Category Archives: insomnia

home

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I’ve been somewhat of a nomad most of my life. Growing up, my mom and I moved every few years for a while. We finally settled in with my grandparents where I stayed for my longest stretch of time at six years. In my adult life, the longest I lived in one city was for eight years. But during those eight years, I lived in six places.
I can’t seem to sit still for too long.

Since I visit so infrequently, the town where my mom still resides that I have always called “home” feels like it is losing its nostalgic grip on me.
When I started to realize this, it scared me a bit.
If that isn’t ‘home’, then where is?

What makes a place a “home”? Where you have friends and community? Is it where you reside? Where you have your job? Is it where your birth-family lives or the town you grew up in? Technology makes the idea of “community” much broader than it was even as recently as my childhood. I have friends all over the world with whom I’m in touch with almost daily. However, there is definitely a difference between my online communications and spending physical time with local friends.

How does one make a place their home? If a person loses their job, why do they struggle to stay in their same locale instead of seeking employment elsewhere?
Is it because moving sucks? It’s a pain in the ass. An awful lot of us have friends in many cities, so having a social outlet probably isn’t too difficult if moving becomes necessary. We usually adapt and adjust fairly quickly to new surroundings, and yet, the struggle is there to stay put. To stay at ‘home’.

I queried a friend of mine yesterday why he’s stayed in Prescott for so many years. He said because he loves that he can go out and usually run into someone he knows. He has some uniquely good friends here, the weather is great, and the countryside is beautiful and easily accessible. I asked him why he didn’t move to a place like Boulder, Colorado. Sounds similar, right? He said he might like it there, but this is where he is and it fits.

But there are a lot of places like that. I’ve lived in a few cities where I’d move back and settle in for a while if there was cause. Having the knowledge that I could go anywhere makes me feel unsettled at times – like I have no solid home base. I have some truly wonderful friends in the town where I now reside. Does one choose to make a place their home and set about creating it consciously, or does it just happen? One day you look back and realize that you’ve been in a place for so many years and have built a community of friends and have history in that location – that you have unwittingly created a home.

Is home as Robert Frost wrote in his poem “The Death of the Hired Man”?

‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’

(or perhaps it is more like what The Tick says:
“Interviewer: Well, can you… destroy the world?
Tick: Egad! I hope not! That’s where I keep all my stuff!”)

 
 
 
 

regret

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The dictionary definition of “regret” is:
verb (used with object)
1. to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment, etc.): He no sooner spoke than he regretted it.
2. to think of with a sense of loss: to regret one’s vanished youth.
noun
3. a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc.
4. a feeling of sorrow or remorse for a fault, act, loss, disappointment, etc.
5. regrets, a polite, usually formal refusal of an invitation: I sent her my regrets.
6. a note expressing regret at one’s inability to accept an invitation: I have had four acceptances and one regret.

I have been trying to figure out the difference between things in my past I regret vs things in my past I just chalk up to bad decision-making. There is loss, disappointment, sorrow. But all those can exist on their own without regret being attached.

The difference I see is that regret happens when you don’t live up to your own standards.
It is more of a feeling of failing oneself.

I have regrets. I wish I’d helped my dad more.
My pop was an alcoholic and addict who constantly tried very hard to better himself.
He died in 2006 of a prescription drug overdose.

He and I talked often about what he was going through. He was in an out of AA, the last stretch he had a sponsor. I was sympathetic, but my life took precedent. In retrospect, instead of just our conversations about it, I could have done research on alcoholism in order to understand the disease better. I could have been more actively supportive of his AA and asked him more often how that was going.

In 2005, he checked himself into a hospital under a self-imposed suicide watch. Our immediate family in NY counseled me not to go. They said that he didn’t want me to see him in that situation, but they thought I should know. I should have flown to New York anyway.

I know, the cliché “hindsight is 20/20” applies here, but only to a certain degree. I can’t let myself off the hook that easily. Sure, I was where I was, but I don’t think I did the best I could at the moment. Saying otherwise would be relativistic and thus make the case that I did the best I could do with where I was at the time. And I think that’s b.s.
I’m intelligent, resourceful, and try to be considerate. So, why didn’t I put those skills to the test when it came to my dad?

There is the truth that you can’t help someone who isn’t willing to help themselves, but he was working on it.
And I wish I’d been there for him more.

I’m sorry, dad.

progress and sadness

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Yesterday was a day of ups and downs.

It started off great: a buddy came by to help me and it was time to put the wheels with new tires on the KL.

While I was at it, I figured might as well change the sprockets and chain out for the new ones that came with the bike.

The old big sprocket was worn, and I assume the front one was too.

I greased up the wheel bearing and got ready to put it all back together.

One slight problem:

Well, bother.

It was getting too hot outside, so we got out my Ez-up. It was pretty easy. 😉
And installed the front wheel.

The KL is kick-start only, and I’d had no trouble getting it to run. However, I noticed that neither the headlight, nor tailight worked. Oh, neither did the horn. I realized that the battery was in the box ‘o spares. I had thought the seller gave me a spare battery. Nope, he gave me the battery.

I topped it off with some distilled water.

And got it wired into the bike. The neutral switch worked, but headlight and brake/tail light still weren’t working.

I didn’t want to worry about that: the bike is rideable (once I get my rear sprocket in the mail) and I wanted to get cracking on the RD.

On the way to another friend’s shop to use the lathe, the storm started. It’s monsoon season here in Arizona and that means thunder, lightning, and (hopefully) rain. I was excited for a real storm! Lightening! Thunder! Rain!

I saw at least two lightning strikes close to town where flames immediately jumped right up. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so excited about the lightening part of this equation…

There were a 50mph+ gusts of wind that pushed across the area, and then the sweet relief of a torrential downpour.

This rain quenched the two fires that I had witnessed and brought cool relief to the summer desert heat.

I got to make parts! That was so cool.
I’ve never made stuff on a lathe!

This little guy was hanging out.
I guess he’s the shop mascot.

There had been a break in the rain, and then while we were at the shop, it started to pour again.

The RD needs a spacer to line up the front brake caliper. Two little roundy discs, measured precisely to some measurement carefully taken and written down (now where’d I put that piece of paper?)

After a bit of instruction, I was machining like a pro! 😉

I made these!

Okay, just kidding. Those are just a by-product. This is actually the near-final product. (I had to do some sanding to smooth it down before it was really done)

Spacers were complete! Time to eat!

When I got home that night (Sunday), I sat down at the computer to check my Facebook feed.
What I read was devastating.

Lightening had started a fire near Yarnell, Az – a little town of about 650 people 30 miles south of Prescott.
Over 8,000 acres consumed, and 500 houses gone.

19 “Hot Shots” firefighters had died that afternoon.
One of whom was a friend of mine.

There was nothing I could do at the moment. My EMT and Red Cross certifications both expired recently, so I couldn’t volunteer. A friend of mine messaged me that she and her husband saw an alert and were taking a dog crate to the Red Cross Animal Shelter up the road. They came and picked me and my cat carrier up around 11:00pm and we delivered the items to the shelter.

When I finally fell asleep, I slept fitfully.

The Hot Shots crew is an elite group made up of 20 men.
All but one perished in those fiery woods.

Prescott is a small enough community that this tragedy touches us all in some way.
The out-pouring of donations and volunteers and help has been phenomenal, but I’d rather not know that everyone around me is so generous and caring if this is how I find out.

On my way to work this morning, I stopped at Watson Lake.
The morning sky was hazy, as if the sun didn’t want to perkily rise up on this sad morning.
The lake was serene and somber and reflected my mood.

Rest in Peace, Hot Shots.