About This Blog
A blog about my life, universe, etc. At any given time you might find something endlessly interesting or just me ruminating on something else, which no one (not even myself) finds interesting. That's the way blogs go, I suppose. Anyway, I was eleventh in line, and you weren't. Hah!

About Me
Name:
Sarah
Age:
26
Residence:
Columbus, OH
Religion:
LDS
Political Score:
5.00/-2.15
Job:
Temp @ JPMorgan Chase
College:
Ohio State University
Majors:
Political Science, International Studies
High School: Home Educated
Hobbies:
Reading, standing in line for things, writing, research
Resume:
HotJobs
Email:
lloannna@gmail.com

About My Family
My mom is a lawyer in Pickerington; my stepdad and dad are computer guys, and my stepmom (who works with my dad) is an engineer. My sisters are, in order of age, a photographer, an artist, and a person too young to have her own website. My brothers are, in order of age, living up north, and again, a person too young to have a website. At some point soon I'll be collecting links for my aunts, uncle, and cousins. ^_^

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Message Services
(Please see the notes below the Comment Policy before sending me a message)
AIM:
lloannna
ICQ:
29395930
Yahoo:
lloannna

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My CafePress Designs

Even More CafePress Designs

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Star Wars: Episode 3 Line (Hollywood)
My Star Wars Line page

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NaNoWriMo 2007:
My Novel: Cipere Lumen




NaNoWriMo 2006:
My Novel: The Manatee Conspiracy




NaNoWriMo 2005:
My Novel: Beyond the Cliffs of Kefira





NaNoWriMo 2004:
My Novel: sul Okyar tir taTz'ileea

 
Today is Sept. 12th...   For various reasons, including the fact that I was in bed being lazy until almost 10am on Sept. 11th, 2001 (reminder to my sisters: when important things happen, WAKE ME UP) -- actually, I was doing that about four feet from where I'm sitting now, where the treadmill is currently (long story) -- Sept. 12th, 2001 sticks more firmly in my mind than the 11th does. My mom and stepfather were on the road to a genealogy conference (in I think Illinois), and had called us the afternoon of the 11th to let us know they were alive and were going to continue driving to the conference (we were really mad at them for that). Anyway, I watched TV in my pajamas until very late at night, and then got up the morning of the 12th around 5am, and decided it would be a good thing for my younger sisters (and me) if I went and bought milk and donuts. As I recall, the girl at Tim Hortons was in total shock -- and the lady I got the milk from (it was I think a UDF, or something, I'm probably wrong) couldn't make change. The streets were utterly deserted, and it just felt like a totally different country from the one I had lived in on the 10th. That feeling of wandering around the area in my mom's Buick, worrying about the airport (it's about 10 miles away, and we can watch planes coming in to land; we know right away when a new flight pattern is established) and just feeling so massively jittery (previously the closest thing to that jittery, that I'd felt, was the mornings before I took the SAT and ACT -- that feeling was NOTHING compared to what I felt on the 12th), is what stuck with me most. And it's never gone away; just ebbed and flowed with changing circumstances (it gets a lot higher when, for example, I go to a Presidential appearance). It's like the day that never quite ended, for me; the feeling didn't go away when the local news stations started talking about the five or ten gas stations that were charging $5 a gallon, the feeling didn't change when I finally got the motivation to go and re-read that part of "Debt of Honor" by Tom Clancy, which was the very first thing I thought of doing on the 11th once the immediate shock had set in and the capacity to analyze things had resumed. I still have to blink when I see the present-day WTC site, because part of my mind insists that it's still burning, because that's what it was doing on the 12th, which is the day that never ended. Randomly: I have no real personal memory of the WTC while it was standing, the one trip we took into the city when I turned 13, we spent the whole day in Central Park and the surrounding area, and I was frankly so preoccupied with things at street level that I hardly looked up; I felt for a while like I wasn't qualified to feel upset over the thing being destroyed, since I had no previous awareness of what it even looked like.

Anyway, for me, Sept. 11th is when I formally "remember" stuff (watching memorials, like the one Glenn Reynolds linked to today, listening to the lists of names, etc.), and the 12th is the day when I really feel the stuff I felt at the time. It's the psychologically harder time for me; I'm always much better during the funeral than before or after, I guess you could say. I have a harder time feeling detached, unemotional, analytical about the whole thing; today (the 12th) I won't be able to bring myself to watch a Sept. 11th video at all (my sisters, for what it's worth, spent yesterday mostly watching Ben Hur -- Caroline was actively avoiding the memorials on TV). Yesterday was the day when I could go to work (my first real day out of training, BTW -- I get to keep my tips now) and be glad that I was helping to make sure the terrorists couldn't destroy our way of life; today I'm glad that the only thing I have to do is go to church, and maybe sing in the stake choir for conference next week.

So, today's a good day to focus on stuff that's better than it was three years ago, for me. Oddly, I've come full circle -- I'm back in my mother's basement; in a month will be the third anniversary of my first day of work at Steak 'n Shake (I was actually officially hired by the same manager twice, three years apart, at a different store this time than the last), and the end of my 30 day probationary period at Steak 'n Shake. There are changes, of course -- now I have even more friends in far away places, who I can't see. ^_^ No, now I'm more mature, more focused, more stable -- which is a good thing, because now I'm almost 24 instead of almost 21. Now I'm trying to hold down a job and go to church and pay attention in Sunday School, and finish what I start, because those things mean something to me, and not because I'll get a good grade or make my parents stop bugging me, or whatever.

Today I'll start paying tithing again, something that I didn't do (for a lot of really dumb reasons) while I was working at Disney. And I'll sing hymns and do all the other things I know I should do (which I knew I should do, last year, but I wasn't doing them anyway).

Today I'll go to bed at a reasonable hour, and wake up at a reasonable hour, and not be tense and scared that more than four hours of sleep is impossible to achieve. Every year that part gets easier, and feels more wrong (last year was worst than 2002 or, I suspect, 2004, because I was in the Disney fog and things were just... wrong).

But I think I'll try to leave figuring out the mess above, not to mention all the other stuff that I haven't figured out the words in order to write down, to some other day. Because today is just... I don't know. Hard.
posted by Sarah at 1:35 AM. | 0 comments |