One more day

It's been ... not "one of those days" but a long string of "those days". The type of days that you realize the best you can manage is to hunker down and try to get through with the least reaction. And I suspect that I've got one more day to muddle through before the clouds clear.

It's been a hodge podge of things. This last week I had to deal with several high need people. That drained a lot of "perky" reserves. Friday should have been a happy day, but it was also a day dealing with the second of a long string of travel days we're facing for a number of weekends to come. This trip was for the second football game of the season, and the second away game. William's team had won their first game but this game was one of those ..... we were down by 30 by the end of the first quarter and it only got worse from there. Does that give you a good picture? At least the last big play of the game was William stopping the receiver with a dramatic tackle so despite the big lose, he was in a good mood for his birthday dinner after the game.

Saturday was William's birthday but William ran off with his buddies and hubby went off to work. It was sort of a non-event. I spent the day working on putting the house back together as best as I could even though there are still a lot of ongoing projects throughout. I felt exhausted without really being able to pinpoint why (or rather, suspecting it was a half dozen reasons all blended together) and I spent the evening, probably not a good idea, watching assorted shows about 9-11.

Today was Joshua's birthday. He would have been 24. But instead, he stayed 19 - forever. Well, I don't really believe he'll stay 19 forever, but you know what I mean. Jeff tried to scramble together birthday cake and balloons for William finally and I just wasn't up for it. He went off to work again, William and his buddy James took over the livingroom for a full day of football games, and I tried to get as many last minute tasks done before tomorrow as possible.

Well, today. it's now after midnight. Monday. Today is my self imposed deadline for all that decluttering I was going to have finished. I realized a few days ago that wasn't going to happen, although my deadline was a good idea as I really got a huge amount accomplished. Today was mostly about getting rid of the stuff I had sorted out - bags and boxes of books and magazines were footed out to the car to be taken to assorted drop off places this week. Garage sale items were boxed up and dragged out to the back shed. Actually it was night by this point, so I dragged them out to the back yard and I'll get them into the shed tomorrow when it's not pitch black out there.

Tomorrow is 9-11. It's no more or less horrific this year then it was last year, or the year before that, but this year I'm finding it more personal because I have now visited New York City. I've walked the streets that I saw filled with smoke and dust and flying debris on television on that fateful day. I've stood at Ground Zero. I've gotten just a teensy taste of what makes people love New York City - the culture, the energy, the people. Nothing more then a shadow of a taste really, but enough to fill in the story, to carry a stronger 3-D image, a more visceral understanding of what the event meant to the people who experienced 9-11, not just as people, not just as Americans, but as New Yorkers.


I've done a lot of my thinking about the anniversary ahead of time, in the last few days. I mean, if I'm gonna have a big ol' pity party, I might as wallow as thick and deep as possible. I've sort of split my time being sad and being angry. And I've combined my anger and frustration to emcompass both 9-11 and Katrina. I've thought about how, if we weren't spending billions of dollars every... what is it - like, every MINUTE - on this stupid war, we would have had all that money, all the time and military staff to help the victims of these two crises. Sigh.

I might just try to keep the television and radio off tomorrow. My daughter-in-law Lisa is coming midday to spend several days with us and I'm looking forward to setting aside all my projects and worries and relish some rare and treasured "girl time." She's bringing her quilting projects so we can spend time sewing. We might take a day to go out on the town - shopping and eating. Watch some "girl" movies. Of course spend hours and hours gabbing about anything and everything, but especially my grandchild-to-be who's main contribution to the conversation will probably be an occasional bump or kick.

Well, pity party over. I'm gathering up the empty whine glasses and hors'doevre platters. I've got a great story in the wings, but I've been waiting for it to finish playing out. Hopefully tomorrow evening I'll have it all wrapped up and ready to share. Stay tuned.....