And this is why I have officially chosen the CBLDF as my charity of choice.

From Neil's journal a bit ago, I'm still running behind.

I was also reading Will Shetterly's blog, behind in that also and I saw a post about where were you on 9/11.

I happened to be in Baltimore, although I technically work in DC, I was seeing the Johns Hopkins doctor about my mutant thrombophilia. In fact I was having 800 bucks worth of useless blood tests, though they didn't tell me that until I got the bill.

Blood test at 8:30, terrible time finding my veins, par for the course, upstairs to the office I once several people have tried and one succeeds and I sit and fill out forms.

I'm concentrating on the forms, half listening to everyone in the waiting room talking about how shocked they are about a plane hitting a building. An elderly man is saying that the entire country needs to be bombed. The way everyone is talking I think they've all seen the same show on TV the night before and I'm thinking whoever wrote it must be quite proud.

Then I go in for my blood pressure and to see how much I weigh and the nurse is crying. I ask her what happened and if there is anything I can do and she says a plane hit the world trade center a few minutes ago.

I think she means the wtc in Baltimore and I say no way, I'd have heard it and she says no, the one in New York and my knees buckle and I sit down. My first thoughts are of Dan, who lives too close to the WTC and of everyone I know in NYC and then they tell me that a plane has crashed into the Pentagon and bombs are going off at the White House, two blocks from my office.

Then my cell rings. It's my friend from Indiana. So many people are calling into my area that my friends from all over can't get through. Chris in England is frantic, not knowing I'm safely in Baltimore. I talk to Kathy for a few seconds and then we're cut off but she's able to post to my friends that I'm okay.

My boss gets through and says to go home and sit tight. My kids are home before I am. Luckily my neighbour is a teacher and he's been sent home and he's taken my boys in and kept the TV off.

But they've been sent home because someone has called in a bomb threat to the capital building in Annapolis, where we were living, and said they'd blow up the whole school system.

I can't protect the kids from the images that are on tv. Over and over again we see the devestation and they are as worried as I am becaue Dan has logged into PGL to say he is safe and that I am in Baltimore so I am safe. But then he's gone out, I guess his journalistic instincts have kicked in and he has this desire to report.

He's gone for hours while I watch all the debris in the air and I think about how SMA type II people die from respiratory or heart failure and how he was supposed to be dead nearly three years ago and I am crying over him, worrying so much.

When things sort themselves out 11 are dead from my company. One of them was on flight 11. I can't get over what it must have been like to be on that plane, knowing you're about to crash into your co-workers.

The weekend before I'd taken the kids up to meet Dan and they'd wanted to go to the WTC and I said no, lets go see the dinosaurs, we'll go to the WTC next time. It's not going anywhere.

I was never so wrong in my life.

Two years later now. Eleven dead from my company and then Dan 8 months later. I still cry when I think about it. Some things heal chaotically and they leave a scar and that scar never, ever stops hurting.

It's a little like my broken back. It's always a pain that's there, in the background where I can often ignore it but when it flares up it becomes everything and there's no getting round it, only through it as best you can. I'm blessed in that I have so many friends in DC and NYC and, except for Dan, they are all alive. Damaged every time they look at the skyline, but alive.