Better and stronger.

I took the dog for a walk and walked right into a deluge, seeing the opportunity of the last real dog bath of the season, I walk slowly home in the rain in hopes of getting the dog good and wet.

I threw the dog into to the entry way and raced to find his dog soap - found soap, but not the soap I wanted, dawdle, dawdle. Get back to the dog and it stops raining .

I get the mostly but not entirely wet dog back outside and start to soap him up. He needs to be more wet. I drag the dog to the hose - he knows what the hose is and he declines to spend th time with the hose or the water that comes out of it.

Wrestle the wet, slippery dog into submission. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Dog keeps trying to leave the bathing area, seems to believe that the further from the hose he is, that he may be able to escape the bath, he is wrong.. Over and over again. I win because I am bigger, stronger, and smarter. Please note  new mantra.

Dog gets  mostly dried, I do not. Wet from walk and bath. We go to Wally because who cares how wet I am or how much I smell like a wet dog, I am A People of Walmart! - I need protean bars and dog food! I am unstoppable and I smell of doggy shampoo! I also need raspberries, toilet paper and a  better quality denim-ish leggings than I have now, also bedtime treats for the dog and a dog toy to reward him for not actually killing me mid bath.



On September 11, 2001 I was just a few months into my job with the state. I was on a step stool filing some correspondence into Mary Gran Nursing Center and my computer beeped to let me know I had email. My brother emailed me to let me know he saw a story about a small plane crashing into the World Trade Center. I went online and found reports of maybe a small plane landed on one of the buildings, I couldn't get on CNN.Com. Something very bad had happened.

I ended up with dozens of CNN breaking news alerts for the day. I had gotten my first one a few days before when Maureen Reagan died.  The breaking news from September 11, 2001 as they arrived, later alerts that were on topic.

I kept trying to call my parents using my calling card, the number on the card was wrong and it wouldn't work, it started with a zero and they didn't start numbers with zero. I was getting hysterical because I really needed to call them. The phone people finally let me speak with them, it was hard because the phone lines were jammed because everyone was hysterically calling everyone. The phone card people later sent me a new card with a correct number on it.

We watched the buildings fall on streaming video it didn't seem real. I had never watched video on a computer before. I do not remember registering images of people jumping.  I walked down the hall to let the people at that end without video know the second building had fallen. There were planes still in the air and they crashed too. Into the Pentagon, into the ground. There were no more plans in the air anywhere. I went home and watched TV and wondered what they were going to do on Friends and where they lived in relation to where the buildings were. I read an Entertainment Weekly that didn't seem to be written in English. I watched the news for hours. Two days later I stopped my car dead in the middle of one of the streets on campus because I suddenly remembered all the people from school who had gone to New York after graduation. A few calls told me that all were accounted for, one of the guys wives was in the second building on her way to work but she got out. I cried at my desk a lot and my Social Worker boss told me to limit my media exposure.