The Biggest Tragedy of My Day Was the Fact That I Couldn't Blog.

Here's what I had planned for today:

• Observe a moment of silence in memory of those who lost their lives on 9/11/01
• Master the first workout in the ChaLEAN Extreme series.
• Mow the yard
• Give the dogs a bath
• Write something brilliantly poigiant about 9/11, patriotism and America...later resulting in a Pulitzer prize for...something....and rendering my day job strictly optional.

Yeah...we make plans and God laughs.

First I slept through the moment of silence. 

When I finally got up, this beautiful, ridiculously well built woman named Chalene Johnson pretty much beat the snot out of me through my TV. 

I cried a little. 

I texted my coach and, bless her heart, was talked back into my big girl panties.

Yes I mowed the yard.  One thing went right.

Then the power went out.

So I weeded a little, I visited my neighbors, I gave the dogs a bath in the kitchen sink since it was pitch dark in both bathrooms. 

I realized my dogs are too big to bathe in the kitchen sink.  

I cleaned up.

Then I spent a good deal of time in my car, with my phone charging up, trying to catch up on text messages, phone calls and, of course Facebook.

I realized I could never be Amish.

And now it's almost bedtime, because I'm a wuss, and my Pulitzer will have to wait because, frankly, I'm whooped.  It must have been all that time sitting on the lawnmower that wore me out.  Right?

But I feel like I've been neglecting Blog Over Lunch.  I've written so little lately.  And I really do have a deep love of my country and feelings about that beautiful and horrible September day which would be difficult to put into words in my best form.  And, Sugar, today I am not in my best form.

So I dug out something ten years old.  I was 35 and it was the first thing I had written since my legendary article on the Student Council race of 1982 in my High School paper.  It won't win me a Pulitzer but it was from the heart, and it still is.

And it is not lost on me that the biggest tragedy of my day was the fact that I couldn't blog. 

         The Change

I don’t complain any more about what I can’t have

I feel now that I have more than I deserve,

and so much more than many.

I don’t wonder anymore how others think of me

I know that my family loves me

And we’re together, and I’m grateful

I don’t think anymore about wrongs that have been done to me

I know now that it doesn’t really mater anymore

We’re all in this same terrifying boat.

I’m afraid I’ll never again look up at the sky and see an airplane

And wish I was on it, going to some exotic destination

I’ll see a missile, and potential disaster.

And I’m grateful that I AM....wherever I am.

I’ll never again mentally go over my grocery list

Or move my lips and not sing along

During the National Anthem

I may never again hear “God Bless America” and not shed a tear

Of pride and of sorrow

And hear the words, as I never did “before”

I don’t worry anymore how my son will do in school

Or if he’s learning the rules

For now I just try to explain all this insanity

And in the end hope he doesn’t really understand

the horror of it all

And I hold him just a little closer than I did “before”

And I may never again think in terms of years or months

Of then and now

But always in terms of “before 9/11” and “after 9/11”

I will never again see a fireman

And not want to weep

And hear the word Hero echo in my thoughts

But no matter what I think, see, hear

No matter what I’m afraid of and what I’m grateful for

I may never be as proud to be an American

As I am today.