The pitocin is cranking, and my cxtns are 2-3 min apart level 6 ot 7 out of 10 according to the monitor and level “HOLY CRAP” according to me.

WHERE IS MY EPIDURAL!??!!?

I want the following things:

1. Epidural
2. easy delivery
3. FOOD OMG I AM SO HUNGRY.

Great here comes another one. WHiiiine.

I’m hooked up to 3 iv bags via 1 tube, plus a blood pressure cuff and a finger pulse-ox monitor. But I"m making Hubby wear the pulse-ox monitor on his finger because I want to type BUT I don’t want to listen to the alarm.

My water was broken, and I’m laboring.... now, hello? Anaesthesia? Pbbbbblease?! 

It’s pitocin time. Baba O’Riley and I are thumping away. I have to say, I like having wireless internet in the hospital. 

I’ve got an IV, a band aid where they tried to start the IV the first time (ow), and a gown that doesn’t close in the back. Baba O’Riley is happy and I am listening to the heartbeat - thumper thumper thumper. All is well.

Time to get this show on the road - it’s induction day for me & Baba O’Riley. Woo!

The waiting continues. I’m still pregnant. My back hurts, my hips hurt, I can’t walk straight - it’s almost comically annoying and awful at times, especially at 3am when I wake up with an OMG NOW urge to pee and wonder if I can actually walk to the bathroom or if I should pray to grow a penis instead so I can aim at the wall or something. (Hey, it’s not like I am actually awake during these thoughts.)

Otherwise, l’shanah tovah - may you have a new year of sweetness and joy. 

1. I need QVC in HD.

2. I want to have every nook and cranny of my house customized and compartmentalized by California Closets. Including and especially my junk drawer.

3. I have far too many candles.

4. Why is QVC NOT in HD?

5. I love my new dryer so much I want to do MORE LAUNDRY. Good thing I’m 39.5 weeks pregnant. I’ll be making plenty of laundry soon.

6. I should NOT go to the grocery store while nesting. I am drawn to the baking aisle and the cleaning supply aisle and am unable to tear myself away.  I bought a 5lb chicken, a 6lb brisket, a box of brownie mix, pancake mix, and barely escaped before buying 2 bottles of Febreze.

7. QVC needs to (a) broadcast in HD and (b) stop selling handbags I don’t want.

It’s raining out. Pouring. I keep thinking of the people standing in the pit at Ground Zero reading the names of their loved ones as they cry.

The weird thing about 9/11 is that it’s important, and it’s amazing to think that it was already 6 years ago, but enough time has passed that, I think, no one really knows how to mark the day. Do we get angry? Do we cry? Do we do a good deed? Do we think about the people who went to work same as always six years ago this morning, and never came home? Two wars have started since 9/11, and that plus the passage of time has created a much larger divide between the ways in which people want to process and remember.

I remember in the days following 9/11, when fighter jets flew over my house and the smoke went on for months, everyone felt the same. We were scared and sad, like someone had come and torn out a piece of each of us. It’s so different now, because just remembering doesn’t seem adequate, but what to do beyond that is inadequate as well.

But I do remember that 2,998 people went to work six years ago today, and never came home.

Perhaps one way to remember is to talk about the things that happened in New York in the days following 9/11. I was training for the Avon 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk, so the following weekend Hubby and I walked from 59th and Central Park all the way to Ground Zero. It was about 8 miles. I saw the rubble pile and was not allowed to take pictures as it was a crime scene. I remember the smell and how I worried about Hubby going to work in that smoke. At the time he worked on Wall Street.

I remember the thousand upon thousands of pictures of people, posters from loved ones asking them to call home, come home, let us know where you are. There were literally thousands of people on posters all over Manhattan, people who weren’t going to call, who weren’t coming home. And at the time, their relatives didn’t know for sure if they were alive or dead.

There’s an Orthodox Jewish mitzvah, or custom called “Shmira," which requires that a person stand and pray over the body of a deceased Jew until burial. It’s part of Jewish burial custom - guarding of the dead and consoling of the mourners. It’s also one of the most important mitzvot, because it is a selfless act that can never be reciprocated.

After 9/11, there was a round the clock shmira organized by local Jewish schools and community centers at the city morgue so that someone would stand and pray over the dead, even though at the time there were no bodies to pray over, and certainly no one knew if the remains present were from someone Jewish. I think about those people today, who stood for weeks outside and prayed day and night to watch over the dead, to stay with them until their souls moved to heaven.

I think about all the people who, right now, six years ago, were waiting, and hoping, until they moved to despair and mourning. Six years ago today no one knew what was happening. The following day and the days after, we began to process and move apart to deal in our own way with what had occurred. And now we’re all in different places, united by a shared memory.