Kimberly Hirsh

I’ve been experimenting with posting on LinkedIn more frequently and while some of my posts there are posted at my domain first, others are specific to LinkedIn. But in the interest of owning my data (unlike Starfleet, who does not own Data), I thought I’d repost those here at my site.

Originally posted on LinkedIn:

Hi there!

I have a lot of new followers, so I thought it’d be a good time for an introduction post.

👋🏻True things about my life that shape my work: I’m a mom of an almost-7-year-old. I live with multiple chronic illnesses. I’m the daughter of parents who have multiple chronic illnesses between them.

💗 Work that lights me up: facilitating learning, either for young people or adults who work with them, and fostering creativity (for anybody).

📆 My perpetual 5 year plan: do work that’s interesting and important. Right now, that’s research to help library staff leverage youth interests for relationship-building and creating academic, civic, and professional opportunities for youth.

◀️ Previously, on Kimberly’s work: blogging about qualitative research methods, researching how cosplayers interact with information, making university makerspaces more inclusive, training librarians and educators on racial equity, leading university outreach to K-12 educators, being librarian for middle schoolers, teaching Latin.

❓ What’s next? Hoping to be lower school librarian at my kid’s school, so I’m refreshing my knowledge on collection management and ed tech. Continuing to freelance for businesses interested in qual research, K-12 outreach, and making the Internet better.

🛝 For fun: Always reading (on a romance tear since May), playing video games, especially couch co-op with my kid & spouse. In pre-kid & pre-pandemic times, community theater and improv.

🫵🏻 Your turn! What should I know about you?

When we stayed in Le Vésinet, a suburb of Paris, there was a boulangerie on our walk home from the train station. Every time we went into the city, we would stop there and grab a baguette (and usually some other things, too) to have back at the house. I recently got homesick for Paris and found Sophie Nadeau’s blog post, Here’s How to Recreate the Paris Experience in Your Home.

This morning, in order to follow her recommendation to eat a typical French breakfast, I went to Guglhupf, which makes excellent baguettes (but is technically a German bakery) and bought 2.

I don’t know if I’ll polish one off today or not.

CW: Pet death

When we brought our kitties home last week, Wednesday had a little nasal discharge. The person at the front desk was all, “Yeah, that’s an upper respiratory infection, they’re super common in shelters, just get her to the vet and they’ll give you some antibiotics.”

I couldn’t get her into the vet until Monday. By Monday, she had lost a third of her bodyweight. She was severely dehydrated. She was constipated. The vets gave me a bunch of (not inexpensive) meds and gave her subcutaneous fluids. Later in the day, I got the discharge notes and they said I should bring her back the next day for more fluids if she didn’t improve in the night.

I took her back, they gave her fluids, and I asked if we could give her fluids at home. They said yes, told me what to do to feed her from a syringe (it’s called trickle feeding), and told me they didn’t know if she was going to make it.

Yesterday, W’s mom came over and we gave her fluids twice. I fed her with a syringe every two or three hours. I gave her all her meds.

This morning, M went in to check on the kittens and when I went in, I saw that she had died in the night.

This is, of course, very sad. But it’s also something I’ve been prepared for for a few days. I know I did everything I could for her. I also know, especially after consulting with the vet when I took her for fluids a couple day ago, that the shelter did wrong by her by not only not treating the respiratory infection but also by going ahead and giving her a bunch of vaccines and spaying her while she was sick.

I know the shelter is struggling, too, so I’m not angry.

But damn. What a set of events to conspire against a little kitten.

I only knew her a little and her personality faded as she got sicker, but she was a fierce, adventurous girl.

On the other hand, her brother Midnight, who also came home with an upper respiratory infection but much less severe, is thriving. We’ll be giving him lots of love and attention.

Twenty-five years ago tonight, W. and I went on our first date. (Yes, we were young.) We went to see a cross-cast production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Afterward, we went to Ben and Jerry’s.

I was going to catalog a bunch of memories of those early days together here, but I think I want to keep them in my heart. And, of course, as heady as that first rush of falling in love is, it’s the time after it that builds to an anniversary this big.

It feels like and is a long time, 25 years. It’s wild because it doesn’t seem to me that we’ve been together that long because how could I still find someone so incredibly delightful after all that time? How is it that every pun he makes still cracks me up? That the way he moves through the world, like literally physically carries himself, can still bring a flush to my cheeks? What miracle is this, to get to spend this much time with someone so great?

It’s a choice every day to wake up and keep loving each other. To show up, to have patience when we’re not on the same page. To know that even when we’re not on the same page, we’re on the same team. And it’s a blessing, a gift from whomever gives us cosmic gifts, to have the chance to make that daily choice.

We’re celebrating a quarter century by taking M. to the animal shelter to pick out two kittens to add to our family.