Library Overload

You know you've checked out too many books from the library when...

Your car beeps at you the whole way home because it thinks there is someone in the passenger's seat who hasn't put on their seatbelt.

Library fines are a part of your monthly budget.

You're on a first name basis with the library staff. All of them.

So are your children. All of them.

You have a revolving credit in their computer, from losing books, paying for them, and finding them again.

The metaphor for joy that first pops into your mind is the time that two videos for which you'd been searching your home for weeks turned out to be sitting on the library shelves all the time.

Your list of items checked out no longer fits on one page.

One of the numbers that pops up most often in your caller ID window is the local library.

That's because you, a homeschooling mom, and your son, a science fiction fanatic, are addicted to interlibrary loan requests.

In order to make a fire in the fireplace, you have to move 4 stacks of books and videos. (Two and a half are the library's.)

Your idea of hearthside decorating easily incorporates a couple stacks of library books.

Your children can build a road out of library books that extends nearly the length of your house.

Most of the books are on the ancient Romans and you think, "Ahhhh, how appropriate!"