Library Lament

The last of the library books I checked out in late October were due yesterday.  I'm spending my last evening with them.  Not sure what difference a few more hours makes stacked up against the nine weeks I've had them but it's one of my little rituals.

The lament the title refers to is for the $27.25 in fines I accrued for this batch of 16 books.  The second time they were due I spaced it for a week.  $.25 per day per item adds up fast.

This is the first time I've ever racked up that big of a fine in all the years I've had a card.  I'm so chagrined.

Was it a measure of the bad place I was in this fall/winter?  Or just of the crazy week following the end of NaNo when I was switching mental gears from NaNo to the Xmas crochet projects?

At least it wasn't my sister's card which I had been using since I arrived in January 2013.  But it was a sad way to inaugurate the first use of my latest Longview Library card.

I finally acceded to the need for having my own card.  I had balked for over 18 months seeing it as symbolic of accepting Longview as my current home and not just the place I am visiting for a time.  But by mid October I knew it would be at least another 3 or 4 months before I could hope for a return to the Rogue Valley and to a new home with Ed.

Tuesday marked the two year anniversary of my arrival for Mom's birthday party and that six week visit that became this Longview limbo.

The Longview Library was my first library and I can still remember my first card. A stiff paper rectangle with round corners and a small metal tab attached to the top left corner.  1962 or 3 I think I was 5.