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Today is the day we pack up and drive out West to Salt Lake City. It’s sad to leave Pittsburgh, which has been our family’s home for seven years.
Our children haven’t known any other home but this one!
Okay, okay . . . can’t think about it too much, or I’ll start crying so hard that my tears will short out the keyboard. Let’s look on the Bright Side! Like this:
This is a bag of my Summer Reading. The game I’m playing is that I can only read adult fiction (which I like to do in summer, to get a break from the kidlit, excellent though it may be), and that I couldn’t spend more than $15 on the books. So, yeah — all of these books, which are in excellent condition, were found at book sales and such for next to nothing. Most of them haven’t even been read. Thank you, Oprah, award committees, and bestseller lists — for making wealthy people who have no reading time buy books, and them immediately give them to thrift stores and library book sales. The impoverished bibliophiles of the world salute you!
Well . . . the books inside the bag are part of this game. Road Trip USA and Princess Ben were purchased new. We need the road trip book to find out where the best patty melts are on the road, and I’m planning to read Princess Ben to Brian on the trip.
The picture’s awfully blurry, ain’t it? Here’s what’s in the bag:
- Several magazines
- Middlesex
- Cold Mountain
- Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
- Naked
- Me Talk Pretty One Day — I’ve actually read this before, but Brian hasn’t
- Straight Man
- Possession
- The Glass Castle
- The Jane Austen Book Club
Unread bestsellers, every one. Think that’ll last me for the weeks until I can get moved in and shimmy up a new library card? It’ll be about a month or two before that happens (oog. How will I survive?!?).
I won’t be able to post for a while. We’ll be staying with my parents for a few weeks while some work is done on our new house, and time online will be parceled out between me and my 13-year-old brother (siiiiiighhhhh). Love that guy, but it’s hard to get him off the ‘puter. There are more “Remembering Pittsburgh” posts in the works, as well as a great story about how Jeffrey’s been begging to convert to Catholocism. Confused? Intrigued? Stay tuned.
Ta!
Squirrel Hill is my ‘hood. Technically I don’t live in Squirrel Hill (I’m not saying where), but it’s definitely my favorite of the thirty-odd neighborhoods in the city of Pittsburgh.
I love the corner of Forbes & Murray . . .
. . . The JCC and its funky Hebrew-numeral clock . . .
. . . Little’s Shoes! With its fabulous retro-everything! I mean, they still hire people to hand-paint their sale signs.
S.W. Randalls is a wonderful little toy store. We are sad that we won’t be around long enough to enter the Lego contest this year.
No trip up Murray is complete without a visit to Dozen Cupcakes. Man, we are SO ADDICTED to these things! I love the cute window display . . .
. . . and Jeffrey loves the cute cupcake display.
Kazansky’s is where we go when we need a good Reuben fix.
Oh, there’s too many other favorite places! Rita’s Italian Ices (love that mango), Games Unlimited (and its curiously eccentric staff), the Tango Café, Aladdin’s (with its sumptuous dessert case and excellent falafel), Forward Lanes (the only bowling alley I know that’s on the second floor of a building), The 61-C (named after a popular bus line), Knit One (keeps me in with the yarn ladies) –oh, I can’t name them all, but I’ll certainly miss them.
I quit my job last week.
I’ve worked as a page, and then as a clerk, and then finally as a librarian for the Children’s Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. For seven years. And then I had to say good-bye.
I was planning to write this amazing “behind the scenes” tour of the library, including the secret tunnels and overlooked doors that only we librarians know about, but instead, I decided to take a series of photos showing how gorgeous the building is. Seriously, I love it. It’s the kind of library I’ve always wanted to work for.
These first two are architectural details of the front door.
This next one is of the lantern in the front foyer, just before you enter the lobby. There are four tiny lion’s heads on it, but I don’t know if you can tell from this image.
I especially love the grand stairwells, even though I hardly used them – it’s much faster to take the staff elevators. You can’t see it, but the steps of the marble staircase are gently scooped after so many feet going up and down.
After going through the lobby, you turn down towards the Children’s Department . . .
Here is the main fiction room. Brian and Eleanor are experimenting with this “My Storyteller” thing that some CMU students built.
And here’s the picture book area. Everybody loves to see Mary Anne (from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel).
Lastly, here is a section of the beautiful “Storyteller” mural we have in the Non-Fiction room. I used to be in charge of shelf-reading that room, so I’ve always had a bit of affection for it.
One of the great things about Pittsburgh is its long history of eccentric millionaires who donated large swathes of land to the city for parks just to tick of their families.
Thanks, Mary Schenley, for deciding to get even with your dad! Now we all have a great big park to run around in!
The paths were originally meant for horse-drawn carriages to go down, so they are wide and graveled — perfect for strollers.
I absolutely adore this park — we call it our “enchanted forest.” It’s so lush and green.
The paths and hidden staircases spiral downwards into a series of ravines. Panther Hollow is at the bottom, where there is a duck pond. We always like to bring bread for them to eat.
Years ago, there used to be a boating house here, but now the only boats on the pond are toy ones. Jeffrey likes to make little leaf boats and float clovers on top.
On the other side of the forest is the Bartlett Playground, which is our Playground of Choice. There are rarely any weird people hanging out in this park, and it’s easy to see the whole area from any of the benches. Ella and Wimmy are obsessed with the swings.
On the slope that leads to the forest is Wildflower Hill. A crop of daisies just came into bloom this month. Jeffrey had fun frolicking about.
Oh, I’ll miss zooming in and around this forest!
William has a new nickname.
Jack Norris!
Yes, it’s a little bizarre. Here’s the story:
Jeffrey gave it to him on Memorial Day. We in the car with the windows rolled down, on the way to a picnic. The wind was blowing William’s hair around, and he was gurgling and cooing in his lovable Wimmy-way.
“Mom,” said Jeffrey, “when the wind is in Wimmy’s hair, he looks just like Jack Norris.”
Who?
“Jack Norris,” he repeated. “He’s a guy who looks just like Wimmy.”
Brian and I were puzzled by this. Who in the world is Jack Norris? How on earth did Jeffrey learn about him? We immediately thought of Chuck Norris, but Jeffrey has never seen any of his films (and hopefully, he never will).
“Jeffrey, can you tell me what Jack Norris does?” I ask.
“He’s a guy who runs around really fast,” he replies. “And he’s a dwarf.”
Uh-huuuuuuh.
This was ALL we’ve been able to get out of Jeffrey about who this Jack Norris person is. He looks like William. He runs fast. And he’s a dwarf. Once Jeffrey even sang a song about it.
Jack Norris runs around,
He saves the people all around
And he’s a dwarf!
He’s a dwarf, he’s a dwarf, he’s a dwaaaaaaaarf!
Nowadays, it’s become a family running gag. Whenever William is being especially, ah, intrepid — say, stuffing styrofoam peanuts in his mouth, or tipping a bowl of freshly folded clothes over on himself — we punch our fists in the air and say, “Jack Norris is on the case!”
Especially if the wind is in his hair.
