Calm After the Storm
This entry was posted on 9/12/2011 8:24 AM and is filed under blather.
In the last ten days, I've had the privilege of having drinks with some good friends. Four of us sat out on the back patio eating cheese and crackers and drinking in the early evening sunshine.
Then, Jay and I had one of my brothers and his wife over for dinner. We rarely get to see Joe and Heidi because Joe works far away (very far away) and is gone for months at a time and in addition to living in that alternate universe known as St. Paul, Heidi has four kids still at home, running her like a gerbil in a ball twenty four hours a day. Their son Hootie, is a senior this year and I plan on going to see him play a few times. I did last year and it was really fun. Jay and Josie are going to come this year, too. The lovely Mr. Curry gave Joe and Heidi a tour of his beautiful home. Their house is of the same style and vintage as his and they'd love to do some of the same things he's done to his place. Except the wine cellar. With four teenagers in the house, maybe a wine cellar isn't your best bet.
We did polish off a bottle of Mr. Curry's finest.
The weather of the last week or so has been spectacular as only September can be; warm, sunny, breezy and no humidity. This is why we live in Minnesota.
I've been painting every day until my hand cramps up. Let's all cross our fingers and hope for a good Christmas.
I'm praying constantly for an end to the wild fires in Texas. Tyler and Megan aren't in the thick of it yet but it's getting closer. So sad for all those folks who have already lost their homes!
Thank God Rick Perry is their governor instead of Kathleen Blanco.
I know, that seems like a gratuitous slap but it's not.
I got to spend a few hours playing with Bananas and Punkin the other morning. We had fun. Punkin is talking better and better every day. Bananas is extremely smart for her age. Like so many little kids, she hears everything, remembers everything and imitates everything but she thinks about it, too. If people knew how much a three year old can really understand, they'd be a lot more careful around them.
Punkin is hilarious. I don't mean in a 'isn't she cute' sort of way, either. She's a stand up comedian. She thinks everything is funny and she makes up jokes all day. Just because she's still learning to articulate them doesn't mean they aren't clever and hysterical. Like all comics, she tries stuff out and if the room doesn't like it, reworks the punch line. She learned biting isn't as funny as she thought it would be.
Went to a beautiful, beautiful wedding. The bride and groom looked like they came right out of Bride magazine. Except they both wore tennis shoes under the finery; he wore brand new jordans with his tux and she wore silver sequined converse under her foaming, fluffy strapless gown.
Last night we had a birthday dinner for one of the three people we know whose birthdays fall on September 11. We had tenderloin, cake and then watched the documentary shot ten years ago on the first day of a young firefighter's career with ladder 1 in Manhattan.
First day on the job and the towers fell.
Ten years go by and you think you remember the horror of what happened that day but watching the footage again you realize that you've tamped it down to a manageable size. You don't remember because watching it brings it back and it's bigger and scarier and more painful than you remember.
I think it's wrong that the television news divisions have refused to replay the footage for all these years. We need to remember. Our kids, who were too young to understand what happened, need to see that. They need to see it without commentary, just like we did while it was happening. They need to form their own opinions of the events of September 11, 2001. They need to see the truth.
But as Rick Perry found out last week, you can't tell the truth in America these days.
"That is why you fail."
