(no subject)

The thing is that people come into the library with requests that are both oddly vague and oddly specific at the same time and expect any member of staff to be able to immediately pull a book title out of the air.

For example, today a lady came in asking for "simple books for a group of two- to six-year-olds" that she could "act out with puppets". And preferably not a fairy tale, which eliminated my first answer. But when I asked her what kind of story she was looking for, she just shrugged and said, "Oh, any good story."

It is a terribly sad thing that the only picture book Pterry has written is Where's My Cow?, which I doubt would work in this situation. If he had, he could be my default answer when someone asks for a "good book" with no other qualifications in all age brackets.

(no subject)

I don't hate my period, particularly. I mean, I'm not saying that I enjoy it or anything but I don't have a particularly bad time of it, most months. It's just a thing that happens. No big deal. What I do hate is the two or three days before my period when I am prone to extreme emotional whatsit.

See, I am, even at the best of time, a person who cries easily. Ridiculously easily, really. It happens when I'm sad, when I'm angry, when I'm happy, when I'm lonesome, when I'm nostalgic, when I read particular books or hell, when I read particular lines from particular books. ("Mrs Whatsit loves me." "I loved them, and you gave them to me." "I will take the ring, though I do not know the way." Every damn time.) I also cry at least once almost every time I go to the movies. When it's a movie that I'm particularly invested in, chances are that I cry through most of the second half. Occasionally, this prompts people to ask if I'm all right. I had a friend keep trying to hold my hand during one of the Lord of the Rings movies because she thought I was suffering some kind of emotional distress. My sister went to see a performance of Phantom of the Opera with me once and was concerned for my wellbeing throughout the whole of act two.

It's not usually extreme emotional upheaval, really. I just tend to leak at the eyes and nose.

The thing is that most people are not people who cry easily. Let me tell you, crying at the drop of a hat is not a thing that's going to advance your social standing. It makes people uncomfortable - embarrassed and uncertain, like there's something maybe they should do but they aren't sure what. Do it enough times in front of the same people and they start to think that you're doing it on purpose, as manipulation. Even if they don't think you're being manipulative, they certainly don't take seriously anything you say while you're doing it.

I can't help it. Honest. Most of the time, unless I'm by myself, I try my damnedest to stop crying the moment I find that I've started. It's not as though I cry attractively, after all. And it makes people uncomfortable, as I've said. It makes me hellishly uncomfortable. It's terribly embarrassing. Also, it's physically uncomfortable: my eyes hurt, the skin around them gets all dried and scratchy from salt residue, and I nearly always end up with a sinus headache from sniffling. Crying sucks. I pretty much hate it, but there's really very little I can do.

So, having a few days every month where I get to deal with all that times ten and with the added worry that I'm being irrational about the whole thing? Yeah, that's seems really unnecessary.

Thanks a hell of a lot, hormones.