Thank You for the Awesome

[rockinlibrarian]

It's that time of year again: time to realize that you probably should have been giving thanks all year long, but since you forgot to, you might as well hurry up and do it all now.

So let me say Thank you to all my readers, for taking time out of your busy Internet browsing addictions to slog through all my ramblings here. I offer particular thanks to: elouise82, vovat, iamdamanda, Mark Flowers, riki_kiki_taco, ozma914, Charlotte from her Library, easyqueenie, punterschlagen, katecoombs, DawnStarlight, magnolia___, grrlpup, and rockonliz127, who have all left comments in the past month, which is awesome a) because that means I know you READ this stuff!, and b) I love continuing the discussion-- so THANKS for discussing! It means a lot to me to have this connection, that other people are reading this stuff that comes out of my head and thinking about it long enough to even RESPOND. THANK YOU.

So let me give thanks to other stuff now. Thank you to Shop and Save and BIC for supplying me with my wonderful ergonomic journaling pens which I have stocked up on just because I am afraid they might disappear and I will be stuck using pens MUCH INFERIOR FOR JOURNALING, and thank you also to my journaling pens, who are sentient and reading this, for being so awesome to begin with.

Thanks to my lovely dream last night, which was about me going to Fairyland and becoming a proper denizen thereof and being assigned to a Legacy which turned out to be about the Legacy of my grandfather who died a year ago today, so apparently I'm under a geas from Fairyland to carry on the Blankenship Legacy of being a Good Person who Speaks for the Trees, so thanks also to the fates of heredity for allowing me to be born into a family of Good People Who Speak for the Trees in the first place. And thanks for Trees for being Awesome and making oxygen and creating shade and slowing erosion and smelling nice and looking really pretty against a blue sky and eerie against a gray one, and for climbing and for wood and fruit and paper, and also just being Awesome.

Thanks to my parents and inlaws, who, speaking of grandparents, have been so Awesome at providing lots of childcare. And in my parents' case, also have done much to help keep my house from turning into a complete and utter disaster area. Now it stays pretty safely in the realm of minor disaster area instead.

Thank you Velma Jeffries, RIP: I have no idea who you were, but you left a bunch of money to the Children of this town, which they used to build a playground, which sometimes I think is my children's own personal playground, and WHAT kind of kids get a personal playground that is QUITE THAT AWESOME, all to themselves, although when other kids show up, that is also fun. Thank you other kids for showing up to play with my kids. And thank you Ms. Jones for being my son's teacher and helping him to have made GREAT STRIDES SOCIALLY in the past few months. It always makes me slightly giddy to see him so enthusiastically making friends with other kids at the playground.

And speaking of dead people who've given things to the community, thank you, Frank Sarris, for that lovely big new library, even though you probably should have sprung for us to get an ejection button for the teen room, where whenever someone's being too obnoxious you just push the button and the trap door opens and they slide right down out the side of the building into the dumpster, but perhaps we would have just spent that money on getting the back lot paved anyway, so we'll forgive you for that; and anyway thank you for having made your fortune on chocolate and ice cream in the first place, because I LIKE being able to say my benefactors made their fortune on chocolate and ice cream (and possibly pipeweed, though only punterschlagen would know about that), and I like that our library can claim, beyond all the other awesome things all libraries claim, SELLING HIGH-QUALITY CHOCOLATE BARS at the desk, because DOESN'T EVERY AWESOME PLACE NEED TO DO SO?

Thank you, songwriters who aren't satisfied with Good Enough, who take the time and thought and artistry to take your music and lyrics just that LITTLE BIT FARTHER into Completely Awesome, because when such a song comes on the radio amid the jumble of Good Enough, Rather Dull, and Outright Annoying songs, it JUMPS OUT and makes one want to shout with joy, or whatever that Rock and Roll feeling is, which is possibly more anti-authoritarian than joy is, but positive shouting has taken place whatever you call it. Thank you particularly to the Beatles (who are HALF-dead), for doing this ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME, AND INSPIRING OTHERS TO DO IT; I had Abbey Road on the other day and was SO STRUCK with this feeling that I HAD to go grab my paper journal and awesome ergonomic journaling pen and write about it (possibly also the pen may have been whispering seductively "WRITE WITH ME!" at the same time, so I was being pushed into it from two directions), although I had to keep stopping writing so as to zone out into the Awesomeness completely for awhile; and let me send out a special thank you to Mr. Richard "Ringo Starr" Starkey, because you totally don't get enough credit as a musician, because every drum lick of that album is so EMBEDDED IN MY MUSCLE MEMORY that I can't even listen without playing air drums the whole time, and I decided that Playing Drums In a Beatles Tribute Band need NOT necessarily be one of my UNATTAINABLE Life Goals, because who SAYS all Beatles Tribute Bands have to be impersonators, and I'm totally going to start an All-Girl Beatles Tribute Band, Lovely Rita and the Meter Maids, once I, you know, actually learn to play the drums.

Thank you to whoever invented the word "awesome," because I don't know how I could possibly express my love and admiration for most of the world without it. Am I overusing it? NO! Because if you think that, then you DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT AWESOME IS!

I'm sure there are lots of other people I can thank, but I'd be going on forever, and I still need to make deviled eggs for tonight. Thank you to my aunt for assigning me deviled eggs, which I totally can make, and not turkey, although that would be dumb anyway because I don't have enough ovens to make turkey for 45 people, nor enough room in my house anyhow, so also thank you to my aunt for inviting everyone to her much larger house on days like this.

Comments

[riki-kiki-taco.livejournal.com]

That ejection button is a GREAT idea. I'm going to bring that up at our next staff meeting


~kiki

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

At first I was surprised by the positive response to the teen ejection button idea, but now I wonder how I could have been surprised...

[elouise82.livejournal.com]

I wished I had an excuse to linger around the teen room the last time I was at the library. Unfortunately, there's only so long I can stare at the Twilight section. But oh, there were a million plots in every sentence I overheard. If I worked there, I'm sure I'd want the ejection button; as a writer, it was pretty sweet.

And I'm thankful for you, too, and for discussion :-)

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

We'd only eject the bullies, vandals, and kids who play football/bookcart-riding in the building. That still leaves lots of melodramatic conversation!

You're very welcome!

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Aw ... (I'm totally with you on the teen ejection button).

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Like I said, at first I was surprised that so many people are going for that idea (really, you'd think more people would want to join Lovely Rita and the Meter Maids), but now I can't figure out WHY that would surprise me...

[punterschlagen.livejournal.com]

PUH-LEASE can I be in your band?!

And every library should sell Sarris chocolate!

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

YES! What do you want to play? Or sing? I decided since we don't have to be impersonators (because I just don't think I COULD pull off a Ringo), we don't necessarily need to align ourselves with any particular Beatle, so one could decide to be the Lead Singer/no instruments or Designated Keyboardist and that would be all right. Both of which you'd actually already be good at, come to think. So you're far ahead of me, since I don't actually know how to play drums, so it will be awhile, anyway.

[sal_amanda]

Your welcome. And that's all I can say because I didn't actually read this through since we just got home from another harrowing visit with the in-laws.

[sal_amanda]

OOH NO! I mean you're welcome, not your welcome. Gah!