw their long eyelashes blinking at the world and wondered what they thought about. Did they want a cupcake?

    Just now I stood in the garden, contemplating on mulching even though the maple hasn’t released its helicoptering seed pods yet. It is raining a bit and Miss Tibbit and Hamish asked if we might instead nap in front of public television. Sure, I told them, let’s go in.

    The world will have to get by without me watching it for a little while. I hope I don’t miss anything.

  • Nothing Gets Done When I Have a Big Stack of New Library Books

    A person should never, ever visit the library on a Thursday, not if they want to have any kind of a productive weekend.

    Reading spot out back.

    I had Big Plans for last weekend. I was going to burn some paint off the woodwork in the bathroom. Mulch down the few garden beds still exposed to the burning drought-sun. Maybe clean the house. Mow the dry, brown vegetation patch that used to be the lawn. Watch a movie. Knit. Ride bikes. All kinds of things.

    Reading spot out front.

    Instead I read. Two romance novels, a couple of period mysteries, a fantasy novel, some modern literature, and a little bit of history.  I read on the sofa with my feet propped on the dog-worn ottoman. Read in the back yard on my new vintage-style woven-strap lounger. Perched with a book at the kitchen table – just for a moment was the intent but I creaked when I finally stood up. I read in bed. At my desk. On the front porch. On the back deck while burgers grilled. I may have spoken to the Spouse and the Dogs once or twice. I know I fed the fish and the cat because they are still alive. Otherwise, it was the books.

    If I happened to be in a place where I absolutely could not read, like say, when I was driving the car out to the Clarence antique/flea markets to find something to make into a bathroom vanity (failure – we accidently bought a beautiful piece of furniture we can’t bear to cut holes into) – if I couldn’t be reading, I thought about the stack waiting for me back at the house.

    Library book stash table. Custom built for the purpose by Funk Brothers Furniture.

    See, I have a small greed problem at the library that results in nice, tall, interesting stacks of books on the table at home. They let me check out 50 books at a time in the city library and I figure, why waste the opportunity? The Spouse and I meet at the café in the heart of the Central Library and have a nice lunch. After, he heads back to work and I, my full stomach, and empty book sack hit the stacks in this order: mystery, fiction, sci-fi. I break to check for things on the computer. Then, new fiction, new non-fiction, biography. They are all in the front of the building. I head to the back. Gardening. Knitting. Animals. History. Women explorers. All explorers. Sometimes, I trudge all the way back up to the front if I forget to pick up my stuff on hold. Finally, home with the heavy sack of book-goodness. I resist the urge to page through the top one at red lights. Mostly.

    When I visit the library on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday I can be rational. I am In Control of the Reading. But a Thursday is so close to Friday (T.G.I.F.) that I simply settle in. Surrender to the stack. Wallow in the inky stink of well-thumbed library books. I like to flick the pages as I read. I like to prop the spines on my stomach as I lounge. I like to carry a small stack subset from place to place when I am nearing the end of one and know I’ll need another.

    It is Thursday again. I am down to the last picks of the stuff from last week. A cozy-mystery in a long running series that I find annoying and compelling. A new Victorian-era mystery. Book two of a sci-fi series. A book about beekeeping. Some literature thing I yanked off the new book rack that I’ll probably like. The trick is to Stay Away from the library today.  I would really like to get something done this weekend.