Beyond the usual creepy weirdness

On October first, the big off-brand Rubbermaid style buckets get dragged up from the basement so that the children can scatter bats and skulls and assorted Halloween decorations all over the house. When November arrives and it is time to pack it away, a few favorites will become part of the permanent house decor. We’re the poverty version of the Addams family.

Someday I’m going to try a spooky Christmas tree

Car update

The dealership repaired the seat belt. The back window has been replaced a second time because it didn’t take the first time. I didn’t know that was a possibility, but if there’s rare chance of anything strange, you know we’re bizarro magnets.

The back door latch opening and closing incessantly and the multiple safety alarms it trips are still the same. Someone said there might be glass in the door motor, but the two tries glass repair dudes said there’s no more glass slivers anywhere. <- insert eye roll here ->

The side effect of the back door latch chaos is that we’ve had to replace the car battery. This week’s SAT math practice is determining how long a battery lasts with a broken something in the car draining it. Bonus points for guesstimating how many batteries it will take to get to the root of this mystery auto breakage.

In summary for our collective missing attention span, the boat is leaking and we’re bailing water instead of plugging the invisible hole.

Nostalgia for what

Every year on this day, the ‘America was love and brotherhood on 9/12/01’ memes get plastered on social media. I can understand people who were children on 9/11 thinking this. The adults saying it need to do some serious reflection about how they experienced the day and weeks after 3000 people were murdered on live television.

On 9/11, I fell down our stairs and broke my toe. On 9/12, my husband drove me to the Doctor for x-rays. There was no reason to drive myself with the wrong foot, because nobody went to work that day. The streets were nearly empty. The Doctor’s office employees were silent. The TV in the waiting room was off. Nobody made chit chat. America was shell shocked.

On 9/12, I still couldn’t get my brother who lives in DC on the phone. He got word to us that he was ok via friends, but we were still terrified for his wife who worked in government buildings.

The day after 9/11, everyone was numbly waiting for another attack.

The Friday after 9/11, I had a work convention in Gatlinburg. There were so many non-show attendees that they nearly cancelled the event. In the end, they cancelled the Friday and Saturday night social activities. The husband and I slow danced in an empty ballroom to silence.

The weeks that followed had people being followed, threatened, assaulted and killed because their skin wasn’t white, they wore turbans or they prayed differently.

Oh man, yeah, it was just so great how Americans united after 9/11 is nostalgia for the aftereffects of tragedy.

9/11 sucked. So did 9/12.