2007-03-09

The day was streaming with sunshine after Morning Offering when Mick and I settled into the downstairs office to spend a morning working on our tax information. There are things which QuickBooks does not catch. If a taxpayer wants to capture information for use on Schedule A, the Itemized Deductions part of the tax forms, he must shag those balls himself. I began adding to our 2006 worksheet the information Pam had already gathered on our donations and “donations in kind”, like Goodwill boxes of clothes and old household effects. Jim took on the medical records.

By lunchtime Jim had chewed his way through all the medical file folders of receipts and insurance forms and we had the information we needed on medical mileage. Meanwhile I had gotten the charity donations and donations in kind done, including adding up all charity mileage from my car log. I did myself in on that, writing for part of the year with a red pen. Now I know why officials always ask for people to write on forms with black ink. The red color does not Xerox well at all. I must have spent 30 minutes writing in unreadable bits of that log copy for our tax preparer.

There is more tax info collection to do, and Gary promises that Monday morning, he will join me and Jim in ganging up on the rest of the work. Hopefully, that big push will get every I dotted and T crossed!

Pam was not able to continue her good work on the taxes as she had gotten another bookkeeping job, which she needed. However, it takes up every remaining hour in her work week. Hence the work by the house crew.

I came upstairs after lunch and stretching, intending to work on the book, but I promptly fell asleep in my chair, worn out by the morning’s work, during which I had been uncharacteristically vertical and running around from cabinet to labeler to folder to form in a merry dance. When I awoke from the inadvertent nap, it was almost five o’clock and I expected the call to bathe quite soon, so I decided to do some e-mail, to make use of what little time was left in the work day. I wrote a good bit of e-mail as follows:

The last two members of our Board had written in to give consent to the changes we wish to make. Now it is a matter of continuing to work on the document responding to the concern we had that a larger Board might mean a less wieldy Board. So we are structuring the Board as we enlarge it – or at least proposing to do so. Hopefully I can work on this document again tomorrow. I wrote both gentlemen to thank them and assured them that more was coming on this subject soon.

I responded to quite a few people who had written in on the article I wrote for UPI on the hospital experience. I really touched a nerve with that writing! So many have responded now that I think another article awaits the writing, on the concern people have about my illness and possible death. I certainly have no intention of dying soon! I have had poor health for my whole life, having come from the womb with many birth defects in my left eye and brain damage from the eye being turned into the third eye area of my brain, piercing the amygdale. I do feel quite fearless about death, for it will only mean that I have concluded my lessons and service here and am ready for new life, new lessons and new service.

Dana R and I corresponded on several different points. She is donating a good bit of her writing to L/L Research to archive and possibly reprint one day, plus some of her books. We are working through her various concerns now. Meanwhile, as we are both feeling a bit under the weather, we are sending each other encouraging words, prayers and angels. We share a tremendous love of Jesus the Christ, so we have a wonderful time praising His way, His truth and trying to live His life with Him, not that we have crosses or crucifixions to bear, but that we follow the way of peace, service and love with all our hearts.

Steve M had sent back Chapter Three of 101: The Choice, corrected for the second time, and I consolidated his comments, taking most of them to heart and enjoying them all, and finished with that Chapter for good, until the final read-through of course. I wrote to thank him after putting the Chapter to bed.

Donna N had written in concerning a case she was working on, a patient of teenage years and schizophrenic diagnosis who was convinced that she was possessed. Donna was at a loss as to how to help her. I made a couple of suggestions.

Melissa T wrote in and I spent a bit of time being a girlfriend. She is having a really hard time getting settled out west.

Ian and I communicated on a couple of different issues concerning A Book of Days and the web site.

Jim arrived home late, almost 6 PM, from gardening for one of his customers. He had cleaned up their sizeable estate of winter storm debris and had a heaping trailer-load of bags of leaves and bundles of sticks to join the stack of limbs he placed at their “curbside” – our little village has no actual kerbing – for garbage pick-up.

We enjoyed a refreshing whirlpool and a bite of supper before greeting Carmen, who, along with Romi, had been invited for Movie Night. Romi called at the last minute to beg off, but Carmen, Jim and I enjoyed Robin Williams winning the Presidency of the USA. Anything he is in is predictably going to be worth the watching, and we enjoyed it, although the depth of political commentary was like a very large wading pool. The movie reflected the entire nation’s growing concern about the present administration and articulated the array of concerns well, without ever going more than wading-pool deep in offering any sort of solution. He was, of course, immensely witty, and one always knows most of the riffs were not in any script. We are grateful for his gifts!

The University of Louisville had won a cliff-hanger of a game yesterday night – a game I mostly snoozed through - and that put them back at Madison Square Garden for an attempt to win the conference tourney. They, however, lost to Pittsburg in tonight’s game fair and square and will not be coming home with the conference title. March Madness begins in earnest this next week, as the play-offs of college b-ball start up, all 65 teams who make the cut being named soon.

I slept through a lot of this game as well, but Carmen and Jim enjoyed the game. We said good night to Carmen after offering a late Gaia Meditation, and went up for a kitty-cat snuggle before our own good nights were said around midnight.