9/11/2011

Today is the 10 year anniversary of 2011. To help me remember how I felt that day, I thought I would pull out my journal from 8th grade. Here are the words of the 13 year old Becky Todd on 9/11/2001... exactly how it was written.

Today is 9/11/01

Today is the most tragic day of my life. 2 of our lands traid-marks have just been distroyed. The world trader center or the twin towers have just calapsed today.

Today I got up like any old 13 year old 8th grader would get up, would be half awake half not. I got up, took a shower got dressed did my hair soon and so forth. I got on the bus like nothing was wrong. Just talking to my friends and stuff.

I get to school I was just about to first perios when a boy names Cameron Vickilion came up to me and Meghan and said "Did you hear what just happened about an hour and a half ago!!?" Both of us said "No". "The world trade centers just got hit by a plane" me and Meghan both just kind of ignoring him. Then when I got in first period, the principle came on the intercom and said that one of the world trade centers just fell down. I didn't really know what the twin towers were so I was confused. Then in 2nd period my teacher started to cry and Meghans mom checked her our of school. All the rest of the day was horrible. Every1 was crying and scared. I got home and watched the news and for once I saw what happened. It was so scary and sad. That was the day I will never forget.

(4/20/2002)

A lot has happened since then but that is something that will always be with me. I just watched another documentary on 9/11 and it is so sad. I remember getting off the bus when I got home that day and seeing Meghan come running down the hill to come talk to me. We talked 4 hours about what happened since she was home all day she had seen what happened. But me I was at school with all my confused classmates and my sobbing teachers.

I remember walking into my house and seeing my brother on the couch watching what was my first glimpse of reality. What I saw on that T.V. screen was something I wouldn't have thought possible. Smoke and flames on these buildings. Planes crashing into them. It was the most horrible thing I have ever saw in my life. I called my mom at work and trying really hard not to cry she didn't really sound worried which kind of scared me. But she thought there wasn't a very likely chance that anything would happen to her. For the next week or to, all that was on the t.v. was either 9/11 or if they have found any more servivors. I think for about a month, our country was so united and whole and it was so nice. You would walk around town and people would say hi to you or say god bless you or something. And the saddest thing was seeing all the flags like this:

It was so sad I started to cry. This day will alwats live in my forever and I will never forget it.

A Penny worth a million

I don't know if I am alone in this but I just totally suck at finishing blogs. That's right. I don't suck at writing them or starting them but...FINISHING them. I have about 20 unfinished blogs that are just waiting to be read by the world!!

This is one of them.

Back at the end of January, I was going through a rough time. We got our house but I felt like something was missing. Since George is working from home now, I felt bad that he was just home alone all day without a whole lot of interaction. So the first thing I thought to do was get a cat.
So one Saturday, I meandered into Petco to look at the kitty cats. Somehow my eyes diverted to these cute little puppies. There was one inparticular that caught my eye. It was a white border collie/blue healer with little brown spots. It was the calmest puppy of the bunch and my heart just melted!! So, I ran home and told George we had to go look at this puppy. He is thinking to himself "oh great, how am I going to say no this time..."
Well we get to Petco...and my puppy is being sold!! I was so sad!! But then we look down in the cage and there she is. A little brownish white puppy....Her face is half brown and half white with brown feckles. Just about the cutest thing I ever saw. I picked her up...she was just calm and cuddly! I knew I had to have her. But, it wasn't my decision. I knew if we got a puppy, it would be George's not mine...since he will spend most of the day with it.
After walking around Petco for about 30 minutes...we finally decided she was the newest addition to the Ortiz Family. Penny Ortiz or Penners or Penny blossom or Penny Rosa or Sean Penn or Penn State or Penny Loafer...just to name a few of her nicknames she's gotten from us.
So far our time with Penny has been great. She is the best dog in the world!! That of course was until March 21st. One day we began noticing Penny was really... calm. Which she isn't really hyper but she was abnormally calm. Then she started to get this nasty cough. The next day, George took her to the vet and the vet diagnosed her with Kennel Cough. Which scared me a little bit because I guess its more serious in puppies. That night, George and I went t visit some friends. When we came home, Penny was in the bathroom with blood all around her. She was coughing up blood. A lot of it at that. This wasn't normal. I was really worried. So we decided it would be best to take her to the animal hospital...Just to be safe!
When we got to the hospital, we were met by a very high strung receptionist who immediately started yelling at us telling us to get our puppy from the car immediately. As soon as we brought Penny in, she took her straight to the back and told us we had to give them $400 down before they'd start treating Penny. Apparently, she was in need of a blood transfusion, oxygen and plasma to keep her alive. They gave us a final estimate of $1,300 we needed to pay. Up front.

We had to make the toughest puppy parent decision. Is Penny worth $1,300? Of course being me, I became so hysterical I couldn't even talk. George was the level headed one.

We decided to just have them do everything they could to keep our puppy alive. Even though they couldn't even guarantee that. The doctor came in and told us she has 1 or 2 things. Either she had rat poisoning or she was a Hymophiliac. AHHH!! Well, I can't think of a time she would have gotten into rat poison so we were afraid it was Hymophilia. The doctor said he'd do what he can tonight and we would just have to come back in the morning. So we left and headed home.

I did not sleep well.

That next morning, we got up at 7 and headed back down to the hospital to pick Penny up. The doctor told us Penny had been doing well all night after the blood transfusion until about 6am. She had a reaction to the blood and was having more problems. We ended up taking her to the vet and the vet was dumbstruck on how bad Penny was. I think he felt horrible just saying she had kennel cough. They didn't know what they could do with her besides just keep her stable by putting her on oxygen. They recommended to keep her at the vet until the animal hospital opened again and to take her back.

Well by the time we paid for the hospital visit at the morning at the vet, we were pretty much out of money. So all we could do was just take her home and hope for the best....

She was in pretty bad shape. She was so weak she could hardly stand. We had to get her to take her medicine which meant she had to eat something which was a whole other issue. By the end of the night though she was getting a little stronger and we got her to eat some bread.

The next morning, we woke up to a puppy that actually looked like...our puppy. For the first time in day her ears were up and she was standing and moving around!

Here is what she looked like Sunday morning.

Sad huh? Our poor little puppy. But from then on, she just got better and better. Now she is our perfect little not so puppy anymore! Healthy and so stinkin cute!

Here is a picture of her that her daycare (Yes, I said daycare...we take our puppy to daycare) took of her.

So what happened?

Well, I'll tell ya. A week before she got sick, George and I went to go see a movie. When we came home, our basement was flooded. And guess who did it? Yup. Our cute little puppy!
OUR PUPPY FLOODED OUR BASEMENT!
I bet not many people can say that!

So that night we spent about 5 hours trying to dry our carpet with a shop-vac. Well, to get our basement to dry a little faster, we opened the door to our crawlspace...and guess what was in our crawl space?
Rat poison.

How'd I get so white n' nerdy?

Recently I have been discovering my inner being. The Nerd. You know, all through high school I thought I was SOOO cool knowing all the songs to all the newest broadway shows. Rollin' into school with my van, bright red hair and I made sure everyone knew I was in the choir and musicals.

Well... I think in the past few years, I have had this transformation from one nerd to another. I'm not the nerdy choir kid anymore but a real life... Nerd. Like the ones who play magic and talk about Spock like he is a real person and such. Wow.

So, if you do any of these then CONGRADULATIONS!!!! You are as nerdy as me.

1. If you have seen the youtube video that has puppets of Harry Potter characters. Snape, Snape, Severus Snape.

2. If you play Paper, Rock Scissors, Lizard, Spock to resolve conflicts in your marriage.

3. If you know what Munchkins is.

4. If when you hear the song Miss American Pie, you start singing "A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away, Naboo was under an attack...."

5. If you have ever played Talisman

6. If you own more than 3 mac products

7. If The Big Bang Theory is more than just the theory.

8. If you considered buying an ergonomic keyboard for your husband

9. If you watched Watson on Jepardy and tried to figure out what algorithms they could possibly have used.

10. If you know the reference in which the title of this blog came from.