For real and actually.

November is going to be low-media month! Stop laughing, I mean it. Yesterday I took my daughters to the downtown public library, a four-story wonderment with fountains and a children’s theater and a very impressive calendar of events. (Side note: every time I find myself in downtown Jacksonville I feel an almost physical ache for urban living. I love my house and my yard and my proximity to family, but I will never stop missing city streets. ) We don’t actually reside in Duval county though and a membership is 40 bucks a year so we left the building empty-handed, rode the monorail for exactly 45 seconds, and headed to our local library to check things out. I’m embarrassed to tell you that in the 3.5 years we’ve lived here, I’ve been to our local library exactly once. There’s a big fancy local (not four stories and fountains big) on the Island, but as a rule don’t go to the Island much. Ever since they plopped that Target in my backyard and surrounded it with a health food store, a gym, Home Depot and Japanese fast food, we haven’t found much need to venture more than 3 miles from the house. This would feel almost like urban living if there were sidewalks.

So anyway, we checked out our local library that is really just the back half of the community college reference library on their satellite campus. It’s like, four shelves of books and three chairs. But still I came out of there with seven books and a movie and plans to take my kids to ToddlerTime this afternoon, and it’s a 7 mile round trip instead of the 50 miles we traveled to visit the Super Wonderful Downtown Jacksonville Library. Maybe if my kids were older they’d be more bored, but we’re probably OK here at the Little Library That Could for a couple more years. There’s a fountain and a courtyard and plenty of flowerbeds for trampling, and the best thing is that this little almost-library is completely empty. Hello, City planners? When you build a library for the community, maybe have a go at putting it somewhere I don’t know, IN THE CIY? (I will save my city park rant for another day. Suffice to say our area has more people than the Rich Island, but only one playground. One. The Rich Island has at least six parks that I can name off the top of my head and probably more)

I bitch about the location, but actually half the reason we’re going there today instead of to French Story Time at the Downtown Jax is because a) parking costs 3.00 an hour down there and b) my middle daughter still hasn’t learned the part where she is required to hold hands when in parking lots or on city streets. At the Baby Branch, we’re so far away from streets and highways that all I have to worry about is parking lot traffic, and once I get her into the courtyard I can let her roam a bit. I know a simple solution to this might be to teach her to obey my directions, but then I’d be killing her free spirit. Right?

Oh right! I was talking about low media month! OK here’s the plan: Every day I’ll check my email, message boards and blog subscriptions at some point in the morning. Then I hope I’ll write my daily entry. Then I’m shutting off the computer until bedtime when I’ll do a once-over again. ONE DAY A WEEK, I’ll set aside several hours for work. That’s it. If I don’t get to my Daily during the morning round-up, I’ll do it at night.

The rest of my “free time”, I’ll spend cuddled up with a book or my kids or both. Wish me luck; I’ve already thinking of twelve things I need to Google before lunch.