A Sad, Sad Day

My library's website kicks the proverbial posterior. In addition to searching the catalog, I can see what I have checked out, renew if necessary, place a hold on books, or make lists of books I might want to request later. And the books don't have to be checked out for me to put a hold on them. I can request a book that's just sitting on a shelf gathering dust and some saintly librarian will go fetch it off the shelf, put a slip in it with my code printed on it and put it on a special shelf for me to come pick up. Then an e-mail will get sent to me telling me that my book is there waiting for me and after a week, they'll put it back on the shelf or send it on to the next person. Really, it's quite heavenly. I have yet to wander the stacks of my library and the only place I have been is the children's room for story time. I hate wandering stacks because my children wander along behind me competing with each other to see who can pull the most books off the shelves before I freak out and start yelling. Been there, done that.

Over the last several months, I have accumulated over 200 books on my list section of my online account. I had it divided by genre and filled each category to the max. I accumulated all the titles from reading book blogs, reading newsletters from bookstores and libraries and emptying out my entire Netflix queue. This gives you a little perspective of what I have lost.

Yes, lost. When I went to my account today to ponder what to request next, my lists were gone. GONE. As my hysteria mounted, I scoured my brain trying to think of where they might have moved them. Maybe they weren't gone after all. Nope. Gone. I found an e-mail address for the web manager and sent him a note that was said something like "My lists are all gone there were so many books on them I don't know what to do help me help me HELP ME!!!!!" When I went back and looked through the directions on how to use the list manager, I saw this:

"My List is a feature that lets you create a temporary list of items from your search results. You can view the list, sort the list, add or remove items from the list, or e-mail the list. If you have set up a user account, you can also save a list of items for future reference. From a saved list, you can move items to another list, rename the list, or delete it."

I added the bold and italic type there. Why oh why didn't I see this before? Why did I invest so much time and not even bother to save or e-mail the lists? I'm sick about it. Stupid internet. Making me so lazy and dependent. I'm seriously depressed about it. I can't even begin to start over. I have the lastest "Notes from the Horn Book" newsletter sitting in my inbox and I can't even look at it. It feels like too much to start over.

Moping around for a while is in order. Please, nobody give me any kind of perspective or tell me about illiterate children in Albania or whatever. I need to lick my wounds before I muster up the strength to start over. I might have to watch some "Bones" reruns and ignore reading for a day to soothe myself. Sigh.