I may soon be blacklisted

Me and the library just aren’t the best combination sometimes. I guess I need to pay more attention to what I still have out, and what I’m retuning. Here’s the story:

After picking Jenna up from school, we headed off to the library. We had a backpack of stuff checked out that couldn’t be renewed any more, and I needed a book for my ward book club. So, before we left, I had gathered all the books I could find (leaving out at least 4 that I know of) and put them all in the big library bag. We went in, (which is quite a production with a wheelchair bound 6 year old and a 3 year old and 2 bags of books) returned all the books, participated in story time and gathered some books. When we checked out, I went ahead and paid for this book, since we’ve had it checked out for months now and just can’t find the dang thing. Hopefully, since we own it now, we’ll be able to find it soon.

Amazingly, we didn’t have any other fines today, so we loaded up all 3 stacks of books and made our way slowly back to the car. On the way home, we decided to drive through Hogi-Yogi (since Ryan was working from home today and therefore I could use my BOGO coupon for a free chicken bowl) and get lunch. While collecting our food through the tiny drive up window, my phone rang. It was Ryan, who said that Natalie had just called from school because we turned in a school library book to the Lehi Library. I guess the Lehi library called the school librarian, who looked up who had checked out that book and called Natalie in class. She called Ryan at home, who called me. I had just barely left! But I wasn’t far, so I went back, rescued her school library book from the Lehi library, and brought it back home.

This isn’t the first time I have inadvertently returned a book to the wrong library, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I guess that’s just the price you pay to use a library. And since I want to encourage reading at home, I’ll just keep trying. I just wish we had a library closer to home.