Tuesday Afternoon

This post is not about pregnancy or babies or nausea or food.

WHAT?! Is that even possible?

That’s right, friends—I have a life outside of imminent motherhood! Let’s take a moment to rejoice in this brief relapse into the world that doesn’t revolve around my expanding belly. Because I know it seems like the only thing I talk about these days. But I think about other stuff, you know.

Like libraries and stuff.

Don’t sigh at me. This is important.

Two evenings ago, I was having a hot flash so Brandon went around to open up the house and get some air flowing. At the front door, there was a small package waiting. For me. From the University of Hawaii. I wasn’t expecting anything, but quickly realized it must be a long lost package from last May. As in May 15, 2010. As in the day I graduated from my master’s program.

I started jumping and dancing in place as I pulled out my diploma. It looks like this:

It took a while to get here because they spelled my middle name wrong on the first one. Nice. But it doesn’t matter now because I am an official graduate. I have closure. HOORAY.

But that’s not the only reason I celebrated on Tuesday night. Remember my library? The one I’ve been building for our department? The one that has taken a year and a half to get going? Yeah. It’s almost done.

On Tuesday afternoon, I finished cataloging all the items in the resource center. Assessments. Instructional aids. Toys. Videos. Books. Everything. There are about 600 items in our catalog now, readily available with all the details you could possibly need to look up. It took me every day since May 25 to do it, but it’s done. And the catalog works awesomely, if I do say so myself.

Everything else is in place. The labels, the barcodes, the color coding. Even our furniture came in. All we’re waiting on now is a couple of signs and BAM!—the library is done. DONE. Can you believe it? After all this time and effort, all I have left is to upload the catalog to our faculty computers, give a brief tutorial at a faculty meeting—and that’s it.

Wow. I mean, this is a big step in my library career. I’m not just building a library. I’m managing a library. I’ve been focusing on it for so long, it hardly seems possible that we’re actually opening our doors. Excuse me while I wipe away the happy tears…

Did I mention all it takes is one scan from the barcode scanner and an item is checked out? You’d think that would be hardly worth mentioning, but it took a year and a half of research, prep work, and frustration to make it that easy. It also makes a neat beeping sound. Ahem.

We open on August 16, 2010. But I already celebrated with red velvet cheesecake on Tuesday. Because I’d say Tuesday was a great day for library.