Your Job Must Be So Easy

Before working at the Madison Library District, I have always assumed that to be a librarian must be the best thing in the world! Think about it; you get to read all day, you’re surrounded by books, peace and quiet all the time. HA! All of those are a total lie! Here’s what I have found myself doing as a librarian. I can’t read all the time, I have too much stuff to do, and when I do find that I have extra time they prefer us not to read during our hours. I AM surrounded by books which has been amazing but now that I am no longer a page my time among them is limited. The biggest lie of them all is peace and quiet. Since I have been working here the police has been called I believe 5 times, and most of the time our patrons are more noisy then they should be. This brings me to my current adventure as a librarian.

It was my turn to work a Saturday, mostly because I was making up hours for being home sick because of the kidney stone. Grant was just about to drop me off when I get a call from the Co-Director of the library.

“Hey this is Miranda, are you at work?”

“Just heading in.”

“Well, we have some serious flooding issues. When you get in can you have Cathy call me?”

To be honest, that’s what I believe she said, it was so hard to hear her. I kiss Grant goodbye and walk into the library where I was met by Terri.

“We have an emergency! The adult section is flooding badly! Grab all the bowls you can!”

I take my armful of bowls and almost run to the adult section. It was bad! It looked like it was raining in the library. So many leaks in the ceiling it was impossible to count. There were so many little bowls and cups and pictures, and garbage cans on the floor trying to get as many of the leaks as we can. 

Of course the damage was already done. We had a lake in the middle of the library and about 50 books were damaged. Luckily the computes weren’t wet and we were able to put trash bags over them to prevent that. 

As time went on we got smarter. Our tiny bowls became buckets and both the Director and Co-Director of the library were here making the necessary S.O.S. calls that needed to be made. 

We were probably there a good half an hour trying to stop the rain and soak up the lake by the time help had come. We had a firefighter and a plumber, and husbands came with shop vacs so we can suck up the lake. We figured out if we took the ceiling tiles out the leaking would stop. Eventually we found out that one of the drains had completely detached and thus the leak? I don’t know if that’s the right word because when I think of leak I see just one or two but this was a huge hole in the ceiling! Our firefighter did the best he could to reattached the drain, our restoration company came to the rescue, finally there was nothing left for us to do, with the lake that is.

We did a little of work in the back of library and then Valerie (our Director) gave us a thumbs up and we were free to go home and get paid for it! Woot Woot! So if you can’t already guess, working at a librarian is never as easy as it seems.

In a not so related topic, my parents made a surprise visit this weekend as well! My mom drove in Wednesday night, and I might have been in the middle of going to the bathroom when I heard a loud knock at the door. Who in the heck would be knocking on our door at 10:30 at night?!? Then I hear Grant say, “Shar, your mom is here!” What?!? It was a lovely surprise and so nice to see my mom and Rosamund, my youngest sister. Then the next morning I get a phone call from my mom asking if I can go with her to Salt Lake (4 hour drive) to pick up my dad from the airport so he can surprise the rest of the family as well.

I guess I should mention why they were even here. One of my little sisters, Alex, was homeschooled and just received her degree, and being homeschooled never got a graduation ceremony. So they made the long trek out here to surprise her and have a small family graduation ceremony just for her.

So Thursday night my mom and I made the long trek to Utah to pick up my dad and back and around 3:30 a.m. we pulled into Rexburg. We were able to have them all Friday and have a great little ceremony for Alex that night. The next morning, right before the water disaster at the library, we said our goodbyes and they headed BACK to Utah to visit my sick uncle.

So yeah! Family here for the weekend, a water adventure at the library… I think that was a successful and fun weekend!