A little Year end wrap up…

Where have I been, what have I been doing?

You know those Christmas Card letters? A little bit like that—with more snark.

Sometimes this year I have literally forgotten my blog’s password. I shock myself. But I’ve been having sooo much fun landing content in too many other places.

Working backwards:

• Figuring out the Wonderful World of Freelance Writing with SchoolFamily.com

I am writing a weekly column for SchoolFamily.com titled ‘GoodNCrazy Mom’. I get to write about all things related to my life as a mother of 3 school age kids. From weight loss goals with all kids in school, to whirlwind trips to Spain (what do you do with the kids when you leave?!) and pondering a little less holiday hustle and bustle… not everyone agreed with me on that one! And one of the posts was picked up by my School district’s Superintendent… he forwarded it to every teacher in the district! They had no idea what hit them.

Possibly my favorite School Family post so far… My Un-Resolutions for 2012, what are you NOT resolving to do this year?

• Getting my GalTime On (and then taking it back off again)

I have been the GalTime Local Ambassador Liaison for the past 6 months, I love the website and I have a passion for helping new online writers and mentoring and brainstorming, but in 2012 I will be stepping down from this gig, focusing more on my own writing (and getting more dishes done).

• I was asked to Join the Parent Advisory Board for Famigo.com

What a completely fun little company. They created an amazing cell phone app—check out their Android App, you’ll thank me when your kids stop destroying your phone settings! I get to flash my techy mom skills and I write a ‘mom-techy’ post twice a month over there!

• Project Manage Sponsored #TMOM Twitter Parties

Travelingmom.com is a niche travel info website and the community there is truly a blast to work with. If you haven’t joined in the #TMOM Mondays (9PM Eastern on Twitter) then you SHOULD!

• I’m coming up on 18 Months working with VolunteerSpot

VolunteerSpot.com is a free online sign up sheet service. It helps you organize your volunteers, plain and simple. And I jump in and play social media expert/consultant  and chief brainstormer on a regular basis. Plus, I personally love the service, I recently organized a Chili potluck dinner for my Cub Scout troop and it was oh so easy (and tasty!) with VolunteerSpot. (They just hit the 1 million volunteer mark! Yay VSpot!)

Fave articles I’ve written in 2011
(…I kind of think they rock):

Top Ten What I Wish I’d Known Then About Blogging — For TaraDara

Stop Annoying Your Teacher– for VolunteerSpot.com

Holiday Hustle and Bustle — for SchoolFamily.com

Un-Resolutions — for SchoolFamily.com

Seattle Streaker in Safeco Field — for GalTime

Getting Creative with Cub Scout Activities, turn them into service projects! — for VolunteerSpot.com

Recycled and Toilet Paper should NOT be in the same sentence! And Mom TP Types, Which Type are You? — for ToiletPaperWorld.com

And in my mom-life, what have I been doing in 2011?

• Foster Care, we have a 5 year old little boy living with us right now, making us a family of 6.
• My parent’s 50th Anniversary this summer in Southern Idaho, Way to Go Frank & Virginia!
• A family Trip to Lake Tahoe (never been, IT was amazing!)
• A Trip to Madrid with my husband while he was on a work trip! (Huge thanks to my mother for taking care of the kids!)
• Old Lady Basketball, every Tuesday night, whether we like it or not.
• Cooking a lot of Stove Top Stuffing Meat Loaf, I swear it’s my new favorite meal.
• Sooo much less reading. Who has time? But I did manage to read a few books this year: The Help, Gladwell’s Outliers, One Day, Tina Fey’s Book… I saw a lot of movies though.. does that count??
• Still haven’t taken a photography class, but I’m dying to begin using Adobe Lightroom. (Hello, 700 photos from the family reunion this summer!)
• Cub Scouts. I’m the new Den Leader, I have no clue what I’m doing most of the time… shhh, the boys don’t know the difference!
• Parenting a High Schooler, who has early morning seminary, and never-ending Play Practices (A Thespian!) We’re blaming her dad.
• Back to the Gym with a vengeance. I’ve lost ten pounds (when the scale is working right).. and I can’t believe it. I’ve never been able to lose any weight since my youngest was born (7 years ago). YAY ME!
• Blogging conferences: BlogHer11 August (Oh the fun drive to San Diego with @MaryHeston), Mom2.0 April (New Orleans! WOW.), BlissDom11 January (Travel in January is no fun, ended up staying the night with @Chaotic_Barb in Denver and how fun was THAT!?)

It was a fine August day.

With Sprinkles.
And Sunshine.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Oh wait. It WAS yesterday.
Yes. I’m 38 1/2.

And I would like to announce to the world that I am officially a grown up.

• I laugh in the face of Doctor bills.
• I sneer at lightening storms. (And tree limbs crashing through my roof.)
• Kids’ fevers? They don’t scare me.
• Two mortgages? Bring it.

I can take it. I’m a GROWN up now.

I’m sure a wild flood will unleash next month and I’ll turn back into a sniveling child. But until then the magic number 38 is my special grown up number.

I’ve determined this special new adult-ness in my life is real, because in the past month, several normally freak-me-out events (with extra doses of heartburn thrown in) didn’t freak-me-out. Instead they became calm events where I opened my checkbook, made a plan and solved the problems with no swear words or otherwise sleepless nights.

I must be a grown up now. That’s all I can figure.

Either that or my husband switched my Thyroid medicine again??

When did you realize you were officially a grown up?

Today I give you a guest post from a well known lifestyle blogger (and friend of mine!)

Please welcome Katja Presnal from SkimbacoLifestyle.com

I love being a stay-at-home-mom, but truth be told – being a mom isn’t enough for me. It’s not that I don’t love my children, I do, and I’ve always wanted to be home with them, but I want something just for me. I’ve always wanted a career too. Or to own my own business. Today I have both, and I am still a stay-at-home-mom turned work-at-home-mom. I think you CAN have it all, be a present mom for your kids and have a career. Especially if you have it online. And if I can do it, you can do it too!

I recently wrote about blogging as a lifestyle choice, making a living from home with your kids is also a lifestyle choice you can make. There are so many ways to make money from home, and it can be overwhelming to even think how to start, so here are several suggestions for how to get started making money while you are home with your kids.

• Start Selling on eBay or Craig’s List

My sister saw how many small clothes my kids had and she recommended starting to sell the used clothes on an auction site. I made $500 in the first month and was thrilled. While it would have been nice to spend that five hundred bucks on something for me – I went to discount stores and flea markets to buy more stuff to sell on auction sites. It is a very easy entry way to start learning about sales and marketing online.

• Crafty? Sell Items You Make Yourself

If you are blessed with any kind of crafty talent and even better if you have the creative imagination to make products that nobody else has, you are destined to become the next Etsy success story. It’s not enough to have a great product, you also need to know something about sales and marketing to turn it into a living. A good rule of thumb is to be nice to everyone, and understand a lot of sales mumbo-jumbo is just remembering to do the right thing and treat people nice.

• Blogging

I know blogging is the hot topic of today, and it certainly has changed my life. But if you only think about making money and the highest income you were able to make from home, starting a blog isn’t a way to get instant gratification. Remember the used clothes I sold on an auction site? I made $500 the first month. But it took me two years to make $500 a month from my blog. However, there are many opportunities blogging can bring you and like mentioned, it has changed my life in a much deeper way than just making money.

There are several blogging and writing jobs online that you can also pursue. One of the best ones out there right now is the Cheap Sally one year blogging contract. Cheap Sally is a couponing website and they are looking for bloggers to write about deals and sales on their blog for 2012, and offering a $100,000 blogging contract! If you already like saving money and writing, then this sounds like an opportunity of a lifetime to me. Get the details for the gig and apply now at CheapSally.com.

Work/Life Balance for Work-at-Home-Moms

I think the biggest challenge for work-at-home-moms is to find the balance between work and family, and it is not as easy to work from home full time as it seems. It has so many benefits though that I highly recommend giving it a try with some of these easy ways. Often even a small income that you are able to bring for the family makes a big difference these days, and once you start reaching out to other work-at-home-moms, you will realize we are a fun bunch and always helping each others to succeed.

Katja Presnal is an Addy Award-winning social media strategist and owns the Skimbaco® blog network and lifestyle brand. She inspires to live life to the fullest and does it by combining social media with everything else she loves. You can connect with her on twitter @katjapresnal and read more at her blog Skimbaco Lifestyle .

Please note: Carissa was in no way compensated for this article/guest post.

Been doing too much writing (and twittering) elsewhere these days. I don’t have much left to add here? Which is NOT normal for my normally chatty self.

Photo by 49333775@N00

But it’s worth it I promise. Head over to BlissfullyDomestic.com where I wrote about THESE! Yes, in the crafty section? They keep telling me that’s where I fit? I guess I’m not cool enough for the Fashion Parade?

AND!! I got my prize in the mail today. THANK YOU DOT!

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He said I could print it here, and it’s long. And it’s worth it. Here’s my version.

One thing was how, around 11 in the morning, there was absolutely no traffic on the streets. Another thing was the smoke, at first a gigantic plume and then sort of everywhere. And the feeling of despair, loneliness and helplessness. And then the days, weeks and then months of flyers, posters, pictures, almost all with a face or a family photo, always with the same message: “believed to have been in the World Trade Center on 9/11, someone said they saw him being taken away in an ambulance, please call if you have seen him.”

Just thinking about how beautiful it was that morning in Maplewood, New Jersey makes me tear up, the stunningly gorgeous prelude to a universally sickening day. Seven years ago, Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

I lived in northern New Jersey, about 15 miles west/southwest of Manhattan. Lovely two-story colonial, a very short drive to the New Jersey Transit station, a nearly four year-old preschooler attending the Weekday Nursery School in South Orange, a nine-month old baby girl, and a wonderful wife trying very hard after only one year of my working for a large New York City law firm to deal with practically being a single parent, given the type of hours I was working. From the Maplewood train station, I had about a 35-40 minute ride into New York Penn Station (“NYP” as abbreviated by NJ Transit), and then depending on how I felt, the weather, or the shoes I was wearing, either a 14 block walk uptown to 1585 Broadway, at the northern end of Times Square, or a short, two-stop ride on the 1 or 9 train to 49^th and Broadway.

I basically had two real choices for the commute – either an 8:25 train or an 8:50 train. There were earlier trains, all known as the MidTOWN DIRECT on the Morris & Essex line, but it really didn’t matter too much because regardless of how early I got to work I was going to be there until midnight or later. And the nice thing about being a lawyer in New York was that nobody really cared what time you got there, as long as it was before 10 and as long as you acknowledged that there was no quitting time, just convenient stopping points that you could take advantage of to decide to leave. For whatever reason that morning, I left home around 8:30 and drove to the station to catch the 8:50 train. Kissed the wife and girls good-bye and took off into the just-getting-cooler late summer morning.

The train station was uneventful, bought a bottle of diet Coke from Joyce at the coffee stand, put it in my soft leather briefcase, and assumed a standing position at where I hoped one of the train doors would stop, briefcase on the asphalt between my feet, New York Times in hand, waiting for the train. How stupid I was all those years to be spending so much time – so much time – waiting for a train.

The train only made a few stops before NYP – South Orange, Orange, Brick Church, Newark Broad Street, and then the long stretch across the Passaic River, the Newark marshes, past the still-under-construction Secaucus transfer station, and then if lucky a smooth trip under the Hudson River into New York City. If unlucky, you’d sit and wait while an Amtrak train or two passed by, since Amtrak owned the tracks and got priority use.

Shortly after leaving Broad Street, the train tracks run sort of parallel to the New Jersey Turnpike, and then along 495, leading cars to the Lincoln tunnel. The train car was not too crowded (another attraction of the 8:50), with only a few people standing near the doors as the train barreled toward Manhattan. It would have been about 9:05 in the morning. The mood was normal, some people buried in their papers, some trying to catch some more sleep, others engaged in animated conversations. I recognized a few “regulars” from Maplewood, nothing unusual. One guy had his headphones in, listening to what faintly sounded like a sports show on the radio.

Just a couple of minutes past Broad Street, I looked out the window to the north and noticed traffic was stopped heading toward the Lincoln Tunnel. No biggie. Then I noticed that traffic was stopped on purpose, and people were standing on the south side of the road, shading their eyes and looking south toward the bay or lower Manhattan. Tons of people, pulled off to the side of the road. Traffic in the main flow was fine.

At that moment, the guy seated across from me, his cell phone rang. He answered it quickly. He listened, his face turned white (well, he was a white guy but his face got even more white), and then he stood up and abruptly bent over to look out the window on the right side of the train car. He said “Oh my God,” and sat down and folded his phone. I seriously thought he was having a heart attack, he was sweating so bad and shaking. Uncharacteristically for the morning commute, I leaned over and said, “hey, are you okay? Do you need some water or some air?” He said “no, that was my wife and she said the radio is saying that a small airplane had hit into the World Trade Center, and that another plane in the area did the same thing.” I said “huh?” – how does one plane crash into a building, let alone two planes. I said to him “one plane is an accident but two planes, that’s terrorism.”

The guy with the headphones (who I frequently ran into several times in the next three years and whose face always reminded me of that day) turned his radio dial quick and was listening intently. He took a few seconds, took out his earphones and told me and the other guy that 1010 WINS was saying that a plane had crashed into one of the towers, but that they were getting reports that two planes had crashed.

I looked back out the window to the left, saw all the people staring south, and then stood up and bent over to look south. The day was so clear: I saw two gigantic candlesticks, the tops in flame, and a huge plume of black smoke rising from each, merging somewhere before Staten Island. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I said, both towers are burning. That’s impossible. I said, that’s not an accident, that is terrorism.

(Short explanation: I had first visited NYC in June 1988, and returned in September 1989 and lived in New York until July 1991. I returned to NYC in August 1995 and eventually lived in the NYC metro area until April 2004. So, I had missed the 1993 WTC
bombing, but had intently followed the news stories and so I knew that terrorists already had tried once to take down the towers.)

I reached into my pocket for my cell phone, dangit! My wife and I only had one cell phone at the time (and that had only come after a lot of discussion about the fact that we’d never get rid of it if we got it). We didn’t think two were necessary, just one for me to have to take to work and to call if a train was late or I needed to make a personal call. My wife had the phone because she needed it that night and knew I wouldn’t be home in time.

For a few moments everything happened slowly. The dude listening to the radio, the other guy sweating and trying to call his wife back, the people pulled off the interstate, and the rest of the people on the train oblivious to what was happening. The enormity of it took what seemed like a long time to sink in. And then it hit me: New York City was under attack by terrorists and we were going there! I thought about where to find the conductor, whether to go up to the engineer, and see what they thought about us going to New York with a disaster taking place. And all those people who didn’t know what was going on, laughing, talking sports, sleeping – you idiots – what should we do? I thought several times about pulling the emergency brake – yeah, that would have been a story, but maybe I’d get away with it and the train could turn around and go back to Newark. (You know it’s a big deal if someone prefers to go to Newark instead of New York, that’s pure desperation, reserved only for true emergencies.)

I didn’t pull the cord. We started under the river. I started praying, but I didn’t even know what to pray for. I didn’t know if this was a one-time deal, if the danger was over, if I was going to be able to get back on a train and go back home once I got to NYP, or if I should just go to my office. I actually thought about how much trouble I might get in at work if I didn’t show up. Imagine.

When we got to NYP, at around 9:18 or 9:20, that decision had been made for me. They were announcing that all commuter train traffic in and out of Penn Station was stopped. There were TVs on all around Penn Station, all broadcasting New York One (the NYC all news station). It was hard to hear, but it was clear that planes had hit into each of the towers.

I thought I’d better just get to my office, call my wife, and sit it out. I also thought that the last place I should be in an emergency was on a subway train, so I decided to walk even though it was a bad shoe day.

Surfacing to street level, I was amazed that foot traffic was virtually stopped, everyone looking south at what even from 3.5 miles away was clearly a major disaster. Police, fire trucks, and ambulances were all racing south, even on streets that were one-way north. I walked north past 34^th Street, 35^th, 36^th, 37^th, stopping every so often to turn around and look downtown. I didn’t know what to think – I was there, just a few miles away, but I also felt far removed from it all. Today I regret that not once did I have the thought that maybe somehow I should go downtown and see if I could help. Not once.

By the time I reached Times Square, 42^nd Street, it was just too weird. It was too quiet, there were too few people on the street, and there was none of the usual commotion. I stopped in the middle of Times Square, about 80% empty, and watched the big screen across the street, no sound but it had subtitles. They were discussing the plane crashes, and showing a picture of the site of the crash. I couldn’t quite tell what angle they were shooting from because it didn’t look too familiar and the smoke was too white. Several times I looked downtown to the giant candles and their black smoke, and became more confused. I wondered if they were shooting from Staten Island toward Manhattan, or maybe from Jersey City? All of a sudden the words caught up with the video, and it wasn’t New York City at all – they were showing footage of the Pentagon, what the heck, the Pentagon? The announcers were saying a plane had hit the Pentagon? What? How in the heck? And then they were saying that they had received word that a bomb had just gone off at the State Department? Another. “what?”

And then I suddenly became very conscious of where I was – smack dab in the middle of Times freaking Square, in the middle of New York City, the largest city in the United States. I entertained a quick thought, “if I were a terrorist and wanted to kill people, I would crash a plant into Times Square. Maybe even first after creating a diversion downtown.” I turned and began to jog toward my office building a half-dozen blocks away.

I finally got to my building, the Morgan Stanley building (it’s the one you see all the time on TV commercials and TV shows and movies, with the three electronic tickers across the front of the building, all moving at different speeds). My law firm was sandwiched on about 10 floors in the middle of the building between all the Morgan Stanley people. I walked inside the lobby, pulled out my ID and swipe card, and headed toward the turnstiles by the elevators. I didn’t get ten steps across the lobby when a security guard told me I had to leave. I showed him my ID and told him I worked there and needed to go to my office, but he said the building was being evacuated and that everyone had to get out NOW. Well, I had another selfish thought, what the hell am I supposed to do now? I don’t have my cell phone, I can’t go to my office, I’m wearing bad shoes, and I can’t leave Manhattan. (Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was not just commuter trains that had been stopped – all car and train traffic into and out of Manhattan had been stopped. The bridges were closed, the tunnels were closed. I really was stuck.)

I wandered west on 47^th Street, where I ran into a co-worker. I told him they had closed the building and I was going to go try to find a pay phone. He said he had been in the office, had left to get coffee, and was going to try to get back in. I never found out if he did, or if he just went home. I walked across 8^th Avenue to a bar on the corner, where people were crowded inside watching the news on TV. I watched a bit, saw what the chaos was and decided I better try to call my wife. There were two payphones on the corner (remember those?). I of course had no change, but I had a calling card. But that just meant more numbers to dial and more numbers t
o screw up, as the day progressed. Several times I got a fast busy and couldn’t get a line, and so I’d wait, let someone else try, and then try again. Nobody was getting through. I kept trying to figure out if I had the phone numbers of any friends who worked in the city that I could call and maybe go crash at their office for a bit, but realized all my contacts were on my computer at work (no Blackberry at that time). The one number I had was for my friend Robin, who worked a few blocks away. Surely I could go hang with her if I could get a hold of her. I tried several times, no luck. Tried my home number in Jersey, no luck. Tried the cell phone, no luck. Tried Robin again and it rang. Her secretary picked up, I explained I was a friend of Robin’s and asked if I could talk to her. She said that Robin had decided to work from home on Long Island today and wasn’t in the office. I asked the secretary her name and she said Valerie. I said, “Valerie, I know you have no idea who I am, but I am a friend of Robin’s and worked with her for two years. I can’t get a hold of my wife, I don’t have a cell phone, and it took me about 40 minutes to get a hold of anybody, and you’re it. Would you mind, if I gave you my home number, calling my wife and telling her I’m fine and I’ll be home as soon as I can?” She said of course she would. And she did. I wish I would have saved that tape recording of her voice on my answering machine as a reminder of the kindness showed to me that day in my desperation. (My wife didn’t get that message for an hour or two after it was left, but she DID get it.)

I went back to the bar, got a diet Coke (free, courtesy of the barkeep), and tried to decide what to do. I couldn’t remember where exactly any of my other friends worked, let alone their numbers. I finally remembered where one worked, but when I went to the building about five blocks away, the building, like mine, was locked down. Nobody was going in.

I finally convinced myself to think rationally and logically. I was stranded. I was diabetic and eventually would have to have some food, although if worse came to worse I could survive for days and have no problem. So that was basically a non-factor, although I had to convince myself of that. I only had about twenty dollars on me, and if things were bad – no electricity and bad phone lines – we might be a in cash-only society for a few days. I had no place to go, but knew if I hung outside my friend’s building, I’d eventually see him (although an hour and a half of waiting later that afternoon proved that theory a bit unworkable).

I went to the ATM and got out $300 in cash. Good. I stopped and grabbed lunch at a pizzeria when I realized that for some reason the stores were closing. Whey were the stores closing? I had, and still have, no idea. Places like Duane Reade and CVS that were open 24 hours were closed. McDonalds were closed. So I had lunch while I could, and then found a deli where I stocked up on a box of granola bars.

I finally decided to walk uptown to Cornell University Medical College (CUMC), where my wife had worked for three years when I was in law school, to see if her old boss was there (and who had shown us unbelievable kindness and generosity over those years), and see if I could just hang out in the lab. I had begun my walking (bad shoes, remember) at 33^rd Street and 7^th Avenue, already had re-traced my steps several times back to that payphone, and was on about 8^th Avenue and 49^th Street when I had this idea. CUMC is on 66^th Street and York Avenue, on the Upper East Side. I was on the West side. I cut through Central Park.

The barren streets still get me. That and masses of people that occasionally appeared, walking uptown in the middle of the street. And the fighter jets – I don’t know if they were F-16s or F-15s, but they flew low across the city several times that day, scaring the beejesus out of me each time – crazy me for thinking that perhaps more planes were on their way to crash into buildings.

I got to CUMC and by a stroke of fortune – and acting like I knew exactly where I was going and who I was going to see – the security guard let me in with my ID and signing a log-in sheet. Lucky indeed. The PA kept breaking in, announcing that all employees and visitors were being encouraged to go to a certain location in NY Hospital next door to give blood because they were expecting a deluge of emergency and severe trauma cases any moment. (Those trauma cases never came, at least nowhere near the expected volume. There weren’t that many injuries. Everyone was dead.)

I got upstairs and luckily Bill was there and welcomed me in. He had no idea what was going on outside, at least the magnitude of it, and seemed content to just be doing lab work. He said he’d sent everyone else home.

At that time, I had no idea the towers had fallen, although certainly they had by the time I was walking from West side to Upper East side. The prospect never even crossed my mind, and there were so few people that I passed that I didn’t even overhear it.

Bill let me use the computer in his office, but the internet was not working. He let me use the phone and I tried my wife, no luck on either home or cell phone. I decided to call my mom in Utah. It was about 1 pm by now. She was bawling when I called, before I called, actually. Although she knew I worked in Times Square, she had become convinced during that morning that I worked in the World Trade Center. She said the towers had collapsed. I said no way, she said she was watching it on TV. I asked her to try my wife and to keep trying, and also to call my siblings and tell them I was fine.

Another sidetrack. Here is the text of an email message I received from my older brother in Utah on September 11, 2001 at 8:22 a.m. Utah time, with the subject line “are you okay??”:

Considering the chaos in NY, just want to make sure you are OK.

Hopefully some communications lines are open. I’ll pass on any status you can give me to family.

God bless….

Jeff

Here is one from my other older brother, who lived in Texas but was in California on business at the time, dated September 11, 2001:

I have offered
prayers of gratitude for your safety and protection during the horrifying events of today. There was high anxiety this morning until we heard that you had been able to contact [your wife]. As for me, I’m stranded in Anaheim, CA for the near term. I was scheduled to be here until Friday anyway, but who knows if travel will be back in order to get me home even then. [My wife] is quite shaken, but she is thinking clearly and is being very strong. I wish I was there with her, but she has a good support structure. [My company] is making arrangements for individuals to return based on their personal needs. They are sending single parents and moms home first, some by Grayhound busses. Some people on my team are too freaked out to fly, so they want to go back by ground. My priority is lower, but I can stay at the hotel as long as necessary and could even go stay with [my high school friend]. Hopefully the nation’s travel infrastructure will be back in order by this weekend.

I’m anxious to talk to you about what you saw, heard, and felt. I assume you will be home tomorrow. I will try to call sometime.

In case you need or want to chat with me, here are the ways to contact me:

Cell:

Pager:

With love and gratitude,

Shawn

Here is an email I received from one of my best friends, with whom I hadn’t had much recent contact, on September 11 at about 11:00 in the morning, from Minnesota:

I couldn’t help but think of you at this time. What a sad day. I hope that you are alright and that your family is fine. I feel like that I am worlds away, and at the same time, I am

scared. I can’t imagine how you feel right now. I lost several professional friends today. They worked for Tradespark and CantorFitzgerald in the top 10 floors of the 1st building hit. Fortunately, my best professional friend left NYC for a Westcoast trip.

I apologize for writing now, under such dire circumstances. My prayers are with you and your family. Please, let me know that you are safe.

Love your long, lost buddy.

Nate

Here is another from a former co-worker who was in Denver, sent a few days later:

Hi. I’m not sure if you’re back in your office, but I just wanted to drop you a line and find out how you’re doing. The pictures that continue to come from New York are simply unbelievable. I feel so much sorrow, and the feeling of helplessness is overwhelming too. It must be sheer agony to have to see New York right now. Please know that I’m thinking of you, and you will be in my thoughts especially tomorrow during our national day of prayer and mourning.

Love,

Simone

Yes, I still have those emails, saved in my archives. Interestingly to me now, I was still shaken enough five weeks later to write the following email to my parents, siblings, and best friends, seeking their advice. This was dated October 17, 2001:

“Am I completely stupid continuing to work smack in the middle of New York friggin’ City every day? I need some perspective here.” By the way, I stayed until April 2004 so I got over it somewhat.

Anyway, back to the events. I stayed at the lab for a while, then started trying to figure out how to get home. I eventually was able to contact my wife and talked to her several times. She was attempting to relay messages to me from other friends in the city who lived in Maplewood and South Orange, some of whom had heard that the NY water ferry was open, and another who was going to walk across a bridge and have someone pick him up. I could never contact any of them when she gave me their numbers. At one point I had been given an address of an office building and after I walked a mile to get there, there was no such address and it was a residential area. So I walked back.

Around 5:45 or so I heard people saying that the NJ Transit trains were to start running at 6 pm, so I half-ran to Penn Station to see. I wasn’t the only one. It was the worst I’ve ever seen it. Crowded does not begin to describe it, and all of us, to a person, was exhausted emotionally, physically and spiritually. Fortunately kindness ruled the day. I managed to find a spot near the “big board” and around 6-ish they announced that a train was boarding to New Jersey. It was not the MidTOWN Direct, and it was NOT on the Morris & Essex line, but I wanted out of NYC, and the stairs were right next to where I was standing, so I went down to the train. I figured I’d figure out what to do in NJ when I got there. The train was packed, worse I’ve ever seen, but the doors eventually closed, we made it out of the station, under the Hudson, and eventually stopped in Newark, at Newark’s Penn Station (yes, Newark has a Penn Station and so does every other major East coast city).

I got off the train, and figured I was about 15-20 blocks from the Broad Street station, and that I could walk (even though it was getting dark and I wasn’t terribly excited about walking alone in Newark for 15 blocks in the dark, even if people were being nice in a national tragedy). I stopped at a payphone to call my wife, who said a neighbor was coming to Penn Station in Newark to pick me up and here was his cell phone number and I should just wait in the normal pickup spot for passengers and he’d be there soon.

I sighed with relief and began walking toward the front of the station. Just then everyone started shouting and telling everyone to get out, get out, get out. They wouldn’t even let us stay in front of the building, we had to go across the street by the Marriott. There were cops and fire trucks everywhere, and transit cops, and they were saying someone had called in a bomb threat to Newark Penn Station. Would it never end?

Because of the hoohah, my neighbor couldn’t find me. I kept trying to walk back to the station area but kept getting shooed away. I eventually found a payphone about six blocks from the station, called home, called my neighbor and tried to describe where I was. He finally found me. I wasn’t hard to spot. He took me home. I collapsed in my wife’s arms and held her for a long time. I held my daughters. I cried
.

And then I wanted to watch TV – even though I had been there, I had missed a ton of information. I had very little details although I knew what had happened. There was no way in hell I was going to work the next day, and in fact the city was for all intents and purposes shut down until the weekend anyway, so I stayed up all night watching CNN and MSNBC. It was horrifying to see, finally, what all the world had been seeing all day and to realize I was there.

Spent several somber days with my family, went back to the City and to work on Monday the 17^th. There were army guys with machine guns at New York Penn station. I was creeped out. Didn’t feel safer. Work wasn’t too productive. We all had a lot of stories to tell and heartache to share. Not long after that, within a few days, we got a memo from the chair of the firm, who informed us essentially that he had decided our mourning was over, the firm was losing money, and we needed to start billing again. Callous bastard. I left that firm 8 weeks later, actually went to work at my friend Robin’s firm, where I got to see my angel Valerie every day for the next two and a half years. And I thanked her for her kindness on 9/11 frequently.

Me too.

Meet new people?

Me too.

I’d like to share some of what I loved this week.

Email me your favorites and I’ll share those too.

This was sad. But real. Bless her.

It all started at Kent State University.

Right in the middle she lists this:

1. Why can some people have twins, triplets, quads, etc. and are able to handle it?
2. Why can other people have twins with siblings and can handle it?
3. Why would God take my babies?
4. What did I do to prove to God that I could not handle it?

In Birds Nest posted some pictures, and this one says it all. That dad is great.

And Blog of Beth and Babes had some ‘Dirty Talk’, and Dirty pictures for you.

Mommy Pie. My new twitter friend.

She says, “How a stupid waste of time reinforces my faith in humanity.”
I only barely get twitter. She seems to have it down. Go. Learn. Then click her twitter button.
(My Twitter name is rogbark. I know. But anything related to my blog name was taken.)

I love the Lolly Jane Boutique. I want my blogshop to look just like hers. (Do you think she’ll mind?) And I want someone else to do it. I can’t find the time to prettify it.

Angie has perfected the Scientific Method. With some help from her son and um..pee.

And now do you want to know why? Why I’m sharing some good things I’ve seen along my blog-hopping trek this week?

Because Goodmom/Badmom linked to my blog last week. (And I want to pass it on). I suggested this silly little gem. But. Instead.

They linked to my 9/11 story.

And today I’d like to follow up. And say thanks.

Thank you internet for hearing me out. And for your comments.

I want to share some responses.

From Jacki
I always enjoy reading someone’s 9/11 story. I mean, not because it was a fun event, but it gives another perspective on it. The thing that always sticks with me is that my dad was supposed to be on the plane that crashed in to the Pentagon, but at the last minute his company put him on another flight.

From Kat
Wow. Great post, and interesting to me to hear your story. I was living in NYC with my boyfriend then – his dad worked in the WTC but was home with a cold that day. We didn’t know that though, and my boyfriend walked from Washington Heights, where we lived, to his parent’s apartment in Stuyvesant town where his parents lived because we couldn’t get them on the phone. Scary, but turned out well for us. Glad your husband was okay.

From Givinya De Elba
Wow. Thankyou for writing that.
At the very same time, I was woken up here (just after midnight) in Australia by my agitated husband urgently saying, “Come and see the news!” CNN was on three of our TV channels and your ABC was on the other – and we all started freaking out.
And the whole time, half a world away, you (and thousands of others) were going through … THAT. I’m so sorry that those things happened.

From cndymkr / jean
I’m so glad you wrote about this. I still think about that day and I always will. My husband (a cop in NJ) was called into work to block the GW bridge on the NJ side. I waited hours to hear from him. I knew that he was not near the towers but I didn’t know what else was going on there. He was gone two days. He came home when so many didn’t. I still can’t look at a plane in the sky without replaying that second plane hitting the tower.

I didn’t really plan to have the whole world read my little housewife version. I had maybe ten readers when I wrote that. (And half were family-hi mom!).

And so many people were and are so much worse off.

I totally get that Everyone in America and the world were affected by this. My parents in small-ville USA who usually only read the local paper, were shocked and scared and upset just the same as you and I. I honestly get that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to go about this post.
It’s hard. And it’s long, and I don’t apologize.

I’m sure everyone has heard every view inside and out about September 11th. Should I add my housewife’s version to all the rest? It’s hard to wrap my head around my own experience. Let alone share it. (My husband was truly the one who was in the city). I was safe all tucked up in my sweet little New Jersey-ian suburb. But I was freaked out and seriously scared all the same.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we only had one cell phone. It seemed decadent having one at all, much less consider having two! He commuted into the city via NJTransit everyday and it was ideal for him to make work calls while on the train. He would call me on his way home letting me know he was on his way, or when there was a delay and the ETA.

Every once in a while, I needed the phone for a mom thing, and he would leave it with me for the day. No big deal right?

I needed the phone on that particular Tuesday, because that night it would be my turn to drive around to several neighborhoods picking up young girls for a church activity. I had to take my kids with me, and it was hard to find a place to park, and then get the kids out and knock on (usually apartment) doors. Having the cell phone, was fabulous for just such an errand.

Let’s rewind to the morning of Tuesday, September 11th.

We don’t usually watch TV in the AM, and my husband apparently did not listen to the radio that morning driving to the train station. He generously left the cell phone behind (at my request) and left around 9:15AM, to catch a 9:30AM train.

I grabbed my grocery list and left soon after to take my then nearly 4 year old to pre-school. Again NOT listening to the radio. I dropped off my kid and another mommy grabbed me and asked: had I heard about the plane? The what, I replied? She said, it’s on the radio, some sort of small plane has crashed into a building in Manhattan. A plane? That’s crazy! I checked the radio. And sure enough, that’s exactly what they were reporting. A small plane has crashed into a building in the city, no more details than that? I didn’t know what to think, and not that I didn’t believe it, it sounded tragic, but I still needed milk and eggs, right?

Fairly nonchalantly I meandered over to the grocery store. (It seems so crass in hind-sight, I know). By the time I got to the store, listening to the reports on the radio as they grew quite a bit more intense, there were clear updates that for sure the small plane had in fact hit one of the twin towers. Okay, now THIS got my attention. My husband did not work in the World Trade Center, he worked way up in Midtown, practically right on Broadway. But his train, the one he was literally on at that moment, traveled into the city near enough to freak me out!! I sat in my car for a long time listening to the radio. My younger kid was getting agitated sitting in her car seat.

I finally got out and attempted to do the shopping. Remember now, I AM THE ONE WITH THE CELL PHONE!!! I have tried several times to call his work, to leave a message. But the lines are jammed, you know that awful fast busy signal? And I’m not the only one. There are all these other zombie mommies walking around the store with a toddler in the seat and no groceries in the cart, talking or attempting to talk on their cell phones. We kept looking at each other with these questioning stares, wondering…

I gave up, and bought the few things that miraculously landed in my cart, I certainly didn’t remember putting them there. My drive home takes me up over a little hill before dropping back down into the valley that is my town. And while on the top-most part of the hill, in the not too far off distance, I can see the Manhattan skyline. And there is a thin trail of smoke at the southern end of the island, right about where you can clearly see the two towers. Only the smoke is too thick to make them out.

This completely does me in. I lose it, right there in the car. I’m all tears and mushy, and still don’t have any real information. My baby is blissfully oblivious, but confused at crazy mama. The radio by now has gotten some better information and they are letting us in on the gruesome realization that it was NO small plane, it was a huge and very packed jetliner, with a full tank of jetfuel! Remember I still haven’t seen any television footage, most Americans at this point know more than I do. They are describing how people are being evacuated. Evacuated? From a hundred and ten foot building? How is that going to work out??

I make it home and my home phone rings. Praise be, I think, he’s calling me finally! But no. It was a close friend, calling to see how much I knew and whether my husband had checked in. I caught her up on what I knew, which was nothing. And she let me know that she too couldn’t contact her husband who had taken a much earlier train. She sounded much more upset than I was, and I agreed to drive over to her place for a while.

This is where I first watch actual television footage, now I am totally and completely horrified. AND the news about the second plane, and the one in Pennsylvania and the one at the Pentagon start filtering in. Should we pack up the kids and start driving West? North? Where? Without our husbands!? I still can’t get hold of my husband and my friend was more under control. I decide to go pick up my preschooler early, because it is truly freaking me out not having my whole family right with me– right that second.

Soon after we get home again the phone rings. I remember this being around 11AM, but the details are way fuzzy for me, it’s all smushed together. The person on the other end of the line is someone I don’t know. She is apologizing that it’s strange for her to be calling, but that she is calling on behalf of my husband (Thank God). She is the secretary of a friend of my husband’s who is an attorney at a totally different law firm than my husband’s. I don’t care who she is, she’s my new saving angel and I love her. Her message was that he was not able to get into his building at all, because they were evacuating it. But he was fine, and working on getting home. That’s all the news I get. I don’t hear directly from my husband for 3 or 4 more hours.

The activity for the young women, was of course canceled. I never needed that horrible phone at all. And it would have made such a difference for him.

He caught a train from Penn Station to Newark around 7PM that night. He was stranded in NYC, (never did get into his building), for no less than 9 hours.

I leave him to tell his side of the story. (I’ll post it, if he’s willing…)

For several weeks after that day. People were…different…nice. You’d wave to people you didn’t know (a rarity there), you’d ask strangers directly if they had lost anyone. There was no honking on the streets (truly odd). I remember the first time someone honked at me in annoyance, about 3 weeks after 9/11, and I was totally upset. Didn’t they know? The rules? The NEW rules? We are genuinely concerned for everyone, we don’t honk, because it’s possible that person you just honked at, might have lost their husband to a terrorist attack in our back yard.

***

Please pardon my multiple tenses in the post. It’s still all sort of real and current for me, and I’m having a hard time placing this story wholly in the past?

Midnight is raucous.

Wants to finish that project before going to bed. Likes watching House around 10PM and would so much rather do the dishes tomorrow. Midnight figures the kids will let her sleep in, and if not, actually believes there will be time for a nap? If Midnight starts reading a book, she cannot put it down and will stay up past her bedtime reading ‘just one more chapter’.

6:45(AM) wakes up perky and bounces out of bed. 6:45(AM) makes a nutritious breakfast and while slowly savoring it (sitting down) makes a tidy to do list. 6:45(AM) checks off each item with a fastidious (obsessive) flair. Every child receives exactly 47.3 minutes of alone mommy time. And those same children are nestled in their beds by 8PM. 6:45(AM) then nestles herself down with a hot cuppa cocoa and the latest Phillipa Greggory book and has lights off by 9:45PM in order to have precisely 8 hours of sleep. 6:45(AM) would have a coronary if every dish wasn’t cleaned and put away every evening.

We hate 6:45(AM).

(Possibly because Midnight and I are jealous).

But starting Monday morning. 6:45(AM) has been banished for 2 and a half months! Summoned to the dungeon of Summer Break Castle. (May she rot, and never come out).

Midnight is up for a rockin’ good time (and NO EARLY MORNINGS).

I’ve been working on this for a few days. Bear with me, I’m getting to it.

Angie over at SevenClownCircus managed to get herself tagged for a MEME. And for a practical joke she tagged me (it’s like a stomach virus, —gets passed along to the unsuspecting large intestine–ME in this case).

And for the record…I still don’t get what the heck a MEME is? —Tag you’re it! Is it the internet version of ‘NoBearsAreOutTonight’? Mainly I think we all like the idea of someone paying attention to us, even if it’s in the form of ‘‘DoAsI’mDoing-OrI’llBeatYouUp’ or called ‘WorkitWednesday’ or whatever those weird days of the week thingy’s are called. Let’s just call them what they are: A Reason For You to Link to MY Blog.

All right, for this occasion, (and because I like Angie) I have created a button. (A reason for you to link to my blog-duh). It links to my “what the heck does MEME stand for?” post.

Feel free to join in. Follow along. (Baa-Baa). Use my button whenever the need arises or you feel like another MEME is just plain weird. Call it the Anti-Meme. I think I’ll have a MEME-THEME all week long in fact; (cuz the funny thing is, Jamie at TheHeinerClan tagged me too, on the same day. And sheesh I don’t want to leave anyone out or make someone feel bad, now do I?)
There you go. I just tagged you. For reading my blog. YOU are tagged. With the anti-tag.
GO MEME YOURSELF. Have fun, I know I will.

Bring on today’s NOT-MEME:

(the rules and regulations are defined in Angie’s post, check it for yourself, cuz I pretty much ignore that stuff.)

MEME-the first:

Label yourself in 6 words. No more. No less.

Hmmm. That’s tough. I’m such a big person to fit into a little sentence?

Okay. I’ve got it.

Because I figure there are two types of people. Those who like Neil Diamond…and those who don’t. (Name that movie).

But then I got to thinking… Maybe this one fits me better?

Because I really need to know.

And here’s the part where I MEME-ed all over myself. And guess what? It’s fun! Try it.

I buy EASYMAC by the caseload.
or
Have Tomatoes. Can’t plant. Too COLD!
or
Sick of school. Need. Summer. Break.
or
Married 14 years. Need. Summer. Break. (hi sweetie, just kidding!)
or
5 foot 7. One Hundred thirty-nine.
yle="color:rgb(255,102,0);">or
Molecular Biologist turned poop expert, yick!
or
Leftovers for lunch.Every.Single.Day.

This is empowering. This is enthralling. Tag me anytime! (Go ahead, make my day.)

You know those recurring nightmares? Where you find yourself naked in your neighbor’s backyard? Where you spiral downwards in a black pit (in slow motion) and your screams echo off non-existent walls? Where you show up to your high school basketball game and you have forgotten your game shoes? PLUS you’re 3 hours AWAY from your terrifying teenage bedroom, where they reside (maybe) in the closet?

Oh wait. That’s not your nightmare, that’s my private nightmare. And even though my college hoop dreams died more than 15 years ago; I have this particularly upsetting, sweat-drenching version of a night terror about once a week.

These demon dreams must be stress induced, or fear related, right? I wonder what a therapist would tell me? (Imagine an old lady German accent here.) You are acting out repressed fears of shoe fetishness. However, my genuine adult fears won’t remedy so simply.

My child comes home with blood dripping off his forehead and a gaping hole where his eyebrow should be. Now THAT’s stress! How I wish I could borrow a friend’s pair of ill-fitting Air Jordans to ease the pain of my 3 year old’s slashed wound. And then again later when ‘YES! there’s going to be a second shot’, and ‘yes it’s going to hurt too’!

I’ll willingly bear the sting of forgotten shoe embarrasment or the shame of letting my team down anyday, I’ll even run out on the court in flip-flops, just please spare me my own children’s distress.

Maybe that’s what those misplaced hightops are doing?

Saving me from reliving my children’s very real pain during my dark induced nightmares.

Entered in Scribbit’s Write Away Contest, titled Shoes.