In the last two months, I’ve fought off strep throat and a UTI/Kidney infection, so knowing we had plans to visit my 92-year-old grandmother in Idaho for mother’s day, I played it extra safe to make sure I didn’t pick up anything else before our trip.
Aaaaand then my partner got an eye infection. The universe chuckles at our plans, I fear. We didn’t cancel the trip, but it did mean that I flew out alone and they came later, after 24 hours of being on antibiotics.
We go to Idaho annually, or have since my grandmother moved there in 2020. Since our last trip, she’s moved from my aunt’s house into an independent and assisted senior living facility. It was her choice to do so because she was bored and lonely and it’s been remarkable for her. She has friends, she’s always playing games and doing activities, she doesn’t have to cook and she has a very nice suite with a living area, bedroom, bathroom, and mini kitchen. People are constantly checking on her, taking her vitals, etc. Someone takes out her trash, someone does her laundry, and help is always a cord pull away. It’s comforting to know she’s in a good place and well taken care of.
Idaho as a state is an impressionist painting. So beautiful and idyllic but as you get closer up, it kind of becomes a mess. The extremely republican leadership means social services are severely lacking. There’s nearly no public transportation so the culture is very car heavy. House prices have gone up since so many people are moving there, but the pay is still low. I looked up library job salaries in the town where my grandma lives and their Library Director makes roughly the same as the salary I make as a branch librarian.
We would never move to Idaho and we know that, but it’s hard to be so far from my grandmother in her last years. The first day of our trip is always like, but what if we did move to Idaho? And then by the final day we’re like, we could never. Also, I was more allergic to everything in Idaho this year than I ever have been before. Simply walking outside made my eyes water continuously. I swear I’m not crying, I’m just allergic to everything and I hate their slimy, hard water! I’m just trying to wash my hands, man!
If you live in Idaho, I’m sorry. Your state is so beautiful. I wish it were not so conservative. I’m rooting for you.
I am a Saturday librarian today. By this point in May, everything is Summer Reading for me. We’re prepping prize books, we’re making a display, we’re special ordering banners for the light posts around town. I both co-chair the planning committee and work at the busiest library, so there’s a lot of prep.
Summer Reading is one of those things where I think it’s likely the most important program we have in terms of outreach and enticing readers to come through the doors, but also I’ve been chairing the committee for so long that if someone said we had to cancel summer reading forever, I would attend the funeral in a bright red dress, smoking the first and only cigarette I’ve ever smoked so I can blow the smoke directly into the face of the corpse.
Libraries, like life, are cyclical in nature. We celebrate the same holidays, offer the same kinds of programs seasonally, see the same people come in on their regular day of the week. Though we plan for Summer Reading all year long, around March, my Summer Reading sense perk up and I know it’s time to Get Serious. But I always carve out a little bit of time in the spring to go to Idaho, no matter what’s looming on the horizon.
So that’s where I’ve been. I am writing, after a somewhat long break. I have two projects that I’m alternating between and a third, smaller one that’s been fun and hopefully you’ll see sometime next year. I can’t promise when something new will come out or what it will be, but I’m pecking away over here in my little house on my little street in the golden state.