I hope she knows...

How beautiful she is....

Inside and Out.

There is something...

so incredibly beautiful about my daughter when she looks downward. I have no idea what it is that makes my heart stop beating and my breathing pause when I see her looking down, but it really does something to me. I think it has to do with how delicate her little face is when you can't see her big eyes. I love her face. I love her pretty lips and her pretty coloring and her pretty eyebrows. Everything about her just screams "Prett".

It seems like a lifetime ago....

and it also seems like yesterday. For me, at least. I am sure if you loved someone who lost their life on that wretched day, you might have different feelings than I do.
7 years ago I came back from Arizona, Daniel in belly, on September 10th, very late at night. I awoke on September 11th to my phone ringing and my father in law saying a plane hit the WTC. I turned on the news just in time to see the 2nd plane hit. It was horrifying. 80 miles away, something sinister was going on. I spent the day, shell shocked, trying to get a hold of my American Airlines NY Based flight attendant friend and her Delta pilot husband. It was 4:00 before I heard from her husband and he assure me she was fine. I had spent the day running through 30 years of Polaroids in my head, my oldest friend starring in most of them. To say that hearing from her husband was a relief is an understatement. I thought for sure I had lost her and in losing her, I lost a part of my history.
That night I drove to see my mom an hour away. The sky was so blue and so incredibly empty. We live on a flight path, so this was an oddity. My mom and I went out for Chinese food. It was an upscale Chinese Joint and we were the only ones there, the AM radio piped in, feeding us one more horrifying news story after another.

My grandmother called me that night. Our conversation was bizarre. She never mentioned the attacks, though she lived 20 miles from them. All I could think was that it must be nice to be oblivious to what is going on- I can't wait to get old.

It seems like no one really remembered this day this year. It makes me sad. It will end up just being like December 7th. No one remembers what important thing happened on December 7th anymore and 2400 people lost their lives that day, 600 shy of how many lost their lives on 9/11. I don't think the people who lost loved ones at the raid on Pearl Harbor ever would have thought that hardly anyone remembers "the day that will live in infamy" 67 years later.

People might not remember this day in 60 years, but if I am alive, I sure will. Because 9/11, to me, was the first time I really realized how charmed life as American has been and I suddenly felt(and still feel)like that sense of security, the arrogance of entitlement is gone. Maybe the latter was a good thing, but it's hard for me to see anything good having come out of that mess. I am sure the victims and their families see it the same way.

2 weeks ago we walked the Brooklyn Bridge and then went by the WTC site. You can;t see in it anymore as construction management companies have obstructed viewing, which is puzzling to me considering that in the months post 9/11, it was an open observatory for the morbidly curious. When we were at the site, I saw a soccer team there posing for team pictures. Like they were in front of the Taj Mahal or White House, not where people dove from fir blazing offices 80 stories up to their terrifying deaths. It all seemed so macabre, so thoughtless, so disrespectful.

Mike's flying home tomorrow. As much as I want to see him, I am glad it is not today.

My husband has the sweetest A$$

Really, he does. It's not flat, it's got some junk in it (all muscle, though) and I like to watch it. His A$$ was the second thing that initially attracted me to him,after the fact that he could make me laugh like no one else ever could. I know from the first time he made me laugh that I would marry him. The funny part is, most of the time he is making me laugh, he is actually making fun of me. Like this morning when I asked him which presidential library he was going to see in Kansas City (Eisenhower or Truman) he said "If you were gonna lie about having graduated from college you might have wanted to pick another major." (I graduated with a degree in poli sci for those of you who do not know...much of that information was removed from my brain each time I birthed a baby).
He is annoying, too. He rubs his feet together rhythmically and constantly until my sensory sensitive self is ready to crawl out of her skin. He cuts his cuticles for what seems like an hour after he showers. He uses two brushes for all 17 pieces of hair he has remaining in his head and brushes with each brush 20 times.
Anyway, my husband, his sweet A$$ and his smart mouth are going to be on a trip sometime in the near future (no dates because of Internet crazies). I am not thrilled about it. I have this idea in my head that somehow, if I am physically with him, I can protect him and keep him safe. But if I let him out on his own, he will be devoured by wolves. It's a bizarre thought process that goes on in the McMommy's head, but one that I can't stop. This will be the longest we have ever been apart since our first date. It doesn't feel right. I will miss him. Even if he chews croutons too loud or slurps his soup and I view kitchen knives as weapons that I must not touch or I will go to jail every time we sit down to dinner.

Am I the only one....

Who thinks Michael Phelps has the body of an adonis?
Good God.

and to think....

I felt insulted when a bride whose wedding I was in was particular about what color under garments we wore.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/fashion/24skin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Sometimes I feel like an awful person...

but this is not one of those days.
My MIL made her usual 5 calls before noon on a Saturday today. Most of the time I let it go to voice mail and today was no exception. I think only speaking with her once a day is quite sufficient. I am convinced that to the elderly, the phone becomes a weapon.
Anyway, most of the messages involve some crying and desperation. She never addresses me in the messages, just Mike *or if she can't remember his name at the time she calls, he becomes a sibling*. Most of the calls frankly, annoy me and I feel bad about that (at times..not when she wakes my kids up right after I get them to sleep). Today's last message actually made me sad. It was thundering our and the message she left was awful. She told us that she had no electricity and that she was sitting in the hallway crouched in the middle because she was so scared of the storm.
How. Does. That. Not. Make. You. Feel. Sad? Standing in the hallway, scared of the storm is something a pet or a small child would do, not an adult. It made me sad to think how incredibly terrifying the smallest things must be to her, living alone.
So, despite the fact that I have 50 people coming to my house tomorrow for my sister's 40th and my grandfather's 98th, I told Mike to go get her, trying really hard not to direct some anger towards his useless brother who lives down the street from her and has not seen her since the last time he took money from her a few months ago.
So, she has been here all night. At one point, I was sitting on the couch, painting Caroline's nails and she just stood there and stared at us for 10 minutes, right in my personal space. I am claustrophobic to begin with, so the crowding almost made me crawl out of my sin.
Tomorrow I asked her to wash windows. At least it will keep her out of my space. Plus, they are pretty dirty.