Just call me Odor Eaters.

Tonight I got home early enough to make us dinner (please let this trend of getting home in the daylight last all summer...), so I threw together a Boboli pizza. My half has the peppers, but with a pesto base the pizza was pretty good. What did we ever do without Boboli wheat crusts? Anyway, to celebrate our early and homemade dinner, Wyatt treated us to a little humping action while we ate. Doug and I are on the couch eating our pizza when we hear Wyatt make his little needy cry. We turn around to see him getting on top of the blanket that was resting on the back of the couch. He's biting it, and making biscuits on it, and purring to beat the band. And then his little hips start to thrust. I took a video of it with the intention of posting it here so that everyone would be able to see the torture that we endure from Wyatt and his randiness, but why would anyone want to sit through a minute of watching the cat hump a blanket? I'll spare you the evidence of Wyatt's love, but search for it on YouTube if you really are in need of some base humor.

In other news, I was thinking of what kind of careers women can have as mothers that are flexible and would still pay you decent money if you did them part-time. I was thinking about this on the way home from Maine on Sunday, as Chris had been talking about her job and day care and making it all work. I did some Internet investigating, and some possibilities are freelancer (freelancing with anything, I guess, since you can dictate your own hours), nurse, dental hygienist, pharmacist (pretty much anything in the health professions), teacher, cosmetologist... the usual. So I asked Doug what he would think if I ever decided to work part time as a cosmetologist, or a dental hygienist (which would require another degree. Actually, all of these things would require more schooling, so unless one was smart and planned ahead one would be faced with getting some sort of certificate or degree in order to pursue as a new mother one of these paths). He couldn't picture me as a cosmetologist, and while he could more easily picture me flossing people's teeth and handing the dentist the Novocaine needles, he decided that he had the perfect part-time job for me. One that he could totally picture me doing, with enthusiasm that he's never seen me bring to any other job. He thinks that a career as a bowling alley assistant would be ideal for me. Taking the money, activating the lanes, giving people the bowling shoes, but especially spraying down the hot and sweaty worn shoes with antibacterial spray. I'm looking for a real conversation, real advice from my husband and he tells me that I should make a career out of using an aerosol can. Thanks!

However, I did get very enthusiastic today about libraries. Every once in a while I get on a libraries kick. I get tired of trying to think of what else I could do with my life when I am in a fine profession already, but just maybe not in the right specialization. I've always said that I'd be great in a public library, and today I agreed with myself. I had renewed vigor for public library work and started to imagine myself working in reference at a mid- to large-sized urban library, helping patrons with their reference questions, providing reader advisory services, designing community outreach programs, fixing the copy machine, giving directions, whatever - just out with people and working in a community. That's what I want to do. Eventually I might want to move into management again, maybe to the assistant director or director level, but I'd be very content for a while to work as a librarian, to work on the front lines. The economy isn't helping me reach my goals, though. Towns are not hiring new librarians or adding new positions. Towns are cutting back library funding and are cutting back hours of existing staff, many cutting staff altogether. Until the economy gets better and more librarians retire, I will just have to be content reading Library Journal and belonging to the PLA.