Today is the fifth anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11. I know you don’t need me to remind you of that. For too many of us, someone we know personally was affected, and for all of us the senseless loss of life is something that will never be easy to understand or accept.

I don’t want to rehash that day, or the days following it – we all have our own “where were you when…?” memories. But as the anniversary of the attacks approached this year, I found myself thinking about how I get through hard times like that – even the hard times that are nothing more than my checkbook refusing to be wrestled into submission, or my toddler creating yet another crayon masterpiece on the living room wall.

By Friday of the week of 9/11, I was empty. Scraped out, no more tears to cry, and a little bit numb by how long I was sitting in front of the TV each day watching as the rescue teams searched for survivors. There was nothing on TV but the coverage of Ground Zero, and there didn’t seem to be any way to escape it. I felt more than a little guilty for wanting to in the first place.

Even the local channels – the ones that air reruns of favorite syndicated shows late at night – had given up their airtime to news feeds all week. I was too emotionally drained to concentrate on reading anything. But when I got into bed, I think it was that following Monday, and turned on the TV, out of habit I flipped to the WB, and there they were – Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe.

I had never been so glad to see anyone, fictional or not, in my life.

Nothing was going to change what had happened that horrible week, but man, for that half an hour, there was nothing I wanted to think about more than Joey’s favorite sandwich, or Monica’s right to have eleven classifications of towels (“Fancy. Guest. Fancy guest…”).

I’ve seen them all a million times. I can quote most of the dialogue from most of the episodes. (I’m not bragging, believe me. Even I think this is a sad, sad little function of my brain.) And yet on a bad day? There I am, flipping frantically to TBS or one of our local stations, looking for a rerun. If I happen to catch the episode where Monica bets the apartment – “Ms. Chanandler Bong.” – I’m golden. Automatic stress relief, and bonus laughs stored up for the next deep blue funk.

I’m a re-reader, too. When a TV’s not handy (although we try to make sure that never happens in our house), I’ve got a dozen favorite funny reads on standby. Jennifer Crusie, Janet Evanovich, Rachel Gibson, and MaryJanice Davidson, for instance. (And, okay, anthologies of Calvin and Hobbes. And The Far Side.) If I don’t have time to reread the whole book, I’ll pick out the funniest scenes. It’s like a chocolate chip cookie, or a handful of Cheetos, without the calories (or the orange fingers). Excellent for a flash of pure happy.

I always know that whatever’s bugging me – whether it’s big and grim and serious, or little and frustrating and only mildly annoying – isn’t going to disappear by reading the meet-in-the-closet scene from Faking It, or catching Ross in his Leather Pants of Doom, but for a few minutes at least, nothing matters but the sound of my own laughter.

What do you do to get through the bad days?

Is it just me, or will September forever be back-to-school time? Even before I had kids, Labor Day weekend made me itchy to go buy notebooks and new pencils. (Now, of course, I buy them for the boys, but I usually manage to squeeze in a beand-new notebook for me, too.)

It’s a different way of marking the year, I guess. For me, Janury 1 is just the day I have to jog my brain to remember to write a new year on my checks and correspondence. The real start of the new year is the beginning of September.

So I usually make … well, not resolutions exactly, but new goals this time of year. (All those new notebooks and fresh pencils help.) And this year, I want to work on a couple of things. Meeting my deadlines in a more timely manner, for one. But I want to try some new things, too. New recipes, since dinner around here has gotten more boring than watching paint dry. I want to take more pictures, and get a new digital camera. And I want to read more, in some new genres.

Anyone else treating September as a kind of new year? Anything you want to learn, or do, in the coming months?