Shattered

This morning as I was sitting at the reference desk, I noticed that it is really time for me to change the display in the children’s section, not only because it’s been up for awhile, but also because the animals I made out of leaves don’t accurately reflect the season. It doesn’t feel like fall anymore.

I thought some paper snowflakes might look nice. I haven’t made them in years, so I decided to practice. I was in the middle of making a snowflake when a couple came up to me and asked me if I could help them find websites with videos of live crimes. When I asked for an example of what they were talking about, they described a video they had seen of a man being decapitated.

I am really tired of other people bursting the bubble I work so hard to create. I am disappointed with people in general.

Invisibility Cloaks

I had a really unsettling series of experiences during my last week in Seattle. My eyes had been bothering me all summer and I decided to give them a vacation from my contacts. This is always a disorienting experience for me because I don't see as well wearing glasses. They throw off my already iffy depth perception and it usually takes me at least four days to adjust to the different way of seeing.

I noticed as soon as I made the switch to glasses that people didn't look at me as often, and they definitely smiled at me less. I also attributed the crappy service I got in restaurants and bars to my glasses. I wondered if I would have had a different experience if I'd had a cuter pair of glasses. I'd still like to get some, but the experience rattled me enough to cut my eyes' vacation short. I switched back over to my contacts after only three days.

I shared this experience with M. the other night, and she'd had something similar happen. She was dating a guy who lived in another state. She'd just started a new job and they were being stingy about giving her days off. She really wanted to see her boyfriend and had already bought a plane ticket. She decided she would go visit him despite not being able to get the day off, and just call in sick to work.

Luckily for M., the day before her trip, she found out some of her coworkers would be on the same flight. She decided to disguise herself, reasoning that they didn't know her very well and probably wouldn't recognize a disguised version of her.

She chose a mom-in-tennis-shoes look, wore a wig, enormous sunglasses, and stuffed her clothes so that she looked twenty pounds heavier. She got on the plane, walked right past her coworkers without a hitch, found her seat, and reached up to put her bag in the storage compartment. As she did so, she accidentally bumped into a man in aisle, who visibly recoiled from her. She was angry and thought to herself, fuck you asshole, I'm actually really cute.

Letting Go

This morning I decided it was finally time to cut the umbilical cord and stop listening to Seattle NPR. I think it was kind of the last thing I was holding on to; it felt really comforting to have continuity in my life.

But enough is enough. I've been here two months now, and listening to Seattle traffic reports isn't benefitting my life.