Ramblings of A Mutant Penguin

The Mutant Penguin Herself Speaks - Personally

Friday, September 11, 2009

A Few Other Thoughts

I have been feeling very unhappy of late. I have been a hermit, for the most part. My friends are busy dealing with their lives, my family lives a long ways away. I am researching cell phone plans that I can get with unlimited calling because I find myself wanting to talk to my Mom as often as possible. I guess I just feel like she's the only person I can talk to whose life I am not intruding upon if I call. I need to get out and do more things but anyone who knows me knows I hate doing a lot of things alone. But today perhaps I will. I do not want to be sitting in my room all day. I will do my laundry this morning and then I will pick up a bit in my room, take a shower and go somewhere. I have no shopping that needs to be done and no swaps to get sent out so it will have to be something different. Amy has been spending a lot of time in Reno visiting her father who is having a terrible time living without the woman he was married to for over 50 years. Alma is in Arizona with her daughter visiting friends. I am at loose ends.

I can't wait for vacation. Not just the Celtics game but mostly just to be with family. I sleep better, feel better and it's always hard to leave. It's the one place I feel like I truly fit in. And lately I have been feeling like I don't fit in anywhere. So perhaps if I do something out of the ordinary and enjoy it that will help me feel better.

I bought my tickets to go see Matt for his birthday. I will get 3 days with him and Ally this year. Better than 0. And I will get to see little darling Andrew while I'm in New Hampshire. Can't help but have a light heart and smile around him. He is such a cheerful little boy.

Coffee time and then laundry. Time to adjust the attitude. And longitude. :)

Today

I can't imagine there aren't too many people over the age of 20 who don't remember where they were on September 11, 2001. And those of us who were older then felt a kind of terror we had never known. We had lived through wars. But they were wars that did not happen on US soil with the exception of Pearl Harbor and that was before my time. Dad and I have discussed this quite a bit since he was in the Korean War. Americans never had to deal with the aftermath of bombs being dropped on their homes or of soldiers from another country shooting at them on their way to work. We were, for the most part, unscathed on our land. Until September 11, 2001. That was a terrible day. Not just in the amount of lives lost, through no fault of their own, but in how we looked at other people in our own land. In how our security was ripped away from us in an instant.

I don't care what you say about George W. Bush. But there is one thing you should agree on - he did what was necessary to protect his people, the people he was elected to lead as Commander in Chief and the people he promised to protect. And he did his job. He stepped up to the plate.

I will never forget how I felt that day. And I can still hear the echoes of "Do You Remember?" playing on the radio and everywhere I went. To this day even just hearing it in my mind can make me cry. Oh yes. I remember. And I will never forget. I hope you don't, either.