August has arrived, bringing with it National Back-To-School Month, National Catfish Month, National Data Entry Month, National Goat Cheese Month, National Inventors Month, and Romance Awareness Month. This week is Simplify Your Life Week, which encourages us to eliminate (or at least reduce) the clutter in our lives!

Friday is National Fresh Breath Day, which brings to our attention the importance of fresh breath as an integral part of our overall health and wellness, as well as the impact it has on our personal and professional image. Saturday is National Mustard Day, which pays tribute to the king of condiments! People at the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum will slather their favorite mustard on hot dogs, pretzels, licorice, and ice cream (definitely an acquired taste).

Finally, Sunday is the day that gardeners everywhere have been eagerly awaiting: Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbors' Porch Night. To cope with their overzealous planting of zucchini, citizens are asked to drop off baskets of squash (or other overabundant vegetables) on their neighbors' doorsteps. You might also check with non-profit groups, such as the Community Kitchen or the Salvation Army, to see if they could benefit from your bounty!

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

At Wednesday's 10:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Medieval storytimes, participants will hear stories about knights, dragons, princesses and castles; make a golden crown; and decorate a sword. Beaches will be featured at Saturday morning's 10:00 storytime, when participants will enjoy stories about the ocean, see a collection of seashells, and make sand paintings and a 3-D ocean picture.

BOOK TALK

The library's Bob Kerwick provides this week's book information. Dixie Flannigan has spent 10 years as a prosecutor and is burned out. So, she quits and becomes a bail bond enforcement agent, which is a nice term for Bounty Hunter. Dixie is only five foot, two inches tall and weighs only 120 pounds, but she is easily the toughest bounty hunter in Houston. You'll find her in two novels by Chris Rogers, "Bitch Factor" and "Rage Factor," and a third Dixie Flannigan novel, "Chill Factor," is in the works.

In a lighter vein, you'll find Stephanie Plum, former lingerie buyer turned bounty hunter, operating in Trenton, NJ. When she loses her job in a department store, Stephanie pressures her cousin Vinnie, a bailbondsman, into giving her a job as a bail bond enforcement agent. Not only is she totally unqualified for the job, but she is assisted by several other strange characters, like her crazy grandma Mazur and a 200-pound former prostitute Lula. These three characters are featured in five novels by Janet Evonovitch. Start with "One for the Money" and go on to "Two for the Dough" and you'll be hooked on the whole series.

Also on the lighter side is Miss Melville, a middle-aged, genteel woman, who finds herself in a state of dwindling finances. For the first time in her life, she must find a job, so she becomes, not a bounty hunter, but an assassin. While most of her "hits" are done under contract to a government agency, she soon develops her own list of targets and prides herself on never killing anyone who didn't deserve it. You can meet her in Evelyn E. Smith's "Miss Melville Regrets" and "Miss Melville Returns."

DID YOU KNOW?

Here are a few tips that will help you to make birthdays more meaningful. Ask the birthday person what was most memorable about the past year and what he/she most looks forward to now. Ask each person at the table to say one thing he loves about the birthday person. Make a homemade gift and/or birthday card.

Let the birthday person choose the menu - or do the cooking.