the tale of a parking lot and a courier bag

 


This is what I needed last night to carry all my things home from the library. One of our courier bags. You see the fill line? To stop overzealous (and strong) library workers from overfilling a bag and pissing off the county courier? I filled it to the fill line.

The thing is, we have this little parking problem at the library. After years of neighboring an empty grocery store parking lot (when we moved here when I was five, that was the first grocery store I ever went to with my dad) (then the store closed and the building was used as: a haunted house, a kids' club, space for the library book sale) (the parking lot was used for: park & ride, parking for the Sunday farmers' market, overflow library parking), the lot is being developed and we are down to our own tiny lot. Staff must now park a couple blocks away by city hall. And must listen to patron after patron complain about the parking. An indignent "What's going in next door?" (Response: hand them a flier.) A peevish "When will you get your parking back?" (Never.)

So when it's your turn to host a coworker's birthday, and you need to carry two empty Pyrex dishes (formerly home to chocolate pecan cupcakes), 2 books, 2 books on tape, 2 DVDs, and your bag (which is pretty capacious on its own), you follow your instinct and grab a courier bag. I kind of want to keep it - it's the perfect size for library days. Or maybe I just need to reconsider how much I cart to & from work.