It will take every remaining bit of 2009 to recap the year. There’s 1/6th of it left, I know. If I wait until 2010 then I’ll get behind on recapping THAT year. And lookit: I’m not exactly on top of this stuff. Slow, even. I offer my last blog post, written two months ago, as Exhibit A. Bailiff, please add it to the list of evidence. Who’s that shouting at me from the back of the courtroom? You! You there! Kiss m–

A guy just sat down next to me at Barista. He spoke to me, then looked at my wedding ring. He’s not talking to me anymore.

Yeah, I know. This is shaping up to be disjointed and distracted. I like shiny things.

I’m not going to talk about 2009 in any particular order, because that would require cross-referencing. I don’t have a whole lot of spare time. The reason why I get to sit, sipping a latte, anywhere besides my office at 3pm is because I went to work at 7am. And I didn’t take a lunch break.

There are ZERO shrieking babies at work. There are two of them here. You can’t exactly teach a brand new baby the meaning of quiet, and these babies aren’t screaming because they’re mad.

It’s all swirling around now. The events, the fights, the joys, the losses and gains. So much to say and a lot that needs to be left alone. This isn’t the place to air out the laundry soaked with stinky drama–I want to celebrate the year of massive change and thank the people who rode shotgun through it with me.

Mounted police just trotted by. In 2009 I decided that I would never name my child after a month, a city, or a deity. However, it’s completely okay to give an animal a human name. I wonder what police name their horses?

When I went back to work in January, I was ready. So ready. I wanted an office chair and a computer with a big monitor and good benefits. What came with those items I couldn’t have known to request. I got a big fat lesson in what it means to take care of myself. And I learned a lot about what this “self” thing is.

Look, a story!

Previously, I worked retail. To be good at retail, you have to be what the customer in front of you needs you to be. Doing that for three years, I gradually came to believe that it was my job to be everyone’s mother. When I got back into the office environment I frustrated myself to tears over the fact that no one was taking care of ME as much as I felt I should take care of them. Inside, I pouted, “Don’t I deserve to be treated the way I am treating YOU?”

Then, one of my genius coworkers told me to sit down at a picnic.

“You must expect great things of great people. When you do not treat them like great people, you send the message that you believe they are mediocre people. Are they mediocre people? If not, why do you feel you need to do so much for them?”

YES. Great. People. Don’t. Need. Me. To. Stress. Over. What. I. Perceive. To. Be. Their. Every. Need.

Perceive is the key word there. I was addicted to people relying on me. Stuck on the feeling that they might roll over and DIE without me. Who will remember that ONE thing or BE there to help with that OTHER thing? If not me, then I’ve failed miserably! MUST be me. It can ONLY be me.

Thanks to my genius coworker, in 2009 I became a recovering coddler. In 2009 I stopped expecting to be coddled back. So much pressure lifted. And I got a good start at being a better–GREAT, even–person. Who doesn’t need every little need taken care of, because I’m not mediocre. And who now can trust that other people can be great on their OWN. It took me how many years to realize that? Bailiff, there’s Exhibit B.

Everyone remembers where they were when it happened: When almost 3,000 Americans lost their lives in a matter of minutes. For no good reason at all. And we shuddered at the thought of being in New York City at that moment–how if we were there we probably would have thought the world was ending.

The news came down along different channels; for me, it was a phone call from my mother as I was just about to walk out the door for Biology Lab. She sounded terrified. She told me to immediately turn on the television. She wished that I was home, because she was afraid of me being so far away in that moment.

I watched the second tower fall on my little 13″ screen.

No time for a shower that morning, because I’d been up late playing Counter-Strike and as a result had grossly overslept. I hadn’t even the time to put on a bra, and I never ever went out of my dorm room without one. For a moment, as I sat gaping at the pictures and listening to my mother recap what had transpired, I thought about getting into my car and driving straight to my parents’ house. But then I remembered that if I missed another Biology Lab I would automatically receive a “C”.

Now I see a lot that my shock wouldn’t allow me to perceive. In hindsight, the situation was ironic: Just hours before, I’d been running around as a terrorist in a video game. In hindsight, I’m lucky that the biggest thing I had to worry about that day was the fact that I was braless in public for the first time since elementary school. In hindsight, being angry at the TA for not letting us out of Lab to watch the news was really silly. Canceling Lab would have been giving in.

Please read this. And realize how lucky we all are to be alive; to remember; to be sad. My father says that every second you live is one that you never get back. When I think about the folks who didn’t have a choice about how to spend their remaining seconds, I am incredibly humbled.