Archive for August 2010
Two Strikes
Yesterday my day started and ended with lightning and thunder.
I arrived at work just ahead of a storm-front that, when it finally reached us, turned the view out our windows so dark it startled me when I walked by. Then came one of those ‘flash-BANG’ strikes of lightning that was so close our power did something of a hiccup and some things went off, but others stayed on. It turned out that we had lost one phase of AC power to our building, so some outlets were live, and others, not. In our main room of assembly stations, the overhead fluorescent lights were off, but the workbench lamps were still on. It looked like the each person was working at their own little campfire in the dark of night.
The evening storm at home wasn’t too problematic, …at first. I noticed the broadcast of the Twins game suffered a few pauses, as if the weather was messing with the signal from the cable company. Then another of those ‘flash-BANGs’ hit and our power bounced off and on one time. Everything appeared to be functioning just fine. A short while after that, the sirens started. First, a police car, followed by an emergency rescue van, and ultimately three fire engines turning right at our corner to reach the houses up the street. There was a pause in the rain, so I wandered out to the curb at the intersection and enjoyed a pleasant visit with my neighbors while we waited to learn what happened.
The story I heard is that the strike targeted the natural gas meter of one of the houses. The problem though, was people in multiple houses were reporting the smell of gas in their homes. I don’t envy the folks whose responsibility it is to solve that issue.
It started to rain again and I went back in to watch the Twins finish off the White Sox and reclaim first place in their division, hoping those two close strikes of lightning in one day will buy me a long stretch of time until I’m due for another.
New and Improved
Have you noticed the feature I recently added that is now available in the margin on the right? “Previous Somethings” allows you to more quickly navigate to archived posts. I’ve needed to avail myself of the option more and more lately as my number of posts climbs and I strive to remember if I have already written on a topic or not. Often times, as I pause to consider what title for a post will materialize in my mind, the words that arrive seem too familiar, as if I’d already used them. Heaven forbid that I use the same title more than once. You’d notice right away if I did such a thing, wouldn’t you? Do you have a sense of deja vu over the subject?
Regular readers of Relative Something might recall I wrote about the same problem of fretting over duplication just a week and a half ago, except I was more focused on the entire topic of whole posts. (You can use the “select month” pull-down menu to reach it! It was July 28th.)
That whole post was about forgetting, and on that subject, I have something to report! But it’s not about forgetting. I was going to write that it is about remembering, but that’s not entirely correct, either. I didn’t actually remember where some of my lost things had been left, but I have recovered three items in the last few days! It is a whirlwind of returned treasures. I am going to focus now on how often I find lost items and see if it keeps happening to me over and over. I must have developed some special power or something!
On Saturday, up at the lake, we were out for a walk to explore the grounds with guests and when we arrived at the tennis court to check on the eagle’s nest, (when did I last write about that?) there, lying amid the tossed balls and scattered driveway chalk, was the long-lost favorite water bottle from my bike. It is possible that it got left when I was down there playing tennis with Julian so long ago. I’m more inclined to believe that I left it somewhere at the cabin, because there should actually be two bottles, and then someone else borrowed it to use down at the courts. It doesn’t matter. I’m just happy to have it back, and I’m enjoying the surprise of finding it.
Then on Sunday, my eyes fell upon the missing nail file that I got from my mother many, many years ago. It was just waiting to be found in a rather logical place that entirely defies my ability to understand, having missed it many times in earlier searches. Maybe it, too, had been moved by someone other than me in the intervening time.
Lastly, just last night, I learned where my missing bike lock had been. I had left it in Gary’s car at the end of the June bike trip. I wracked my brain over finding where I misplaced that item. Searched high and low in all the possible places around the house and garage, multiple times. No wonder I didn’t find it. When I got home, I set it precisely in the place that I first looked for it on that day I discovered it missing.
It brings about a good feeling. It resembles the reward you feel when you snap that jigsaw puzzle piece into place to fill a void you’ve been laboring over for some time. Now I find myself eagerly waiting to discover what item I’m going to find next!
Taking a Pounding
Last night at the lake place, we received some pretty intense rainfall. A spectacular show of lightning kept us entertained just after sunset. The power went off briefly, but recovered and has been stable since. When we started to hear the pangs and clanks of hail, there was a hurried effort to rearrange vehicles to clear a spot in the second stall of the garage under cabin 3 so our friend, Rogie, could get his special car out of harm’s way. That is all it took to stop the hail. Never heard another whack after that.
One particularly dramatic moment came when someone spotted what looked like smoke coming from one of the landscape lights. We all squinted through the wet windows to clarify what we were seeing, and my first impression was that it didn’t look like steam from the hot bulb, as would be expected. It really looked like smoke! One opinion fed another and soon Cyndie was reporting that she saw sparks. A moment later, I was sure that I saw flame. Could it be that some part of the wiring was short circuiting out there in the rain?
Cyndie jumped when she heard ‘flame’ and ran to do something; I didn’t know what. I walked out the door into the rain and over toward the light to investigate. Just like Mike said, it wasn’t sparks or flame, it was the rain drops hitting the light and splashing up. The “smoke” was actually steam, after all. Just goes to show the power of the mind to perceive what it expects to see. I was so sure I had just seen flames from inside looking out.
Then I looked up, still in the falling rain, to realize that Cyndie had run through the cabin to the basement door, out to grab the garden hose, and had arrived to put water on it. In the rain. I thought that was pretty funny. She was just as convinced as me that we had a burning landscape light on our hands.
The whole place took quite a pounding last night from the heavy thunderstorm. So did the accuracy of my perceptions. It serves as a convenient reminder that things may not always turn out to be exactly as they might appear.
Me and Alcohol
Long ago in my life, so long that it’s embarrassing to admit, I discovered I don’t care for alcohol one bit. There was a brief period where I figured I should learn to like it, seeing how it was such a large part of people’s lives and a pretty significant expectation in which to imbibe upon attaining legal drinking age. But my better sense overcame that idea, aided nicely by my ongoing dislike of the taste of alcohol in all its forms. Among the multiple reasons I’m grateful for that, the most significant is that it tends to be the number one drug of choice for people with depression, and I would have likely complicated my experience of seeking a remedy for that mental struggle –and more likely than not, made a bigger mess of things up to that point.
At the time I was making my decision to just do without alcohol entirely, I was struck by the presence of the drug in 100% of the conflicts and life-dramas I was witnessing. It also seemed to be present in every violent crime, auto death, and domestic dispute I was reading about in the paper or hearing of in the news. I figured I was improving my odds greatly by avoiding it altogether.
Still, it has never been far off. Nothing is more difficult for me than the role it plays in the lives of people close to me. How I have wished to just have them make the same decision I did and abstain entirely. It frustrates me that there is no definitive point clarifying that intangible transition from unimpaired to intoxicated. How much is too much? How long is too long? I’m afraid, as patient a man as I am, I have no patience for enduring the period of increased drinking, and the associated consequences, that must eventually build up to earning a justifiable intervention.
It all seems so unnecessary and entirely avoidable.
I suffer the fact that even though I am able to completely eliminate my intake of alcohol, I remain under the influence of its impact, through the experiences of people around me.
Everything and Nothing
There can’t be anything more intense than the intensity of absolutely everything this world presents, packed into one microscopic morsel of a moment that presses smack-dab up against another moment which is chock-full to the brim with more of absolutely everything this world presents –overstuffed, really– and then finding that that moment is also wedged against even more moments which all seem to be lined up and approaching, one after another, with no discernible end in sight. At the very same time that all this intensity is radiating over and through us, there occurs some mysterious phenomenon which allows us to simultaneously sense absolutely nothing at all. We take in nothing but a monochrome blur, absent of image or sound, and in reflection, project a hollow stare devoid of any detectable emotion. Everything is there, and nothing is there, all at the same time.
My depressed mind would seem to amplify every possible thing I could think of and then compress it all into an overwhelming tangled concern to be dealt with all at once. It may be that there was a cause and effect relationship, but it was doubly difficult to manage all the issues my dysfunctional mind collected because at the same time there was a gray fog enveloping all the mental processing I was trying to accomplish.
Unraveling it all is no easy task, but it is relatively simple. Even small progress in the direction of healthy thinking will provide changes that tend to pave the way to further improvement. All you need to do is choose to go down that road. And it really helps if you go so far down that road that when you look back, you can no longer see the dysfunctional thinking that you’ve left behind.
Seeking Initiative
I am wondering about something. And part of me is considering the possibility there is no answer to what is on my mind.
Is there a moment when someone experiencing mental health challenges will make a definitive decision to seek a solution? I expect it is not so clear-cut as to be one specific moment. In my case, I tend to refer to the morning I lived up to a promise I made to myself to call for help if I ever experienced another shutdown from depression. I can’t really identify what brought me to even make that promise. I think it is funny that I didn’t feel it worthy of making a call right then and there, at the time I deduced I might have a problem deserving professional intervention, but that it could wait for some future incident of difficulty.
As I continue to come upon the difficult stories posted in depression forums by suffering people, I am moved to come up with something to say that might inspire a seed of initiative for them to choose to change. It is sad to witness the pain people endure while they avoid facing the reality of their situations. The pain of depression is familiar to sufferers, and, in a dysfunctional way, more comfortable than the unknowns of healthy thought process. We unconsciously harbor fears which our minds then put a lot of creative energy into defending, even when those fears are unfounded.
What is it that finally causes a person to decide they have had enough of the old struggles? What rouses us to choose to take a step in the direction of optimal health and seek help from mental health professionals? If there were a single answer, we could bottle it and send it out to all the hurting people of the world.
Instead, there are a lot of people suffering, figuratively banging their heads against the same problems over and over. I wonder if it is possible to help them find that moment in which they discover an inspiration to take action toward better mental health.
An Apple Today
An apple a day may be good for a person, but something here seemed to find the leaves much more appetizing!
Manic Mix
Real or imagined, my mind is a manic mix of mayhem, most recently triggered by an ill-timed –as if there was ever a good time– high ankle sprain that occurred on Friday morning during my regular indoor soccer workout. We had been surprised with a forced relocation to the children’s gym due to some basketball special event requiring both wood courts. I didn’t adapt well to the plastic tile sport-court surface and turned my left ankle while desperately trying to maintain a defensive position between our goal and the attacking player, Ranses, who was expertly keeping ball possession and gaining ground, despite my efforts.
I was barely able to drive back home afterward and then decided I needed to take the day off work. However, later that day, we were headed to Mille Lacs Lake for the Hays family reunion weekend. That turned out to be a whirlwind of fun, food, laughter, and silliness. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up maximizing the focus of my treatment of the ankle and neglected to bring my cold packs or my bottle of ibuprofen, and even neglected to appropriately rest it. Getting out for some bocce ball, catch with a Foxtail and then football, and even going for a little walk, were all a little premature activity so soon after the sprain.
I don’t think the bowling on the Wii was all that harmful, but watching some of the X-game performances sure made me tense it up more that I wanted to. I think I hurt myself just watching others risk their limbs to the degree those athletes do. 
I did take advantage of the hydro-therapy available in the big lake when a small number of us walked over to play along the shore. While others were off exploring the Kathio State Park, I got in a little rock balancing while soaking my sprain in the cool waters of Mille Lacs.
The weekend seems to fly by before we even get around to spending quality time with everyone present, but I did get some good attention from Drew as he helped me take apart and rebuild the spherical jigsaw puzzle I brought along.
Yesterday, when we finally landed back home again, I worked on getting into a rhythm of regularly icing of my ankle, taking ibuprofen, and elevating my foot while resting. It gave me a chance to catch up a bit on the ‘virtual’ friends I’ve made in my online community, where I was sad to read of the difficulties one person was having with his recently diagnosed depression.
It has been on my mind since I first read about it last week and I have been struck by the level of influence it has had on my attention. The struggle this person describes in posts to our ‘walled’ community is incredibly familiar to me and I feel very sympathetic to their plight. I’m starting to notice that while they are struggling with things, it feels as if I am impacted as well, and I anxiously await news of a break in the suffering.
I think I’m ready to return to the routine of a work day. Unfortunately, it will not be entirely routine until I am able to return to my morning soccer matches with a fully healed ankle to get my head-clearing exercise. And what can you say to that but, “and how!”
Relative Something 