thoughts while mowing the lawn #3

• I will really miss the girls when they are no longer in Baltimore. They leave on Thursday and we won't have a chance to see them again before they leave.  We saw them rarely while they lived in Baltimore but I knew that they were there, a mere hour away.  Close enough so that you didn't need to make airline reservations, and plan a trip in advance, and make it into a big deal.  Close enough that I knew that it was just possible that they might come down to DC to visit friends and spend the night with us.  Close enough that I could enjoy our time together instead of worrying about how soon it would be over. 
• I actually like mowing the lawn but I hate edging and the sidewalk is getting overgrown by the grass.  How can I convince Charlie that he should pick up the edger occasionally?
• Today is 9/11 and it is a beautiful, clear, blue-sky day just like in 2001.   I hear a plane overhead and remember well that fall when the only planes I would hear were the fighters patrolling the sky over our house.  Every night the drone put me to sleep. Something had to since Charlie was away on AF duty, and the children were away at school and there was nothing to do but listen to it.   It was a horrible constant reminder that life had changed forever.  But at the time I had no idea that I had more to fear from our country's reaction to the tragedy than I did from the terrorists.