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Nineteen Years.

ejamienyc

This  journal entry was written about 10 years ago (2010-ish) . And have posted it most years since, and I expect I’ll keep posting it year after year. It seems especially relevant to me now.  I spend a lot of time with people in my professional life who are adults, but much younger than me, or in my personal life with my middle school daughter and her friends. It has dawned on me that there is an entire generation for whom 9/11 is simply an event in their history books. That doesn’t mean they don’t take it seriously or think it isn’t important; they just weren’t old enough (or even alive) to remember it or truly understand it. I’ve come to realize that the way they think of 9/11 is likely the way I thought of the JFK, RFK & MLK Jr assassinations or the way I thought of Pearl Harbor – those were just things we memorized for a test. So I keep posting, because what you’ll read below will never be found in a history book. I keep posting so that maybe what happened that day will stay real, and will be remembered as more than just a tragic, life-changing Tuesday morning. 

Another update to this recurring post.. in 2017 I took Mini to NYC for the first time. In all the times I’d visited since the Memorial had been built or since the Freedom Tower had been built, I’d never been down to see them. But two years ago she wanted to see.  We visited the memorial, which overwhelmed me and made me lose my breath a little bit, but it was beautiful and serene. We went to the top of the Freedom Tower, which truly scared me, but when we got to the top, it was the city in all of her glory and I truly appreciated how the Tower is the symbol of strength and resilience that is New York City.  She wanted to visit the museum, but we didn’t, it was and is more than I think I’ll ever be brave enough to do. 

Updated edit for 2020. As we all know, this has been an “unprecedented” year. I cringe a bit at using that descriptor, as it feels like it’s been over-used to the point of being a joke, yet, it’s accurate. September 11th has been on my mind more often than not in this 19th year. In March, things in this country were eerily similar to post 9/11. Everyone was home, airports were closed, first responders and essential workers were heralded as heroes, and for a brief moment in time, most of this country came together with that same 2001 attitude of “We’re America, we got this.” Sadly, that period didn’t last long. There’s a lot I’d like to say about this year, but today’s post isn’t about politics, it is about remembering and teaching. I want and hope that today is a reminder to hug your loved ones, honor those who gave their lives, and most importantly, put humanity before everything else. Don’t make it a day to just have a quick memorial service or look at the horrifying images, don’t let the evil win. Make it a day that counts, and make it a day to put things in perspective and know what really matters. I don’t say these things lightly, as I myself have to work hard every day to keep that all of those things at the front of my mind and heart. Never Forget. 

Original Post:

There was a time when I liked danger. As in a roller coaster or sky diving. Or getting a tattoo or rappelling down a cliff.  Or moving to NYC at age 22 with nothing but a college degree, a couple of connections, and parents who were willing to support me for a couple of months. It was fun, and I was always up for taking on a challenge.

And then came 9/11.

I don’t talk about it much. When I’m here in TN, when the subject or that time of year comes up, I stay quiet.  I get that that day changed anyone who was old enough to know what happened. But no one who wasn’t in NYC or DC or PA will ever get what that day was like.  If I’m with a group that puts two and two together and realizes I did indeed live there then, they ask questions with a morbid curiosity. I get it, it is human nature.  But I generally answer in the shortest way possible and then get the hell away from that conversation.

I was 26 years old. I was at the dentist, with a load of Novocain in the left side of my face. My appointment was finished, and I went to check out. The receptionist told me that two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers.  I remember asking how the heck could that happen…how could you not see the Towers? I remember assuming it was two small planes, like little Cessna’s or something. And she told me it was two jets.

And my stomach was on the floor. My sister & Josh’s offices were about 4 blocks from WTC.  I knew Josh was working from home that day on the Upper East Side but not my sister. This was all at about 9:15 … moments after the 2nd plane had hit.  I booked it out of the office, in the mid-50s in Manhattan. Everyone was walking around trying to get cell service. I came flying around the corner on Madison Ave and froze. Looking South was nothing but the blackest smoke one can ever ever imagine. Filling the sky.

I remember getting to a payphone because my cell wouldn’t work. I can’t believe there were even payphones still around. (and I remember that by that afternoon, somehow Bell Atlantic had made all the payphones free). My fingers were numb, and I couldn’t find coins. Once I did, I kept dialing and dialing. All lines busy. I remember getting through one time to my sister, she had just made it to her office and they were frantic and leaving. And then we got cut off. She had had told me they were leaving and all they knew was that they had to head north. I got through to my mom in NC and said I had no idea what was going on but I was ok and was going to work.

GOING TO WORK? I look back now and wonder why in the hell I did that. But no one could fathom what the hell was going on. And we were supposed to shoot with Emeril on the next day, so I needed to get in to get that all finalized. Seems so surreal now to think I was concerned with an Emeril shoot.

And I walked the rest of the way to work. As did lots of other New Yorkers. We didn’t know what else to do. This was still before the planes had crashed in PA and DC. I remember standing outside the Fox News building, across the street from Food Network offices, and reading the red news ticker go across the building. Reading the ticker and then looking south and seeing smoke. It wasn’t clicking. It wasn’t real.

At work, most people were there. They were already on their way and didn’t know what else to do.  So I started working. I was still moving forward with finalizing Emeril stuff. We all had TVs on and were listening and watching.  And I will never forget when one of the girls from traffic screamed. The first tower had fallen. Incomprehensible. I don’t think my feet touched the floor when I went over to her desk.

And it was gone. The TV just showed this image that made no sense. That was the first time I cried. And was terrified. And of course the planes had hit PA and DC by now. We didn’t know if there were more coming. It was about this time the management started to send us home. I hadn’t talked to my sister in an hour and had no idea where she was. I couldn’t get through to my cousin who also worked in NYC (but lived in Jersey) but somehow got thru to my Aunt in MA. She had talked to him and knew he was already heading back to Jersey.  I somehow got through to Josh and told him I was coming home.  I remember I had talked to my dad. He’d told me to get water and cash. And I remember telling Josh to go get it since he was home.

When the first tower fell, it took the massive antenna with it that was the main cell service provider. There was virtually no cell service. And land lines were a mess. Subways had been shut down completely. Bridges were closed. Buses were running, but they were cram packed with people the officials were getting out of downtown.

So I walked. What’s funny to me is it was a gorgeous day. It was in the 70s, no humidity, clear blue sky.  It was about a 2 hour walk. And it was surreal. I remember being so glad I’d worn really comfy flip flops. I remember taxis parked on the curb, with their doors open and radios up all the way, so anyone walking by could get updates. Same thing with bars and restaurants. They had doors and windows thrown open. Most weren’t open for business yet, but people just stood in the doors and at the windows watching. At some point on my walk I was almost home, and I got through to Josh. He’d talked to my sister for only a second. We still had no idea where she was, but we knew she’d gotten out of downtown and was alive.

At one point, walking down the middle of First Ave.. there were no cars and there were so many people walking… we just spilled out onto the street. Throngs and throngs of people. I remember thinking it looked straight out of a movie.  And I remember a bus going past me. Heading North.  Packed with people. And as it passed me I just stared. There was a guy riding along the back. Literally standing on the bumper and just hanging on. One of those things that wouldn’t be written about. No one would ever hear about that guy. He’d probably been walking for hours from downtown and had a ways to go to get to the Bronx. I remember thinking it would have been funny if it were any other day. It would have been some whacked out New Yorker out for a thrill ride. But that day it was a desperate attempt to just get home. To safety. Even tho we all knew we’d never feel safe again. Not even at home.

And I finally got home. Opened the apt door. And was hit with the smell of unfinished wood. Bizarre right?  We had ordered an unfinished bar the weekend before, and arranged to have it delivered on the 11th. And it got delivered. The delivery truck was already almost to the apartment when everything had started to happen, so they just delivered it. It is still out on the back deck, and we’ll never get rid of it.

I remember hugging Josh. But still not freaking out. I remember being methodical. Like, I need to get in touch with so and so and so and so. More stuff about the shoot. That’s what I was concerned with. And I remember just trying to get in touch with family. Of all days.. all 4 of my parents were in different cities. My stepdad was in Atlanta, mom was home in NC. My dad was in CA, and my stepmom was home in Memphis. Josh had gotten several gallons of water. We were terrified the water supply would somehow be threatened.  And then we just sat there. But we couldn’t sit there. We didn’t want to be alone. We needed to be out in the street with everyone else. We were so scared, but wanted to be scared with everyone else.

So, odd as it might sound, we went to the Irish pub next door. And it was packed. And silent. Wall to wall with people drinking beer. No one was drunk. Everyone just sat there stone faced watching TV,  we got a table. And I remember I was starting to shake. And I sent Josh out for cigarettes. I hadn’t had one in a long time. That day, I didn’t give a shit. And I smoked and had a beer or two. We stayed there a couple of hours and then went home.

Sometime in that afternoon I had heard from Shannon. She and Angela had made it home, and they too went to their neighborhood bar. Looking back, I don’t know why we didn’t go down to her apartment. I really don’t. She saw much worse than me. She literally had to run through the streets, just going north to survive.

At some point my boss had somehow gotten thru to me to tell me the offices would be closed the next day. The day we were supposed to shoot with Emeril. And I remember having to cancel some VO sessions and the crew. Random crap like that.  I still have my notebook from that time.. I still have the page.. with my to do list that I’d written on Monday 9/10 for me to do the next day. I still go back and look at the random chicken scratch and phone numbers that I then was writing on 9/11. I will never throw it away.

I remember coming back to our apartment building. I guess it was early evening by now. We went up to the roof. We lived in a high rise. We took pictures of the smoke. There were fighter jets everywhere. Just circling Manhattan. Terrifying yet comforting. I remember there were already pictures up everywhere of missing people. We lived in a part of town where lots of young financial professionals lived. Lots of people who worked down there.

I don’t know how long we were home when we heard a knock at our door. It was my old roommate Opal and her boyfriend Eric. They too just didn’t want to be at home alone. So we all went to a bar down the street. I remember they were just doing happy hour prices all night. There was nothing happy about it. They just knew it was all they could do I guess. Bush had been president 9 mos. I couldn’t stand him. That night tho, I remember watching him on the big screen in that bar. You could have heard a pin drop. And that night, I liked him. I really did. If and when I tell people we went to a bar that night, most think I am the worst human on the planet. They don’t get that no one was there for a good time. Everyone was there bc everyone was terrified. Everyone was there bc they just needed reassurance that everyone else was just as scared. Everyone was there bc they just wanted to be with fellow New Yorkers. Everyone was there bc we knew no one, no one else, would ever ever understand. We had a couple of pitchers, and then we just went home.

I had nightmares that night. I had them for weeks. I still have them now. They are rare these days. But they will come, out of nowhere, and they are vivid. And horrible. I remember that first night my sister calling several times, managing to get through the nightmare phone lines. Just so scared.  I remember waking up the next morning. Hoping it was just a big nightmare. And turning on the TV and knowing nothing more than we’d known the day before. We met my sister and her roommate for breakfast. We bought a NY Times and Daily News. I still have them. I remember we just walked the Upper East Side in a daze. That afternoon we got scared. We could smell smoke. We thought something else had happened. But no, it was the smoke working its way up Manhattan. Acrid. Burning. And I remember seeing Army vehicles. So many of them in a parade down 2nd Ave. HUGE trucks. They were going to start getting the debris. You know what else? I went to the gym that morning on 9/12. Ran on the treadmill. Cried the whole time. The gym was packed.

I remember my boss calling me to tell me we did have to work on Thursday. I remember contact with our parents being helter skelter bc there was still no cell service and land lines were locked up.

I remember Josh walking me to the bus that Thursday. I usually took the subway, but that day I wanted the bus. I was terrified of being stuck on a train underground. There was such paranoia that every single time someone coughed wrong, they stopped the trains and had the swat team there.

That day, that Thursday. I remember calling my vendors. About VO sessions and stuff. And we all felt so stupid. Who the hell cared about a VO? It seemed so asinine to have to even worry about it.

That Saturday me, Shannon, Josh, her roommate, I think David, and another friend went down to the site. We have pictures. Pictures of bombed out mail trucks still just sitting on the street. Pictures of firefighters changing shifts. Covered in that gray dust. And crowds cheering for them. So thankful for them. And scared for them.  And proud for them.

One of our producers at the time lived a few blocks away from the towers. She had tapes in her apt that day. When she finally made it back to work a couple of weeks later, the tapes still had the dust on them.

There are so many things about that time in NYC that no one knows. Except those of us that were there. For the next 6 mos, no one was ever ever to work on time. You’d get stuck on a train for hours. Just waiting for the next threat to be cleared.  Seeing cops with massive guns became the norm. I mean- like AK 47s. There was a plane crash about 6 weeks later at JFK. We heard the news come on, and we froze. I was at work. And I immediately started crying. We all did. We were convinced it was happening again.  It turned out to be a freak accident. Everyone on board died. It was gut wrenching.

Early that November – at least 8 weeks later- I had a shoot downtown. About three blocks from the site. And I remember the smoke still being so thick. So prevalent. When I got home that night, it smelled like I’d been at a campfire for hours. I still can smell it in my mind.

I remember one morning that December. Watching the Today Show while I got ready for work. And I froze. Matt Lauer was doing a story about purple ties and how they were the current trend in men’s fashion. I am sure one wonders why that story made me freeze. It was the first time in months that there was a story NOT about 9/11 on the Today Show. It was the first fluff, who-really-cares-story, that was covered in the news. The first sign that maybe, just maybe some sort of normalcy would return to our life as we knew it.

Somehow, I knew no one personally that died that day. There were friends of friends – too many too count. But I did not know anyone personally. Nor did Josh, Shannon or David.

It was July 2005 when the train bombings happened in London. We’d come back to Knoxville a few years before.  I remember waking up to that story. And crying. And crying. It was happening again.

That’s it. That’s my story about danger. I no longer want to ride roller coasters. I no longer need to get that thrill of danger. I have had a lifetime’s worth.  I still have the nightmares. I still, and I am not exaggerating, flip out if I hear a plane overhead that sounds too low. Or if I see one flying that looks too low. I literally freeze, and I start to lose my breath and talk myself down.

There’s so much more I could tell. Still stories from that day, that time period that I still have in my head. I don’t doubt for a minute that day changed so many people. I can’t believe I’ve never written about it before now. Someday maybe I’ll share it with others.

Sixteen Years. One Six. 16. Sixteen Years.

ejamienyc

I wrote this about eight years ago, and I started sharing it several years ago, on the anniversary.  This day, this time of year, is always a challenge for me. A challenge to keep it together, to get through the day, to push the memories to the back of my mind. They are there, they are always there, and they will never fade. Never forget. Never.

There was a time when I liked danger. As in a roller coaster or sky diving. Or getting a tattoo or rappelling.  Or moving to NYC at age 22 with nothing but a college degree, a couple of connections, and parents who were willing to support me for a couple of months. It was fun and I was always up for taking on a challenge.

And then came 9/11.

I don’t talk about it much. When I’m here in TN, when the subject or that time of year comes up, I stay quiet.  I get that that day changed anyone who was old enough to know what happened. But no one who wasn’t in NYC or DC or PA will ever get what that day was like.  If I’m with a group that puts two and two together and realizes I did indeed live there then, they ask questions with a morbid curiosity. I get it, its human nature.  But I generally answer in the shortest way possible and then get the hell away from that conversation.

I was 26 years old. I was at the dentist, with a load of Novocain in the left side of my face. My appointment was finished and I went to check out. The receptionist told me that two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers.  I remember asking how the heck could that happen…how could you not see the Towers? I remember asking or assuming it was two small planes, like little Cessna’s or something. And she told me it was two jets.

And my stomach was on the floor. My sister & Josh’s offices were about 4 blocks from WTC.  I knew Josh was working from home that day on the Upper East Side but not my sister. This was all at about 9:15 … moments after the 2nd plane had hit.  I booked it out of the office, in the mid-50s in Manhattan. Everyone was walking around trying to get cell service. I came flying around the corner on Madison Ave and froze. Looking South was nothing but the blackest smoke one can ever ever imagine. Filling the sky.

I remember getting to a payphone bc my cell wouldn’t work. I can’t believe there were even payphones still around. (and I remember that by that afternoon, somehow Bell Atlantic had made all the payphones free). My fingers were numb and I couldn’t find coins. Once I did, I kept dialing and dialing. All lines busy. I remember getting through one time to my sister, she had just made it to her office and they were frantic and leaving. And then we got cut off. She had had told me they were leaving and all they knew was that they had to head north. I got through to my mom in NC and said I had no idea what was going on but I was ok and was going to work.

GOING TO WORK? I look back now and wonder why in the hell I did that. But no one could fathom what the hell was going on. And we were supposed to shoot with Emeril the next day, so I needed to get in to get that all finalized. Seems so surreal now to think I was concerned with an Emeril shoot.

And I walked the rest of the way to work. As did lots of other New Yorkers. We didn’t know what else to do. This was still before the planes had crashed in PA and DC. I remember standing outside the Fox News building, across the street from Food Network offices, and reading the red news ticker go across the building. Reading the ticker and then looking south and seeing smoke. It wasn’t clicking. It wasn’t real.
At work, most people were there. They were already on their way, and didn’t know what else to do.  So I started working. I was still moving forward with finalizing Emeril stuff. We all had TVs on and were listening and watching.  And I will never forget when one of the girls around the corner from my desk screamed. The first tower had fallen. Incomprehensible. I don’t think my feet touched the floor when I went over to her desk.

And it was gone. The TV just showed this image that made no sense. That was the first time I cried. And was terrified. And of course the planes had hit PA and DC by now. We didn’t know if there were more coming. It was about this time the management started to send us home. I hadn’t talked to my sister in an hour and had no idea where she was. I couldn’t get through to my cousin who also worked in NYC (but lived in Jersey) but somehow got thru to my Aunt in MA. She had talked to him and knew he was already heading back to Jersey.  I somehow got through to Josh and told him I was coming home.  I remember I had talked to my dad. He’d told me to get water and cash. And I remember telling Josh to go get it since he was home.

When the first tower fell, it took the massive antenna with it that was the main cell service provider. There was virtually no cell service. And land lines were a mess. Subways had been shut down completely. Bridges were closed. Buses were running, but they were cram packed with people the officials were getting out of downtown.

So I walked. What’s funny to me is it was a gorgeous day. It was in the 70s, no humidity, clear blue sky.  It was about a 2 hour walk. And it was surreal. I remember being so glad I’d worn really comfy flip flops. I remember taxis parked on the curb, with their doors open and radios up all the way, so anyone walking by could get updates. Same thing with bars and restaurants. They had doors and windows thrown open. Most weren’t open for business yet, but people just stood in the doors and at the windows watching. At some point on my walk I was almost home, and I got through to Josh. He’d talked to my sister for only a second. We still had no idea where she was, but we knew she’d gotten out of downtown and was alive.

At one point, walking down the middle of First Ave.. there were no cars and there were so many people walking… we just spilled out onto the street. Throngs and throngs of people. I remember thinking it looked straight out of a movie.  And I remember a bus going past me. Heading North.  Packed with people. And as it passed me I just stared. There was a guy riding along the back. Literally standing on the bumper and just hanging on. One of those things that wouldn’t be written about. No one would ever hear about that guy. He’d probably been walking for hours from downtown and had a ways to go to get to the Bronx. I remember thinking it would have been funny if it were any other day. It would have been some whacked out New Yorker out for a thrill ride. But that day it was a desperate attempt to just get home. To safety. Even tho we all knew we’d never feel safe again. Not even at home.

And I finally got home. Opened the apt door. And was hit with the smell of unfinished wood. Bizarre right?  We had ordered an unfinished bar the weekend before, and arranged to have it delivered on the 11th. And it got delivered. The delivery truck was already almost to the apartment when everything had started to happen, so they just delivered it. It is still out on the back deck, and we’ll never get rid of it.

I remember hugging Josh. But still not freaking out. I remember being methodical. Like, I need to get in touch with so and so and so and so. More stuff about the shoot. That’s what I was concerned with. And I remember just trying to get in touch with family. Of all days.. all 4 of my parents were in different cities. My stepdad was in Atlanta, mom was home in NC. My dad was in CA, and my stepmom was home in Memphis. Josh had gotten several gallons of water. We were terrified the water supply would somehow be threatened.  And then we just sat there. But we couldn’t sit there. We didn’t want to be alone. We needed to be out in the street with everyone else. We were so scared, but wanted to be scared with everyone else.

So, odd as it might sound, we went to the Irish pub next door. And it was packed. And silent. Wall to wall with people drinking beer. No one was drunk. Everyone just sat there stone faced watching TV,  we got a table. And I remember I was starting to shake. And I sent Josh out for cigarettes. I hadn’t had one in a long time. That day, I didn’t give a shit. And I smoked and drank. We stayed there a couple of hours and then went home.
Sometime in that afternoon I had heard from Shannon. She and Angela had made it home, and they too went to their neighborhood bar. Looking back, I don’t know why we didn’t go down to her apartment. I really don’t. She saw much worse than me.  She literally had to run through the streets, just going north to survive.

At some point my boss had somehow gotten thru to me to tell me the offices would be closed the next day. The day we were supposed to shoot with Emeril. And I remember having to cancel some VO sessions and the crew. Random crap like that.  I still have my notebook from that time.. I still have the page.. with my to do list that I’d written on Monday 9/10 for me to do the next day. I still go back and look at the random chicken scratch and phone numbers that I then was writing on 9/11. I will never throw it away.

I remember coming back to our apartment building. I guess it was early evening by now. We went up to the roof. We lived in a high rise. We took pictures of the smoke. There were fighter jets everywhere. Just circling Manhattan. Terrifying yet comforting. I remember there were already pictures up everywhere of missing people. We lived in a part of town where lots of young financial professionals lived. Lots of people who worked down there.

I don’t know how long we were home when we heard a knock at our door. It was my old roommate Opal and her boyfriend Eric. They too just didn’t want to be at home alone. So we all went to a bar down the street. I remember they were just doing happy hour prices all night. There was nothing happy about it. They just knew it was all they could do I guess. Bush #2 had been president 9 mos. I couldn’t stand him. That night tho, I remember watching him on the big screen in that bar. You could have heard a pin drop. And that night, I liked him. I really did. If and when I tell people we went to a bar that night, most think I am the worst human on the planet. They don’t get that no one was there for a good time. Everyone was there bc everyone was terrified. Everyone was there bc they just needed reassurance that everyone else was just as scared. Everyone was there bc they just wanted to be with fellow New Yorkers. Everyone was there bc we knew no one, no one else, would ever ever understand. We had a couple of pitchers, and then we just went home.

I had nightmares that night. I had them for weeks. I still have them now. They are rare these days. But they will come, out of nowhere, and they are vivid. And horrible. I remember that first night my sister calling several times. Just so scared.  I remember waking up the next morning. Hoping it was just a big nightmare. And turning on the TV and knowing nothing more than we’d known the day before. We met my sister and her roommate for breakfast. We bought a NY Times and Daily News. I still have them. I remember we just walked the Upper East Side in a daze. That afternoon we got scared. We could smell smoke. We thought something else had happened. But no, it was the smoke working its way up Manhattan. Acrid. Burning. And I remember seeing Army vehicles. So many of them in a parade down 2nd Ave. HUGE trucks. They were going to start getting the debris. You know what else? I went to the gym that morning on 9/12. Ran on the treadmill. Cried the whole time. The gym was packed.

I remember my boss calling me to tell me we did have to work on Thursday. I remember contact with our parents being helter-skelter bc there was still no cell service and land lines were locked up.

I remember Josh walking me to the bus that Thursday. I usually took the subway, but that day I wanted the bus. I was terrified of being stuck on a train underground. There was such paranoia that every single time someone coughed wrong, they stopped the trains and had the SWAT team there.

That day, that Thursday. I remember calling my vendors. About VO sessions and stuff. And we all felt so stupid. Who the hell cared about a VO? It seemed so asinine to have to even worry about it.

That Saturday me, Shannon, Josh, her roommate, I think David, and another friend went down to the site. We have pictures. Pictures of bombed out mail trucks still just sitting on the street. Pictures of firefighters changing shifts. Covered in that gray dust. And crowds cheering for them. So thankful for them. And scared for them.  And proud for them.

One of our producers at the time lived a few blocks away from the towers. She had tapes in her apt that day. When she finally made it back to work a couple of weeks later, the tapes still had the dust on them.

There are so many things about that time in NYC that no one knows. Except those of us that were there. For the next 6 mos, no one was ever ever to work on time. You’d get stuck on a train for hours. Just waiting for the next threat to be cleared.  Seeing cops with massive guns became the norm. I mean- like AK 47s. There was a plane crash about 6 weeks later at JFK. We heard the news come on, and we froze. I was at work. And I immediately started crying. We all did. We were convinced it was happening again.  It turned out to be a freak accident. Everyone on board died. It was gut wrenching.

Early that November – at least 8 weeks later- I had a shoot downtown. About three blocks from the site. And I remember the smoke still being so thick. So prevalent. When I got home that night, it smelled like I’d been at a campfire for hours. I still can smell it in my mind.

I remember one morning that December. Watching the Today Show while I got ready for work. And I froze. Matt Lauer was doing a story about purple ties and how they were the current trend in men’s fashion. I am sure one wonders why that story made me freeze. It was the first time in months that there was a story NOT about 9/11 on the Today Show. It was the first fluff, who-really-cares-story, that was covered in the news. The first sign that maybe, just maybe some sort of normalcy would return to our life as we knew it.

Somehow, I knew no one personally that died that day. There were friends of friends – too many too count. But I did not know anyone personally. Nor did Josh, Shannon or David.

It was July 2005 when the train bombings happened in London. We’d come back to Knoxville a few years before.  I remember waking up to that story. And crying. And crying. It was happening again.

That’s it. That’s my story about danger. I no longer want to ride roller coasters. I no longer need to get that thrill of danger. I have had a lifetime’s worth.  I still have the nightmares. I still, and I am not exaggerating, flip out if I hear a plane overhead that sounds too low. Or if I see one flying that looks too low. I literally freeze, and I start to lose my breath and talk myself down.  

There’s so much more I could tell. Still stories from that day, that time period that I still have in my head. I don’t doubt for a minute that day changed so many people. I can’t believe I’ve never written about it before now. Someday maybe I’ll share it with others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erin Stories..

ejamienyc

It’s no secret that things happen to me that don’t seem to happen to other people. I just am THAT LUCKY.  It’s been that way my whole life. In high school these things were commonly known as Erin Stories, and if by some rare chance, something bizarre happened to someone else, it was instantly classified as an Erin Story.

This morning was no different.

I was running some errands before work, picking up some things for a wedding shower lunch later today. My car was packed full of stuff –  computer, large purse, a large stuffed animal yet to be returned to the store, a pair of flip flops, a car seat, a cooler, flowers in a box, another massive empty box. Said empty box was because I had actually prepared ahead of time to put the flowers in the box so they wouldn’t fall/get ruined while being transported (we all know I drive like Junior). But the awesome florist already had them in a box for me, and I had nowhere to put the empty one. Why not my trunk, you ask? Because it was stuffed full of dog beds and dog food because the two psychotic dogs are being boarded tonight because we have Edith and if they aren’t boarded they might sit on her head and smoosh her.

I had one errand left to go: picking up the cupcakes.  I got them fairly quickly, as I’d already ordered and paid ahead. Walk back out to car, box balanced in one hand, phone and keys and purse in other. Unlock car, promptly drop phone. Look at ground. No phone. Wait what? I peek under my car, no phone. Peek under car next to me, no phone.

At this point I would not have been surprised if my head spun 180 degrees, Exorcist style. I was running late, had a low tire warning (and even tho I have run flats I still get majorly wigged out by low tires), low gas tank, and now my phone had apparently been swallowed whole by a mysterious force.  I somehow unlock my car, and get the cupcakes securely stored in the cooler I’d also had the foresight to bring (anyone who knows me knows that foresight is not one of my strengths).

I then take a closer look under both cars. And there is my phone. Under the car next to mine. Not just right under it, that would be too easy. Smack in the middle underneath it. Not close to one side or the other.  I stand back up completely baffled. I can’t call anyone, because, yeah, my phone is under this lime green Neon (seriously). I see no one around.

UGH. So I drop to the ground, IN MY DRESS, and lay flat on my stomach. I scoot my top half somewhat under the car, and manage to reach and reach and get my phone. Just as I have my hands on it, the wind blows. And I’m in a dress. And the wind blows. And I’m in a parking lot exposed to one of the busiest shopping centers in Knoxville. And there was a yard crew working on the curbside appeal. Not even kidding.  And my dress was not covering what it was meant to cover.

I popped up in the fastest and best Burpee form I have ever managed (all those workout sessions have paid off I guess).  At this point I’m sweating, my knees and thighs are black with parking lot grime – BUT I GOT MY PHONE! I stand there laughing, because what else can a girl do?  I have images of the shopping center security team watching all this go down on their little closed circuit TVs, at least I provided some comic relief.

The day has improved. There will be cupcakes. I may be filthy, but there will be cupcakes.

 

Is it Just Me?

ejamienyc

Do the morning hours just evaporate for other people too? Or is it just me?

Y’ALL. I was up at 4:10am and didn’t make it to the office until just before 10am. That’s nearly SIX hours!

I was up this morning at 4:10am. Went to 5am workout, came home and was out of the shower before 7. Made the bed. Did the makeup and The Hair.  I did have to paint my toes, but that seriously only took about eight minutes.  I made a smoothie – which is fast bc I have it down to a science. It took me a nanosecond to get dressed since it is the time of year that I live in a dress and sandals. I tossed some celery, almonds and LaCroix’s into Eileen’s adorable monogrammed lunch tote that she never used (so at the office I answer to Erin OR Eileen, and for any AXO’s reading, I’ve clearly become accustomed to answer to just about any and all names starting with “E”).

That was it; the dogs had already been fed and been outside. Eileen was at Josh and Sarah’s, so I didn’t have to nag her all morning.

Yet it was 8:50 before I was ready to go.  I mean, I know I’m not the fastest when it comes to The Hair and makeup, that’s what happens when you grow up in Memphis, these things matter, (Cheech & Brian I know you are nodding your heads in agreement with that statement) – but I mean, come on, I am not THAT slow/vein!

So Sarah dropped off Eileen, and I was taking her out to Mrs. H’s house (where Eileen gets to spend most of the day swimming with her best friends, but does have to do her summer math and reading – SCORE!).

I think this is the point where the major time-suck started.

The plan was to run by the grocery store to grab some food for Mini to have for the week at Mrs. H’s.  We got in the car only to discover the doors won’t lock. Which isn’t necessarily a big deal, except for the fact that I refuse to drive around with unlocked doors.  (I may or may not have had a fleeting thought of “oh goodie! something is broken and the warranty is expired, maybe I get a new car!”). We fiddle with testing doors and trunks and locks. I was just about to try to overcome my paranoia and drive with unlocked doors- but we figured out the only door we hadn’t tested wasn’t actually shut, which apparently means the doors won’t lock. #goodtoknow

We went to Publix because it was closer than Kroger.  We grabbed watermelon, some Lunchables (Leah, I hear you yelling at me), some GoGurts and some sliced turkey and apples for me). Oh, and a Publix cooler bag since we don’t already have seven of those sitting at home/in Bill’s truck where they do no good because they are always at home or in Bill’s truck.  This quick trip around the store didn’t seem to take long, but that’s probably one of those places they pump drugs into the air so you stay longer and spend more money, right?

We go to self check-out. I should just know better. I mean – it’s ME. It’s ME and TECHNOLOGY. This is never a good plan. Things were going along fine until we got to the apples.  Just put on the scale, punch in the code, and go, right? HAHAHAHA. No. No, in our case, Mini and I tried it 2x and failed, so the helper guy came over. He tried it FOUR times. FOUR. No dice. He calls over the manager. At this point I tell them – hey- no biggie -I can skip the apples this trip.  Apparently I had the most determined manager known to man. She tried it four MORE times – each time a different way. Then she runs away- at which point I think to myself – eh, lets just forgo the freakin apples and continue checking out. But of course the manager has locked the little screen and I can’t do anything without her super secret access code. She finally figures out a solution and the apples ring up.

FOR SEVEN DOLLARS AND FORTY NINE CENTS. What? TWO APPLES? not organic. not made of gold. yeah, they’re Honeycrisp and they’re on the larger side as far as apples go, BUT SEVEN DOLLARS? (and we wonder why this country is so FAT, who the hell can afford to eat well if two stupid apples are almost ten bucks!?!?) We’re finally done and on our way.

At this point I don’t even know what time it is. I’m pretty the sure the Apple incident lasted 45 minutes (#sarcasmfont). Off we go! I was super proud of myself because I remembered that one of the main roads was closed from 9-3 for storm damage pickup, but then again I wasn’t going that way anyway, but I still remembered. But said closed road made for extra traffic on the way I WAS going. And by extra traffic, I mean extra traffic PLUS I got stuck behind every delivery truck West of Campbell Station road.  The ones that drive about 11 miles an hour. SHOOT ME NOW.

We finally make it there. I was tempted to slow down and let Eileen roll out of the car, but a friend of mine did that a couple of weeks ago and it didn’t end well (#truestory).

Got her dropped her off, but of course I forgot to give her the watermelon I’d bought her (because duh, that cancels out the Lunchable).  Back to the traffic. And more delivery trucks…

I finally made it to the office. Where I did run into Sissy, who gave me a dress! I thought, ok! this day will be ok!

And then I came into the office, flying around one corner only to have walked smack into a shoot. I’m sure they appreciated that – but at least my hair looked good! So then I came around flying around the OTHER corner.. where I ran into a line of interns getting their badge photos made.  SWEET! I’ll be eternally etched into some poor twenty-something’s badge photo.

Since it took me six hours to get to the office, it should at least me memorialized somewhere, right?

I Carried A Watermelon

ejamienyc

If you don’t what “I carried a watermelon” is from, we can’t be friends.

I was 12 when Dirty Dancing came out, and I saw it in the theater. I had the soundtrack on cassette, and I’m fairly certain I played the tape (yes, the actual physical TAPE) to the point that it broke.  It is one of those movies that was an instant classic – in the vein of Ferris Bueller and Goonies – I am not actually comparing Dirty Dancing to to the likes of North by Northwest or Gone with the Wind.

So now, many many MANY years later, there is a Broadway Musical version of Dirty Dancing. OHMAGAWDYAAAAAAS.  This is every 1980’s tween girls dream come true (sidebar: there was no such thing as a tween in the late 80’s, but that’s what I was).  And since our Scruffy Little City is pretty cool, the show made it’s way to our beloved Tennessee Theatre. And I, of course,  made my way to the show with friends in tow.

Now, like I said,  this movie is a classic as far as the campy, cheesy, romantic dramatic life-lesson movie it is meant to be. One would expect the musical version is meant to be the same.  One does not go to the Dirty Dancing musical and expect it to be the caliber of an Italian Opera. Only no one told some of the audience members this.

We went to the Sunday evening show. We were surrounded by…how shall I put this… people much older than we are (and we’re not exactly spring chickens ourselves).  I can’t figure out why they were there, because they didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves or have any appreciation for the show.

Maybe they didn’t realize what Dirty Dancing was? I’m guessing they don’t flip through the TV channels and sit down mesmerized every time they come across an airing of Dirty Dancing? I’m guessing they don’t know the script word for word. I’m guessing they didn’t mourn Jennifer Grey’s botched nose job and they certainly didn’t mourn Patrick Swayze’s passing. They probably don’t get a thrill every time someone says “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!” and they didn’t spend hours of their summers trying to do The Lift in the neighborhood pool.  Maybe they were actually expecting the Italian Opera and the reverence it deserves?

Maybe these are the cultured people who have season tickets to the theataah. 

And then there was us.

The six of us who are certainly not the shy and quiet kids, the six of us who laugh and love and enjoy a cocktail, the six of us who want to SING ALONG TO THE SONGS. And who cheer and laugh at the hilarious on-stage adaptations, who give a “whoop whoop” when there’s a kick-ass dance move or one of the cast members nails a song, who giggle yet support the blond guy on stage who is trying desperately to BE Swayze and the amazing actress who nailed the talent show rehearsal scene.  The six of us determined to have fun and relive our tween moments, and yes, when Johnny comes running down the aisles of the Tennessee Theatre for the Last Scene, we are going to love it. I mean, come ON.

I’m still baffled by the evening.  I make it sound like we’re heathens, of course we aren’t. We know how to behave and be respectful, but this was not the show that required Cotillion behavior.  It was a complete clash of viewers – which marred the experience a bit for me.

Bottom line, if Dirty Dancing comes to your town – GO AS FAST AS YOU CAN.

And dear readers, just remember there is the theaatah, and there are the musical versions of goofy 1980’s movies.  Attend accordingly.

And now it is Summer

ejamienyc

And just like that… it’s been two weeks since my last post!

It’s that time of year, right? On the one hand, the lazy days of Summer have started. On the other, there’s so damn much going on I’m not sure where lazy fits in.  Final projects, end of school parties, sleepovers, dance recitals and pre-K graduations, you catch my drift.

So yeah – school’s out! OK, wait. can we talk about this? Today is JUNE 01.  The kids, at least the ones down here in the South, have already been out of school a week. The way the school year has changed is mind-boggling.

When I was a kid, we started school the week before Labor Day. I remember it well because the Catholic schools started before everyone else, who started the Tuesday after Labor Day.  When you’re ten, starting five days before everyone else might as well be starting five weeks before everyone else.  The point is, we started school when Summer was actually OVER.

We went to school until late December. Yeah, we got off for Thanksgiving, and probably an in-service day or two. We didn’t have Fall Break. We got two weeks off at Christmas, and went back a few days into January.  We did get Spring Break, but there was no additional Winter Break (isn’t that what the two weeks in December are?!).

And then we always got out around June 10 (this was when it was fun to be at Catholic school because we did get out before everyone else!) at which point Summer was not yet brutally hot- but definitely pool-worthy.

Isn’t that what you all did? And isn’t that what still happens in the NorthEast?

I have no idea how over the years the calendar has morphed into what we have now.

Which is to start school the second week in August, and get out before Memorial Day. WHAT?  No one ever seems to be able to explain the reasoning behind this bizarro calendar.  For a while I thought maybe the powers that be were trying to trick us into that whole year-round calendar thing, but that trend seems to have just died (and honestly, I’m quite ok with that).

When I started this post, I didn’t really have a specific topic or point to prattle on about, I just wanted to post because I hadn’t in a while.

But now I’m super curious about school schedules in other parts of the country (clearly I’ve got the SouthEast and the NorthEast covered).  So do tell. Comment on what it is like where you live. Even BETTER! Comment on why we have this start in August end in May nightmare here in the South.

 

writer’s block

ejamienyc

 

I don’t necessarily have writer’s block.

Most of my posts revolve around the hilarity/insanity of my day-to-day life, which generally means I have endless topics from which to choose. But when these rare periods of normalcy come about, my fingers freeze on the keyboard.

So in lieu of a goofy tale, I took to FaceBook to hunt down topic ideas.

oh my.

Have you MET my friends and family? #ohwait

Samples of suggested topics:

  • Eggs. Yes. Eggs.
    • not shockingly, I’m related by blood to the owner of that idea
  • Weird Coworkers & Duck-Billed Platypus
    • chances are good that the latter idea suggested by a coworker
  • Red Sox/Yankees
    • all kinds of fun with this one, from Sox and Yankees fans alike #JeterIsDone; #BothTeamsSuckRightNow
  • Air Travel
    • I feel like that is an invitation for either seriously Bad Karma or for a Delta Mobster to come track me down and end my days 
  • The effects of wine AND how to eat clean
    • I am a living oxymoron
  • Bigly.
    • all.the.words (do we laugh or do we run away in horror?!)
  • Mothers Day
    • I got to a one-day reprieve from poop-scooping! (thank you Bill!) #DontTellHimIToldYouGuys
  • Multiple suggestions from friends that I have known for 25+ years
    • first off this is a miracle since none of us are past the age of 23
    • we’d probably all lose our jobs and kids if I told any tales of our Memphis Days
    • but just for fun I made the picture shared on FB the featured image.. I bet a lot of you guys came to read when you saw that little gem!  

SUNSHINE

ejamienyc

I really want to blog – because we had a MOM SLUMBER PARTY – how fun is that?! – but y’all, the sun is out. And if you have spent even a hot minute in East Tennessee lately, you’d know the sun has made only rare appearances.

So as much as I’d love to tell you all about Mom Slumber Party shenanigans, well,  I’m going to sit out in the sun and do nothing.

TTFN!

Ooops She Did it Again..

ejamienyc

OK actually – we heard that song the other day in the car with Mini!! I don’t think she was all that impressed, but I sang along in the front seat anyway. And yes, I still know every word. I own my love for cheesy pop music.  (Somewhere in New Jersey, Rick Hankey is having heart palpitations that he is related to me). 

Wanna know what I did again?
I registered. For St. Jude Marathon. Again.

Just like I have the last couple of years, and for various reasons (either nagging injury or just plain lack of discipline/training on my part) I’ve bailed.  But not this year. I think for the first time in a long time, my head is in the right place as far as nutrition and fitness. And the other day a memory popped up on FB that was from my last full marathon in 2014 – oh Lord THAT is a story in itself. Remind me to tell y’all later.

So, I’m signed up at Silver Fundraising Level ($1500). You can be sure I’ll be bugging you for at least $10.  I know I know 150 people willing to give me ten bucks right?!  Bill is considering the half.  One of my BFF’s from growing up is also doing the full.  I’ve got seven months to train, and get stronger. I know there’s a certain tall blond coach out there talking to herself in her head saying “and faster! you gotta get faster!” .. we’ll see if that part comes to fruition.

So enough about me. This race isn’t about me. It is about St. Jude. And about kids. And about Memphis. And what that hospital does for kids & their families, and the impact that hospital has on that town. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it justice with words on a blog, but give me a few days and I’ll take a stab at it.

In the meantime, all of you out there are the ones who have to help hold me accountable. Don’t let me bail.

And of course, feel free to start donating.

Head Socks. Who knew?

ejamienyc

I honestly have no idea the last time I drove a go-kart. Probably back in early high school when we frequented the Putt-Putt on Summer Ave in Memphis Bartlett.  But today – oh yes – there were go-karts. Even better, they were INDOOR. Inside of an old Kroger (seems to me a genius idea to do with a giant space like an old grocery store… so why oh why did I not think of it first)?

We had attempted this place during Spring Break, which of course was a #fail since 95% of our third of the state was on the same break. Or so we thought. After today we realized that this place has regulars. Like Norm at Cheers. Or for that matter, like me at Aubrey’s. A gang of scraggly guys, all ages and shapes, and all in major need of a shower and shave. I’m somewhat surprised these guys didn’t drive right in in their own go-karts, vanity plates and all. This place full on-races, qualifying and grand-prix and possibly their own Winston Cup.

Oh – “this place” is called Veloce. Don’t ask me how to pronounce it.

Our little totaled four girls ages nine and ten, and two boys ages seven and eight. All super experienced drivers. Plus me, another mom and a super-tall dad.

There were kid cars maxing out at 25mph, and adult cars maxing out at 50mph.  Eileen actually qualified for the adult kart since she’s part giraffe, but no way would I let her in on that 50mph track!

img_5711-1
head socks. head socks. head socks.

Once we’d paid up (just one kidney each), the race track guy instructed the kids to go put on clean head socks. I look at fellow parentals utterly confused, just as the children bolt over to the shelf of clean head socks.  How the hell do these kids know what a head sock is?! And why do they know where they are and how to put them on? Before I can finish being baffled, the kids have fastened on their helmets over their clean head socks and are strapped into their assigned kart.  These are the moments when I question who has allowed me to keep this small human alive.

And then they were off, Eileen leading the charge. And they totally went for it! It was hilarious. So as they were racing, it was the adults turn to suit up! Thank goodness the kids had demonstrated how to use this head sock.

img_5720-1
parents in head socks. 

The hilarious thing about this picture ^^ is that fellow dad Dave and I have known each other since we were 18, having met at COLLEGE ORIENTATION the summer before we started our Freshman year. If you had told our 18year old selves that 20+ years later, our girls would be best friends and we’d be at a race track putting on head socks, we’d have laughed in your face and returned to our keg stands.

For the record, I am not a fan of a head sock. I now have even more respect for Danica Patrick, as these things are itchy, smelly, and make one’s whole head prickle with sweat. I’m also leery of how clean (or not) this thing was.

The kids wrapped up and were shouting with glee and ohmygawdthatwassoooawesome.  I, of course, was hollering at Eileen through my muzzle of a helmet + headsock to come get my phone because all of this had to be documented. If ever there was an adventure in activewear, this would be it. Just in the knick of time she got said phone and scooted out of the way just before I would have smacked into her shin.  I was all excited to be first. I was gonna ROCK this.

Or, not.

I may mimic Ms. Patrick when I’m out on I-40 speeding past all the mini-vans, but apparently not so much when on an actual racetrack.  I started first, and ended last. In fact, my time was only :04 faster than Eileen’s… and her car was 25mph slower than mine.

But who cares? It was so much stinkin fun! It was hilarious. I spun out twice, once on accident and then on purpose because it was so fun. Dave and Michele left me in their dust, and I think once I almost killed Dave when I stopped short and he had to swerve around me as he was lapping me.  My whole face shield thing started steaming up bc I was laughing and breathing so hard through that head sock I was creating a sauna in my head.

When it was all said and done, we had seven laps of epic fun. I highly recommend go-karts for a stress reliever. Who needs to be an adult when you’re on a race track? And if you need a buddy, I still have two rounds left on my ticket.  Wear your active wear.

And if you watch and don’t blink, you’ll see Eileen whiz by and wave.

 

Nest

ejamienyc

Y’all.  I’m writing a whole post about a thermostat. This ranks right up there with the “you know you’re old when you rant about gas prices”  line of thought (and we just won’t discuss how often gas prices have been discussed of late).

It is mid-April, and here in East Tennessee that means it is practically summer. Days in the 80s, flip-flops and shorts are in full swing. And of course, so are air conditioners. Last week I kept noticing that our AC was not behaving, and assumed it just needed some seasonal maintenance since the unit was only nine years old. #riiiight. I can’t fully explain what went wrong -something about a copper wire, a hole in the unit, and leaked gas. All I CAN explain is the part about needing a new unit.

Sigh. #yayadulting

So along with our shiny new HVAC, we decided to get one of those programmable thermostats. You know, the one you can control with your phone, that knows when to start cooling the house down and/or warming it up. What you may not know is that in order to OPERATE this fancy thermostat, you actually need a physics degree. And one in organic chemistry. And 20years experience as a developer or coder.

The first day, Bill and I stood in front of it. We pushed the center. YAY! A response. We assumed it was touch screen. Oh wait, not so much. We kept pushing the center. Nada. Then by sheer accident Bill touched the side and oh! It turns, and holy MOLY look at all the different screens! Whoa! It knows what time it is! And what the weather outside is!

I’m not making this up. These are the words that were coming out of our mouths. You’d have thought we had just woken from the Stone Age. Also, none of you are allowed to comment about the fact that we CLEARLY did not even open the instruction manual.

Well then Eileen and her BFF came downstairs. They’re 9 and 10, they have iPods and tablets and are expected to turn in their homework in PowerPoint format. But a thermostat that senses motion and lights up when you get close to it – well golly gee! Those two were enamored.  And of course could not keep their hands off it.  And then Eileen managed to turn on the HEAT. Did I mention it is in the 80s here? In perfect unison, her BFF and I yelled at her – mom voice and all – “EILEEN!” It then took the three of us a solid five minutes to figure out how to get it back to the cooling mode.  And we were incredibly proud of our team effort.

Eileen was then irked with me when I told her she could not download the app. Good Lord – I can just see us coming home on a sub-freezing day and the house is set at 60degrees.

Fast forward five days, and we’ve settled in pretty well with our Nest. We still get a little thrill of excitement when we walk by it and it lights up.  When I’m home alone, it kind of feels like I have a little friend hanging out there on the wall.

As far as I know, we’re not due for any other new appliances. So if you have your heart set on another appliance post any time soon, I curse you!

25.

ejamienyc

I wrote the original post at least 15 years ago, if not more. For a period of time, I posted it every year on this day. But then it started to feel performative, or attention seeking, or somehow shallow, and I stopped posting it. But this year feels different. Twenty-five years is a long time. It’s a whole generation, in fact, it’s almost two generations. A whole group of people who have no memory of that day or hadn’t even been born.

This year, this 25th year, feels like I should share it. As always, at this time of year, there are endless TV specials, footage all over social media, or – as seen earlier this week – blatant, rage-inducing lies, and gut-wrenching revelations.

It feels like the right time for a regular person to share what it was like that day. And no only that day, but also the weeks and months afterwards. What life became, the fear and terror that never really went away.

Original Post:

There was a time when I liked danger. As in a roller coaster or sky diving. Or getting a tattoo or rappelling down a cliff.  Or moving to NYC at age 22 with nothing but a college degree, a couple of connections, and parents who were willing to support me for a couple of months. It was fun, and I was always up for taking on a challenge.

And then came 9/11.

I don’t talk about it much. When I’m here in TN, when the subject or that time of year comes up, I stay quiet.  I get that that day changed anyone who was old enough to know what happened. But no one who wasn’t in NYC or DC or PA will ever get what that day was like.  If I’m with a group that puts two and two together and realizes I did indeed live there then, they ask questions with a morbid curiosity. I get it, it is human nature.  But I generally answer in the shortest way possible and then get the hell away from that conversation.

I was 26 years old. I was at the dentist, with a load of Novocain in the left side of my face. My appointment was finished, and I went to check out. The receptionist told me that two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers.  I remember asking how the heck could that happen…how could you not see the Towers? I remember assuming it was two small planes, like little Cessna’s or something. And she told me it was two jets.

And my stomach was on the floor. My sister & Josh’s offices were about 4 blocks from WTC.  I knew Josh was working from home that day on the Upper East Side but not my sister. This was all at about 9:15 … moments after the 2nd plane had hit.  I booked it out of the office, in the mid-50s in Manhattan. Everyone was walking around trying to get cell service. I came flying around the corner on Madison Ave and froze. Looking South was nothing but the blackest smoke one can ever ever imagine. Filling the sky.

I remember getting to a payphone because my cell wouldn’t work. I can’t believe there were even payphones still around. (and I remember that by that afternoon, somehow Bell Atlantic had made all the payphones free). My fingers were numb, and I couldn’t find coins. Once I did, I kept dialing and dialing. All lines busy. I remember getting through one time to my sister, she had just made it to her office and they were frantic and leaving. And then we got cut off. She had had told me they were leaving and all they knew was that they had to head north. I got through to my mom in NC and said I had no idea what was going on but I was ok and was going to work.

GOING TO WORK? I look back now and wonder why in the hell I did that. But no one could fathom what the hell was going on. And we were supposed to shoot with Emeril on the next day, so I needed to get in to get that all finalized. Seems so surreal now to think I was concerned with an Emeril shoot.

And I walked the rest of the way to work. As did lots of other New Yorkers. We didn’t know what else to do. This was still before the planes had crashed in PA and DC. I remember standing outside the Fox News building, across the street from Food Network offices, and reading the red news ticker go across the building. Reading the ticker and then looking south and seeing smoke. It wasn’t clicking. It wasn’t real.

At work, most people were there. They were already on their way and didn’t know what else to do.  So I started working. I was still moving forward with finalizing Emeril stuff. We all had TVs on and were listening and watching.  And I will never forget when one of the girls from traffic screamed. The first tower had fallen. Incomprehensible. I don’t think my feet touched the floor when I went over to her desk.

And it was gone. The TV just showed this image that made no sense. That was the first time I cried. And was terrified. And of course the planes had hit PA and DC by now. We didn’t know if there were more coming. It was about this time the management started to send us home. I hadn’t talked to my sister in an hour and had no idea where she was. I couldn’t get through to my cousin who also worked in NYC (but lived in Jersey) but somehow got thru to my Aunt in MA. She had talked to him and knew he was already heading back to Jersey.  I somehow got through to Josh and told him I was coming home.  I remember I had talked to my dad. He’d told me to get water and cash. And I remember telling Josh to go get it since he was home.

When the first tower fell, it took the massive antenna with it that was the main cell service provider. There was virtually no cell service. And land lines were a mess. Subways had been shut down completely. Bridges were closed. Buses were running, but they were cram packed with people the officials were getting out of downtown.

So I walked. What’s funny to me is it was a gorgeous day. It was in the 70s, no humidity, clear blue sky.  It was about a 2 hour walk. And it was surreal. I remember being so glad I’d worn really comfy flip flops. I remember taxis parked on the curb, with their doors open and radios up all the way, so anyone walking by could get updates. Same thing with bars and restaurants. They had doors and windows thrown open. Most weren’t open for business yet, but people just stood in the doors and at the windows watching. At some point on my walk I was almost home, and I got through to Josh. He’d talked to my sister for only a second. We still had no idea where she was, but we knew she’d gotten out of downtown and was alive.

At one point, walking down the middle of First Ave.. there were no cars and there were so many people walking… we just spilled out onto the street. Throngs and throngs of people. I remember thinking it looked straight out of a movie.  And I remember a bus going past me. Heading North.  Packed with people. And as it passed me I just stared. There was a guy riding along the back. Literally standing on the bumper and just hanging on. One of those things that wouldn’t be written about. No one would ever hear about that guy. He’d probably been walking for hours from downtown and had a ways to go to get to the Bronx. I remember thinking it would have been funny if it were any other day. It would have been some whacked out New Yorker out for a thrill ride. But that day it was a desperate attempt to just get home. To safety. Even tho we all knew we’d never feel safe again. Not even at home.

And I finally got home. Opened the apt door. And was hit with the smell of unfinished wood. Bizarre right?  We had ordered an unfinished bar the weekend before, and arranged to have it delivered on the 11th. And it got delivered. The delivery truck was already almost to the apartment when everything had started to happen, so they just delivered it. It is still out on the back deck, and we’ll never get rid of it.

I remember hugging Josh. But still not freaking out. I remember being methodical. Like, I need to get in touch with so and so and so and so. More stuff about the shoot. That’s what I was concerned with. And I remember just trying to get in touch with family. Of all days.. all 4 of my parents were in different cities. My stepdad was in Atlanta, mom was home in NC. My dad was in CA, and my stepmom was home in Memphis. Josh had gotten several gallons of water. We were terrified the water supply would somehow be threatened.  And then we just sat there. But we couldn’t sit there. We didn’t want to be alone. We needed to be out in the street with everyone else. We were so scared, but wanted to be scared with everyone else.

So, odd as it might sound, we went to the Irish pub next door. And it was packed. And silent. Wall to wall with people drinking beer. No one was drunk. Everyone just sat there stone faced watching TV,  we got a table. And I remember I was starting to shake. And I sent Josh out for cigarettes. I hadn’t had one in a long time. That day, I didn’t give a shit. And I smoked and had a beer or two. We stayed there a couple of hours and then went home.

Sometime in that afternoon I had heard from Shannon. She and Angela had made it home, and they too went to their neighborhood bar. Looking back, I don’t know why we didn’t go down to her apartment. I really don’t. She saw much worse than me. She literally had to run through the streets, just going north to survive.

At some point my boss had somehow gotten thru to me to tell me the offices would be closed the next day. The day we were supposed to shoot with Emeril. And I remember having to cancel some VO sessions and the crew. Random crap like that.  I still have my notebook from that time.. I still have the page.. with my to do list that I’d written on Monday 9/10 for me to do the next day. I still go back and look at the random chicken scratch and phone numbers that I then was writing on 9/11. I will never throw it away.

I remember coming back to our apartment building. I guess it was early evening by now. We went up to the roof. We lived in a high rise. We took pictures of the smoke. There were fighter jets everywhere. Just circling Manhattan. Terrifying yet comforting. I remember there were already pictures up everywhere of missing people. We lived in a part of town where lots of young financial professionals lived. Lots of people who worked down there.

I don’t know how long we were home when we heard a knock at our door. It was my old roommate Opal and her boyfriend Eric. They too just didn’t want to be at home alone. So we all went to a bar down the street. I remember they were just doing happy hour prices all night. There was nothing happy about it. They just knew it was all they could do I guess. Bush had been president 9 mos. I couldn’t stand him. That night tho, I remember watching him on the big screen in that bar. You could have heard a pin drop. And that night, I liked him. I really did. If and when I tell people we went to a bar that night, most think I am the worst human on the planet. They don’t get that no one was there for a good time. Everyone was there bc everyone was terrified. Everyone was there bc they just needed reassurance that everyone else was just as scared. Everyone was there bc they just wanted to be with fellow New Yorkers. Everyone was there bc we knew no one, no one else, would ever ever understand. We had a couple of pitchers, and then we just went home.

I had nightmares that night. I had them for weeks. I still have them now. They are rare these days. But they will come, out of nowhere, and they are vivid. And horrible. I remember that first night my sister calling several times, managing to get through the nightmare phone lines. Just so scared.  I remember waking up the next morning. Hoping it was just a big nightmare. And turning on the TV and knowing nothing more than we’d known the day before. We met my sister and her roommate for breakfast. We bought a NY Times and Daily News. I still have them. I remember we just walked the Upper East Side in a daze. That afternoon we got scared. We could smell smoke. We thought something else had happened. But no, it was the smoke working its way up Manhattan. Acrid. Burning. And I remember seeing Army vehicles. So many of them in a parade down 2nd Ave. HUGE trucks. They were going to start getting the debris. You know what else? I went to the gym that morning on 9/12. Ran on the treadmill. Cried the whole time. The gym was packed.

I remember my boss calling me to tell me we did have to work on Thursday. I remember contact with our parents being helter skelter bc there was still no cell service and land lines were locked up.

I remember Josh walking me to the bus that Thursday. I usually took the subway, but that day I wanted the bus. I was terrified of being stuck on a train underground. There was such paranoia that every single time someone coughed wrong, they stopped the trains and had the swat team there.

That day, that Thursday. I remember calling my vendors. About VO sessions and stuff. And we all felt so stupid. Who the hell cared about a VO? It seemed so asinine to have to even worry about it.

That Saturday me, Shannon, Josh, her roommate, I think David, and another friend went down to the site. We have pictures. Pictures of bombed out mail trucks still just sitting on the street. Pictures of firefighters changing shifts. Covered in that gray dust. And crowds cheering for them. So thankful for them. And scared for them.  And proud for them.

One of our producers at the time lived a few blocks away from the towers. She had tapes in her apt that day. When she finally made it back to work a couple of weeks later, the tapes still had the dust on them.

There are so many things about that time in NYC that no one knows. Except those of us that were there. For the next 6 mos, no one was ever ever to work on time. You’d get stuck on a train for hours. Just waiting for the next threat to be cleared.  Seeing cops with massive guns became the norm. I mean- like AK 47s. There was a plane crash about 6 weeks later at JFK. We heard the news come on, and we froze. I was at work. And I immediately started crying. We all did. We were convinced it was happening again.  It turned out to be a freak accident. Everyone on board died. It was gut wrenching.

Early that November – at least 8 weeks later- I had a shoot downtown. About three blocks from the site. And I remember the smoke still being so thick. So prevalent. When I got home that night, it smelled like I’d been at a campfire for hours. I still can smell it in my mind.

I remember one morning that December. Watching the Today Show while I got ready for work. And I froze. Matt Lauer was doing a story about purple ties and how they were the current trend in men’s fashion. I am sure one wonders why that story made me freeze. It was the first time in months that there was a story NOT about 9/11 on the Today Show. It was the first fluff, who-really-cares-story, that was covered in the news. The first sign that maybe, just maybe some sort of normalcy would return to our life as we knew it.

Somehow, I knew no one personally that died that day. There were friends of friends – too many too count. But I did not know anyone personally. Nor did Josh, Shannon or David.

It was July 2005 when the train bombings happened in London. We’d come back to Knoxville a few years before.  I remember waking up to that story. And crying. And crying. It was happening again.

That’s it. That’s my story about danger. I no longer want to ride roller coasters. I no longer need to get that thrill of danger. I have had a lifetime’s worth.  I still have the nightmares. I still, and I am not exaggerating, flip out if I hear a plane overhead that sounds too low. Or if I see one flying that looks too low. I literally freeze, and I start to lose my breath and talk myself down.

There’s so much more I could tell. Still stories from that day, that time period that I still have in my head. I don’t doubt for a minute that day changed so many people. I can’t believe I’ve never written about it before now. Someday maybe I’ll share it with others.

Seventeen Years

ejamienyc

update: this past October, I took Eileen to NYC for the first time ever.  She very much wanted to see the Freedom Tower and the 9/11 Memorial.  I did not want to go – not because it isn’t important, or well done, or meaningful -or for any other reason other than I was not sure how I would react. But we went, because it IS important. We went to the new mall, we visited the amazing – breathtaking- memorial.  I showed her the church that miraculously sustained little to no damage, and that served as a shelter and place to sleep for the volunteers, firefighters and rescue personnel. I held myself together, because I guess that’s just what you do in front of your kid. We did not visit the actual museum, I likely will not ever be able to get through that.

And then we went to the top of the Freedom Tower. I was stunned, I was speechless. It is beautiful, amazing, and resilient. 

…And then came 9/11.

I don’t talk about it much. When I’m here in TN, when the subject or that time of year comes up, I stay quiet.  I get that that day changed anyone who was old enough to know what happened. But no one who wasn’t in NYC or DC or PA will ever get what that day was like.  If I’m with a group that puts two and two together and realizes I did indeed live there then, they ask questions with a morbid curiosity. I get it, its human nature.  But I generally answer in the shortest way possible and then get the hell away from that conversation.

I was 26 years old. I was at the dentist, with a load of Novocain in the left side of my face. My appointment was finished, and I went to check out. The receptionist told me that two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers.  I remember asking how the heck could that happen…how could you not see the Towers? I remember asking or assuming it was two small planes, like little Cessna’s or something. And she told me it was two jets.

And my stomach was on the floor. My sister & Josh’s offices were about 4 blocks from WTC.  I knew Josh was working from home that day on the Upper East Side but not my sister. This was all at about 9:15 … moments after the 2nd plane had hit.  I booked it out of the office, in the mid-50s in Manhattan. Everyone was walking around trying to get cell service. I came flying around the corner on Madison Ave and froze. Looking South was nothing but the blackest smoke one can ever ever imagine. Filling the sky.

I remember getting to a payphone because my cell wouldn’t work. I can’t believe there were even payphones still around. (and I remember that by that afternoon, somehow Bell Atlantic had made all the payphones free). My fingers were numb, and I couldn’t find coins. Once I did, I kept dialing and dialing. All lines busy. I remember getting through one time to my sister, she had just made it to her office and they were frantic and leaving. And then we got cut off. She had had told me they were leaving and all they knew was that they had to head north. I got through to my mom in NC and said I had no idea what was going on but I was ok and was going to work.

GOING TO WORK? I look back now and wonder why in the hell I did that. But no one could fathom what the hell was going on. And we were supposed to shoot the next day, so I needed to get in to get that all finalized. Seems so surreal now to think I was concerned with a shoot.

And I walked the rest of the way to work. As did lots of other New Yorkers. We didn’t know what else to do. This was still before the planes had crashed in PA and DC. I remember standing outside the Fox News building, across the street from Food Network offices, and reading the red news ticker go across the building. Reading the ticker and then looking south and seeing smoke. It wasn’t clicking. It wasn’t real.

At work, most people were there. They were already on their way and didn’t know what else to do.  So I started working. I was still moving forward with finalizing my shoot details. We all had TVs on and were listening and watching.  And I will never forget when one of the girls from traffic screamed. The first tower had fallen. Incomprehensible. I don’t think my feet touched the floor when I went over to her desk.

And it was gone. The TV just showed this image that made no sense. That was the first time I cried. And was terrified. And of course the planes had hit PA and DC by now. We didn’t know if there were more coming. It was about this time the management started to send us home. I hadn’t talked to my sister in an hour and had no idea where she was. I couldn’t get through to my cousin who also worked in NYC (but lived in Jersey) but somehow got thru to my Aunt in MA. She had talked to him and knew he was already heading back to Jersey.  I somehow got through to Josh and told him I was coming home.  I remember I had talked to my dad. He’d told me to get water and cash. And I remember telling Josh to go get it since he was home.

When the first tower fell, it took the massive antenna with it that was the main cell service provider. There was virtually no cell service. And land lines were a mess. Subways had been shut down completely. Bridges were closed. Buses were running, but they were cram packed with people the officials were getting out of downtown.

So I walked. It was a gorgeous day. It was in the 70s, no humidity, clear blue sky.  It was about a 2 hour walk. And it was surreal. I remember being so glad I’d worn really comfy flip flops. I remember taxis parked on the curb, with their doors open and radios up all the way, so anyone walking by could get updates. Same thing with bars and restaurants. They had doors and windows thrown open. Most weren’t open for business yet, but people just stood in the doors and at the windows watching. At some point on my walk I was almost home, and I got through to Josh. He’d talked to my sister for only a second. We still had no idea where she was, but we knew she’d gotten out of downtown and was alive.

At one point, walking down the middle of First Ave.. there were no cars and there were so many people walking… we just spilled out onto the street. Throngs and throngs of people. I remember thinking it looked straight out of a movie.  And I remember a bus going past me. Heading North.  Packed with people. And as it passed me I just stared. There was a guy riding along the back. Literally standing on the bumper and just hanging on. One of those things that wouldn’t be written about. No one would ever hear about that guy. He’d probably been walking for hours from downtown and had a ways to go to get to the Bronx. I remember thinking it would have been funny if it were any other day. It would have been some whacked out New Yorker out for a thrill ride. But that day it was a desperate attempt to just get home. To safety. Even tho we all knew we’d never feel safe again. Not even at home.

And I finally got home. Opened the apt door. And was hit with the smell of unfinished wood. Bizarre right?  We had ordered an unfinished bar the weekend before, and arranged to have it delivered on the 11th. And it got delivered. The delivery truck was already almost to the apartment when everything had started to happen, so they just delivered it. It is still out on the back deck, and we’ll never get rid of it.

I remember hugging Josh. But still not freaking out. I remember being methodical. Like, I need to get in touch with so and so and so and so. More stuff about the shoot. That’s what I was concerned with. And I remember just trying to get in touch with family. Of all days.. all 4 of my parents were in different cities. My stepdad was in Atlanta, mom was home in NC. My dad was in CA, and my stepmom was home in Memphis. Josh had gotten several gallons of water. We were terrified the water supply would somehow be threatened.  And then we just sat there. But we couldn’t sit there. We didn’t want to be alone. We needed to be out in the street with everyone else. We were so scared, but wanted to be scared with everyone else.

So, odd as it might sound, we went to the Irish pub next door. And it was packed. And silent. Wall to wall with people drinking beer. No one was drunk. Everyone just sat there stone faced watching TV,  we got a table. And I remember I was starting to shake. And I sent Josh out for cigarettes. I hadn’t had one in a long time. That day, I didn’t give a shit. And I smoked and drank. We stayed there a couple of hours and then went home.

Sometime in that afternoon I had heard from my sister. She and her roommate had made it home, and they too went to their neighborhood bar. Looking back, I don’t know why we didn’t go down to her apartment. I really don’t. She saw much worse than me. She literally had to run through the streets, just going north to survive.

At some point my boss had somehow gotten through to me to tell me the offices would be closed the next day. The day we were supposed to shoot. And I remember having to cancel some VO sessions and my crew. Random crap like that.  I still have my notebook from that time.. I still have the page.. with my to do list that I’d written on Monday 9/10 for me to do the next day. I still go back and look at the random chicken scratch and phone numbers that I then was writing on 9/11. I will never throw it away.

I remember coming back to our apartment building. I guess it was early evening by now. We went up to the roof. We lived in a high rise. We took pictures of the smoke. There were fighter jets everywhere. Just circling Manhattan. Terrifying yet comforting. I remember there were already pictures up everywhere of missing people. We lived in a part of town where lots of young financial professionals lived. Lots of people who worked in or near the towers.

I don’t know how long we were home when we heard a knock at our door. It was my old roommate and her boyfriend. They too just didn’t want to be at home alone. So we all went to a bar down the street. I remember they were just doing happy hour prices all night. There was nothing happy about it. They just knew it was all they could do I guess. Bush had been president 9 months. I couldn’t stand him. That night though, I remember watching him on the big screen in that bar. You could have heard a pin drop. And that night I liked him. I really did. If and when I tell people we went to a bar that night, most think I am the worst human on the planet. They don’t get that no one was there for a good time. Everyone was there bc everyone was terrified. Everyone was there bc they just needed reassurance that everyone else was just as scared. Everyone was there bc they just wanted to be with fellow New Yorkers. Everyone was there bc we knew no one, no one else, would ever ever understand. We had a couple of pitchers, and then we just went home.

I had nightmares that night. I had them for weeks. I still have them now. They are rare these days. But they will come, out of nowhere, and they are vivid. And horrible. I remember that first night my sister calling several times. Just so scared.  I remember waking up the next morning. Hoping it was just a big nightmare. And turning on the TV and knowing nothing more than we’d known the day before. We met my sister and her roommate for breakfast. We bought a NY Times and Daily News. I still have them. I remember we just walked the Upper East Side in a daze. That afternoon we got scared. We could smell smoke. We thought something else had happened. But no, it was the smoke working its way up Manhattan. Acrid. Burning. And I remember seeing Army vehicles. So many of them in a parade down 2nd Ave. HUGE trucks. They were going to start getting the debris. You know what else? I went to the gym that morning on 9/12. Ran on the treadmill. Cried the whole time. The gym was packed.

I remember my boss calling me to tell me we did have to work on Thursday. I remember contact with our parents being helter-skelter because there was still no cell service and land lines were locked up.

I remember Josh walking me to the bus that Thursday. I usually took the subway, but that day I wanted the bus. I was terrified of being stuck on a train underground. There was such paranoia that every single time someone coughed wrong, they stopped the trains and had the swat team there.

That day, that Thursday. I remember calling my vendors. About VO sessions and stuff. And we all felt so stupid. Who the hell cared about a VO? It seemed so asinine to have to even worry about it.

That Saturday we went down to the site. We have pictures. Pictures of bombed out mail trucks still just sitting on the street. Pictures of firefighters changing shifts. Covered in that gray dust. And crowds cheering for them. So thankful for them. And scared for them.  And proud for them.

One of our producers at the time lived a few blocks away from the towers. She had tapes in her apartment that day. When she finally made it back to work a couple of weeks later, the tapes still had the dust on them.

There are so many things about that time in NYC that no one knows. Except those of us that were there. For the next 6 mos, no one was ever ever to work on time. You’d get stuck on a train for hours. Just waiting for the next threat to be cleared.  Seeing cops with massive guns became the norm. I mean- like AK 47s. There was a plane crash about 6 weeks later at JFK. We heard the news come on, and we froze. I was at work. And I immediately started crying. We all did. We were convinced it was happening again.  It turned out to be a freak accident. Everyone on board died. It was gut wrenching.

Early that November – at least 8 weeks later- I had a shoot downtown. About three blocks from the site. And I remember the smoke still being so thick. So prevalent. When I got home that night, it smelled like I’d been at a campfire for hours. I still can smell it in my mind.

I remember one morning that December, watching the Today Show while I got ready for work. And I froze. Matt Lauer was doing a story about purple ties and how they were the current trend in men’s fashion. I am sure one wonders why that story made me freeze. It was the first time in months that there was a story NOT about 9/11 on the Today Show. It was the first fluff, who-really-cares-story, that was covered in the news. The first sign that maybe, just maybe some sort of normalcy would return to our life as we knew it.

Somehow, I knew no one personally that died that day. There were friends of friends – too many too count. But I did not know anyone personally.

It was July 2005 when the train bombings happened in London. We’d come back to Knoxville a few years before.  I remember waking up to that story. And crying. And crying. It was happening again.

That’s it. That’s my story about danger. I no longer want to ride roller coasters. I no longer need to get that thrill of danger. I have had a lifetime’s worth.  I still have the nightmares. I still, and I am not exaggerating, flip out if I hear a plane overhead that sounds too low. Or if I see one flying that looks too low. I literally freeze, and I start to lose my breath and talk myself down.

There’s so much more I could tell. Still stories from that day, that time period that I still have in my head. I don’t doubt for a minute that day changed so many people. I can’t believe I’ve never written about it before now. Someday maybe I’ll share it with others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BUNNY!!!!!!

ejamienyc

You guys. What is it about our house and wild animals?

In the past four years:

  • a bird trapped in the house on Thanksgiving day (and no, I don’t mean the one in the oven)
  • a dead mole left for us in the dining room
  • a baby bunny brought to us on the night before Easter
  • and the latest.. a baby bunny in the house… FOR 24 HOURS

And, just for fun, three of these four adventures have taken place when Bill happened to not be home. #facepalm

On to today..

quick set up: we have a dog-door on the screened-in porch,  and the porch door leads into the dining room. when it’s nice out, sometimes said dining room door is left open to let in fresh air.  as was the case yesterday.

Around mid-morning, I saw Finn trot into the den from said porch rather quickly – that kind of trot when you KNOW your kid/pet is trying to not be noticed because THEY know they’re doing something wrong.  I follow him into the den, and he was frantically sniffing all around the couch. Weird. He wasn’t barking, not whining or scratching, just sniffing and sniffing. Clearly there wasn’t a toy stuck under it, because why would that require laps around the WHOLE couch?

I actually texted Bill to say I thought there might be a critter in the house.  But soon after, Finn had lost interest. And Cedar – generally the more hyper and verbal of the two – had ZERO interest in the couch. So I blew it off and forgot about it.  I mean, if Cedar didn’t care, then there was clearly nothing to worry about.

The day moved along with exciting adventures like laundry, a Target run and doctor appointments. Fascinating I know. The point is the dogs were alone in the house for several hours. SEVERAL HOURS. I’ll come back to that.

Day moves into night. Crazy storms (again). We watched a movie, in the den, with the dogs. Then went to bed, the dogs curled up in their spots, in the den.

Nothing to report here. Just normal suburbia. Laundry. Gym. Cleaning the house.

Ahh.. cleaning the house. I’m dusting and sweeping.  Ahhh..sweeping. We have hardwood floors and two Golden Retrievers, even with their summer cuts, the fur in our house is EPIC. Since I am such an amazing house-cleaner, I do that kind of barely-there sweep, where about 1/4-inch of the broom goes under the couch to make it look like there is no fur and dust.

Around this time, Cedar starts to go bananas. Running around the couch, sniffing and clearly agitated. I use that handy phone flashlight function, lay on the floor, and see a nasty fur-covered tennis ball. UGH.  I know he won’t leave it alone until I get that blasted ball. I can’t reach with my right hand, so I roll into some pretzel position trying to reach it with my left. Strrrretching and I can just reach it with my fingertips.

AND THEN IT MOVED.  OMG I TOUCHED IT. 

I’m not entirely sure how I didn’t break glass with the noise that came out of my body. I somehow managed to gain a modicum of control and get a peek again and all I COULD SEE WERE EARS.

Along with being an amazing housekeeper, I rock at adulting. Which is why I promptly ran frantically to the porch to summon Mini for moral support. In case you’re not aware, Mini is about 10 weeks shy of 12 years old.  #facepalmtimestwo

Bill was home with a click of his heels. He was stunned at the bunny’s size (turns out this was most certainly not a baby), and even he, thick farm gloves and all, was leery of getting the bunny. It may be cute, but rabies is not.

Here’s what’s even crazier:

  • called our exterminator; they don’t do anything bigger than mice
  • called the business they recommended – they could not get to us today because they were so busy.  Wait, what? I mean how many wild animal situations are happening in this town?
  • called the next recommendation – they were able to get us worked in.

Clearly I should consider running a similar business?

Varmint Catcher was in and out of the house in less than five minutes. I was amazed. He had special gloves and a cage, and clearly is not a fraidy cat. For any PETA members reading – the bunny did have a minor wound and was being taken to a clinic to be treated and re-released.  I’m hopeful the bunny warns all his bunny friends to stay far, far away from our house.

During all of this, the dogs were on the porch (with ceiling fans, shade and ice-water, as it is hotter than hell’s front door out there). Barking like maniacs. Which has left me with a helluva headache. There will be wine or Tito’s later.

The fact that this bunny was IN THIS HOUSE for 24 HOURS and LEFT ALIVE is nothing short of a miracle. I can’t believe we didn’t come home from yesterday’s errands and walk into a scene from Criminal Minds.

Not that I’m complaining.

And for those keeping score, active wear was worn by me throughout this adventure.