2007-05-30

Jim’s and my 20th anniversary rolled in, dusty and very warm. This month has been one of the top five hottest Mays on record despite a severe cold snap early in the month. However the grass is stubbornly growing and Jim went out after Morning Offering to make some lawns look beautiful. I went back to Dr. B-H’s office to have the EEG she requested. That took the morning.

After a very light lunch I came upstairs to work but fell asleep in my chair and lost most of the afternoon work time. Sometimes sleep sweeps over me so heavily I would think I were drugged if I did not know for sure that I am not ingesting anything consciousness-changing.

I did work more on the orange-ray chapter – each ray will need its own chapter, I have found, as the material I wish to share is too lengthy to combine the three lower chakra discussions into one chapter. However I am not satisfied yet with its flow. Something is nagging at me. I shall need to tackle this again with fresh eyes tomorrow.

I found the work I had done on the Spring 2007 issue of Light/Lines. The original ‘send’ got lost back in March when I did the work and I did not notice that Ian never published the issue on site until Gary brought it to my attention. Ian wrote back immediately to assure me that he would get the issue published pronto.

Jim and I bathed and then went to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse for our present to each other. Oh my! The outside elevator takes the happy diner up to the 25th floor of a suburban high-rise office building. It’s an interesting building, being built from the top down, so that the building is suspended from the central core. There is a 360-degree view, and private planes come and go frequently as Bowman Field is close by. The food was so good! From beginning – lobster bisque – to end – banana flan tart – and everything in between, Jim and I had a feast we will recall forever!

I offered the prayer at the end of our Gaia Meditation while we were at table there. If any other diners noticed us, they probably thought we were contemplating our plates! Truly, one can meditate anywhere except in the driver’s seat of a car!

We relaxed with the cats until bedtime.

2007-05-29

Another gorgeous day! We cannot afford many more hot, dry days or our grass is going to turn up its toes and fry! Jim left after Morning Offering for the dusty job of mowing and I finished collecting my quotes for my fifth article on Dana Redfield. I was pleased with what I was able to glean from looking through her unpublished manuscript, which she had left to L/L Research, of “Tomorrow”.

I had to leave for a doctor’s appointment to get checked up on my seizure, which I had in 2004. I have to go back tomorrow for an EEG and take another MRA in June, but if all goes well, the doctor will take me off Kepra, which would be great! One less drug.

I stopped at Big Boy for lunch and then shopped for a bath pillow and a 20th Anniversary card for Mick, as our anniversary is tomorrow. I also made a deposit for L/L Research, as we have gotten several cash donations lately and they don’t mail well.

It took me the rest of the afternoon to finish Dana 5, and I found that this is not my final article on her after all. I got to thinking about some of her imagery of the Tomorrow Tree being struck by lightning and I want to write on that before I am through.

Meanwhile, I scanned new e-mail to find that both of the ladies, Jill and Cynthia, whom I had asked yesterday about the possibility of a midrash section as an appendix to Dana’s book, The Alphabet Mosaics, feel it is a really sound idea. So it looks more and more as though this will happen in good time.

Gary had been hard at work all day and we consulted about several matters. The volunteer who is editing “The Brown Notebook”, which is the source from which Don Elkins originally got the idea of forming our Louisville Group, as we called ourselves before becoming L/L Research, wrote to ask for editing guidelines. He sounds so sharp! Gary says he is in publishing. That figures. Not too many people know about em-dashes. It is delightful to have such a skilled person on that job.

Further, the volunteer doing the notation on the music on our music CDs wrote asking for guidelines on that! I encouraged him not to score the other instruments but stick with the basic chording, as for piano or guitar, and the melodies. It will be super to offer the music on line in addition to the texts of the stories within which they are embedded. I wrote all three stories and most of the words to the songs for those three stories, while my brother, Tommy, wrote most of the music for Jenny, The Journey and This Is The Day.

Gary also pointed out that our Spring Issue of Light/Lines never made it to the llresearchsite in March! I dashed off an inquiry to Ian, and he does not have the material. I shall need to find that tomorrow.

We had a lovely, quiet evening. Amy Goodman’s show was again riveting, looking at War Made Easy, a documentary on how our nation’s presidents from Nixon onward have managed news reportage of war, cheering for it with sometimes bad information - think Gulf of Tonkin - in their inimitable way.

Colbert was especially tasty tonight too, as Jane Fonda sat in his lap and completely undid his usual calm demeanor. I so enjoy that woman! As Bob Seger so red-neck-edly said, “I love to watch her strut!” And I do! Not just strut, which is part and parcel of who she is as a person, having all the ballet experience in her childhood and continuing to do the barre exercises throughout her life, but object, and reason, and make all kinds of sense about difficult issues. Go Jane!

Gary prayed the ending prayer at our Gaia Meditation and then I read while Jim did some e-mail before we came upstairs for a kitty-snuggle at bedtime.

2007-05-28

A sweet rain overnight dampened the dust and freshened the air as I retrieved the newspaper before Morning Offering. Jim had a much easier day because of that, and the increasingly golden, burnt grass hereabouts has had a reprieve.

After answering notes from Leslie D – we are off for the summer; the next meditation meetings are in September - and Rick C – it’s grand that he’s back at work doing his recording and saving for a better console – I squared off with the day.

Firstly, I wrote Ian, who is producing A Book of Days, sending him Jim McCarty’s text blurb on it for inclusion on the back cover of the book. It is a fine little recommendation and it will do just dandy. Good-bye, Bishop Gulick, and thank you for delaying the printing of this book for two months! Several e-mails and a telephone conversation with his admin have not served to coax the man into writing the blurb he promised me. It is time to move onward. I am just surprised it took me this long to give up my faith in his promise to write a blurb for me. What was I thinking, to wait so long?

Secondly, I wrote to introduce Ian, webmaster for our archive site, www.llresearch.org, to the hopeful webmaster for www.bring4th.org, Steve E. They will have reason to converse in the time to come, and so I made them known to each other. I also laid out for Ian the work which Gary, Steve, Jim, Romi and I had done this last weekend on pre-launch matters for B4. I took the time to do this most lovingly.

This done, I turned to Dana Redfield’s work, for although I keep saying I cannot work on the editing of the Alphabet Mosaics until I finish editing the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues, people keep writing me about Dana. And each person has considerable material from her, and much commentary about her. So I wrote Jill and Cynthia, the latest two of her colleagues to contact me about her book. Jill sent me an article she wrote about Dana. Cynthia had much to say also and asked if she could visit in person later this summer.

I wrote them both at some length, discussing with them Elihu E’s suggestion that we include, as an appendix, a collection of commentaries on Dana and her work, and asking for their opinions on this idea.

I broke for lunch and then came back upstairs to work on 101. I’d determined to split Chapter 4 into three chapters, and began the session by removing all but the red-ray discussion from that chapter. Then I read through the present orange-ray section, now Chapter 5, noting what I had covered and what remained to be covered in that discussion in order to report on what the Confederation says about orange ray.

I identified three areas I still wished to discuss before moving on to yellow-ray thoughts. By afternoon’s end I had written the first-draft text for two of those three points and had just chosen the quotation to head the discussion of the third point when Mick called bath time.

It was a good place to pause, so I printed out all my changed pages and called it a day. Mick and I enjoyed our whirlpool and then a romantic tryst before sliding into sleep, from which Mick gently shook me awake at 8 PM: suppertime. My stomach was in rebellion, so I dined on little but good feelings, which there were in plenty, while Gary and Jim enjoyed their salmon loaf. Stewart and Colbert were holding forth and tonight Al Gore was interviewed concerning his new book, The Assault on Reason. I appreciate this mainstream personality attempting with all his heart to bring to people’s attention the situation of our political times.

After the Gaia Meditation, at the end of which I offered the closing prayer, Gary said good night and went downstairs to his basement room to read before bedtime, while Mick and I came upstairs to enjoy some episodes of Star Trek Enterprise which we had missed the first time through. It was a real treat to see a two-part story we’d not beheld before. That took us to our own lights-out at 11 PM.

2007-05-27

What a glorious day! I spent my morning singing at St. Luke’s while Mick cleaned house. I enjoyed a unique Pentecost service. This is the day the church celebrates the event where tongues of flame danced on the apostles’ heads and as they preached, each man heard the words in his native tongue. We got to hear the prayer of the Holy Spirit from our multi-national congregation in Roman, Greek, French, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, German and, oh yes, English! It was moving indeed. It brings the drama of that moment in time home to hear the many different languages.

After church I stayed at the reception to sell CDs and baseball tickets on behalf of the choir, not getting a single sale. I did bring home a whole flat of red impatiens, which the church was giving away to celebrate Pentecost, the birthday of the church. They had some left over after most of the congregation had left with their one flower, and a few of us volunteered to take the remainder home.

Steve E was gracious enough to treat Mick and me to lunch. We took him – where else – to Captain’s Quarters, the unassuming but very pleasant restaurant on the banks of the sweet, broad Ohio about seven miles north of Camelot. The cottonwood trees were "snowing", white flakes drifting through the air and thick on the ground. We sat between a hackberry, a maple and the cottonwood and watched a very active Ohio – no barges today, but all kinds of one-person river-cycles, putt-putt mechanized rowboats, sleek small boats, yachts and houseboats. We even saw what Steve called a “cigarette boat” with an enormous-sounding engine. It looked very exotic and very fast! It was a delicious lunch and a lovely time out in the open air.

We lingered at lunch and got back home barely in time for Mick and me to take our bath and rejoin the growing party. Romi came over early to work on our computers’ maintenance. Carmen arrived and we enjoyed a good conversation before the talk around the circle and the following silent meditation. After the half-hour meditation, the group was kind enough to sit with me while I asked the Holy Spirit to guide me in producing some sample guided Gaia Meditations.

Steve feels that a lot of people who really want to enter in to these meditations are not that sure how to go about it. He wanted some examples. The group came up with seven themes and Jim read them to me one at a time. Then I would speak the meditation as it came through me. It is a kind of channeling, but from an inner guide, in my case the Holy Spirit. I was glad to get that text done, as that was all that remained of those texts which Steve needs from me to launch the first generation of bring4th.org. it felt good to close out that part of our weekend's purpose for gathering with Steve.

We all drifted into getting our cook-out together after that was done. I made some devilled eggs while the guys fired up the grill. It is the first time we have used Dad McCarty’s grill, which we carted back from Nebraska last winter, and we discovered that only half of it is working so far. However, the part that did work produced some delicious BBQ chicken and corn on the cob. Romi had brought potato salad and cookies and Carmen had brought a sweet, juicy watermelon, so we had a feast.

Conversation reined until after 8 PM, at which time Steve offered everyone a Reiki session. In the midst of those we offered the Gaia Meditation, with Gary praying the closing prayer.

After Mick finished talking with his Mom at about 10:30 – she had driven over 500 miles today, all over west Nebraska with her niece, Shirley and Shirley’s husband, Babe, putting fresh bunches of plastic flowers on the many family graves, as is their custom, and had not gotten home until late – we said good night to the group, which was still deep in conversation. My eyes were involuntarily closing! Mick and I napped and snuggled with the kitties until midnight, when we said good night.

2007-05-26

This was an unusual Saturday here, as none of us did what we normally do. I am usually upstairs working on a Saturday, while Gary usually mans the admin desk or does other chores. Today, however, it was all about web sites for us.

Jim usually has free time on the weekend, but this time he had taken on two jobs in addition to his normal work week and so he spent most of the day working for Jim’s Lawn Service.

After Morning Offering, he went off to garden while Steve E, Gary B and I gathered for a day of working on the www.bring4th web site. I noticed that web equals “we b”, which word play I enjoyed because it synchronistically expresses what our spiritual activism site is all about. We b human beings – help us to b-come!

Our discussion got off track and back on any number of times as we chewed our way through the concept of the site and what features needed to be included in the start-up material we will launch as B4’s first generation.

Jim brought our fast-food lunch in at noon and we all kept talking. Somehow we always found our way back to the nitty-gritty of focused work. By the time Romi joined us, after I had taken some time out to have my toenails cut in the early afternoon, we had begun to get a clearer picture of what work lay ahead.

Romi explained to Steve what he had been doing in broadcasting the channeling sessions during this last channeling season and Steve, in turn, explained how a web-cast would work from the new B4 site. Fortunately, we have just finished our channeling sessions for this season and shall not have another public meeting and meditation until the first Sunday in September, when we begin session again.

Our public meetings “year” runs, like schools, from September to May, with the three summer months off so Mick and I can catch our breath, relax and watch a few movies on Sunday afternoons, or drive up to Avalon for a retreat. Steve felt that by September, our web-casting function would be up and running.

We four worked quite a bit, in the later part of the afternoon, on the nuts and bolts of various sections. I found some text to create for the site and promised to work on first drafts of all the texts we identified as needed so far.

Our food supply had run dry in-house and so we ordered take-away pizza for us all for supper and enjoyed a good conversation until the Gaia Meditation, at which Gary offered the closing prayer tonight. After that, the party broke up. I knitted on Kori’s baby blanket while Jim cleaned the kitchen and Gary and Steve went to rent a video. They returned just as Jim finished cleaning. Mick and I bade Gary and Steve a good night and went upstairs to snuggle with the kitties before our lights-out at 11 PM.

2007-05-25

After Morning Offering Jim and Gary set out to do their Friday mowing marathon. Many lawn customers prefer that their lawns be fresh for their weekend entertaining, so on Fridays Gary helps Mick and they really rock and roll with twice the usual number of customers.

I edited another Aaron/Quo session before lunch, enjoying again the unique flavor of these co-channelings. It is wonderful to see how positive information from sources as different as an ET and an ancient Buddhist inner guide harmonizes.

I gave the internet a look before lunch. Responding to my positive experience with listening to Kucinich’s views, I ordered a T-shirt for Mick and a bumper sticker for me. I also signed up for his newsletter. I should be able to keep track of his discussion of the issues of the day that way. His web site is http://kucinich.us/. Be my guest and check him out if you are interested. Whatever we do this time around with the election of our next president, we need to be more involved, I think. These last two elections were utter disasters of misbehavior and outright criminal acts, where we selected a president rather than voting one in.

I am deeply disappointed in Congress's vote to fund more war. The Democrats won the last elections and obtained a majority in both houses of Congress because the general run of American people wanted an end to this war. These same Democrats are now acting like sheep.

It is as though the Bush boys were blackmailing them all with incriminating photographs of sexual indiscretions or proof of theft or murder. I keep reminding myself that this world scene is precisely what we came to planet Earth to love. So my watchword of the day is that wonderful chorus from Mendelssohn’s Elijah: Be Not Afraid! We can heal this world as we heal ourselves and express steady faith, holding the light with serenity and confidence.

In the afternoon I worked further with orange ray in Chapter 4 of 101, discovering I had way more to cover than I had realized. I organized my thoughts on what was left of orange ray matters and wrote about distractions and how they keep us from developing our relationships. There are plenty of distractions, between computer games, television and iPods and such.

I may split these chapters up, as the present chapter is over 30 pages now, and i have not even begun a discussion of yellow ray. so i believe we shall have more and shorter chapters, perhaps one for each ray.

Jim and Gary finished their lawn work in mid-afternoon and then Mick did his weekly maintenance on his tools and mowers and repaired a leak in the waterfall of the smaller pond while Gary got groceries and cooked up a storm. Mick called bath time just as I got some more e-mail addressed. Vara L wrote with good news. She is greatly enjoying living down south with her new boyfriend. She is now almost completely responsible for editing Planet Light Worker. She told me they would publish my “Shift” article in their July issue and the chakra series in issues thereafter.

I had not heard from Leslie D is several years, and was tickled to receive an e-mail update from her. She is a gentle, sweet, poetic soul and through the last decade or so has come to our meditations off and on. At this point, her health is delicate and she needs to stay home. But it was great to say hey.

I squared off with the upcoming visit with Steve E, who will spend this weekend working on the bring4th web site with Gary and me, plus Jim from time to time and Romi at some point – he said he wanted to sit in as he could. I have a pedicure on Saturday afternoon and church on Sunday morning to be reckoned in to the planning of our extended conversations. I sent Gary an e-mail with those facts and printed out the schedule to hang in the kitchen where everyone can consult it.

My last note was also to admin Gary. My MacDuffie classmates are beginning to send me photographs. I would like to include them in my class newsletter next month, so I wrote to ask Gary if he knows how to scan in photos and use them in composing a document. I have not done that before except in the Camelot Journal, back when that was possible.

Jim called bath time and we luxuriated in a long whirlpool before coming upstairs for a date. I always feel so creative as we share sexual energy, as if we are both gardeners in the Creator’s Garden of Delights. We bring each other to bloom!

We napped briefly after that and then came down to join Gary for dinner and the Gaia Meditation, with my offering the ending prayer tonight. Then Steve E showed up, bright-eyed despite his long road trip from the DC area, and we had a good conversation until my eyes started clanking shut at 11 PM or so. So we all said good night. We shall have fun this weekend, I can tell! there is much good energy around this project. Praise the Lord!

2007-05-24

Another beautiful, hot and dry day greeted Jim and me as we made our Morning Offering. This draught is so out of season that it is remarkable. Usually we are inundated during May with spring rains. First the freeze just after things began blooming and now the draught has ruined some local crops already. It is thought that our peaches and apples will not grow this year.

Jim did not mow today. His jobs were all gardening, and he worked very hard, bringing lots of branches and vines home to take to Avalon for our earth-building project along the sides of our feeder creek’s ravine. I spent the morning clearing the desk and then editing the third Aaron/Q’uo dialogue from the fourth of nine weekends. I am now almost exactly halfway through that work.

Cindy F picked me up and treated me to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, one of my favorite restaurants in this end of town. Yum!! We had a long lunch, catching up on all her doings, on my part, and all my doings, on her part. Cindy has been gone for a bit over three years now. She and her beau, Ron, now live in WA and she is building a temple in her barn. It was terrific to get caught up on all her family news.

Again it was late when I returned, but I had not been shopping so I was not wiped out physically and was able to get back to work, a blessing! I worked my way through the orange-ray sexuality section again, feeling good about the flow, although I wish I could have written the section with more of a light touch. However, I personally think keeping the orange ray clear, sexually speaking, is doggoned difficult for most people unless they are in the kind of mated relationship Mick and I have, where he is Man to me and I am Woman to him.

For the most part, and especially for those “out there” dating, the scene is unfortunately one of sexual predation and often people are not kind. There is a lot of abuse of women in our society. So it was written as I felt it had to be written in order to be clear about staying open through all the dramas. So I ended up talking about forgiveness. I think it is a strong section now, so I am ready to move on into discussion of the yellow ray.

Jim called bath time in perfect timing with my ending my work on Chapter 4. We took in a great conversation Amy Goodman had with Dennis Kucinich. His thoughts were cogent and clear, so unusual for politicians that my whole personality sat up and said howdy. I do not know how he can be elect-able, being so outspoken, but I agree with him across the board and will contact his campaign group to see about getting a bumper sticker. It is too early for signs in the yard!

Jim and I dozed off after the news and awoke to come downstairs for supper, political satire from Stewart and Colbert and then the Gaia Meditation. Romi stopped by to pick up some computer bits and pieces for work he is doing and left me a New York Times Magazine, which contains the Sunday puzzles. I greatly enjoyed working them through while half-listening to the television’s CSI episodes.

Mick and I came upstairs for our usual kitty snuggle and said good night at 11 PM.

2007-05-23

After Morning Offering, I drank my green tea and did just a bit of e-mail, writing Vara L about Planet Light Worker’s use of my UPI articles and talking more with Romi about archiving my correspondence.

Then it was time to go to Indiana for the second time this week. Connie M and I wanted to get together for lunch and she lives over that way. We met at a Ruby Tuesday’s off exit 5 on I-65. Their menu offers a special burger which is delicious – not original, but good!

What was even better was seeing Connie. It has been nine months since she and I were together, a long time apart for us. Connie has often attended our meditation meetings ever since the early ‘90s. And I have missed her since last fall.

We spent a long, long lunch hour catching up. Connie took me through a sad soap opera which she had experienced during this time, as her mother became mentally more and more “off”, paranoid and cruel in her fear. Being a good daughter, Connie was very determined to see her mother through, but ultimately she herself began to become mentally unstable under the pressure of trying to keep up the family business while her mom got meaner in her senility. Finally Connie and her mom agreed to sell the business. Connie has moved away from her mom, closer to Louisville. And her mom, freed from the business and living alone, has become a nice person again. Go figure!

This does mean that Connie needs to find a job, as previously her bills were paid from the family business’s earnings. Fortunately she is a clinical psychologist, and it is a matter of choosing which job to take rather than looking for work, as the Louisville area professionals all know and love Connie’s work.

After reluctantly rising from the dinner table, we decided to prolong the afternoon together by shopping at a local Goodwill. I had a wonderful time fishing round amongst so many garments to find a few that were pretty on me. We used up the afternoon, and then I got in the middle of a traffic jam on the Kennedy Bridge coming home. It is a narrow bridge relative to the amount of traffic it must bear between Indiana and Kentucky, and someone had crashed across all the lanes of traffic going south and stopped the traffic behind them. It took me an hour to arrive back home, just in time to hang up my new clothes and have a bath with Mick.

Gary had been at the admin helm all day and has finally gotten caught up on the meganormous Inbox backlog he beheld when he got back from vacation. He does such a great job! We ironed out some more questions various people had sent in before Mick and I came upstairs to relax.

Democracy Now was most interesting tonight. Jeremy Scahill was interviewed. He has written a book about Blackwater which describes this company as representing itself as a kind of army of the USA. The representatives of this company overseas feel it acceptable to shoot and kill civilians as part of their duties in maintaining security.

I was tickled to hear that a little town where Blackwater wants to build yet another camp to train mercenaries has risen up and refused to allow that company to build within their township. That kind of proactive citizenship is just what is needed to indicate to powerful forces like Blackwater that America is not amused by this descent into Roman Empire-like behavior.

We came downstairs and joined Gary for Jon Stewart and the Colbert Rapport, supper and the Gaia Meditation. I settled into some reading on Tom Wicker’s amazingly long political saga while Mick caught up his e-mail. Then Gary, Mick and I sat down and talked through next weekend.

It will be a crowded time, and an excellent one. Steve E will arrive Friday evening for a weekend of discussion on launching bring4th. He has a ton of good ideas and the ability to do all the technical things needed for running a web site. We will discuss both concepts and technical stuff. The concepts will come first, then the ‘imagineering’.

We also will have our very last meditation meeting for the season, a silent meditation this next week. We decided to make a party after the meditation is over. Gary will man the grill and we'll have corn on the cob, baked potatoes and a big salad in addition to whatever dishes the others bring for pot-luck. it should be perfect weather as we are in draught. Jim's watering mornings and evenings to keep our plantings healthy.

Jim and I bade Gary good night at 10 PM and snuggled with the cats until 11PM before our own lights-out.

2007-05-22

Jim headed out into the drought-caught day to mow and garden after Morning Offering while I came upstairs and wrote some e-mail to start my work day. I sent an e-mail forward to several friends of a lovely daily send called “Morning Blessings” which I often find very inspiring. The link is blessings@angelaperegoff.com. Check it out for your own use. You can subscribe for free.

Cindy F wrote to cancel her luncheon appointment with me. She had gotten caught up in cleaning at the house of her ex-husband. It is now on the market and she felt a good scrubbing would help it sell. It is a mansion with 12-foot ceilings and spacious inner dimensions in all the rooms. L/L Research held the Midwinter Gathering there two winters ago and we all greatly enjoyed that space. Hopefully Cindy and I will be able to get together day after tomorrow instead.

I wrote a couple of letters to St. Luke’s people. I agreed with Lisa to sell CDs and baseball tickets after church next Sunday. I also agreed with Fr. Joe to substitute at the 8 AM Sunday services as lay reader and chalice bearer when needed.

His usual reader for the early service, Ewing H, is an old friend of my parents’. Ewing's wife and my Mom were recovering alcoholics together for over a decade as well as Cursillo group members, and for years they got together before AA and Alanon meetings each week. I am sorry to say that Ewing is showing his age. He is one of this world’s sweetest and kindest gentlemen and I am sorry to see his health failing.

My cousin Carlos wrote to thank me for all the genealogical records from the Rueckert side of the family which I got Gary to copy out and send to him. He also let me know that he had re-established contact with our mutual Uncle, Joe B, whose wife was both our fathers’ sister, Karlynn. Joe has now remarried after waiting several years since Aunt K’s death and is now in his early 90s, still playing golf every day.

I’d gotten a nice catch-up letter from Sandie S, who reports that moving back to California was a great move on her part. She synchronistically joined with several others of like mind and is having a wonderful time in Hollywood as well as improving her cash flow. Go Sandie!

She will use my chakra series of UPI articles in Planet Light Worker, her e-zine, as well as the article I wrote just for PLW on the shift.

Ken B had written to ask whether I had heard anything about a new planet showing up out of nowhere. I let him know that I had not. These rumors abound, in my experience. Sometimes the Planet X is always on the other side of the moon or sun or something. Sometimes it is frozen and stuck in first density, not showing up somehow. Sometimes it is described as being dark matter. Varieties of this rumor have been around as long as I have been in this area of research, which began in 1970 in a formal way. it is all probably psychics receiving the impression of Fourth-Density Earth.

I spent the remainder of the morning working on editing the Aaron/Q’uo session coming third out of four in our fourth weekend gathering.

After lunch I had a short meeting with Gary B, answering some questions from Terry H. Then I used the rest of my work day to write through the orange-ray sexuality section of Chapter 4 of 101. It is almost there now. I shall read through, hopefully for the final time on that section, tomorrow.

Jim and I enjoyed a pleasant evening full of conversation and dinner, then a viewing of an old film, MASH, which we both love. I offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation and we came upstairs to have our bedtime snuggle with the cats, plus a date. We said good night at 11 PM.

2007-05-21

With a sunny sky to welcome me, I drove to Indiana after Morning Offering to spend time with sacral-cranial therapist, Liz, and homeopathic-Steiner-injection-osteopath Dr. Steve. It took longer than usual as Liz worked with my back problems after the regular session, asking me to deep-breathe while she did different holds on my body.

After lunch, I worked with the orange-ray sexuality part of Chapter Four of 101 for most of the rest of the working day. It was write and delete there for a while. I believe I have got a good flow going now.

I took a bit of time clearing material from my Inbox and answered some e-mail. I wrote first to ask Romi what happened to font sizes I can see! He wrote right back, thank heaven. It turned out that he had reduced the fonts so that he could work on Trav2 and had forgotten to reset the size, so he told me how to do that. This was a blessing! I had hunted all over to figure that out but missed the intuitive option of right-clicking the desktop.

Joe had written me a beautiful and caring letter and called a couple of times, on fire with the desire to make me well. Over the decades since The Law of One came out, I have had dozens of people contact me who are sure they can heal me.

When they are unable to do so, of course, they place New Age guilt squarely on my shoulders. It is an oddity of this kind of thinking that the belief is that if we were all thinking properly, or eating properly, or taking the right whatever-pill/bolus/enzyme/solution, we would be entirely healthy.

I’ve long ago had it with this process of assigning blame for being unwell. I was probably rude. I asked him for energy healing only, from all that he offered. Energy healing is always welcome. It is non-invasive and can be done at a distance.

In fact, I suspect that my vital energy is utterly healthy and that I am actually quite well. For instance, knock wood, I have not had a cold or sinus infection all year, and none last year either. I simply deal with discomfort from various distortions chronic within my particular body.

I found a chicken recipe I thought Jim and Gary might like and collected that for our recipe database.

Paul C sent back what he could hear of the lyrics to my brother Tommy’s and my music CD, The Journey, apologizing for not being able to hear the rest. I wrote back to thank him for his work and to assure him that I could take it from there. I can also restore the story which was written by me to accompany the songs. The story never made it to our CD because our original recording, done in a church basement on bad equipment, was full of clunkers. We re-recorded the songs for the CD.

Choirmistress Lisa e-mailed to ask me to buy some tickets to the local ball park. If we sell all 50 of our choir tickets, Fr. Joe gets to throw out the opening pitch and we get to sing the National Anthem for that game. I see some volunteer duty ahead of me after services from now until the game, selling those tickets! Mark me well: we shall sing that anthem!

And finally, some terrific news came in from Gary: the old bring4th site has now been taken down. We had requested that it come down last March and they assured us it was going down on April 15th. It finally was removed somewhere between last Wednesday, when Gary last checked, and now.

This is exquisitely good timing, as the webmaster for a proposed new B4 site, Steve E, will visit here this weekend and Gary, he and I will work out the steps ahead of us. Steve has tons of good ideas and a sense of dedication to the work that is wonderful to feel. We are most fortunate in him as well as in all our volunteers, a wide-spread bunch indeed.

Both Mick and I were quite weary and our intentions to watch Star Trek Enterprise episodes were altered by our both falling asleep. We awoke to find that it was dinner time, so came downstairs and greeted Gary, who was finishing his day at the L/L Research helm in the downstairs office. We dined together and had the Gaia Meditation, with Gary offering the ending prayer, before coming back upstairs to continue watching STE episodes, as the Sci Fi Channel was offering a block of the shows all evening, and we had missed a good many of the original showings of these. It was great fun. The shows are so well-written! It’s good entertainment for us.

We enjoyed the cats and each other and turned out the lights at 11 PM.

2007-05-20

The Sabbath was cool, sunny and breezy, perfect weather for a picnic. While Jim cleaned house, I attended the service at St. Luke’s, which was held outside, Fr. Joe’s favorite “mass in the grass” which he does as often as he can in warm weather.

During the service, the BBQ smelled wonderful! When we said our last “Thanks be to God! Alleluia!” we all lined up to gather a plateful of good things to eat. The attendees had all brought pot-luck dishes, one better than another. Jim joined me for the meal and he noted what a treat it was to sit and relax in the same big horse ring where he is usually hustling for all he is worth, mowing the area.

We enjoyed a bath and a nap when we arrived back home, awakening just in time to welcome a visitor who had driven down from Cincinnati, Anna, plus Romi and Carmen. Romi set up the broadcast for our last channeling meditation of the season and we had a good talk around the circle before choosing a main question for Q’uo. The group decided to ask a question which Gary B had written out for consideration today. It had to do with how to seek the Creator, who was shrouded in mystery and who could not be intellectually found, only thought about. it will be fun to edit that transcript and consider what was said.

We let those listening know that we were seeking funds to continue this broadcasting program next season, which runs September through May. However we have not mounted the Matching Funds campaign for that yet, although we have a generous donor to sponsor the campaign, as we are still working to determine the least expensive way to offer the broadcasts.

Next weekend we will meet here with Steve E, who hopes to be L/L Research's webmaster for a new version of www.bring4th.org. One of the things we will discuss is the possibility of having the broadcasting capability be part of that site's configuration. if we can arrange that, we think our cost for this capability can be reduced a good bit. Once we have determined just what the price tag is for this service, we will mount the campaign with accurate expectations as to what sum we hope to collect in donations.

We were in a quiet mood, after Anna left to drive back home while it was still daylight. Romi offered us his Love Tea and Gary joined us after his shift at Cracker Barrel. We all sat and read our books together, a very cozy feeling. Eventually dinner was all warmed up and we dined together, after which we sat and talked together while Jim called Mom McCarty. Carmen and Romi left about an hour after supper.

Gary, Jim and I offered the Gaia Meditation at 9 PM, after which Gary went to his own part of the house for the rest of the evening while Mick and I came upstairs for an extended period of relaxing with the cats and watching nothing profound on TV until our eyelids nodded shut around 11 PM.

2007-05-19

Saturday morning dawned bright and clear and the temperature never rose out of the high sixties, a marvelous day in Kentucky. Our peonies are in full bloom now and this year the tiny bugs that often infest the blooms are absent. As well, our indoor amaryllis has gone into a riot of huge blossoms in the kitchen window. Elsewhere in our Magic Kingdom, the wood poppies and iris have just about traveled the length of their blooming, while the first of the day lilies are in full stalk, with tiny green knots at their crowns that will turn into glory soon, coaxed by the warmth of the ripening year.

After our Morning Offering I sipped green tea, played with the cats and had a round of solitaire, celebrating the leisure of the weekend. Later in the morning I read in Dana Redfield’s book, The ET-Human Link, and found several good quotes for my fifth article on her, on the psychic or occult UFO experience.

Jim had cooked during the morning and then gone on his round of errands, bringing back our fast-food treat for the week. Afterwards, he briefly napped while I as briefly collected more Dana quotes. Then it was time for Nancy S to arrive for her special session with Q’uo. We greatly enjoyed getting to know her as we talked around the circle. Nancy’s questions were those of a person who came to the path of spiritual seeking at an age past her youth – she is my age and just has opened to these ideas in the last few years.

I think this is the situation for many, so I look forward to reading the transcript of this session as I edit it. Hopefully the material will aid people when it is up on site.

Jim went outside to weed in the yard while I lay down, glad to have the rest as my flared-up back has joined my tummy in complaint. Mick took the time to work on the worst of the flare-up area, which is my back’s right upper quadrant. He has found a peculiar but effective tool for applying pin-point pressure to the area– the butt end of a small condiment knife. His ministrations really helped!

Jim came back in from his outside work awash in grass and happy as a lark, the bonnie afternoon sun and gentle breeze having washed away all but the joy of the day. We took in the Preakness. Like all of the world, of course, we hoped for Street Sense to achieve the second jewel in the Triple Crown, but Curlin took the chance away by a mere nose-hair.

Seeing those beautiful thoroughbreds always brings me back to my childhood love of horses. The horses I have known in my life were the best of companions, full of personality, loyal and gallant and funny and wicked as well. How handsome they all looked as they paraded to the post! Equines in general are a beautiful sort of animal.

Mick and I bathed, then, and had a date, after which we finished our evening with reading and conversation. Jim cleaned the kitchen while I continued to read a big novel by Tom Wicker. This author can write so well! And the level of political detail is amazing. It is also interesting to see how people, or at least Wicker, saw the world scene, writing only 30 or so years ago. The times move ahead and things change!

The reason I read such old novels is that I am reading my mother’s books. She was an avid reader and at her death she had thousands of fun books – sci fi, romances, mystery novels and historical sagas. Since I need to cut books off their bindings in order not to strain my weak, arthritic hands, these books are a godsend, as I can easily slice them off their bindings, read the pages and toss them out when I am done.

Mick and I always hope to snuggle with the cats before bedtime, and tonight Dan D. Lion, our gray-striped tabby, put on a dance that lasted at least 20 minutes, a new record I think. For some reason, when he starts to knead my lap, as cats do when they are happy, his hind legs do a little dance with a fairly complex rhythm on my thighs and knees. It’s so cunning! Rumba Kitty! We enjoyed NCIS and then part of an old film we sentimentally seeing again before saying goodnight at midnight.

2007-05-17 and 18

Somehow I missed writing my CJ entry yesterday. It feels weird, because I remember writing on my journal early yesterday morning, but it was lost in cyber-space.

I spent yesterday morning editing another new channeling, one which Gary B had transcribed. The subject was religion versus spirituality and I enjoyed pondering the Confederation’s thoughts as I edited.

After lunch I answered a call from Linda D, our tax preparer, who had called in after her vacation. She let us know that our tax report for L/L Research would be late, as her company had a staggering tax season and is also in the process of moving house to a larger office in another building – still downtown, unfortunately for me. I told her that this was OK, as we never owe money, our corporation being non-profit. She assured me she had gotten a proper extension from the IRS to keep us square with them. This will be their second year to report on L/L Research, a sign that we have somehow gotten bigger and are doing more.

I caught up briefly with Steve M, Calvin R-P, Fikisha C and Dianne S. I wrote Romi to thank him for his information concerning archiving and why we have never used it. I asked for his instructions some day when he feels like it, as I do want to archive both mail sent to me and mail I have answered on the laptop. One fine day, probably after I have departed this earthly fix outbound, hopefully a volunteer will mine that work for my spiritually oriented advice and put it up for seekers to access if they wish.

Aaron T has expressed interest in taking that project on when she finishes transcribing and editing my old tape letters, which were generated in the late ‘80s and early '90s, when I could not sit up or type due to massive rheumatoid problems. She is slowly but steadily working her way through those 150+ tapes. I rehabbed from those stringent problems in 1992.

And lastly, I wrote Tiffani M to welcome her to the Board. She is a ball of fire, a wonderful person and a Ra scholar to match the best of them. We are so very lucky to have her expertise – she works with finances and thinks QuickBooks is a work of art – on which to call.

I spent the rest of the working day reading the last of Gary's mine of newly found Dana Redfield letters and collecting my quotes from them both for the article coming up tomorrow, which covers Dana and the outer UFO phenomena and the one next week, which discusses Dana and the inner UFO phenomena.

Coming up to this morning, I took the time to finish gathering quotes, mainly from Dana's book, Summoned, for today's article. Then I wrote the article itself, sending it off just after 2 PM.

I had a very quick bite to eat and kept a 3 PM beauty appointment at Images, where Jazz, a beautiful woman whose wizardry with hair is to my great benefit, gave me a masterful haircut and Lee Ann gave me a mini-facial, which I need in order to keep my skin from getting into trouble because of ultimate dryness.

She also de-fuzzes my brows and upper lip and darkens my brows, which I dearly love. I have nice eyebrows but my coloring is so pale that one cannot see them unless they are colored. This dye process works far better than using a pencil or smudging color on, as the dye penetrates the actual brow hairs and looks natural – me, only darker. I always feel beautiful indeed when I leave that salon.

I arrived home just in time to enjoy a bath with Mick, after his huge mowing day and weekly maintenance routine, and to celebrate TGIF by taking in a whole block of Star Gate on the Sci Fi channel as we caught up from our day and dozed.

Mick and Jim had cut eight lawns today! While Jim was doing extra gardening for a client and maintaining his mowers, Gary powered through getting the groceries and doing some of the cooking for the week to come! He puts in a very long day on Fridays.

He joined us at 9 PM for the Gaia Meditation and we dined together before he said good night, as he wished to spend the rest of his evening reading. Mick and I ended the evening upstairs with a kitty snuggle and said good night around midnight.

2007-05-16

After Morning Offering Jim left for a day of lawn care work, gardening and mowing, while I worked on exploring the Dana letters which Gary had found me for quotes. I got some good ones and was much cheered to know that I can follow my original plan in writing the two final Dana articles.

Dianne S. came at 11:30 and we drove to Captain’s Quarters, on the Ohio River at Harrod's Creek. The outside decks were empty of people despite the fine day because there was a brisk wind with gusts and the temperature was in the 60s. Most diners found the outside too chilly. However Dianne and I were in jackets and wanted to feel the sun on our faces and sit under the big old trees. We had a lovely time together. Dianne is working with A Course in Miracles and was full of praise for the work. We also talked about her husband, who has degenerating epilepsy and has lost most of his intellect now. She does a beautiful service in taking care of him with such love.

I came home to greet Gary, who was at the admin helm for a while. Then he went outside to see if he could get the paint spray gadget which attaches to our air compressor going. After a while he admitted defeat on the first round and went up to Home Depot to talk to the representative there who sold us the gadget. I will have to find out how that visit went. I hope we can use this gadget, as it will paint up under the eaves and into all the crevices thereof much better than one can do with a brush.

I called the Bishop’s office to ask him to finish the blurb he promised for A Book of Days, which volume has languished, missing that material alone, for almost a month. He was not there but his assistant promised to give him my message.

Then I returned Jean-Claude’s call. I reached him, and found that he will decline our invitation to sit on our Board. He is trying to get his global spiritual network going and feels that he would not be a good Board member for us since he is preoccupied with that massive task.

He handsomely promised L/L Research that anything we needed, funds or whatever else, if I called, the answer would be yes. That is a powerful affirmation indeed! And it echoed Dianne’s feelings expressed to me at lunch, although Dianne, being a woman, saw things more personally and said, “You let me know anything you need, because you deserve it.” We are fortunate indeed at L/L Research in our friends.

I am sad that we will not have Jean-Claude’s savvy at our Board meetings. Jim, Gary and I need to sit down and powwow about a possible replacement for him.

I dedicated the afternoon to editing what I had written on the orange-ray use of personal power. The writing smoothed out and flowed so much better when I was through! I was tickled with it. I may come back and add material later but for now, it is done as well as I can do it. That felt great!

I had just a bit of time left in my work day and put it in on e-mail. Elihu had continued to send thoughts about a possible commentary section in Dana’s Alphabet Mosaics and I wrote him back, a long letter. We are getting to know each other courtesy of Dana!

I took some time and care to write Romi a thank you letter for all the incredibly intense work he has done for us lately. Gary’s computer in his bedroom is ailing and Romi has spent a good bit of time working with it recently. Then there was all the effort on his part to save my old laptop, and, hard on its heels, all he did to get my new machine loaded and going. He’s the best! And so I told him.

I also encouraged an idea he has about his teaching the Law of One principles. I sent him the chapters of 101 I have done and suggested he start developing a cirriculum based on that. I encouraged him to think about creating a workbook that goes along with the book itself.

An author has been very persistent about getting me to write a recommendation for his book. I had resisted his request, as the book, while harmonious with TLOO, is not about that. But I decided to go ahead and give him a quote anyway. After I did that, I wondered if the universe had been waiting for me to be generous about writing a back-cover blurb for someone else so that I could receive bread on the waters in the form of a blurb from the Bishop. I suspect so.

Jim and I enjoyed a bath and an hour of relaxation and Democracy Now before I left for choir practice. I only knew two of the anthems we rehearsed tonight, and we rehearsed a dozen or more. It was great fun! Sight-reading is my favorite thing, musically, as the gratification is instant. Right before one’s ears, one hears a new song. The melodies and harmonizations are always interesting and often surprising. and the words are always prayers and praises, making one's spirits soar. It’s just plain fun! I had a blast.

Jim greeted me with supper when I returned and he, Gary and I watched the Jon Stewart show and the Colbert Report before making the Gaia Meditation together, with me offering the closing prayer.

Jim had asked me for a date this morning, so we bade Gary a good night and came upstairs early . Mick and I had a lovely time together celebrating life! Then we found some Star Trek Enterprise to watch while we snuggled with the kitties. We said good night at 11 PM.

2007-05-15

What a goofy day! It flowed, and I cooperated, but nothing happened as I intended. After Morning Offering, Mick set out to mow with his smaller mower, a stand-behind-on-a-velky. It is much harder work to mow with that machine, as one takes the bumps of the ground like a charioteer bouncing over the Roman roads, but when Mick got back at eventide, he reported that he makes about the same time, as the smaller machine maneuvers around trees and bushes better

I had awakened early and was keen to get into my old Dana letters and find good quotes for the UPI article on outer UFO experiences I intended to write today. They had gone away. Both Gary and Romi, at different parts of the day, fished around for the old letters, and Gary feels he’s found them. I shall check that out tomorrow.

Further, the two books I wanted to cull for quotes for the articles were missing, as were our entire UFOs and UFO Contact collections. At present our Library spills over into every room in our house, including our bedrooms, and I thought I looked thoroughly. However I missed seeing them because I thought I knew (Assume = ass-u-me) that the upstairs hall contained my college books – history, languages, music, literature and so forth. Gary had moved the two UFO collections upstairs to make more room for everything downstairs. The "missing" books were right down the hall from my office the whole time. Talk about being stuck on stupid!

It took me until 11:30 to read everything from Dana I DID have, and it was all useless, since she was talking about end-of-life issues rather than her early work in the letters that survived my computer change-over. With no letters to quote and neither of her UFO non-fiction books at hand, I knew I was, as an ESL student of mine once said, “up Creek S*** without a board”. So I wrote my editors at UPI and begged off for this week. They were very understanding, thank the heavens.

I saved the morning by editing a session we had last February 18th. I really enjoyed it. The subject was religion and I thought the Q’uo group was most insightful. By this time it was well after 1 PM, so I broke for lunch.

In the afternoon I intended to write on orange-ray sexuality. I never got there. I have to figure out how to disable the pop-up feature of my Outlook Inbox. As mail came in, an announcement would float on to my desktop. And each letter seemed to me to be important. I would think, oh, I need to respond to that, and then I would quit my thoughts on 101 and tend to the e-mail.

During the afternoon I wrote four long letters to Elihu Edelson, Dana Redfield’s friend and the editor of Both Sides Now, a very good little prophetic journal, responding to over half a dozen of his letters, all concerning the possibility of making a larger volume of Dana’s Alphabet Mosaics, using my articles for UPI on Dana and also his commentary as a way to help people get into the book.

Mary Rodwell, UFO experiencer and speaker in Perth, Australia, also a friend of Dana’s, wrote several letters also, and I sent her back three missives altogether. She also is most interested in getting the Mosaics book out. I asked her what she thought about doing a commentary section.

I wrote Tiffani M to thank her for joining our Board. She will make an excellent addition to our group of L/L leaders. Now three of the four people Mick and I invited to sit on the Board have said yes. The fourth person and I are playing telephone tag, still. I am most hopeful that he, too, will say yes. It will ease Jim’s and my minds to know that we have formed up a Board which can very competently cope with carrying on in case of Jim’s and my death.

Karen K of MacDuffie most kindly did a thorough search for three classmates’ addresses I had requested and came up with one save. I gave her three more names to look up, as classmates, when they write updates, generally ask about their favorite friends from back in the day, so I was primed.

Cindy F wrote to say that she was once again to be a grandma! She is coming into town this weekend. We made a date for lunch and a girlfriend catch-up next week. She and her husband divorced amicably several years ago Cindy moved out west. She and Steve remained close friends, connected through their children and family business.

Steve attempted to form an abiding relationship with Sandie, a wonderful woman who also became a beloved girlfriend of mine. Sandie gave up the effort to become a couple with Steve after three years of listening to Steve talk to Cindy on the telephone for hours while she, who had come here to be with Steve from the west coast, was left alone.

I never could find a way to help them balance things out. Everyone was doing their best, but somehow nothing gelled. Sandie returned to California after her three-year try at togetherness. Steve is back to being single but best friends with his ex.

I do not blame Sandie at all for leaving, as her needs were never met here, although I think Steve tried his utmost. Nor do I blame either Steve or Cindy for remaining friends and dealing with their software business and kids. All was done well and lovingly. Some combinations just don’t work.

Steve M sent me what he thought was his comments on one of my chapters. The attachment was missing – it was that kind of day! I wrote to let him know that and thanked him also for accepting our invitation to become a Board member.

To end the working day I wrote several thank you notes to kind readers of my column and returned a letter from Lindy T. She recommended that I try an herbal-enzyme tablet called CMO. I sent away for a sample to see how it works with my body.

Mick called bath time and again, we were both fatigued enough that we napped through a good bit of our post-bath relaxation, missing most of Amy’s Democracy Now and World Music. Romi visited at 8 PM, filling the house with his good energy, and we enjoyed conversation, supper, the Gaia meditation and an episode of House together. Poor Ro is still helping me with my new-computer adjustments and finally I said, “Romi, step away from the computer!” The poor man works with them all day during the week. So he did and we all relaxed instead.

Both Gary and Romi said farewell after the House episode, and Jim and I turned out the lights at 11 PM.

2007-05-14

After Morning Offering I barely had time to bid James farewell as he set out to mow before I was off to Indiana for my cranial-sacral therapy and homeopathic, Anthroposophically created injections. This is my latest effort to better my health by alternative means. The allopathic road has pretty much run out for me. There are modest improvements, but not substantial ones. However it is worth the try, and the test run of seven treatments is not yet up.

I came back at lunchtime to find Gary hard at work at the L/L helm and Pam doing her bookkeeping stint beside him in the downstairs office. After I ate, I came upstairs and started back to work on Living The Law of One 101: The Choice. It was good to return to this project after so long away.

I first hunted all over for the database of quotes for this book, but I cannot for the life of me find it. Romi’s e-mail said it was in the Carla folder, but if it is there, I cannot see it. I dropped back and punted by opening the file of quotes on orange ray I had made while writing for UPI about the energy body. That contained all the LOO quotes. Then I did some more searching using the key word, orange, and found more good material to use.

I wrote about our orange-ray dealings with other-selves, finishing the section on non-sexual interaction. I’ll read that through again tomorrow before going on to writing about orange-ray sexuality.

Jim had a breakdown on his biggest mower, Thetis. He was fortunate that it happened directly after a job. He was sitting in the driveway of the home on which he was working, ready to load the mower on the trailer and go to his next job, and found that he was out of go. He got down and checked the driveway and found his drive belt there, lying in five separate pieces. It was going nowhere!

He was able to nudge Thetis on to the trailer with his smaller mower, Susie, and dropped it off for repair before finishing the afternoon using Susie alone. He is keeping his fingers crossed that they get the repairs done before Thursday, when he cuts two very large estates, one a private home and the other a church complex.

We were both exhausted, I by discomfort and he by hard physical labor, so we had a low-profile night indeed, sinking into a Star Trek Enterprise block after Democracy Now and napping more than we watched. We were downstairs briefly for the Gaia Meditation and dinner, and then napped and watched more Enterprise until 11 PM, when we said our good nights.

2007-05-13

Today may have been the pluperfect Kentucky spring day of this season. The humidity was low, an unusual thing in this river valley, and the sunshine coaxed the temperature up only to about 74 F. While St. James cleaned the house, I went to church, rehearsed and then sang the service. Our anthem was a Samuel Wesley piece of bombast on “All Flesh Is Grass”, a nice comment on Mother’s Day! The sermon was better, encouraging us to be encouragers like our Moms.

Home from the service at St. Luke’s, I joined Mick for a good lunch and then he left to drive up to Avalon and cut the meadow, which was in need of it, he said when he got back in the evening. The grass was 18 inches tall! He took it down to the usual height except around the utility shed, which he cut at six inches to avoid all the bits and pieces of things which still litter the ground thickly around that former building site. The hidden metal ate one of his blades last year, so he is now very cautious!

I had thought to do some preparation for writing Dana Redfield’s fourth article, on outer UFO phenomena she experienced, with thoughts on the subject in general, but there was no “Dana” file on my desktop and nothing at all in my “Carla” folder. Well dern! So I worked on e-mail instead.

i had written Gary yesterday to ask him about the matching funds campaign for the broadcasts and Gary let me know that because he and Steve E are exploring ways to offer the broadcasts of our channeling sessions as part of our second site’s activities, we have put off the matching funds campaign for paying for those broadcasts next September through May of 2008.

Steve believes that he can do it more cheaply than what we have been paying, which is about $100 per month for a private chat room. I thanked him for the info. I am eager to meet with Steve and get the ball rolling on the new site. Gary says he corresponds voluminously with Steve and his main job is to calm him down. Steve has many ideas, erupting like a fire hose which is not well gripped, and he is presently spraying them all over! I look forward to helping to direct the flow. Indeed, I look forward to meeting Steve. We are very fortunate in our volunteers.

Aaron T had sent me a beautiful card and a poem by Rumi, and I wrote to thank her for her thoughtfulness. She is transcribing my letter tapes and in them I sometimes refer to my illness as a houseguest. Rumi’s poem uses the same image, so she sent it as a “great minds think alike” gift.

I had a message from the Mayan Elders in my Inbox which I thought was wonderful stuff and so I forwarded it to Mick and Gary for them to absorb also. It is as challenging as the Handbook for the New Paradigm, and along the same lines of “you can change your reality”.

I thanked e-square, as he signs himself, for the good scan of the Hebrew Alphabet, which I can use in collecting Dana’s manuscript digitally. Elihu E. will also send me the scans of all her mosaics pages, which will save us time aplenty here when I get to doing that editing.

Preparing to go back to work on editing the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues, I sent off to Ian for the next weekend’s worth of channeling, Barbara’s and my fifth weekend of offering co-channeling workshops back in the ‘90s. Four weekends' worth almost down and five to go on that project.

My last work of the afternoon was to write letters to two people who wished me to recommend their books, letting them know that their work is perfect for our future “friends of” section on our second site (second sight?).

Romi had come over early in order to finish loading Trav2 with all my files. I was very glad to receive them! I felt quite lost without my rather immense file structure on board. Now everything – I think – is here and ready to use.

Carmen and Gary joined Romi and me for a lovely silent meditation after talking around the circle together. Then we all had Romi’s Love Tea and shortbread and settled in to some conversation. Romi had other evening plans and left just as Jim showed up at eventide. Mick and I bathed before joining Carmen and Gary for dinner and more conversation. We offered the Gaia Meditation together, with Gary’s prayer blessing us at the end, and then it was time to call Mom McCarty.

After that call, I rejoined Carmen and Gary, who were reading, and joined in with my own reading. It is most pleasant energy when people sit and read together. Jim was doing his various chores, getting things lined up for next week’s work. At 10 PM Carmen left and Gary said good night. Mick and I headed upstairs for a late date and then bedtime at 11:30.

2007-05-12

Another grand summer’s day welcomed us as we made our Morning Offering. Jim busied himself with cooking while Romi and I worked with Traveller Too, installing Windows, virus protection, the printer, the mouse and so forth. I am very tickled to say that I managed to install all of Office this time. Hopefully I will never again see “This feature is not installed” when I try to do something.

I love Trav2, who feels feminine rather than masculine, as did Trav1. She is lighter and more svelte. She is quite fast, which is a great blessing.

We moved all of my Explorer favorites, my folders from Outlook and – we thought – the very large “Carla” folders, which contain all my writing and channeling work, all other creative projects and correspondence and the vast mishmash of documents with which I personally work. Instead I got a folder with only my stationery blank and a recipes file. I did not discover this until after the Ro Man left. Gary tried to import the bulk of the remaining files for me, but he was not able to accomplish it. Fortunately I will see Romi tomorrow for our usual Sunday meditation meeting and I can ask him to try again!

I spent the remainder of the afternoon after Romi left making more choices in the various programs as to how my documents will look and how things will work. It is the first time I have done this all myself. Previously I have felt so intimidated by computers that I left the initialization to Ro. This time, I managed to be more hands-on.

Jim and I were both exhausted, he by a day of work in the kitchen and yard and I by sitting up at a desk, which is very difficult for me, and so after our bath we came upstairs to my room and had a good nap. Do we know how to party or what! We awoke long enough to dine and offer the Gaia Meditation, with Gary praying at the closing. Then I came upstairs to lie down while Mick cleaned the kitchen.

He woke me to share a snuggle with the kitties and me before we said our good night around 11 PM.

2007-05-11

Jim and I greeted a beautiful day this morning! After Morning Offering, Jim and Gary headed out for their blitz-mowing routine. Romi came by and picked up Traveller Too as he is going to do some configuring on it prior to our work together setting things up on Saturday.

Suddenly the house was quiet and I was alone with the whole day before me and one job on my mind: clearing my fat Inbox. I started by sending Gary a recipe to add to our database: spinach salad with roasted walnuts and feta cheese. Then I took aim and wrote:
To Helen D, talking about good memories and plans to have her come visit me next fall
Gary, asking him to copy Dana’s Alphabet Mosaics manuscript for Mary Rodwell, an experiencer of much UFO phenomena in Australia with whom Dana was friends
Two letters to Mary Rodwell herself on various items to do with Dana’s book
A catch-up letter to Carol K-S, a classmate at MacDuffie, remembering my suitemate, Karen Murkett, one of the classmates for which MacDuffie does not have any contact info. I imagine she has long since married, so there’s little hope of finding her by Googling on her name. What a great woman she was and, I am sure, is. It feels very empowering to me to help bring the class of ’61 together as best as I can.
A note to Cousin Carlos, who wrote to thank me for all the Rueckert family tree information I sent him. I am not a genealogy fan myself, but my Aunt Karlynn was, and after her death, her husband sent me all of her data, which I passed on to Carlos.
The Kentucky Report to my friend, Rick C, in Maine in response to his Maine report. He was planting peas, lettuce, carrots and more today and had just extended his garden fence to keep out deer. I wrote back with YUM! Rick’s about the best country cook I ever met and thinking about what he’ll do with those fresh veggies makes my mouth water!
Several letters to Eliahu E, working with him on various ideas about Dana’s book. He also is a friend of Dana’s, the one who found her the font she used in her last book.
A note of thanks to Lindy T, who recommended a therapy option for me.
A note to Carol C, a volunteer who is attempting to find grants for us. We presently have no grant money coming in, and it is Carol’s belief that if various organizations knew about our work, they would happily offer us grants. Hope she is right!
A note to Dave G thanking him for his kind and thoughtful words concerning the UPI article I wrote on Words of Power
A couple of notes to Dianne S, arranging a lunch together for next week
A fairly substantial letter to Melissa T, formerly a volunteer here and on Avalon, who is now searching for work in sunny California. She is a crackerjack admin and paralegal. However she has the world’s worst luck in landing a job. I can’t figure it. She deserves a good job! Her work for us was so good that half the things in our office still have her mark on them, as she got them just right. Come on, California, give up a job for my bud!
A couple of notes to Barbara Brodsky concerning the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues, which I am editing for her as well as for me due to her poor eyes, which were damaged in an ocean accident where she was dumped by a big wave and then hit in the face by the board upon which she had been basking. She reported my Christmas thank you note was illegible. Unfortunately, I have heard from several recipients of those Christmas thank-yous that the ink I was using did not blot successfully and my sentiments were smeared past any possibility of reading. Well, rats!
A note to Ann P, a MacDuffie classmate, thanking her for a great update
A note to Ian J about the right date for Terry H’s recent special channeling session
A longish letter to Diane P-C, Rick’s wife there in Maine. She has been suggesting ways I could deal better with my health, being concerned that I am taking too many prescriptions.
A note of Mazeltov to Kathy R, a choir buddy with whom I have sung in various groups since she was a kid and I was a young woman. Kathy has just become a grandmother! She was so excited!

When Mick called bath time, I was completely caught up on e-mail except that Eliahu, Lindy and Diane P-C had already written me back, which I suggest does NOT count! So I did manage to knock out the very last chore, except collecting recipes from four cook books, that I had on the back burner when this waiting period began. That feels very special! When Romi comes tomorrow to help me get Trav2 up and running, I will be ready to get back to work at my usual schedule, editing A/Q in the mornings and writing on the 101 book in the afternoons.

I will try hard to reform my ways, though, and spend just a bit of time at the end of each day seeing to the low-priority stuff like clearing the snail mail and e-mail. I had a solid month of backlog built up! In the event, it was a blessing, as I used working on that backlog as a spiritual practice during my enforced wait for Trav2. Hopefully I will experience no trouble at all with my new computer and will have no need for any alternative chores for years to come!

Jim came home having gotten every lawn mowed, all his tools serviced for the week and a transplanting job done for one of his customers as well. What a guy! Gary was cooking up a storm when I came down for Jim’s and my bath and everything smelled so good!

Jim and I relaxed upstairs until 8 PM, at which time we joined Gary for supper and the Gaia Meditation, with me offering the closing prayer. Gary scooted off to his own room after that to view a documentary while Jim and I enjoyed Star Gate episodes. We said good night to each other and the kitties at 11 PM.

2007-05-10

We broke into double digits (the 10th) in May’s days today with Mick’s 60th birthday. It was up almost to 90 F in the afternoon and blindingly sunny all day. Jim said the grass was jumping out of the ground! After Morning Offering he set off for another very full day of mowing in the morning and gardening and clearing in the afternoon.

I turned to the penultimate item on my to-do list, catching up my e-mail Inbox. By the end of the working day I had the letters left to answer shaved down to 38! A very good day of catch-up.

The bulk of my day was spent taking time with each MacDuffie classmate’s update letter and responding to it before setting the letters themselves in a special folder which I will use when I write the update in June. Seven ladies have responded so far. That’s about a 10% return on my request letter, but then the bulk of those were sent snail mail. All the letters I have back so far were from those who use computers. I suspect the responses will continue to come in via snail mail.

I responded to my brother, Jim’s request for family photos and also his comments on next Christmas’s gathering of the clan. He does not feel he can make any gathering next year, as Kai – his wife – is knocking herself out at her new Thai restaurant and he feels she won’t have the time to attend a gathering.

I wrote to thank Paul C, who is now working on a transcription of one of my song-and-story tapes. At the same time, another volunteer is scoring the songs on that tape! One day soon we should have a handsome e-version of all the texts and the tunes as well up on site. I also thanked him for transcribing Elkins’ speech on the Spiritual Significance of UFOs, which we now have on site.

I had blanked out on when Mother’s Day was, and it hit me today, so I took some time to go get cards for Mom McCarty, Mom DeWitt and Linnie W. I wrapped Mom McCarty’s gift robe up with her card and sent that to her by first class priority, which should get her package to her by Saturday. I also sent off the other two cards, which also should arrive by Mother’s Day. Mom DeWitt is my in-law from my now-distant first marriage. I love her so much! I call her my “out-law”. She was wonderful to me back in the 60s when I was married to her son and we still get together when we can. Linnie, working full-time, takes care of a retired husband and a menagerie of cats and dogs, and we have a decades-long habit of remembering each other on Mother’s Day. We’re both childless, but we have the kitties and for her, a dog as well, for kids!

I again lost part of my day to a bout of illness and lay down for part of the afternoon. It was a good rest and I felt much better in the evening, which was good because Mick’s birthday "party" commenced shortly after I arose from my nap. After our bath, Jim and I shared a birthday tryst, raising much good energy for ourselves and the Creator.

We eventually descended to the first floor for a pizza and a strange movie starring Nicole Kidman which was an imaginary biography of Diane Arbus, the photographer. Robert Downey, Jr., played opposite her as a hirsute recluse with gypsy tastes in décor and dress. It ran perilously close to buffoonery. We abandoned the tale halfway through. You have to credit these actors for taking on such an alternative project. The production was elegantly mounted and the ensemble acting was intensely felt and flawless. It was the script that wandered off into a cul de sac and threw itself away in the dumpster at the foot of the alley.

On the other hand, the pizza was excellent!

Jim opened his presents – a denim sports jacket tailored in the Western mode and a biography of Muhammad Ali from me, with music CDs still to come, and from his Mom, a pair of new jeans and some spending money. Gary also had ordered a gift for Mick that had not yet come, so the Mick Man will have some goodies trailing in to enjoy next week.

Mick did not want to turn 60, and asked that we pipe down on any big celebration. In total sympathy, Gary wished Jim “Happy Thursday”.

We offered the Gaia Meditation, with Gary praying at the end, and then said good night to him and came upstairs for our bedtime kitty snuggle, turning out the lights at 11 PM.

2007-05-09

There had been some talk of rain coming in, but in the event the day was purely full of sunshine and heat, rising up into the high 80s F. Jim put in his full day, plus mowing an extra lawn against the possibility of rain tomorrow and also plus part of a chore he is doing for a customer on the side, and arrived home fairly late. So I had the house and the day to myself.

I felt rather poorly in the morning and, after working for a while, lay down for a real rest before deciding that the situation required White Castle cheeseburgers, which I drove up to Middletown to get. But still I managed to get the research done for an article for Sandie S during the morning.

After lunch, I felt considerably better and divided my afternoon work time between writing the article on The Tipping Point, talking about the fourth-density energies coming in now, for Sandie and starting the big catch-up on e-mail.

I found a pretty birthday card for the Mick, as his big six-oh arrives tomorrow. I hope that his music, which I selected from his wish list, arrives tomorrow before he comes home, as that is his last present and so far it has not arrived. I ordered it ten days or so ago, so it should have been here by now. St. James wants only peace, quiet, a date with me and pizza for his Earth Day, all easy things to arrange. We will have a grand day tomorrow.

With the article written for Sandie, I had only two items left on my list of things to do before Trav2 is ready to boogie: catching up the e-mail and collecting some recipes. Those chores are always with me, so basically I have gotten ALL CAUGHT UP!!! I am doing my happy dance. It will be a pleasure to do the recipes and e-mail, and come to Saturday morning’s work with the new laptop ALL CAUGHT UP!

I am so tickled. I never am caught up. This is a shining moment!

Mick and I had to move fairly quickly through our bath time, as I had a choir rehearsal to attend. We are singing some Thiman pieces that stay high and make me wish I were once again singing alto! Ack! Sustained high Gs are not my speciality! Oh well! It is for the good of the group. So I screeched away as sweetly as I could manage. We’ll have a break for summer soon.

Gary had arrived back home from his vacation with Valerie in North Carolina when I got back from rehearsal and had a bunch of photos to share as he talked us through his adventures, hiking and white-water rafting. They had found a place to camp which charged $18 per day for camping, which fell within their modest budget, and were delighted with the entire experience. Gary did say he was looking forward to sleeping in a real bed again after nearly a week of roughing it. He is a long, tall person and his back tends to act up on him, young as he is.

We shared our dinner and the Gaia Meditation with Gary. He offered the closing prayer and bade us farewell for the night and then Jim and I came upstairs for our bedtime snuggle with the kitties before saying good night at 11 PM.

2007-05-08

There was still a most refreshing bite to the morning air, but I can smell summer coming and am sneezing at the grass, which is seeding right now in the hayfields for the first time –ah-choo! After Morning Offering Mick went forth to meet his very crowded day, armed with his mighty Steppenwolf collection and of course his armor of virtue and Boy Scout badges, not to mention a mower or two.

I spent a most enjoyable morning working on my third article in the Dana Redfield series, trying to give readers some sense of the tremendous work she was doing during the latter portion of her life. I really feel for her, as her publisher and editor – who was also her true friend and lover – did not understand the work. However Dana, with her characteristic verve and positivity, simply said she was glad they rejected the work, as now L/L Research was free to print the book just as she envisioned it, which she could not trust a commercial publisher to do as her work will be at least 8 ½ by 11” in size.

We will at some point mount a fund drive for the printed-book project. And we will definitely put her work up on site. However I am at present editing an older work of mine and Barbara Brodsky’s, the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues. They must take precedence over Dana’s book. And Dana's work is chock full of copy errors which she asked me to fix. So this will all take some time!

One thing I noticed in putting all my materials away after writing about Dana’s House of Life glyph was that she never got around to dedicating her book. Glrmph. I would guess she would have dedicated it to her parents, so will have to discover their proper names and supply that text. Fortunately, we have several good author photo possibilities as she often sent me her photo, especially when Romi came to visit, which he did recently. Ro was the Good Samaritan who got all her literary and legal details seen to, just before she passed into larger life.

I had lunch after sending the finished article off to UPI and then came back up to tackle editing the Sunday Meditation we had on April 22, when Mike P visited.

That done, I turned to the MacDuffie database I had received from the staff there. It had never been properly alphabetized for quick access to married names, being alphabetized by maiden name, which does me little good, as most of my classmates have picked up a spousal name in the decades since high school. I retyped all the names so the last and married names are first, then first and middle names last. And then I somehow had the grace to alphabetize that column successfully. Cheers! That will make things easier for me.

I also hunted around for a half dozen classmates’ missing snail mail addresses. Not finding the information in my records on Outlook, I wrote each of them e-mails asking for the missing contact information.

A couple of people have written in to let us know that someone has put up a web site they call llresearch.com. We have nothing to do with it. It feels “off” to me. There has been no effort to link to all our material, nor has there been any text to say who L/L Research is or to explain why they might be using such a name. It is not right! I wrote Rho M, Scott Mandelker’s webmaster, since Scott’s name was mentioned on the site. I asked her what she knew about this site and stated what I needed from that site in the way of proper acknowledgment. Hopefully, she will let Scott know that I am not amused. Hopefully, he will be able to respond and fix this.

Mick called bath time and we relaxed for a time after our whirlpool before coming downstairs to dine at 8 PM. Romi visited and we enjoyed our dinner and the Gaia Meditation together, and then an episode of House on TV, before he and I opened the box and Traveller Too emerged like Venus rising from the foam!

Trav2 is a beautiful machine. Even with all the bright office lights on the screen, it did not reflect my face and I could see the screen text well. It will be such a joy to use it. We went through the initial choices, naming the machine and so forth. Romi will come back Saturday and help me get all my data from this computer imported to Trav2.

Meanwhile, I have three items remaining on my to-do list – writing an article for Sandie S’s e-zine on the shift of the ages, catching up my burgeoning e-mail Inbox and collecting the recipes from Sandie’s four recipe gift books. I shall see if I can get those items done by Saturday morning. It could happen –I have three days to beaver away at the last of the catch-up.

Mick and I bade Romi a fond good-night and we came up for a bedtime kitty snuggle before lights out at 11:30.

2007-05-07

Monday was a glorious, golden day! It is so pleasant to have this idyllic weather as a brief lull before the summer heat and humidity set in. Jim had a packed agenda in mind and set out for an all-day jaunt amongst the lawn devas of Anchorage. I spent the morning and afternoon shifting my attention between finishing my clothes project and editing a channeling we did for Terry H. That session contained a varied and interesting mix of questions about the time lateral of Earth and other goodies.

For lunch, I was privileged to go once again to Captain’s Quarters, as Talitha L had invited me out to eat before she left town, headed back west. For introducing a person to the pleasures of the Louisville area, this restaurant is my best one-shot. It hugs the Ohio River’s south bank at the mouth of Harrod’s Creek. There are several large decks outside the spacious restaurant where one may sit under huge, wise, ancient trees and watch the river and its barges and boats go by as one dines.

Talitha is fun to be with, full of gentle but ebullient spirits. She heard a song, on the Muzak which restaurants tend to offer their customers, that made her want to get up and dance. When she told me that, I lifted my chair back and got up! “Really?” she asked. We were at the restaurant early and there was not a soul in sight besides staff. “Oh yeah!” I replied. So we boogied together before our food came out, two small, aging women having a truly good time. We had a good conversation, too, and were sorry to have our time together end. She needed to be off to catch her airplane.

Things tend to happen synchronistically in my life. So, in the back of my mind, when I made up the to-do list which I have been working to complete in the wake of this computer’s malfunctioning, I wondered to myself if the new computer would only come when I had finished my list. I put the last garment away at 5 PM, scratching the last original notation off my to-do list and voila! UPS pulled up at our door with the new laptop about 15 minutes later. Traveller Too is in the house!! Romi will come over tomorrow night and start him up! Whee!

Jim came in from his hard day’s work with a big grin, pleased with his day. He had, as is often his wont, gotten extra work done today. Further, he picked up three more odd jobs of good size from a neighbor to do soon. He likes tucking these extra jobs into his days. And our bills get paid by his generous efforts.

He has had the best time mowing since Gary fixed his iPod. There was a Steppenwolf glitch which Gary fixed! Jim had about 70 Steppenwolf songs on the iPod and he tended to play the whole list over and over during his working hours, as John Kay is his favorite singer along with Greg Allman and Lacey J. Dalton. Eventually, the play list acted up, missing some songs and then not playing any songs at all. So Gary worked on it just before leaving on his vacation. Now Mick has over 150 Steppenwolf songs to listen to, even some that he never heard before. He’s glorying in the bounty and said that this was a great birthday present! Jim’s turning 60 on May 10th, coming up shortly! His favorite new song from Steppenwolf: Rock and Roll Rebel! Yup, that’s my cowboy.

After our bath, Jim and I celebrated being alone in the house by having our date downstairs. Mick has the most romantic energy! I thought to myself, in the afterglow, no wonder all his flowers bloom more bountifully for him than for other gardeners. He really has the most healing, loving energy. We did not take a nap afterwards but rather spent quite some time just sitting and soaking up the silence together. It was heaven.

Eventually we sought food and offered the Gaia Meditation, with Mick praying at the end. We said good night around 11 PM after a good snuggle with the cats.

2007-05-06

Sunday was an exquisitely lovely day! The cool morning was wonderfully refreshing, while the afternoon temperature rose to about 78F. I slept late, for me, awakening around 7 AM, and worked the Sunday puzzles before going to St. Luke’s for choir rehearsal and then the church service. We sang “If Ye Love Me” by Tallis and “Christ Rising” by another Tudor-era composer, Boyd.

Meanwhile Mick cleaned the house and brought up my summer clothes from basement storage. Then he stored my winter clothing. That’s a huge help, as now I should be able to finish the culling job, folding away my size 6 summer garments until I shrink down again to that size.

Jim and I both napped after we enjoyed lunch together, both of us being quite weary. Snoozing side by side was delicious! We awoke, had our bath and welcomed our visitor from California, Talitha L. Romi, Carmen and Tom F also attended and we had a good Sunday Meeting. Romi set up for our broadcast, which went smoothly.

The question today was from Gary B, who asked concerning the advantages of control versus acceptance. It will be good to see that transcript, as everyone there felt the channeling today was special.

The party stayed together and we conversed as Romi brought out his Love Tea and then, about 90 minutes later, we served dinner for everyone. By 8 PM, however, all our visitors had left. Jim and I just sat and drank in the silence and peace of the house, patting the cats and enjoying our companionship, until the Gaia Meditation. After that was offered, with me praying at the end, we called Mom McCarty. She dotes on Jim and really appreciates these telephone conversations once a week.

Mick and I ended our day with a bedtime kitty snuggle and said good night at 11 PM.

2007-05-05

Saturdays are grand! After Morning Offering Jim cooked while I continued working on my closet, culling out too-small clothing and folding it away against the day I can fit into that wardrobe again. I also pulled out all the winter clothing for storage. Now I am ready to receive the summer clothes I have stored in the basement storage area. I shall have to cull them over also, when they arrive upstairs, to remove smaller garments.

Jim and I both took the afternoon off! I went out to lunch with Carmen T, while Mick had an old-fashioned nap, watched some sports on TV and played with the cats. I had thought that Carmen and I were going to the Limestone Restaurant but when we got there it was closed. So we drove towards the Captain’s Quarters Restaurant but got thoroughly lost. It was amazing, just how completely turned around I got. It began to feel like we had driven into another dimension of time and space.

Eventually, Carmen recognized a road and found the way back to recognizable landmarks, and we arrived at the Ohio’s shores to enjoy eating outside and watching the water and the various barges and boats slide or putt-putt by. It was a delightful meal under the spreading branches of the old trees at Captain’s Quarters, and good company.

Carmen dropped me off here at Camelot somewhat before 5 PM and then Mick and I bathed. We had thought we would watch The Last Emperor of Scotland tonight but apparently Gary had returned the DVD for us! So we were without a film. We lazed the evening away watching Star Trek episodes and, after offering the Gaia Meditation, I read in Elihu Edelson’s Both Sides Now – I am behind a couple of issues, and want to keep up with his work – while Mick scoured the kitchen.

We snuggled with the cats after that and sought our beds around midnight.

2007-05-04

Jim arose quite early and we enjoyed Morning Offering together before he headed out to mow. The forecast was dismal! Gary came upstairs right on time to start mowing and Jim was already gone. He had gotten a lawn mowed before Gary caught up with him. Together, by 3 PM, they had done every single job! All except one: a customer declared that “it was too wet” and told Jim to come back Saturday. That is cruel catalyst indeed for a man who loves his weekends.

Meanwhile I put my work-day in, working half in the office and half in my closet. This interstitial cystitis seems to have made my body prone to weight gain, and I have soared to a size 10 from my usual size 6. I am hoping to get back to the smaller size as it is far healthier for me. I come from a long line of people whose death involved heart and vascular disease and I cannot afford to be heavy if i hope for longevity.

It is too bad, because I have been 175 before and enjoyed being a big, beautiful woman. I could open a door by leaning on it! I could sit in any seat! But I do want to stick around for some years yet, so I eat small portions, and carefully, usually.

So I was trying on my own clothes. The ones which are too small are going into storage boxes for now. so I was both sorting clothes for size and removing winter clothing to be stored in our basement storage closet area. I'll be glad to see my summer wardrobe, although that, too, will have to be checked to make sure all the clothes in my closet will go around me!

In the morning I wrote Bill H a good letter, giving him the outlook on L/L Research, as he has accepted a position on our Board. We are very lucky to have him. In the afternoon hours I went through a recipe book which Sandie S. had given me – one of four from which I hope to capture some good, new recipes for our recipe database – and selected the recipes I will copy.

Can you tell my new laptop is not here yet!!?

The evening brought romance my way, as after bath time Mick had asked for a date. We do celebrate life well together, Mick and I, even coming up on our 20th wedding anniversary at the end of this month. Then we enjoyed the last bit of Democracy Now and came downstairs, as Romi and Carmen were to come over for a TV night.

The group had good conversation, dinner and the Gaia Meditation while we enjoyed new episodes of Star Gate. The party broke up a bit after 10 PM, with Jim and I turning out the lights an hour or so later.

2007-05-03

It was raining gently when I went out to get the paper, and it continued to do so all day. After Morning Offering Jim reaped the reward of all the hard mowing yesterday, and spent his day in the wet but productive, completing the gardening and special landscaping requests he had saved up to do when it rained. He even got some maintenance done, sharpening and switching out his mower blades so that tomorrow, when he and Gary are trying to beat the really heavy weather predicted, the cut will be super-sharp.

Gary was at the admin helm all day downstairs, cleaning up masses of details so that he can leave on a weekend vacation tomorrow afternoon after mowing with Jim. He and I consulted off and on all afternoon as he cleared his Inbox. He rescheduled an interview I have in June with Marcia McMahon on BBS radio. She wanted to do it at 7:30 PM, California time, which would have me trying to make sense at 10:30 PM. He got that rescheduled to 1 PM my time.

This was the day I got to the scrapbooking items on my to-do list. I had the scrapbook of my MacDuffie reunion trip to put together and also all the items we took during our walk around the Home and Garden Show to put into the idea scrapbook we already have started for our Avalon home-to-be. I did the Idea Book additions in the morning, broke for a delicious lunch Gary fixed of eggs scrambled with pineapple, black olives, onions, tomatoes and cheese, and then made the MacDuffie scrapbook in the afternoon.

Jim called up to announce bath time just as I was putting everything away; perfect timing. We had a most pleasant nap together before descending the stairs for supper and the Gaia Meditation, for which Gary joined us. I offered the ending prayer tonight. Then we enjoyed a special, 2-hour-long episode of Gray’s Anatomy before turning out the lights at 11 PM.