My husband and I have a friend who lives in New Orleans. We have known our friend since before we were married. We'll just call her...Sandy. We met "Sandy" on the Jimmy Buffett webboard. "Sandy" is very sad about losing her beloved city and rightfully so. We feel bad for her. We knew that we had to do SOMETHING besides donating money to a large charitable organization that may or may not go to programs in which we agree with the distribution. ANYWAY. "Sandy" is a public school teacher in her area. She has been told that she can go back to work in October. Doug has suggested that we send "Sandy" some school supplies for her children who were poor to begin with but are now without anything. So we asked "Sandy" if this would be appropriate. "Aye, it would." So off we went to the store to supply at least one class with all the basic supplies. At first, we went to Wal*Mart. However, 5 minutes in that store and I knew that I could not stay in there long and stay a) sane or b) out of jail for killing the folks standing in the aisles drooling on themselves looking at items as though they were foreign objects that no man has ever seen before. My GOD. How do folks shop in there? Is it like that everywhere or only here in California? I don't remember it being that bad when I lived in Kentucky. Is it possible that people who shop at Wal*Mart in Kentucky are smarter than those in California? I simply don't know. Although, I am quite sure that there should be some sort of IQ test for folks to be allowed out in public without a chaperone who is IQ qualified. So we left our cart in Wal*Mart and headed out. Not before being run down with no less than 3 buggies and 8 kids running around like wildcats with no parental supervision. Off to Office Max we go! Pull up to the store..."OH look! Lots of up-front parking!" YAY! Park the car and head in with our buggy. We're ON A MISSION! Find notebooks for 49ΒΆ...get 2 cases, that's 48 notebooks! YAY! We find staplers, paperclips, pencils, elastics, scissors, stickers, pens, and a whole buncha other stuff on sale. No crowds. No kids darting here and there like heathens! YAY! We're feeling great about all of our purchases. I even purchased a computer book for myself. Lovely shopping trip. Got a gob of stuff for $150. Shove the items in the trunk and we're off to home to wallow in our array of school supplies. We are feeling good! As we are driving home and nearly to the exit that we take, I look up on the hill at a house. They have their flag at half. I comment to DH that I wonder why they have it. He said, "Rehnquist? Katrina's deaths? War in Iraq? September 11th?" BINGO. Duh. I. completely. forgot. it. was. Sept. 11th. I cannot believe that I forgot. No, I'm not saying I have forgotten about the event completely, I forgot it was TODAY (also my nephew's birthday.) I'm feeling worse now. :( *sigh* I had a couple of friends directly affected by that cowardly attack on my beloved United States. One of them works for the NYSE. He has volunteered to go to New Orleans to help clean up and clean out. What a brave, giving soul that he has.