The view from here

 



 

Home is for juggling. Or at least my home is.

The NASCAR season is winding down. I spend more time in motel rooms and race tracks than my house. The general feeling is that I don’t really live anywhere. I write about racing on the road. I pay bills, surf the Internet, write, wash clothes, pack suitcases, visit my mother and run errands at home. I don’t juggle rubber balls or bowling pins. I juggle all the routine activities listed above.

I slip in a few other activities. I’m trying to learn a new song. I made a video of another. I watched the final game of the World Series and election coverage. I appeared on three radio shows, one at the station and two from the easy chair in my home, talking on the phone.

It’s a strange life but one to which I’ve grown accustomed over the years.

On Thursday, I was juggling with new balls constantly being throw into the mix. I decided I wanted to go to an open mic to try out the new song, which created a bit more urgency to learn it. At 11:30 a.m., I still hadn’t thrown the first load of dirty clothes into the washer. I still had to shave, shower and get dressed. Another trip to the post office was necessary, not to mention paying a few bills that came in the mail on Wednesday.

It’s amusing sometimes around town. Someone will see me eating lunch or in a convenience store and say, “Hey, what are you doing in town?

To which I say, “Well, I live here.”

I’m home when all my friends are working. I’m working when all my friends are home.

The grass needs cutting one more time. That’ll have to wait. I need to trim the bushes on the road to the house. That’ll wait, too.

I flew to Texas on Friday. Thanks to my musical hobby, I had many friends to see out there. I needed to drive up to Gainesville to see Vince Pawless, my friend and builder of extraordinary guitars. Casey Thompson, both a singer-songwriter and a NASCAR fan, was playing with his band in Dallas on Saturday night. When these words were written, I was pretty sure more opportunities were going to arise.

Did I mention that I had a NASCAR race to cover?

Of course, a life others might call normal will return with Thanksgiving, and it will be wonderful … for a couple weeks.

Normal, to me, is this life. Normal, to others, gets old after a while. I think the term is “creature of habit.”

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