Nonfiction Book Reviews

I first heard about Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan when I read Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales.  Gonzales referred to Callahan’s experience quite extensively in Deep Survival, and I thought it sounded like a fascinating story.

Turns out, it was.

Callahan was an avid lover of the sea.  He would spend weeks out in the ocean on his boat, go into port to get some supplies, and then after just a day or two, head back out into the ocean.  He lived on the sea like you and I live in our homes.  He was extremely knowledgeable about the plant and animal life that lived and thrived out in the vast space he called the wet desert (an apt description: There you are, surrounded by miles and miles of water, but there is nothing to drink).

He entered into a race but there was bad weather from the start.  Undeterred, he went ahead with it, a decision that almost cost him his life.  The race was an extensive one and included crossing several oceans, and he had the smallest ship in the race.  He was also all alone.

Six days into the race, the weather became stormy again and the seas were rough.  Callahan did all that he could, and then he went to bed.  He was awakened with a jolt - he later figured out that the most likely cause of the accident was a whale hitting up against the side of the boat.  Either way it happened, the end result was that his boat was sinking, and he needed to get off of it as soon as possible.

There are quite a few things that contributed to Callahan’s survival against odds that have killed every other person ever faced with them:

*He was extremely knowledgeable about the ocean and how to survive in its environment.
*He had bought a six-man raft instead of the standard four-man raft after trying to climb into a four-man raft with two other friends. Apparently, life boats are like tents: You never actually want to go by the count on the outside of the box. *He had not stocked the “normal” emergency kit and left it at that. Instead, he had bought the standard kit and then added a whole lot more, throwing the whole bundle into a sea bag that he was able to grab and go with when the ship started to sink. Because of this extra preparation, he had things like a spear to kill fish with and other items he would have died without.
*He kept his cool and did not panic when the boat started to sink, allowing him to retrieve extra supplies that were very useful.
*He kept his desires to drink fresh water contained - he knew he had a very limited supply of water and was only able to procure more fresh water at a slow rate, so he rationed the water even when every fiber of his being screamed out for more.
*He was creative and smart with his hands, finding fixes for problems that would have been the death of almost anyone else.

As I read the book, I kept thinking, “Okay, what would I have done in that situation? How would I have handled it?” I compared myself to Callahan throughout, and let me just tell you right now: It’s unlikely I would have lived through the night of the boat sinking. If I had been lucky enough to scrap by through that, I wouldn’t have lasted the week.  Depressing but true.

I don’t have the knowledge of the sea and the fish that he did (I know I would have ate a poisonous fish, not realizing what I was doing), I don’t have the ability to fix things easily with my hands (I am a thinker, not a doer, at least in that sense), and most of all, I don’t keep my calm in tense situations. I would have panicked straight out of the box and died.  Lovely, eh?

Other than the interest that the book provided by helping me understand myself better, I also enjoyed it because Callahan is an excellent writer. Just imagine, for a moment, that an entire book is centered inside of a very small area (perhaps the size of your couch) and that there is only one person in that whole book. No one else to talk to, no relationships to develop - nothing but this guy and the ocean.

In most author’s hands, that would have been a recipe for disaster. Talk about boring. But Callahan did a great job of keeping the story line interesting throughout, and making you feel as if you were really living everything that he was. I found myself a lot more thirsty than normal while reading Adrift, which, when I realized what was happening, made me laugh. But after reading so much about fresh water and high temperatures, you can’t help but hit the faucet often while reading.

I also enjoyed his writing style. He has an almost poetical style of writing, and was very enjoyable to read.  He did not focus on just mere survival for the duration; he also spent quite a bit of time contemplating his life, the grand scheme of things, and of course, the great circle of life.  Not boring or dry, but definitely thought-provoking.

My only (small) critique was that there were parts of the book that were confusing to me, since I have only been on a boat a couple of times, and I certainly have no nautical knowledge. It wasn’t enough to make me not want to read the book, but I do have to say that there were some paragraphs that I skipped over, because I just didn’t have any idea of what he was talking about. Luckily that didn’t happen too often, and quickly petered out after his boat sank and he was just on the raft.

I can’t say that’s really his fault - after all, I’m the one who is knows nothing about boats.  But I thought I ought to warn you in case you get very easily frustrated with that kind of thing.

Overall, I give this book a 4.75 out of 5 stars. If you are at all interested in survival stories, or you just want a good autobiography to read, be sure to check out Adrift: Seventy Six Days Lost at Sea. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for 36 weeks - I am positive you’ll love it.

Havs

Okay, everyone who missed me this past week, stand up and be counted!

::crickets chirping::

Well, good, that’s nice.  Moving on now…

So I got asked out today by a patron, and for once, it wasn’t terrifying. His name is Michael, he is a regular patron at the library, he has Down Syndrome, and he also has a huge crush on me.  He’s a cute kid - I would guess that he’s physically about my age, but mentally and emotionally, he’s probably around a 5 - 7 year old boy.  Let’s just say that life is much simpler in Michael’s world.

He didn’t always love me.  When I first started at the library, Michael didn’t want anything to do with me.  He always wanted to be helped by Marsha (my boss).  I remember one time asking him if he needed help, and he told me no, he was going to wait to talk to Marsha.  I was a little sad - I’m not used to people not wanting anything to do with me.  (I have one of those personalities where I always want EVERYONE to love me.  True story).

So I started working extra-hard at being outgoing and friendly with Michael, and sure enough, he started being my friend too.  Ahh…All is right in the world.  One day he asked me if he could call me Mom.  I told him sure, Michael, you can call me Mom.  After all, who could resist Michael?

Then today, he comes up to the front counter.  “Hi!!!” he said, bubbling over with excitement.  Turns out he was going to Jackpot with his (real) mother this weekend to go to a Teri Clark concert.  I was thrilled for him - he’s a huge fan of Teri Clark, and I knew this was a huge deal for him.

And then he asked me to go to the concert with him.

Yeah…Not so much.  I told him I couldn’t go out to a concert with him.  So he changed tactics, and told me that he was going to bring a video camera with him to the concert, and that he wanted to show me the tape afterwards.  I told him I’d love to watch the tape.

“So you’ll come to my house and watch it with me?” he asked eagerly.

“No, hon, I can’t come to your house.  I can’t date people who come to the library.  It’s a rule.”

“Well, I want to talk to Sally!” he half-shouted.  He has been a patron long enough that he knows that Sally is the big boss of the library, and he was just sure that if he talked to her, she’d let me go on a date with him.  “But I loooovvveeee you!” he howled.

I finally got him calmed down, but then he started asking me, “Do you have a girlfriend?”  He meant boyfriend, of course, but it made me smile nonetheless.

“No, I don’t have a boyfriend,” I told him.  “I am married.”

“Oh, you’re married?” he said sorrowfully.  “How long have you been married?”

“Seven years.”

“Seventy years?!  That’s a long time!”

This time I couldn’t hide the smile.  Yeah, considering I’ve only been alive for 28, 70 years would be quite a long time.

“Are you going to break up with him?” Michael asked, serious as can be.

“No, I’m not going to break up with him,” I told him.  “I love my husband.”

“Oh.” Silence for a moment.  “What’s his name?”

“Doug.”

“Can you ask Doug if I can take you out on a date?” he asked earnestly.

I just wanted to give him a hug right then and there.

“No honey, I can’t go out on a date with you.  I’m sorry.”

“Well…….tell Doug I told him hi.  Can you tell him that?”

“Yes, I’ll tell him that,” and I watched Michael walk out the door.

Working at a library is so rewarding.  I can’t tell you how much I love knowing that I am making a difference in the patron’s lives, especially the regulars like Michael.  Michael wasn’t threatening or obnoxious - just imagine a seven-year-old telling his mom that someday, he was going to grow up and marry her, and then you’ll get the picture.  It was just cute.

I tried to get my husband jealous over my new boyfriend tonight at dinner, but he didn’t fall for it.  Perhaps I’ll have better luck next time.

Hava
Who’s not sure how many more boyfriends she has that she can drag out of the closet to make the hubby jealous with, but is going to go check right now to see if she can’t round up one or two…

Before I get this party started, I just wanted to say that I was sent this book for free from the publisher, and my review of it is part of a virtual book tour being done by the author. This didn’t change how I felt about the book or what I am about to say, but I did think that in the spirit of honesty and forthrightness, I ought to tell you guys that anyway.

Moving on…

Before the Scalpel: What Everyone Should Know About Anesthesia by Panchali Dhar, MD was an interesting look into the world of anesthesia, something that us normal people usually miss seeing (probably because we’re sleeping. ::rim shot:: Okay, no more bad jokes, promise).

The two best things about the book were A) The author is an actual anesthesiologist; she doesn’t just play one on TV, and B) The book is well written, walking the fine line between being easy to understand by the patients who don’t have medical degrees, yet including a lot of accurate medical information.  It is easy to veer off into one direction or the other, but Dr Dhar does a great job of balancing the two needs.

Before the Scalpel covers a lot of situations - not just your standard scenarios like giving birth or having open heart surgery, but also dealing with surgeries on children, mouth (oral) surgeries, and having cosmetic surgery, among others.

I don’t plan on having surgery any time soon, but I still found it fascinating how they formulate an approach, what goes into the training of an anesthesiologist, and how the patient is handled while under anesthesia (did you know that while the patient is being operated on, an anesthesiologist is there at all times?  I always thought that the anesthesiologist did their thing, and then left, but that’s not so.  They stay from beginning to end to monitor the patient at all times).

The publishers also put a lot effort into providing great visuals - diagrams of anesthesia machines, cute pictures of babies, and other great shots (like of a baby penguin pushing its way out of the egg while the penguin parents looked on.)  Too many books have pages of dry facts and no illustrations, something that’ll put you to sleep without the need of any anesthesia. I was impressed by how this book handled that.

If you or a loved one is facing surgery in the near future, and you’re worried about the effects of the anesthesia or you want to know what your options are, I would highly recommend reading this book.  I have a coworker at the library whose father is very sick and is facing yet another surgery - I think I’m going to give her this book to read, because she’s a worrier, and it might help put her mind at ease.

I give Before the Scalpel 4.75 out of 5 stars.  Highly recommended for anyone facing surgery, or for anyone looking at entering the anesthesiology field.

Havs

A while ago, I wrote a review of The Romance of Libraries by Madeleine Lefebvre, which was full of romantic stories of how people met and fell in love at the library (some of the love stories working out, and some of them not).  I thought it was sweet that some people actually got in engaged in a library, and I was a little sad that nothing that romantic has happened in our library (at least that I know of).

Well, all of that has changed.

On Thursday night, I was standing at the front counter, doing nothing in particular, when Ann came running over, flashing her hand at me (Ann is a reference librarian at my library, and she also made it onto my Top Ten Coolest People You’ll Ever Meet list.  Just to help you guys place her).  Anyway, on her hand was a beautiful classy engagement ring.  We hugged and jumped up and down and squealed together (sorry guys, that’s just what happens when someone gets engaged - can’t help it!) and when we finally stopped squealing (five minutes later) Anne told me the story.

Her fiancee (who was standing right there, btw) had given her a book that he had illustrated and written himself.  It was an absolutely awesome book.  Professionally printed, beautifully drawn - it looked like something you could buy at the store.  Except this was the only copy of it made.

It was entitled The Librarian and the Geek, and was the story of how they met and fell in love.  At the end of the story, the geek asks the librarian to marry him, she says yes, and they live happily ever after.  When she got that point in the book, he dropped to one knee and asked her to marry him, and she did indeed manage to squeak out a yes.  Afterwards, they came upstairs, where she showed everyone in the library the beautiful ring and the amazing book.

I have to say - I love the ring.  It looks just like something I would have picked out for myself.  But the book - now that’s the really cool part.  Anyone can buy a ring - it only requires a credit card with a high enough limit on it.  But to spend a month writing out a story and drawing up illustrations for a book to be published just this once for a very special occasion?  That makes it by far the most romantic proposition I’ve ever heard.

Congratulations, Ann, you’ve found a keeper!!!!  Your mother gives her stamp of approval.

I wanted to take a picture of the glowing Ann (I swear she is letting off waves of happiness - you can’t help but smile when you’re around her!) and of the ultra-cool book, but my camera battery just died.  Maybe I’ll see what I can do on Tuesday when the library is open again.

In the meanwhile, I had to post a picture of me wearing my brother’s birthday present to me.  In case you can’t read the writing on the shirt, it says “Librarian” across the front of it.  Now I can be known as a librarian wherever I go! LOL! Thanks brother.

Havs

So I got home from class tonight, and logged on to check my emails.  I had a ton in there, which is not normal for me.  I started scanning through, trying to pick out the most important ones, when I saw the email confirming a payment from Today.com for my blogs.

That was good to see, because I was expecting a $100+ paycheck from them this month (there is a $50 minimum payout each month, and last month, I ended the month with $49.69 in the payout slot.  Couldn’t make it up if I tried.)  So I was pretty thrilled to finally be getting paid.

Except when I clicked to open the email, I saw this instead: $389 and change.  What the heck? ::head scratching ensued:: I knew that couldn’t be right, and although it would have been nice to keep that much money, I knew that they’d figure out their mistake sooner or later, and come asking for it back. I started writing an email to the payroll gal, when a thought occurred to me.

No, that couldn’t be it.

Really?  Maybe?  I mean, it is possible.  Anything is possible.

Okay, just in case, I have to go look.

I went to Today.com’s blog, which is only in existence to announce the monthly winners of their contests, and scrolled down to see if perhaps my name was mentioned somewhere on the list.

AND THERE I WAS!!!!

Okay, I know it’s bad form to yell online, but I was so excited, I was jumping up and down and yelling in real life, so that just gives you a little taste of the excitement I was feeling.

Turns out, they had chosen me for the Editor’s Choice Award for the month of January, and awarded me $250 for my efforts.  It is my birthday tomorrow, and I think this is just about the coolest birthday present I could receive.

So I’m going to go download the cool award plaque thingy and put it in my sidebar, and then we can all gaze in rapture at its ultra-coolness.  If I don’t post for a week, it’s because I’m still staring in rapture at my award, and cannot be bothered with, you know, posting and stuff.

THANKS, TODAY - YOU ROCK!!!

Havs

I am not feeling well (I have strep throat and a sinus infection, lucky me) so I’m going to make today’s post short (no need for cheering, Peanut Gallery).

But yesterday, I saw a crazy true story on the MSNBC website that I just had to post about: A lady who gave birth to a baby in a library.  Yes, you heard that right - a lady got on the city bus to go to the library, but somewhere along the way, she went into labor, and by time she walked through the front doors of the library, was in full-on labor.  She gave birth in the foyer of the library, and was taken shortly afterwards to the local hospital.

She gave birth to a baby girl, which of course, makes me wonder: What is she going to call her new little bundle of joy?  C’mon - there’s no way she could avoid naming her something to do with libraries and books, right?

So I’m opening up the comment section for ideas of what you guys think she should have named her new little baby girl.  The most creative answer gets all of the accolades and honor that comes with such an amazing contribution.  In other words, sorry, nothing that cool.  Except you knowing, deep down inside, that you’re just so awesome.

Hava

PS Check out my new poll in the right sidebar. —> Be sure to vote early and often.  Cheating is encouraged!

Today, we are being given a rare treat: A guest post from a fellow blogger here at Today.com. Ravyn has been blogging on her site, Exchange of Realities, since June of 2008, and is (as you’ll be able to tell below) a very talented writer.  If you are at all interested in role-playing games (the topic of her blog) then you’ll definitely want to check out her site.

For us, Ravyn wrote up a review of a nonfiction book called The Language of the Night, written by a popular science fiction author many moons ago.  Read through and be sure to leave her lots of praise in the comment section.

******

I found The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction by Ursula K Le Guin by accident. My original goal in asking for reading material had been finding linguistics books, so I could write about slang. And where better to go than my mother and her shelves full of references on language? But amid the pile of pieces on semantics and colloquialisms and the evolution of language, she handed me this book. In a way, I haven’t put it down since.

Having read a few of Le Guin’s pieces, I’d expected the writing to be excellent. What I hadn’t expected was for it to call out to me so perfectly. Yes, the book was published thirty years ago, and most of the essays therein are at least a decade older than I am. But they’re still true, and with every essay I read, I found one more point that I’d always wanted to make but never known how to say.

What I find particularly interesting about it is her approach. Le Guin doesn’t talk about how to write, in the way that many ‘how to write’ articles do, with should and shouldn’t filling every other page. Instead, she talks about how she writes, and how other people write; what was out there at the time, and what she wanted to read; she grounds the essays in the real world with personal anecdotes, but at the same time couches them in terms of archetypes and ideals. Like the author, the book stands with feet in two worlds, and without one the other makes no sense.

And most importantly, she laughs at all of it, even as she tackles issues that go far beyond science fiction.

Did you know that I am a very rare creature? My species was at first believed to be mythological, like the tribble and the unicorn…I am extremely puzzled, even embarrassed, at my own rarity. Are they going to have to lock me up in pens, like the Whooping Cranes and Duckbilled Platypuses and other species threatened with extinction, and watch eagerly to see if I lay an egg?
~In “The Stone Axe and the Muskoxen” essay

Every six months I read this book, and every time I do something ends up as a blog article. The first time, it was a rail against the lack of proper critique in science fiction, something that from what I can see hasn’t changed a bit since the essay that inspired me was written. This read-through, I penned my own opinion on where to find that elusive image of humanity in fiction known as Mrs. Brown. Next time - who knows?

The advice here is eternal; it’s something every writer of science fiction or fantasy should go through at least once, every teacher of how to write should treat as a reference book, and anyone merely interested in the written word should at least consider skimming. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Ravyn

Thanks again to Ravyn for her wonderful review of The Language of the Night.  Now I’m going to have to add another book on my To Be Read list!  Again, be sure to visit Ravyn at her site, Exchange of Realities.  ~Hava

PS Do you have a favorite nonfiction book that you’d love to review for my site?  I’m open to either exchanging guest posts, giving payments for the guest posts using EntreCard credits, or any other idea that sounds reasonable to you.  Drop me a comment through my contact page and we’ll see what we can figure out.

This morning at work, I had a patron walk up to the front counter and ask, “Can I use a computer?”

Which happens a million and one times a day, and wouldn’t be at all memorable, except he kept swaying on his feet as if he was onboard a boat, and his words were slurred together.  Then it hit me - the smell, that is.  He smelled as if he took a bath in a vat of alcohol.

He was completely and utterly drunk.  At 9:40 in the morning.  His blood-shot eyes had a hard time focusing on my face and the smell was overpowering.

I don’t know if we just live in too small of a town or what, but I have to say that this is not a common experience at our library.  I can only remember helping a couple of drunk patrons in my year and a half at the library, and they weren’t as bad off as this.  The stench of alcohol made it difficult to breathe.

Years of customer service experience kicked into gear, and I was able to pretend as if the guy wasn’t completed soused.  “Do you have a card, sir?” I asked him.

Still swaying on his feet, he mumbled, “No, but I’d like to get one right now!”

As I pulled the application out of the drawer and handed it to him, I thought, “What are the chances he’ll remember he did this tomorrow?”  The image flashed through my mind of him pulling his library card out of his wallet later and saying, “Where the &@#$) did this come from?” lol.  At least library cards are free, right?

He took the application and laid it on the counter.  He studied it for a second, decided that couldn’t be right, and flipped it upside down.  Studied that for a couple of moments, decided nah, that wasn’t right either, and flipped it right side up again.

While he was trying to decipher the English language, I was searching the database to see if he already had a card with us.  That is standard procedure when someone is signing up for a new card, because many times people will forget that they had a card before (or try to sneak it by us) and sign up for a new card when an old card has large fines on it.

Before he could finally decide how to spell his name, I had found his name in the database.

“Sir, have you ever lived on Main Ave?”

“Well, yeah.”  He pauses and looks at me with bleary eyes.  “I think so.  A long time ago.  Maybe…” his voice trails off.

“Bad news, sir,” and I handed his drivers license back to him.  “You’ve already got a card with us, and it has $35 in fines on it.  From 2000.  You don’t have to pay for that, but you also can’t use the internet or check out books.”

“Oh.”  His face fell as he stuffed his drivers license back in his wallet.  “Can I look around?”

“Not a problem,” I assured him.  “You don’t need a card to look around, you only need a card to take books out the front door.”  Which was all true, normally.  He shambled off into the nonfiction section.

I stepped away from the counter and took my first clean breath of air of the last five minutes.  Ahh…much better.

Right then, my boss Brenda happened to come up to the front desk.

“Brenda!” I grabbed her and explained what just happened, and then said, “I’m kinda worried about him - what if he goes off and pees on the books?  Or throws up?  Or passes out?  Do we do something when they’re that drunk?”

Side note: I worked at a plush resort for a year and a half as a front desk clerk.  There was a bar in the lobby directly across from the front desk, and I smelled guests (as we called them on the resort) that stunk like alcohol quite often.  But as far as I knew, I had never smelled alcohol like this before.  It was emanating off him in waves.  That, combined with the swaying, the red eyes, the slurred speech, and the complete inability to tell which way was up on a form, told me that this guy had to be coming off one heck of a bender.

On one hand, I really wanted to keep him at the library as long as possible, in order to let him sober up before he went back out into the world (and possibly got behind the wheel of a car, God forbid.)  It was also a cold and windy day outside - not the kind of weather you’d want to hang out in.  So I felt bad thinking that we needed to get this patron back out the door.

But on the other hand, if he went walking up the stairs, lost his balance because he was plastered, fell backwards, took out the innocent patron walking up the stairs behind him, and they land in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs, both of them dead from broken necks, I would feel pretty darn guilty about that too.  Our library is good at putting up with a lot of things, but possibly endangering other people’s lives is obviously a big problem.

Plus, he was docile at the front counter, but you never know what a drunk will do.  What if he got angry about something and started hitting other people, or ripping books to shreds?

This was one of those “Neither choice is a good choice” situations.

Luckily for me, I didn’t have to make the decision.  Brenda went to Sally, the director of the library, who called me in and asked me what happened once again.  I told her the story as they peered up to the second floor, where the patron was sitting at a desk, apparently reading a book.  I kinda doubted he had the ability to actually read anything, but I guess he wanted to act like he was, in order to appear “normal” or at least prolong the chance of him not getting kicked out.

It didn’t work.

Sally grabbed Christie, our maintenance supervisor, and they went upstairs and talked to the guy.  Sally told me about it afterwards - apparently, he didn’t give any sort of fuss at all when Sally said, “Sir, I need to ask you to leave.”  He just stood up and walked down the stairs and out the front door.

As he was leaving, Christie told him, “Sir, we’d love to have you come back when you haven’t been drinking.”

He said sadly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” and then left, walking down the street.  We watched him until he went out of sight.

The whole thing bothered me.  I always want to save everyone - I am one of those people who actually tear up when I see a homeless person on the street; I’m pathetic that way, I know - and it really bothered me that we kicked him back out into the cold.  After all, isn’t a library supposed to welcome everyone?

On the other hand, there were definite risks if he stayed.  If he peed all over the floor, I wouldn’t want to clean it up.  Same if he threw up or defacated on himself.  Not to mention the risk of him hurting himself or others, knowingly or unknowingly.

I guess it just made me sad.  How did he end up like this?  What would cause a man to be blindingly drunk at 9:40 in the morning?  Did he have any family who cared about him?

I just hope he went somewhere warm and dry to sober up.  And I really do hope he comes back.

Your thoughts?  Do you think we should have let him stay?  Do you think we did the right thing by sending him back out into the streets?  Do you think we should have called the police (which is what my husband thought we should have done when I told him the story)?  Leave your thoughts below.

Hava
Who wants to save the world but can’t and it makes her sad…

There is a mom and two daughters who come into the library every week.  I helped sign them up for their library cards, and I absolutely love the two little girls, so I always look forward to their visits.

Well, today I got a special treat from them.  The younger daughter (maybe three or four years old) was in one heck of a singing mood.  I was standing at the front counter, doing my thing, not paying any attention to the rest of the world, when my boss Martha snickered.  “That’s cute!” she said.

I looked up. “What’s cute?”

“That little girl!  Can’t you hear her singing?”

I listened for a second, and sure enough, there was a little warbling voice belting out:

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the waaaayyyyy.”

Pause. Silence.

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the waaayyyyy.  Oh what fun, it is to ride” big breath “in a one horse open sleigh!”

Pause.

“Jingle bells.  Jingle bells.  Jingle all the way.”

I’m doubled over at this point, laughing.  Although the picture to the right is my niece, Allie, the similarities between Allie and this little girl at the library is almost uncanny.  They have the same big cheeks, the same brown curly hair, the same cute little nose.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d think they were twins.  Or at least sisters.

So there’s your mental picture, okay?  Now get the voice in your head.  You know how three-year-olds are, where they can sing as they do other things (sing LOUDLY, mind you) and yet their mental concentration is on something else.  She had a very cute, high-pitched little girl’s voice that actually stayed on key for most of the singing.

And boy did she belt it out.  Her mother came over at first, and tried to shush her, but she would have none of that.  Mere seconds after her mother went back into the stacks to try to find a book, the daughter would start singing again.

“Jingle bells!  Jingle bells!”  Every time, I cracked up.  I just couldn’t help myself.  Oh, to be three again, and have that complete lack of fear of making a fool of yourself in public.  She would sing for a while (and she’d get pretty far into the song, actually - I was rather surprised at how well she knew the song, not just the first line) and then peter out.  About a minute or so later, she’d remember, “Oh yeah!  I was singing!” and start belting it out again.  And I’d start laughing all over again.

I was sad when they finally left - I was getting good exercise, laughing that hard.

Now have I made up for all of the times where I whined and complained about the patrons?  Because I have to tell you: There are a lot of great ones out there.  And awfully cute little kids to boot.

Hava

On January 1st, I wrote a blog about my New Year’s goal for January: Post every single day on this blog in the month of January.

Well, I have to say that I’m pretty darn happy with myself - I made it!  Here’s, let all sit and enjoy the picture that “says it all,” shall we?

Isn’t that pretty? A part of me wants to print that picture off and frame it on the wall. Hey, it might make for an interesting dinner topic, right?

This experiment taught me a lot about setting goals. Every other New Year’s, I’ve sat down with a piece of paper and pencil, and wrote out a huge list of things I wanted to do better. Nothing was safe. I was going to study harder, lose weight, keep a cleaner house, waste less time on the internet, write in my journal every day, post every day on my blog, finish a novel and submit it for publication (ha!)…the list was horrendously long. I hardly ever made it past day one. Most people don’t make it to February - heck, I didn’t make it midnight on January 1st.

I decided that this year, I was going to do things differently. Instead of trying to become perfect overnight (I know, I know, I’m already pretty darn close to perfection, but still!) I would instead focus on one goal for the entire month. It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t get anything else done for the entire month of January - if I put up one post every day on this blog, I would consider January a success.

What made this work was the fact that I didn’t set the goal that I would post every single day on this blog for the whole year. If I had, by the end of week one, I would have been “tired” one night, and would have skipped, thinking to myself, “Well, I know there’s no way I’m actually going to post every single day for an entire year. C’mon, that’s just not going to happen. I might as well quit trying right now.” And there goes that New Year’s goal.

But every day for a month? Well, I could do a month. It wouldn’t kill me. So even on the days that I didn’t feel like posting (hopefully that didn’t shine through on my posts, but my apologies if it did!) I pushed myself and made it happen.

So what am I going to do with this new-found knowledge? Set a new goal for February.  Just one attainable goal.

As any reader of this blog already knows, I’m not the world’s best housekeeper. My house isn’t horrendous, but yeah, I could definitely use some help in that arena. Hence my goal for February: Keeping certain areas of my house clean. I have made out a list of “hot spots” (areas that tend to get dirty quickly) and I will make sure that I have those places clean before going to bed. Every night. Without fail.

If I can do that, then February will be a success in my book.

So what about posting on here? Well, I won’t be here every day, but I’m going to try my best to be here several times a week. If you want to make sure that you don’t miss any of my earth-shattering posts, be sure to either sign up for my RSS feed, subscribe to my Twitter feed, or sign up to receive an email each time I post (click on the “Get Nonfiction Lover delivered by Email” link).

Don’t miss me too much.

Hava