Library Day

The barge blasts it's horn as it crosses the straits. I'm sitting in the cutest library I've ever known. I wanted to post pictures, but my computer won't recognize that my camera actually has pictures on it! So that will have to wait until later.

It's my first day off. Since I'll be working this weekend, my boss decided that it would be bad to incur too much overtime before the hotel opens in two weeks. It's such a chilly rainy day, that I'm glad to be off while the library is open. The back doors overlook a small porch with rocking chairs that people enjoy sitting in when the weather is nice. But for today, it's just me and the librarian and another island worker who is passed out in the comfy chairs by the fireplace :-)

I woke up this morning to the sound of my automatic coffee pot. That is the perfect alarm clock for me! It will take much restraint NOT to steal that coffee pot when I leave. I think I'll ask my boss if she can take the cost of it out of my bonus at the end of the season. I'm already attached to it.

I wore a big coat today, as it's not feeling like spring just yet. The island welcomes spring in slowly. It's like Sleeping Beauty every year...coming out of the foggy winter slumber to wake up to the green of spring. In a few weeks it will warm up enough to sit outside. But June is the best, because that is when I will help the gardeners (mostly from Latin America) plant loads of seedlings around the hotel. I have many fond memories of the first of June planting season.

The month of May is training time. Currently I have been working on processing all the paperwork for new employees. Wondering what kind of season it will be? Who will get fired first? Who will quit? It's hard work up here, and many college kids just coming for a good time forget that the next day when they have to go to work. My employers do not tolerate repeated lateness or hangovers. With the fine dining restaurant and the hotel rooms at $300-900 dollars a night, they can't afford bad service! It was hard my first season to tolerate their perfectionist standards, but once I "passed" I got into the swing of things. I love the long busy hours! I hope to make enough money to take the month of November off to work on a little house in Kentucky that I shall purchase.

But for now, I have the island...I was thinking today that this is the first time in 2 years that I've felt safe. Totally safe. I cannot describe the peacefulness of this feeling. The completeness it brings to my soul. What was I so upset about last week, last year? I do not remember. I occasionally have a flashback of soldiers and guns and checkpoints...but then I look out the window and see the crystal blue waters wash the thought away. If I could create a heaven for myself, it would be an island like this. And me a happy little clam on the shoreline...