Reminders

Today was actually a fair day despite the emotional tugs and reminders that life is so precious. One of the first things I did today was set the new due date stamp and realized that in two weeks it would be my mom's birthday, the first one without her. That was a somber thought, but a good one for how much I miss her and how she impacted my life. The rest of the day I worked on putting all my books away - there's a lot because everything from last year is now due! I also worked on putting up new books on the non-fiction shelves and straightening up those sections. Pulled books for a teacher on a huge variety of different books, got them checked out to her. Worked on a Scholastic order for new books that I'll use to continue to update our other country books. One student asked for a book on Columbia (the country, not our river!) and we had none! That's right, none! So I put one on my order. Books on women's education around the world, climate change, black holes, endangered animals, how to eat in space...some interesting topics! I had two book talks to do on the Lexile levels, so I did a presentation on MARC records and told them about the mother of MARC,  Henriette Avram, and showed them a MARC record from our library and where they have to put in a Lexile number which our LMSS staff will have to input. Our old program had the Lexiles downloaded automatically, but our new program they decided was too expensive to do that. (Insert rolling eye smiley here...) Then I showed the students how to look up their lexiles in our system. I got to spend time walking around, helping them find the lexiles of the books they found on the shelves that didn't have one on them or on the record. Then we had an urgent email sent for a staff meeting right after school. One of our students is clinging to life, and probably won't make it. So sad, so young. I managed to keep from crying, but not by much. The library will be a place tomorrow for the crisis team. I went into our back room that I made so nice last year and really straightened it up for an extra private place for students to be able to talk with counselors. Sent out an email that the library would be closed tomorrow except for students needing a place to talk to the team. Did one lamination. Then I came home to learn that my cousin here in town passed away, a sudden heart attack they think. He was only 52. Too many reminders today that life is so precious. We need to treat each moment, each person for the truly wonderful gifts they are to this world.