Six Years Ago

When the first plane hit the World Trade Center, I was eating an omelet with cheese and salsa in a restaurant on the east side of Kalamazoo.

I was recovering from being sick for several months, and my boyfriend at the time--let's just call him Clay, because that's his name and I don't give a fuck about protecting the innocent--was just starting a week of vacation. We'd gone to help his business partner out for a couple of hours that morning by making sure he had enough stock to get him through the week, and we stopped for breakfast at that restaurant that I can never remember the name of. It's open 24 hours and it's across the street from Denny's in Kalamazoo and it's got a green sign. That's all I can remember about it, except that I was there six years ago tomorrow, eating an omelet with cheese and salsa, when it started.

We were sitting in a booth, and one booth next to us was a man with a laptop and a cell phone and a newspaper. The waitress seemed to know him; she kept coming out and chatting with him. And then.

And. Then.

It wasn't a case of all hell breaking loose, like it would have if we'd lived here in D.C. at that point. The waitress mentioned to the man at the next booth that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center buildings.

I thought: Cessna.

Isn't it funny how you always remember where you were when something happened? For my Gran, it was World War II. My mother's 28th birthday was ruined by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Would you believe that I remember the day that Ronald Reagan was shot? I was watching Woody Woodpecker in my grandfather's big recliner in their living room when the news broke in. I was maybe five.

I barely registered what that waitress said. Clay and I had an ongoiong battle over the car radio. I would usually rather not have listened to it at all than tolerate his truly abyssmal taste in music, but he thought that in his car, he should have the final word. On the drive home, he was struggling to find a radio station, and I was tuning out what I was hearing, reading the newspaper. Finally, he said, "I think the plane and World Trade Center thing might be a big deal. They keep saying things about terrorists."

"Terrorists attacked the World Trade Center years ago," I said. "That's like lightning striking twice."

By the time we got home and turned on the television, the second plane had hit. The Pentagon had been attacked. There was talk about the fourth flight going down in Pennsylvania, although confusion was the order of the day at this point and nobody really seemed to know what had happened.

Here's what I remember: I felt helpless. I felt sick. I wanted to call everybody I knew to make sure they were safe. I couldn't think of what else to do, so I went to church--some church downtown, maybe Presbyterian? They were having an interfaith prayer service. It was such a bright, sunny day. Everybody looked distraught: the clerks in the grocery store, people just driving along in their cars. There was less traffic on the streets. The internet stopped working.

Late in the afternoon, Clay and I took stock and realized that our friend Mick had called us Sunday night from Boston, telling us he planned to be back in L.A. on Tuesday afternoon. Mick and Clay had grown up together, and, ironically, Mick had gotten to be friends in college with my older half-brother, Tim. All we could think about were the flights out of Logan, and that Mick wasn't answering his cell phone. We were calling his mother, his sister, his other friends: Had they talked to him today?

No, they hadn't. Nobody had. He wasn't answering his cell phone. It wasn't until almost midnight that the phone finally rang. He had been scheduled to take the flight that hit the second building, but he'd overslept, missed his flight, accidentally packed his phone in his checked baggage, and by the time everything had happened, all the flights had been cancelled and he couldn't get his luggage back. He couldn't leave the airport.

In the next few days, I would go fishing with my parents, just to be able to be away from a television, and we would all notice how empty the sky looked without any jet trails. On Friday night, I would go to the bar with my friend Tara, who would find out the next morning that she was 16 weeks pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, who had given her large doses of sedatives and raped her while she was passed out. I would continue to cope with my spanking-new diagnosis of a chronic illness about which I was no longer feeling very good about saying "Why me?"

In the next year, I would get the worst job I ever had, one that would make me drink every night just so that I could face the thought of getting out of bed the next morning and going back. I would break up with Clay as it became increasingly clear that we were incompatible and had nothing to say to each other about anything, and life was just too fucking short. In an attempt to not starve to death as a temp in the floudering economy of that post-9/11 year, I would get a great job with a pharmaceutical company, which I would lose in the first round of cuts when the company I worked for was swallowed by a much larger pharmaceutical company whose name rhymes with Kaiser, and I would agree, reluctantly, to pick up some shifts for a friend of a friend, who was opening a restaurant and since I'd been to a restaurant, that made me qualified to manage one. Of course. The assistant manager of that restaurant was a know-it-all, condescending, loud, short, and a lousy speller. We did not see eye-to-eye, to say the least, particularly after I told him that despite the stupid service industry job, I was actually a very smart woman; what was his excuse?

I married him less than two years later. He is still a know-it-all, loud, short, and a lousy speller, and also the kindest, most generous, most loving man I know. Six years later, Tara--remember her? The one who got pregnant?--is due with her second child, this one a daughter. (ed. Tara's daughter Kaitlyn was born on the morning of September 11th. Everything really just seems to come around, doesn't it?) She lives in California and is married to a peach of a guy who adopted her son. The guy who got her pregnant? In prison. Mick, who missed his flight into the side of the World Trade Center: quit his job, left L.A., and got a job in technology in Portland, where he still lives and works. And Clay, my ex-boyfriend? He sells porn in Michigan. That is the punchline to this story, although to be fair, he sold porn in Michigan then too, owns half the business, and works very little and makes a lot of money--and he gets pretty much all the porn he wants for free, so good for him.

Tomorrow morning, I am going to get up early and make myself a Mexican omelet and white toast, exactly what I was eating when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. I do it every year. I realize that it's a weird way to commemorate a terrible day, but I do it because it was the end of what I think of as the terrible end of my old life, and the beginning of something new for me. Everything changed after September 11th, 2001, including me. This is how I remember.

...And No, I Am Not Going To Have A Nice Day, You Putz.

The last twenty-four hours have seen the following for me and my family:

1. Explaining to my mother that our new house is not in a flood plain.

2. Dan's Back to School night--which involves working from 7:15 in the morning until 9:00 at night.

3. Me coming home from picking Max up at daycare to discover, inexplicably, that our electricity was off.

4. Me struggling through the voice prompt menu at Pepco to discover that our bill is paid and there is no reason for our power to be out, and yet, here I stand in the dark.

5. Me being told that our power would be turned back on "some time before 7 p.m. on Thursday."

6. Okay. Nothing to be done about it, once I'm done yelling at the Pepco representative (which, predictably, got me nowhere.) Put Max into his pajamas, go to school to pick up Dan from school.

7. Go to bed in the dark.

8. Wake up, still in the dark, stuck to my bed with sweat. What did people do before air conditioning?

9. Get ready for work/school/daycare, walk out the front door of our apartment, and hear Dan say these words to me: "Um...Where is our car?"

Yes indeed. Our car registration expires in July of 2008. That would be 07-08. Not August of 2007, or 08-07. Anybody think of any reasons why that might be an important distinction? Our car was towed. The cop who ordered the tow called me personally to apologize this afternoon, rather profusely. I don't think I called him a fat, lazy, ignorant pig-fucking moron or anything, but I really did think about it, and I feel quite certain I did not come across as friendly, or receptive. There will be no charges to get our car back, but nor will there be any reimbursement of my husband's cab ride to work, the car I rented to make sure that we would have some kind of transportation (by the way, if you're thinking of buying a Chevy Cobalt, don't frickin' bother), or the day of work that I missed, dealing with this unbelievable series of fiascos. Is fiascos a word? Fiasci?

This is really it. I just really am at the end of my frickin' rope in regards to ridiculous, unnecessary expenses, inconveniences, and things that make me feel and/or look like a giant mess. In the next 22 days, nothing...and I did just say NOTHING...is allowed to go wrong.

Do you hear me, internet? NOTHING!

Like A Week Without Sunshine, Or In Which Our Heroine Comes To A Startlingly Awful Realization

Over this long Labor Day weekend, Dan and I did nothing of interest at all. We did so because we have to scrape together more money in the next 23 days than we have ever spent at one time in our life, so our time this weekend was best spent scraping dimes out from between the couch cushions. ($.49 closer to closing. SCORE!)

Max is just over two. And he's good at it. He is awesome at being a toddler. And if you don't have kids, or they haven't reached toddlerhood, let me just say this...everything you've heard is true.

And someday soon, he is going to stop taking a nap.

That means over long three-day weekends, we will have no respite from this terrifying child from 6:45 in the morning (the time that the big man likes to start his day) until 8 at night.

Jesus H. Christ Eating A Sandwich, what am I going to do?

Jane, You Ignorant Slut.

So, when the sellers counter-offer included a change from a closing date of Halloween to September 28, what did I fail to consider when we agreed?

It wasn't that, in less than one month, we would be waking up in a home that we owned.

It wasn't that the house was priced at least $100,000 less than any of the other crime scenes, I mean houses, that we looked at, in a better neighborhood, and in better shape.

It wasn't that there was another offer on the house and that, were we to accept the counter-offer, time was of the essence.

It wasn't that, hey, I work for a homeownership development organization! Maybe I should buy a house.

I didn't forget any of that. I thought about all of it.

What did I forget?

That by pushing up the closing date by a month, we were in no way reducing any of our costs associated with buying a home.

Oh, and that we don't happen to have a spare $9000 sitting around to take to closing with us in less than a month. In two months, we could have pulled it together. In three and a half weeks: not so much.

Duh.

Just The Facts, Ma'am.

I have a tendency to go looking for things like this on other people's blogs. It occurs to me that several months ago I just started writing without preamble (what sort of preamble would be required in a case like this?) and never really gave much thought to introducing myself, the cast of characters, or how I got here.

I'm Molly.

I'm 31.

I'm an only child.

I have two half-brothers (or one whole brother and one total stranger) and six step-siblings.

I am German, Dutch, Scottish, and Irish, which I guess means I am simultaneously stoic, cheap, confrontational, and drunk.

I was born and mostly raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I went to a non-parochial private school starting in fourth grade, as I was not "thriving" in the public school atmosphere. I blame the third-grade teacher who called me "retarded" in front of a class full of third-graders, but if you asked her, it probably could have been my fault too.

I'm not retarded. I prefer "idiot-savant," thanks.

I went to Western Kentucky University as an undergrad. I started out as a photojournalism major and ended up as an English major. I had a startling amount of fun there.

I work for a homeownership development nonprofit in the Washington D.C. area.

I'm married to Dan. He's 36 and an English teacher. He says funny things sometimes. Other times he says things only he thinks are funny, like when he suggested that, to molify pro-lifers, we feed unwanted babies to the homeless.

Dan used to be in the Army. I once asked him about friendly fire. His response: "If somebody shoots you, you probably won't feel very friendly towards them."

Our son is Max. He is two and change. He will probably, at this rate, go away to college wearing the world's largest pair of Pampers.

I went into labor at Sears in Clinton, Maryland. This was every bit as bad as it sounds. Maybe worse.

I like to cook. I also like to read cookbooks, watch the Food Network, and, to a lesser extent, eat.

I like to knit as much as I like to cook. I don't like to read about knitting or watch the DIY Network, however, and I rarely eat what I've made.

We would like another baby. However, unlike last time, it does not seem to be happening for us. If you're just tuning in, I guarantee that you will hear far more about my reproductive pursuits on this blog than you are probably comfortable with.

I started this blog because I became friends with another local blogger and she suggested I should. I'd been rolling the idea around in my head, but I needed the push.

When I was 10, I wanted to be a writer and live in Alexandria, Virginia.

I'm now a writer, but I can't afford the home prices in Alexandria.

Because I'm a writer and married to a teacher, I can barely afford the home prices anywhere in the metro area.

My best friend besides Dan is Kimberly. She is a writer also. She lives in Kentucky and has written a novel. She was my suitemate my freshman year of college. She is married to Michael. They are frequently in town for medical reasons. They're Max's godparents.

I became quite attached to Washington Nationals baseball during their first season in the area, during which I was so completely pregnant that I couldn't do anything but sit on the couch, drink decaffinated, unsweetened iced tea, and watch baseball.

When I was 25, I was diagnosed with type I diabetes. It came as quite a surprise, since I'd never had anything more serious than a particularly uncomfortable case of menstrual cramps up until that point. Yes, I take shots. No, it's not my idea of a good time, but it's vastly preferable to seizures, coma, or death.

I can live without the following: birthday cake, Doritos, space heaters, toaster ovens, dried floral arrangements, processed cheese, area rugs, the Yankees, and uncomfortable shoes.

I cannot live without the following: ice cream, central air conditioning, fresh local produce, stinky cheese, the internet, 600 thread count sheets, and Crocs (oh my God, yes. I know. They're ugly, suburban, cliche, blah blah blah. Go eat a bug. They're also light, cool, incredibly comfortable, and easy on your joints.)

Currently residing on my Celebrity Hump Island: Ben Affleck, Josh Duhamel, Edward Norton, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and George Clooney. The Phillip Seymour Hoffman thing is totally inexplicable to me, except that, A.) he has that voice; and B.) He's brainy and funny and talented, and I find those things very appealing.

If I was a rock star, I would be Sheryl Crow. That is not to say that I have any musical ability at all, because I don't. But I'm not an 8-ball-horking blazing hot mess like Amy Winehouse, and I'm not an avant-gard, swan-wearing coolster like Bjork, so I guess that leaves Sheryl Crow.

I named this blog "the nonhipster mom" because I am not one of the cool kids. I have never been one of the cool kids. I think one of my defining characteristics is my lack of social aptitude, and I've chosen to embrace it, since it doesn't appear to be going away.

So. That's enough, I think.

This is so Skull-Punchingly Awesome I can Barely See Straight

My God...just waiting for the technology to catch up.

Can You Smell What The Rock Is Cooking?

After a phone call from the realtor to inform us that the homeowner's association is meeting in two hours to discuss our offer, and another panicked phone call from me to Dan, relating in one long sentence the depth and breadth of my hysteria:

Dan: "Don't worry. I love you, baby. I'm your rock."

Yes you are. I love you too.

*Edited: Contract countered by seller; counteroffer ACCEPTED by all parties as of 6 p.m.!