The Haines Borough Public Library director was busy having a broken arm repaired last week, so we moved the monthly board meeting to this week. Yet even with an extra seven days to get there, most of us were a few minutes late. The 4:00 o'clock meeting wasn't called to order until 4:21.

I know, because I took the minutes since the secretary is out of town. So are the treasurer and two other board members. Luckily, one called in from a hotel somewhere warm with a Spanish-speaking front desk clerk and attended via speakerphone. (Which we finally connected following a few one-sided exchanges that basically went, "can you hear me? Hello, helloo?")

I was also chairing the meeting and was concerned that we didn't have a quorum, even with the patient, vacationing JoAnn on that phone, since it was just me, Song, and Anne Marie from the board, and our sling-armed director Patty Brown.

We decided to run through the agenda anyway, since action wasn't required on any of the items except the approval of last month's minutes. (Actually, it's December's minutes. This was technically the January meeting; it just happened to be February already.) We did need to discuss the upcoming borough budget process and our proposed budget for next year. That could not wait.

Discussions about money rarely make us happy. Invariably small-town budgets, just like larger state and national ones, are trying. In Haines, there's never enough money for everyone to have all that they want or even sometimes need -- from the school district and police department to the arts center and the swimming pool. And sometimes, when I suspect that there really are funds available, the assembly doesn't spend them because of some sort of principle.

It is always popular for elected officials to lecture the public about living within our means. Last year the Haines assembly did vote to spend about two million dollars on restrooms at the cruise ship dock so passengers could use them if they forgot to use the toilets on the boat before they got on the tour buses, but cut back elsewhere, and then repealed a lucrative personal property tax even though no one asked them to.

Maybe we were all running late to the board meeting because we sub-consciously dread the annual funding plea. It was snowing again too, and February snow is not as welcome as October's first flakes.

Then, our newest board member arrived, with her husband toting two car seats containing bundled-up six-week-old twin baby boys, whom he set down in the boardroom before heading to the reading room for a quiet hour with a book, or perhaps a nap.

What joy greeted the twins' arrival I cannot adequately relate. The sweet-smelling infants, Aiden and Asher John, were scooped up almost immediately, and the meeting was called to order. (Thanks to their mother we now had our quorum.)

Since I have been a grandmother all of three weeks, I am practically a professional baby holder. I tucked A.J. (as I have dubbed Asher John) into the crook in my right arm, where he soon snuggled in, the way babies do, and looked up at me like a little gnome, with his very serious, tiny old-man face topped by a slightly too large, fuzzy cap. Then he fell asleep. This meant that I took illegible minutes with my left hand that I'm still deciphering.

I do recall though, that when we got to item "II" under "New Business," the 2011 budget, the budget committee (Anne Marie, Song, and Patty) made a brief report and passed out a few scenarios they are working with. (We have until March to present it to the borough assembly.) Then Patty, whose broken arm was feeling better after taking a pill for the pain, said she could tell us a lot more about library finances, but wouldn't if we wanted to get out of the meeting at a reasonable hour.

I was holding a soundly sleeping baby; the other twin was by then back in his mother's arms deep in dreamland with twitching, translucent pink eyelids.

I felt little A.J.'s heart beating next to mine and watched the snow fall gently through the streetlight out the window and said, "Go ahead Patty, we're in no hurry."