Honk Honk PUNCH!

I know I have been very bad about keeping up with this whole blog thing for the past few months, but the summer in Minneapolis is something that you can’t turn your back on, or it will just get bored and run away.  If you don’t pay attention, one day you’ll be sitting around enjoying the sun, then the next you’ll be freezing your ass off while the wind tries to whisk you away like Dorothy.  So, I’ve been doing just that, enjoying the summer, while admittedly neglecting this blog.

So, to get back (hopefully) into the swing of things, I’m going to kick off the fall blogging season not by so much mourning those who fell in the Sept 11 attacks back in 2001, but rather celebrating the birthday of the closest thing I will ever have to a daughter.  Libby turns 7 today, and as my old boss put it – she is “one of the best things to come out of an otherwise sad day”.  Happy Birthday Libby!

This is by no means a post to slight those that lost their lives in that sad day.  I was riding the bus home today and caught a flag in one of the courtyards of the big buildings downtown flying half mast, and my mind immediately went back to retracing my every step of that fateful morning.  Everyone has their story that they like to tell about what they were doing when the shit went down, and I won’t bore anyone by sharing mine, but let’s just say that it put me in a dark place for the 40 minute ride home.  Such worthless killing, such blind panic, such patriotism, such utter madness for a 24 hour period and beyond.  It’s hard to fathom what it must have been like to be directly involved in that field in Pennsylvania, in the Pentagon, in the Word Trade Centers, or in any one of the 4 planes that had the unfortunate fate of participating in the worst attack our country has seen since Pearl Harbor.  I thankfully have never had an experience that makes me relive personal, agonizing horrors on a daily basis, and I hopefully never will.  September 11, 2001 was enough for this kid.

One of the things that makes these memories bittersweet for me is that I get to remember every year on this day that one really really cool thing came out of it – my little Libby was born.  I still remember picking her up at the “farm” in Western Massachusetts in late November, her itty bitty little body snuggled up, alternating between Lori and I, snoring away, having that smell that puppies innately have.   On the way home, we were looking at her papers and realized that she was brought into this world on a day filled with evil and hatred.  Lori immediately decided on the name Liberty, Libby for short.  And you know what?  She has turned out to be one of the best companions that a person could have.  She knows nothing of said attacks, or the sheer hatred we as humans seem to have for each other, only that she likes to play ball, sleep, snore, fart, and eat.  And she’d never hurt a fly.  So, thanks, whoever brought her to us, you couldn’t have a done better good deed.

Libby in ball heaven

Oh, and if you are a Facebook member, Libby has her own Dogbook page and is accepting friends!  Visit her page here.