$72 an Hour

What a handsome wage! I figure that's pretty close to what I made yesterday for doing something I am really good at and LOVE to do...talking.

Now don't get too excited and start asking me where you can apply for this job. Listen to my story first and you might decide the job isn't actually for you.

I am a baby of the family; loosely translated into one simple word (according to my first-born husband)...IRRESPONSIBLE. And because I am the baby, I don't mind admitting the fact that I am indeed irresponsible. Add that lovely little character trait with library books that have due dates and fines if the books aren't returned and you don't have a very happy story. Add those TWO little things to the fact that our local library doesn't make you pay your fines when they get to a certain dollar amount...they just keep letting you check out books...and then multiply 5 books by three girls by 15¢ for each day the books are overdue. Include the fact that our previous library didn't even CHARGE for overdue books, you just had to return the ones you currently had before checking out anymore and you will see that this baby of the family is in double, triple, quadruple, maybe even quintuple dutch!!!

I won't even tell you how many dollars worth of fines we owed yesterday when I took the girls to their last day of the summer reading program. I WILL tell you that we killed a few trees with the receipt that would print every time we checked out books, itemizing the overdue books and fines. I just couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. More than once the lovely head librarian had deleted my fines when they were very minimal because she is a firm believer that regular patrons should not have to pay fines. But somehow lately they had snowballed and I was feeling snowed under with every visit.

Yesterday I had every intention of leaving the girls at their activity and coming home and doing some things around the house. But I ended up talking for quite awhile to one of the gals that works there (she's pregnant and I had to share my war stories :) Finally it was almost time for the girls to be done so I stayed on. While my girls were waiting to check out a DVD upstairs, the head librarian came to help them. I remembered I had wanted to pay some on my fines and asked Britnee to go get my checkbook out of the van. I figured if I waited for the right time maybe the head librarian just might be able to give me a little bit of a break. What I was NOT anticipating was the BIG break she was about to offer me. She tried to tell me I didn't need to pay the fines. I told her it was simply a matter of irresponsibility and there was no excuse. I argued for awhile to little or no avail. And finally we agreed on her accepting the 10% payment I was planning to make but in return she deleted all my fines. I told her she was way too gracious. She said she liked our family and knew that we were good patrons of the library.

When I got home I figured up the time I spent yakking (and not getting anything done around the house) and decided that in reality I had netted about $72 an hour! I won't tell you how long I was at the library (evil grin!) But I will say that I think my husband had mixed emotions when I told him. Relief for not having to cough up the huge fine but disappointment that the librarian didn't aid in teaching me a lesson on responsibility.