We spent the past 3 hours watching the memorial services on TV. Dad and I didn't know anyone who died that day; yet it was a horrific time, and seeing this service, it seems like yesterday, so hard to believe it has been 10 years.

We've had lots of coverage here all week, and the newspaper did a story on a different aspect all week long. One interesting article (to me) was talking about trying to teach what 9-11 is to the new high school students - they are age 14, were too young to understand when it happened. Amazing to me that this is now "history" to many. How can you ever convey the carefree attitudes we had before, and the nervous, looking up at the sky every moment feelings we had for days afterwards? And it occurred to me, they've never known the freedom of running through an airport at the last minute to catch a plane (OK they are still too young to do this, unless w/ family). How many times I'd done that for business trips. Now with all the security, you best arrive an hour early and 2 hours early would be better.

Dad and I were staying up at his house, we had 4 cats then (no dogs!). That Tuesday, he had a doctor's appointment. (Dad refused to change doctors for the first year he lived with me, as he was "just visiting!") We were running late, and hadn't put on the TV as we normally did. So we get to the doctor's office and it is empty - no one at the reception desk, no one in the waiting room. ??? So I called out. Someone hollered to come down the hall and turn left. They were all in the break room watching a small 13 inch TV. They told us a plane had hit one of the towers, and like most people, we couldn't get out heads around that, just replied, "what?" kind of dumb like. As they were repeating this, the second plane hit. As soon as we had the appt., we went back, packed up and drove back down here to my apartment (where we were living at the time). The roads were empty at that point.

Then we had 4 days with NO air traffic anywhere in our country. It was very quiet; you get used to normal background noises, and instead of being bothered by them, you notice their absence.

Surreal, that is what life was like, for days, a few weeks even.