Library Paranoia

After discussing this with a friend who has the same problem, I feel liberated to confess a little problem I have with getting library books turned back in on time. Every time we go to the library (which by the way is a lovely local library the kids love that even has a coffee shop), I feel like there are invisible alarms going off. "There she is again, the one who can never turn in library books on time. Doesn't she have a fine that is due as well?" We make a lot of contributions to the library through this process.

Of course, dear DEAR husband never turns anything in late and won't even go in the library with me, adding to the paranoia. The only time he will get involved is when he can't stand looking at the books piled up by the door to be returned and will actually take them and drop them in the box outside the library. He must think there are hidden alarms that will go off if he walks inside with MY late library books (not his). To be fair, I always have good intentions which is paving a nice road to **** for me in this matter. This is not something I do on purpose, it's just that well, when you have mittens and hats and scarves and coats and shoes flying all over every time we go out the door, the library books just get forgotten in the shuffle. During the summer, I have no excuse that I can think of right now. Maybe that would be a good science project for the kids. Do library books get returned in a more timely manner during the summer? I can see the poster board charts now.

Anyway, my husband's parents were visiting this week and his mom took our oldest daughter to the library to read some books and enjoy the coffee shop. I know, I know, a coffee shop isn't even enough to get me motivated to get the darn books in on time. But I digress. The good news is that all our overdue books were already turned in (by dear husband of course), but I still need to go in and pay the outstanding fine. Dear daughter was going to get a new library card (because she lost hers like 5 years ago, obviously on the same path as her dear DEAR mom). Usually to get a replacement card is $1.00, but by the time she went in they did not have any records of her ever having one, so she needed to start the process all over again, requiring parents to fill out and sign the application. They would not let her grandma access our records in order to protect us. I told DH's mom it was probably a good thing for her because it protected her from the invisible alarms that would have been activated had they opened up my library record (blush). I'm not sure if she was too amused by this ;).

So, what is the point of this post? Nothing really, except that I am failing as a mom to teach my kids responsibility. But we can have a sense of humor about it all, so that must count for something. Anyway, it is almost New Years, and I am not even going to attempt to make a New Years resolution about this. And I don't want to make light of a serious problem that I am sure is the subject of a Parenting magazine article somewhere, "How to raise responsible kids." This article is of course right next to one entitled "How to regulate your body's normal hormonal cycle and not produce any more citizens that cannot turn in library books on time."