I May Be An Idiot In My Personal Life But At The Library I Am A Rock Star!

I am excited to tell you all that my handsome grandson, Xander Matthew-Bryan Davis, came home from the hospital today. He will be on medicine for awhile and making frequent trips to the doctor but he is home and happy. Thank you all for your prayers and support!

- D

Now on with the show......

I spend quite a bit of time making fun of myself and a lot of people have voiced concern over what they perceive to be my very "low self-esteem" and I would like to assure all of you that my self-esteem is in very good shape! I guess I like to poke fun at my little misfortunes because, well, I like to keep my ego in check. When you work with the public on a daily basis it is easy to feel mentally, socially, and, quite frankly, genetically superior to a vast percentage of the population. If I didn't remind myself of my varied imperfections on a daily basis, I would have a Donald Trump sized ego. I cannot speak for other venues, but at the public library, any public library, you will find a huge cross-section of society.

There are the Brainiacs and the Bookaholics, who truly read so many, so quickly and so voraciously, that they couldn't possibly afford to buy enough books to feed their habit. These people are surprisingly well intentioned and truly love the library but tend to spend at least an extra 15 minutes at the check out counter so that they may give everyone within earshot a synopsis of each book that they have returned.

There are also the home-schoolers who try their damnedest to try to clean out entire sections on one subject each week in order to prove that their child will be academically ahead of the game since odds are that they will end up emotionally stunted.

There are the hordes of teen aged girls who flock, in their dirty tank tops and pajama pants, to use the library's free Internet services in order to make their MySpace pages a little more pedophile friendly. And then there are the teen aged boys who come to see those girls and attempt to climb the library steps with their pants sagging to mid-thigh.

There are the homeless (or the residential challenged, as my sister refers to them) who for lack of any better place to go spend their days in the library, periodically washing their clothes and asses in the bathroom sinks and looking up big words to use when telling the local media their personal story of triumph to tragedy (these stories got super popular with reporters after the release of the Pursuit of Happyness) Side note: Only Will Smith could look HOT while playing a hobo!

And then of course there are the well-meaning albeit misguided and condescending couples who bring their half-eaten sandwiches and restaurant doggie-bags in to "feed to the homeless" and leave angry when they are a.) not accepted or b.) not devoured in front of them. (Seriously, even the homeless have their standards.)

On top of all of this, the library hosts the sexual deviants trying to quickly view porn on the computer before Security walks by, the unwashed, the morbidly obese who inevitably fall and need help into a chair to catch their breath, precocious children who question every answer given to them, old men who routinely ask for 30 archived issues of a magazine only to hand them directly back and say they have changed their minds, parents who want "the nice librarian" to do their child's homework, spoiled adults who constantly remind us that their tax dollars pay our salaries, and just royally bitchy rich ladies.

Surrounded by all of this 37.5 hours a week could make anyone get a little full of themselves and THAT, in a nutshell, is why I try to remind myself that I regularly have toilet paper stuck to my shoe and I once quietly farted in public and blamed the subsequent smell on my granddaughter's diaper. So, for those of you who are worried that I might be a little hard on myself. Please relax, I am fine! It is the rest of those freaks you need to worry about!

Three doctors, two clowns, and a growling Mimi

Let me just express to you that having a love one in the hospital is no fun at all and when it is your grandchild it is ridiculously horrifying! You have NO control! When you are the doctor, you are running the show. The parents are making the hard decisions and the nurse is at the beckon call of both the doctors AND the parents. But the grandparents, the Mimi's and the Papa's of the world, are just there to make sure that the parents have coffee and muffins and the grandchild has plenty of hugs. Since my beautiful grandson Xander has been in the hospital I have wanted to:

1.) Punch a cold (and presumably heartless) phlebotomist in the face after she walked into the room and said, "Someone is going to need to hold him ."

2.) Plead with my grandson's parents to open the curtains and let my little buddy get some sunlight.

3.) And ask, "where the hell is housekeeping?", after a dried coffee spill lingered on the floor in his room for more than 24 hours. I wanted to yell, "I have seen more than three different doctors, countless med students, several nurses, two clowns, and Elizabeth Wooley from the Channel 20 News but not one fucking housekeeper. What the hell?"

But instead, I have only very sweetly asked a nun for a mobile for Xander's crib and I added, "if it isn't too much trouble", got down and my hands and knees and scrubbed up the coffee from the floor, and as politely as possible reminded visitors to wash their hands before holding my pumpkin. (Actually, I also growled at the horrid phlebotomist. Seriously, I growled, like an angry dog. I don't know how it slipped out... I have never actually growled at anyone before but I guess she just pissed off the animal in me. No one heard it but her - and maybe Xander. And I am not sure if it scared her or not but quite frankly I think it should have.)

So until my sweet Xander comes home, I will resign myself to the "passenger seat" and let the pros and his parents drive. I will provide nourishment when needed, assure that everyones hands are clean before they touch my baby, and growl and bare my canines if I feel that anyone does not have his best interests at heart.

Sorry Everybody!

Dear friends,

I feel bad when I cannot provide you with your daily dose of Davis foolishness but tonight LIFE just got in the way. After an extremely busy day at work, I still had to make dinner and pick up my daughter from work. My grandson (4 months old) is sick and I had to stop at the emergency room to make sure he is alright. He will be fine, but it is a Mimi's job to worry too much. And my Nanny (my godmother's mother) is rapidly reaching the end of a very full life - which has me spending way too much time walking down memory lane. So for tonight, I am choosing to put down the computer, count my blessings, and thank god for the wonderful people I have had in my life. I wish you all love and peace and hope that you will keep my Nanny in your prayers.

I promise I will be back tomorrow with something completely and totally ignorant.

XOXO - Davis

Hairy Nuns, Gay Frankenstein & the Unfortunate Shit-finger

It's weird, sometimes I'll be at work or driving down the street and the most random questions and thoughts pop into my head. Occasionally I share these with my husband and he just cocks his head to side and tells me he loves me (in a way that makes me feel like he might be contemplating having me committed). Once in a while, I will even share my queries with my sister and she just looks at me as if questioning our biological tie. So, I have decided to do what I always do and start venting these questions to all of you.

• If Frankenstein's Monster would have been given a gay brain do you think he would've woken up and said, "O!M!G! Love, love, love the platform shoes! Hate the dark colors! And I should really get some cocoa butter on these scars before they ruin my perfectly fabulous new face!"?

• Do you think any black women have ever committed crimes and blamed it on two random Chinese men the way Susan Smith and Bonnie Sweeten blamed two random black men?

• Why does it feel like such a personal insult when someone de-friends you on facebook?

• I wonder if a midget has ever gotten a boob job?

• Do you think teenage Jesus ever told Joseph, "If you don't let me go to the dance, I'll tell my REAL dad!"?
  

• Do nuns shave their legs?

• Has anyone ever been born with no nipples (I mean, they have C-cup boobs but no actual nipples)?

• Wouldn't it be funny if scientists discovered that the Dinosaurs made meowing noises instead of a roar? Jurassic Park would have been hilarious that way!

• Do you ever wonder how long it took cavemen to figure out that sex led to pregnancy or if there were cavemen serial killers?

• Why do people say, "No offense" before they say the most offensive things! Why don't they just "man up" and say, "I am about to really insult you."

• Why in the world does garlic bother vampires? Why not Lawry's Seasoning Salt or Cinnamon? What is so special about garlic?

• Does Kool-Aid count as water intake? And if not, why?

• Do you ever think Stephen King's wife is ever afraid to fall asleep first?

• Has your finger ever broken through the toilet paper while you are wiping and then no matter how many times you wash and Purell your hands you think your finger smells like poop the rest of the day? Or is it just me? (I call this the unfortunate shit-finger)

I don't know! These are just a few of the things that popped into my head today. Maybe they are crazy questions but I am a curious person. If anybody out there has any answers, please let me know... I'll be here waiting.

-D

Side Boobs and Cooter Farts!

* Despite what people may think there are things I will NOT write about. However, this is not one of them. Therefore I must warn my mother, Aunt Becky, and Aunt Barbie that this entry is about sex and it could potentially embarrass you. Aunt Jackie, I know you will just be proud!

During a recent intimate moment with my hubby, I realized that I was holding my arm in a retarded person’s position. My right elbow was bent, my forearm was flat against my chest, and my hand was bent foreword and flailing and grasping at my right shoulder (Kudos to Mr. Fisher for inspiring temporary cerebral palsy). Once the seizures stopped and I noticed my awkward pose I quickly resolved the situation and found a more flattering posture but quite frankly, retarded arm broke my concentration and it took almost half an hour for me to get back in the mental groove (that’s right I said I had another half an hour to find my groove… again, kudos to Mr. Fisher). Anyway it spurred me to thinking about all of the non-flattering positions and noises of sexual encounters past, and just let me tell they are vast!

There are my instinctual deep guttural moans that seem to manifest whenever that certain spot is hit. I know moaning should be sexy but believe me at my worst I can sound like a hybrid moose/donkey being anally probed. So I really have to concentrate on keeping the vocalizations a little more “sexy” and a little less "tipped cow". I mean, seriously, porn has set the bar really high for us normal, non-professional, girls. Never once have I never heard Jenna Jameson groan like she has one foot in the gas chambers while she is pulling a train with a bevy of overly endowed bikers. And for that matter, I have never noticed an unfortunate queef (that’s the technical term for when your cooter farts) slip in a porno either, even the super-dirty ones but if I am flipped into the wrong position during the old in-and-out and it sounds like I have a whoopee cushion stashed in my hoo-haw.

And don’t even get me started on my boobs (I call them Betty and Veronica). Having large, REAL breasts can be a gift and a curse past the age of 35. If I am not careful with my positioning, things can go completely askew. If am on my back, I have to try my best to look as natural as possible while holding my upper arms close to my body to hold my breasts in place (and not allowing them to slide to the side where my nipples end up parallel to my armpits).

There is the also ongoing humiliation of poor sex lighting. I try my hardest to "enjoy myself" only in the darkest of rooms but that damn moon keeps illuminating my window blinds. An adding to that because of my skin color, I tend to glow in the dark. I know that you think I am kidding but my skin does genuinely glow for a good ten to fifteen minutes after the light goes off. Which would be great if I had at any time planned on taking up night jogging but I don't think that will ever happen, so for now I just try to keep my day-glo ass covered until the initial brightness dims.

Even with all of that, though, sex can be a wonderful thing. Something for two people (or more if you are slutty) who love each other (or at least find each other mildly attractive) to do in the darkest room, in the sexiest position, and the quietest way possible. To all of you I say, good luck an just keep practicing... I know I will!

Stephen King never got to see me topless!

Someone recently asked me what I wanted to be when I was a little girl and I had to stop and think about it. But I was finally able to piece together the mental journey I went on to end up working in a library (my dream job) at age 40 and I thought I'd re-walk this journey with all of you.

Very early on (about at 5), I wanted to be a nun. I used to put a towel on my head and bless people, my sister, my dogs, Barbie, etc... I honestly thought that was the entire job of a nun. (Probably because my family was NOT Catholic and I was basing my entire knowledge of "the nunnery" on Mary Tyler Moore's riveting performance in the movie A Change of Habit, starring Elvis Presley.) Once I was privy to the added responsibilities, I nixed the whole nun idea. After that I wanted to be a reporter, an actress, and then, of course, a model. Now, I am not sure why I wanted to be a reporter but most likely it was because reporting combines two of my favorite things, 1.) being REALLY, REALLY important and 2.) telling on people. However, at the time there was not a huge market for 10 year old reporters (Damn the Nickelodeon and Disney channels for not taking off sooner!) Unfortunately, my acting career peaked when after trying out for the roles of Dorothy and Glinda the Good Witch in the Webster Elementary 6th grade version of The Wizard of Oz, I was awarded the coveted version of Maid #4 (I realize that some of you are probably saying to yourselves, "I don't remember maids in the Wizard of Oz", well that's because there weren't any. They were token roles given to those of us who had no actual singing ability or were mild-to-moderately handicapped!) My modeling career was brought to a frightening halt when at age 13 my mother signed my sister and I up to be "living mannequins" at the mall. We were modeling shoes and had to stand completely still in "modeling poses". Which probably would have been easier had we not had on a drag queen hooker's amount of make-up and been wearing bright white leotards - to keep the focus on the shoes (It was a Saturday afternoon and the mall was full of kids our age. Our friends kept walking by... and mocking us. But could you really blame them I was 13 years old, 5 foot tall with 130 pounds and a C cup bra stuffed into a medium Spandex leotard?)

Once I got into high school, my career plan was to graduate High School, move to New York, take part-time classes at NYU while working as a stripper and trying to make it in the Big City as a writer. All of the people at the strip club would respect me because I wasn't promiscuous and I was incredibly intelligent. (I know this plan sounds like the plot to a lot of recent movies but I had this plan in the early 80s before any of those flicks were made! *And in my plan, I meet either Stephen King or John Steinbeck while working the pole and they asked to read one of my stories, love it, and help to get me published!)

After high school, I actually did work as a waitress (I liked it!), a bank teller (wasn't crazy about it!), and a nanny (was mentally molested doing it!) before I began my career in social work. Which I loved for the first 10 or 12 years and then I got tired. Finally, I got a chance to work at the library and I have never been happier. And that is the story of what I wanted to be when I grew up and how I ended up at the library.

*Disclaimer: I have no actual knowledge that either John Steinbeck or Stephen King frequent New York City strip clubs and have no proof of my own ability to successfully work a pole.

Here Shitty Kitty!

As I told you, when our family moved from Quincy to Springfield my father promised me a kitten if I promised to go quietly. My plan, up until that point, was to barricade myself in my room with my little sister, Ken, Barbie, Baby Alive and my dog Mandy and then call a neighborhood press conference to convey to the media that my parents were attempting to forcibly remove me from my property. I would then explain to the reporters from the Quincy Herald Whig Newspaper and WGEM television that the unnecessary and compulsory transfer of a minor to a new town, new school, and new home was not only abusive but the start of a slow and painful, social and emotional death. However, I was 8 and I think the way I actually voiced this threat to my parents was, “If you try and make me go, I’m going to tell. But my father stepped in and offered me a kitten, a cute furry little kitten. (I was never allowed to have a kitten because our family raised and showed dogs and my mother had always claimed that my father was afraid of cats.) After we arrived, my father stalled and stalled and stalled, until he finally announced we could go and look at kittens. He claimed that he had found a lady that raised cats and we could get one from her for a reasonable price. I was over-the-moon excited, finally my own kitten (I had my own, dog, but she was not exactly a snuggler. She had a thyroid condition that made her look and act like an anorexic crack addicted puppy with ADHD, so she refused to be held or petted or even looked in the eye for more than 10 to 15 seconds). But a kitten… I could just imagine her lying on my pillow and purring while I slept. It was going to be outstanding!

When the day arrived, we climbed in the car and headed to the “cat lady’s house”. Now, I know that by calling it “the cat lady’s house” I have painted a funky picture of a fat old crazy lady in one room ramshackle bungalow with 3 lawn gnomes standing in the yard, 6 wind chimes hanging on the porch, and 12 Siamese cats resting in the living room. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The lady WAS crazy but thin, the house was small but not a “ramshackle bungalow” but more of a filthy, broken-down lean-to, and as for the 12 Siamese cats resting in the living room… well, it was more like 50 to 60 inbred cats carpeting every inch of a 200 square foot area. There were cats everywhere! On the television! In the sinks! On top of the refrigerator! On the bookcase! It was insane! There was actually a litter box just sitting on the kitchen counter – with a cat shitting in it! (I swear it looked like one of those houses that the Animal Cops raid garbed in hazmat suits on the Animal Planet channel.) I turned to ask my dad how the hell he had found this Hello Kitty Hell Hole and I could tell he had NOT been here before (I later learned he had gotten the address from one of his new co-workers)! He was plastered to the wall! He wasn’t moving at all! Not one single inch! I wanted to just get my kitten and get the hell out of there! The lady told me, “The kittens are in the bathtub”. Her voice was deep and scratchy (I think she had a hairball). I walked into the bathroom, where a splinter group of thug-lifed tabbies seemed to be planning a coo from behind the toilet, and found the most adorable flea-riddled kittens romping in the dirtiest tub that I have ever seen. I cooed with delight and called to my dad to come see. He still did not move. “That’s o.k., sweetie. Just hurry and pick one,” he answered, his voice cracking. I turned around to see sweat pouring from his forehead and tears welling in his eyes. He really was afraid of cats. Here was my big strong father turned to quivering mess by these furry little lovable creatures. I didn’t understand it. But then I heard one of the thug cats talk about shanking the scared black man by the door and I decided to go home kitty-free!

My dad was grateful! So grateful that I ended up with rabbits, gerbil, hamsters, and lots and lots of dogs! I asked my husband for a kitten for Christmas a few years back. We went to the local animal shelter to get one… We came home with two puppies, a Labrador Retriever and a Rottweiler Mix. Most of my furniture has been gnawed on by puppy teeth but at least I don't have a little box hosting a shitting near-feral cat sitting next to my microwave!