SURGICAL

The other morning when I opened the library, one of the students walked in, looked down, and said, "Um... whose inflated surgical glove is this?"

Sure enough, there it was on the floor, like a bulging powder white udder. I said, "I KNOW that was not here last night when I left."

I don't know what the hell happened in there overnight, but I jammed the inflated glove into the small trash can under my desk. I didn't have the heart to pop it.

DONUT LADY

Oh, mysterious Donut Lady.
The way you confuse me with your broken English, but most of all
the way you insist you recognize me
from long ago...
You claim I used to come in with my mother when I was very small
But I don't remember that at all. My mother preferred bakery shop pastries.
I cringed as I walked through the door this morning with my baggie full of quarters
a poor man's donut fund
As feared, you insisted once again that you remembered my mother and me
This time, though...
This time you dropped a few details, such as
I am an only child
My mother keeps her hair short
(Both true)
Could it be, Donut Lady?
Could it really be that you are a face from my past, once forgotten
but discovered again?
Or is it just that all Gaijin look alike...?

SICK

The library was filled with sneezing, coughing, nose-blowing kids the last few days. So much so that it creeped me out, like I was in the plague ward of a hospital. Last night I woke up wheezing at 1:30 am with a seriously runny nose (it meant business), punctuated by occasional sneezing and coughing. Fuckin' sucks, man. By 3:30 am I was making a trip to CVS to get Zyrtec-D. Anthony was awake, too, with his usual insomnia. Having to put on shoes & socks and a jacket in the middle of the night and make a cold foray into the outside world is totally bogus. There were only 3 visible employees in CVS, none of them paying attention to me, or even willing to feign customer service. I thought about rewarding myself with a candy bar from the front counter, but felt too weary to eat it.
Called the automated absence line at 5:00 am. Then I dragged myself in here to the computer, figured I'd better email Marilyn to her home & work email, warn her that I'm out sick. Hope she doesn't run around like a librarian with her technician cut off.
In other news, I just found out yesterday that one of our teachers got nasty with a female student, and is at least getting fired, possibly going to jail. It's a particularly messy scandal since this teacher happens to be married to another teacher on our campus, and they have 4 or 5 kids, one of them with Downs Syndrome. Also, apparently there was some weirdly inappropriate situation going on since last year, in which the female student in question had been temporarily living with this teacher and his wife, and I'm not sure why. They were "tutoring" her or something, but obviously he ascribes to a very broad definition of "tutor."

CRICKET

I peed on a cricket yesterday.