The time to board the plane approaches and as I always seem to experience in the not too distant memory, I am filled with this anxious feeling of remiss or more accurately pre-miss and it dawns on me to ponder the things I will miss. With that in my mind, today I add to my computer a new folder called 2007 where I will store month by upcoming month each batch of photos I accumulate in my travels and wanders that inspire the snapshots of time I grab paste into the physical memory banks.

**** The Things I will Miss ****

I First is the little people I love. My daughters, my niece and the little ones in my heart that I rarely see. And though far away and disconnected, I always I hold them in my heart. Some things hurt too much to think about more than in flashes so I let them slide out of my mind and find distraction.

Next would be sensation and familiarity of my bed. The place I go at the end point of each day when I have had enough and where I climb in to recharge to be for feeling of warm fresh start.

And when I wake I like to play a album as I start my new day, I will miss the scratchy sound of the needle upon the spinning black disc and how I never know exactly how long before the music will start.

I will miss the way the the dreary and hazy sleep fades away each day as I head to the ocean blue room of clean. The rubber ducks that sit on the shower head and the way my day comes into focus as I ponder my plans under falling water.

I will miss drinking that first morning coffee without having to get dressed and the way the espresso maching always scars me when it gets hot and starts spitting steam out the relief valve when it is ready.

I will miss searching the fridge for bits of food when I went too many days between shopping and being able to eat simple clean cool mangos, making shrimp tacos and salsa and my two favorite knives, the one that rusts if I don't wipe it off and the one that makes the cool shhwriiing sound like a mini "Kill Bill" sword.

I will miss my favorite pan made of cast iron that I cook nearly everything with and how I need to take care of it to keep the perfect layer of cooked in oil and how it never touches soap.

I will miss the enjoyment I feel to create new things or fix things that are broken with my pile of tools

I will miss the freedom that my motorcycle and car gives me to be able to travel on a whim to destinations without hindrance. I will miss not getting anything good in the mail and then after day after day passes to the point where I stop checking, actually getting something good. I will miss the two ladies next door that take a walk every morning and always smile and loaning tools to my neighbor across the street. I will miss going to the Rat Shop and especially everyone there that each day come to share a bit of their life together for a common goal and the challenges and successes that each day brings. I will miss the people I care about that that I hang out with at home.

So to all that I press the pause button and step away. But it never pauses, it just keeps rolling along without me. Bye bye home and soon all this will fade, I know it will, it always does, it is just so hard to see there from here.

The not sad and getting ready to leave,

Dave Rat