I suppose I should start this lil’ tale with the date of September 11th. My mother worked nights at a convenience store and I am an isomniac. We were up all the night on the night of the 10th playing Final Fantasy 9 together. (A weakness for the both of us. Ever met someone who plays video games just for the story? That’s me and my mom.) I had just turned the Playstation off and switched to the news when we both saw the first tower on fire. Both of us were confused…..not sure if it was a movie or reality. One asking the another….WTF? (Yes my mother is fluent in computer geek speak. 🙂 Then we both realized when the anchor came on (I think it was Peter Jennings can’t be sure…flipped through every channel at first while the first tower was burning.) came on and started explaining what we were seeing, that something terrible had just happened.
And then the second plane hit right in front of our eyes. I still can’t find the words to describe what I felt at the time. Shock, disbelief, and anguish just seem to pale in comparison at my thoughts and feelings at the time. I grabbed the phone and immediately called my good friend in Wisconsin and told her to turn on the news. She didn’t believe me when I told her what I was seeing on the teevee. She tuned in and immediately wanted to call a few friends of hers that were in New York at the time. (They ended up being alright) I got off of the phone with her and my mother tried to call my sister in New York to see if she was home and was seeing the same we were. No answer on the phone….we weren’t particularly worried…she’s not that close to the towers. I then called my aunt and everyone else I could think of to tell them to turn on the teevee.
Fast Forward a lil bit….
Now, I will be the first to admit that I believed that bastard that is in “charge” of our great country. When I saw him with that bullhorn on that rubble…I thought to myself at the time, “You had better do something….” (To clarify a bit…I am from the south…Florida to be specific. Let’s just say that the “Get ’em” mentality was running quite strong at that point.) I didn’t vote in the 2000 election. Call it apathy, call it disinterest. Call it whatever you want. I call it a mistake. Either way, let’s just say I already didn’t have much faith in the man. I saw him as one of the “good ole boys”. I dislike “good ole boys” immensely. 😉
Ether way, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I thought that (naively) he would bring the people responsible to justice. (To clarify again…I was 21 years old….I was weaned on Clinton 😉 I expected us to go to Afghanistan…I didn’t expect Iraq however. When the decision to go to Iraq was made was when I finally started to question what was going on just a tiny, teensy bit.
Fast Forward just a lil bit more….
I found out I was pregnant with my son on February 6th 2003. (Yes I remember that date!) I had my son, and 3 months after his birth, my husband lost his job with the small company that he worked for. His boss had been struck with colon cancer and couldn’t continue with the business. We then started to look into moving to the state of Maine. That’s where he is originally from, all of his family here…yadda yadda. We moved when my son was 6 months old. Just the 3 of us and a U-Haul. 😉
Fast Forward just a tiny bit……
We got hooked up with the cable company and purchased broadband. (Hubby won’t live without it!) I was surfing the web one day, and I googled Margaret Cho…… She’s one my favorite comics. I came upon her blog and started clicking the various links on the page that she had listed…and then I came upon Atrios and Media Matters. The world kinda seem to explode from there. I read Atrios religiously….my husband thought I was obsessed! I then happened upon First Draft, and then the Daily Kos. I was literally a sponge….my son was still small at the time, so I could get away him sitting on my lap or in his walker while mamma got her fix. 😉 Then the “Pie Incident” happened. I saw that my favorite authors from DK were moving here….and I followed. Catnip, SusanHu, Lorraine, and so many others to name…it was only natural I went wherever they went.
Now with the recent smear attempts on Booman and Jerome, I felt that I had to post this….so that people could see what these sites do for people like me. A new whole world has opened up for me. I have gone through so many changes in the way that I think and feel about quite few subjects that it’s astounding in my eyes the information that’s available out here in the “blogosphere”. Now granted, mine is just one story….but just think of the people available to me to talk to. To show them what I know…proof of these bastards wrong doing.
The Booman Tribune has been a whole another experience….this pond holds a special place in my heart. I feel at home here without even having to post a damn thing. Most of the time, my feelings are already expressed in the posts here….all I have to do is rate them.
