Better than nothing

Hey, five hours of sleep last night--I feel like I passed the Bac or something. Still tired, tho, and starting at 12:30 I'll be unloading bound journal carts again. The Shift is a task fraught with unforseen dangers:

• I keep smashing my fingers between journals and metal shelves, or between the carts and the shelves, or between journals and carts. Two days ago I mashed my left forefinger pretty badly--today I grabbed the coffee canister at home and lifted it up into the cabinets and mashed that same finger. This resulted in an enraged dance around the kitchen in my boxers and slippers at 7:15am.
  
• Some of those sharp metal book-endy things have cork on the bottom, and because many of them haven't been moved in a decade, they're adhered to the shelves. Sometimes pulling them off results in the entire shelf coming off, and then the endpieces of the shelf (held on by the weight of books and shelf on top of them) fall off and land on my head, or my shin, or my forearms--more cuts/bruises. Other times the book-endy things themselves fall off high top shelves onto my head.
  
• Carts with a decade worth of Physical Review A or The New York Times Book Review Index are goddam heavy, and if you don't pay attention they can tip over at the slightest twinge of momentum. In these cases, pray the cart falls away from you. If it falls toward you, don't try to stop it--this results in groin injuries. It's a good idea to get out of they way as soon as the cart tipples.
  
• Bending over, standing, squatting, getting on the knees, standing and stretching, pushing and pulling, and lifting from all of these positions over and over is not as easy at 35 as it was at 18. I'm still better at it than some of my student helpers, who've never done a day of phyiscal labor their entire lives. I call The Shift "Bookaerobics," and feel sort of like a perverse Richard Simmons librarian, whipping young hipsters into shape by making them heft decaying volumes all day.
  
• Dust. Pulling a volume of Life dated 1932 off the top shelf will give you an unpleasant dust bath. After a day of these dust baths you can taste decades worth of patrons' dead skin cells and boogers. Dust gets in the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, clothes. I smell like rotting books.
  

For some reason, smelling like rotten books reminded me of this great short novel, sent me by The Poet some years ago:



Tonight is the holiday staff party at Cha's elementary school. She wants me to go (I got the "it's ok if you don't go," speech, but with a pout). I feel a bit burned out on the holidays, and a week of sleeplessness has me less than enthusiastic about partying with teachers, so I think I'll ditch it. Speaking of the holidays winding down, Cha had the idea of taking Leesha and Big Red to see the Miracle on 34th Street--Tuesday night. Uh, after New Year's even the most corny of Xmas decorators begin to break down their displays. What was left was a sad sight--many eviscerated elves and Disney characters with wires spilling from their torsos scattered about. Strings of unlit lights, a saggy inflatable Grinch shifting in the wind. I kind of liked it that way. We had dinner at Grill Art in Hamden, which is a pretty good joint, but badly in need of a liquor license.

Yesterday Eskimo announced that her son wants to join the Marines--he's living at home, flunked out of school, and does nothing but play video games and listen to Led Zeppelin. She's been worried about a draft of course, and is freaking out now because we all know where Marines end up these days. "I think he told me that just to frighten me," she said. "Maybe it's his path," I replied. "Or maybe he's unsure what to do because school isn't for him and he's got no marketable skills and he gave up his music years ago--and he saw that cool commercial where some burnout joins the Marines and ends up slaying a dragon made out of lava with his sword and then he gets struck by lightning and turns into a guy wearing his dress uniform." I asked if he was athletic, because the Marines--that's a tough group for someone who can't walk a half mile without gasping for breath. She said "he's in good shape. He used to carry a backpack and his cello at the same time." Carrying a backpack and a cello won't get him through Paris Island; I asked her if he could run and do pull-ups and she said "what difference does that make?" Hmmmm. I think he should join the Navy. He's obviously the sort that could use some discipline and some technical training--and without a certain physical standard the Marines and Special Forces are out, and without academics the Air Force is a no-go. The Marines might be a bit ambitious, not to mention dangerous.