Author Archives: wendywelch

There are Greater Things to Fear Than Spiders in Your Hair

Posted on by
1

Jack and I have a young friend, Blair, who went on Jack’s trip to Scotland this time a year ago with her family. Blair made history by being the only participant to ever take up the tour’s opportunity to shear a sheep.

Jack only takes ten people on the tour, and while they visit internationally known sites, they also get Jack’s home turf advantage and visit a few secret pubs, living room singing sessions, and a working farm, where opportunities abound to do non-touristy things. Like what Blair did with the sheep.

blair sheep II(FYI, while the ewes don’t like the clipper noise, it doesn’t hurt AND it keeps them from getting nasty diseases like heatstroke and fly strike. So don’t believe the ewe’s drama queen pose; she’s neither suffering nor dying.)

Blair doesn’t fear dirt or hard jobs, as you can see, but until recently she and I shared a healthy respect for spiders. About 8 a.m., she posted the following as her Facebook status:

While walking under the eaves of my garage this morning, a slimy slug decided it was a good idea to plop down on top of my head. Thinking it was a giant spider trying to eat me, I quickly start swatting my hair back and forth frantically, further wrapping the slug in a nice cocoon of hair.

After my boyfriend Seth helped me pull the little booger out, we set him free, leaving me to deal with the sticky booger trail he left behind in my freshly straightened hair. And a little fun fact: It’s very hard to get snail juice out of one’s hair. I’m rocking the, “There’s Something About Mary” hairstyle today, swapping the semen with slug slime.

Moral of the story: there are far greater things to fear getting caught in your hair than spiders.

Until Blair posted this, I really wouldn’t have believed that was a true statement. But, okay, I see clearly now.  Thanks, Blair! And I fully expect, given  your prowess with electric shears, that you are sporting a buzz cut now.

Slug juice? Not to worry. This girl knows how to get the root of a problem.

blair and sheep

When Books Attack

Posted on by
4

Running a bookstore is dangerous. Books can become downright murderous–especially during shelving season. Revealed here are the top six book assassin techniques. Be aware!

The Center Shoot: You push a mass of shelved books to one side to insert something in alphabetical order, and a book sticks, causing those headed toward it to strike hard, and those on the other side to shoot forward with 0-60 velocity. It’s not unlike the physics behind popping a pimple. This is an equal opportunity accident, occurring with tall, short, paperback and hardcover tomes with no preference. It doesn’t matter for the victim; it hurts when books slam into your tum.

The Side Slide: A stack of pocket paperbacks (the little ones) are lying sideways on the shelf. The one you want is 2/3 down the stack. You know your physics, and tilt the stack up, so page edges lean against the shelf’s back. And then the gremlins come: the stack you are holding diagonally up, tilted AWAY from you, moves without rhyme or reason–but with considerable force–toward your breasts, where they strike without mercy.  The Side Slide can happen in any genre but only at specific heights: to the female bookslinger breasts, non-gender-specific to the bridge of the nose, and male bookslingers considerably lower.

The Fiction Faux Stack: Popular with trade- or pocket-sized fiction. You lift a stack of these miscreants, maneuvering them in your arms backwards to brace against your stomach–but one wobbles and the whole thing explodes like a firework. For some reason, most booksellers attempting this lift are barefoot; hardbacks unfailingly strike the arches and ankles. For extra points, smaller books may flip upward and come down after the first layer have fallen, prolonging the effect.

The Soloist: When working above one’s head, it is not uncommon to place a book in a tightly-packed shelf, only to have it leap from its assigned position in a goodbye-cruel-world way–usually onto the shelver’s upturned nose. For some reason, larger books from the history section do this more often. Perhaps they cannot bear to be reminded of the company they keep for all eternity.

Cookbook Crumble: Nicer cookbooks are often printed on heavy paper to absorb color photographs. A stack of cookbooks weighs double what other, similar sized books might punch. Hence the unsuspecting newbie’s surprise when, attempting to shelve a cookbook with one hand, she braces the others between her arm and the shelf. Think very heavy, unstable see-saw. If the bone does not break outright, pain will cause the shelver to flex, sending books to the floor, where–you guessed it–the barefoot toes receive the brunt of the sharp-hardcover-corner action.

The Top Shelf Textbook Stacking Fail: You raise a small stack of large volumes, usually textbooks, to the level of a shelf higher than your shoulders, but the edge of the final book catches on the shelf’s bottom as your arms struggle for that last centimeter. This book slides into your face as the rest fall behind the shelf–if you’re lucky. Otherwise the whole stack drop onto your head.

Books are insidious and have many ways to torment their keepers. These are just a few – but Jack says they are proof that a disorderly shop is safer. Or maybe he said justification….