Middle September

How is it the middle of September and I've posted only once this month?! Yikes, time flies. I've made a list to help organize my scattered, blog thoughts.

1. School's in full swing for both Claire and Hamilton, though it's different this year for both of them. Claire's not only at a new school, but she's also going by a new name--Elaine. She's told all her teachers to call her Elaine, but her friends from her old school still call her Claire. She insists that we still call her Claire, though sometimes Mr. Morgan jokingly calls her Elaine. So all her school papers and books come home with "Elaine Morgan" written on them to which Mr. Morgan responds, "Who's this 'Elaine' person?" At Open House, I had to introduce myself as Elaine's stepmom. For Hamilton, he's learning so many new things at school that he's able to share with me this year. Last week all I heard was "AY-bee-see" over and over, though sometimes his pronounciation of the first three letters would morph into "ay-BEE-see." I'm pretty sure he thought "ABC" was a word. This week he's saying, "Gah may pee-puhl," so I've been saying, "What did God make?" He replies, "God made people." It's an awesome truth, though I wonder how much he understands.
2. I cleaned the master bathroom yesterday.
3. While to most folks the above statement doesn't deserve its own, separate number, trust me, it does. The master bathroom took over three hours to clean; the shower alone took an hour. It was disgusting. I won't even venture a guess as to how long it had been since the last cleaning because it would be embarrassing--even for me. But the bathroom sparkles now.
4. I'm looking forward to an upcoming weekend away with some women from church. I'm happy to have enough milk stored for my trip, and I'm thankful for a husband who'll watch the kids--yes, he'll have help. I love fall getaways!
5. I wanted to post my own memorial for Sept.11, but I missed it by a few days. So here's my I-remember-exactly-where-I-was tribute. I was a 21-year-old, college senior spending the fall semester at Keene State, which was only five hours from New York City. Students at my school knew people who worked in the Towers and as first-responders. In my Tuesday-morning class, we watched The Today Show's coverage of the attacks. I watched the towers fall live on television. I heard Katie Couric's live conversation with Jim Miklaszewski at the Pentagon when he said, "I just heard something that sounded like a bomb." I had been in New Hampshire--in a new region of the country, at a new school--for about two weeks, and I felt so alone. The local paper's front page showed a picture of the burning towers in its afternoon edition, published actually on Sept. 11, 2001. In writing about the attacks, it's hard for me not to focus on how life-changing it was for me--to make the events of September 11th about me. I didn't lose anyone or even know anyone who lost anyone that day. My fellow countrymen suffered that day, and I can't memorialize the events as well as news programs. But I can remember their sacrifices, our country's loss, and our only Hope for the future.