2007-06-04

I awoke in much better shape as far as the nerve pain in my back and arm. I was thankful indeed for that! And the day felt better for the rains, which had continued to bless us here and there throughout the night. We even ended the day with another shower! Not that we’re all caught up on rain, but our plantings are out of stress and the grass is green again. After Morning Offering Jim set out on his mowing and gardening day, finding as he went along that he had far more to do on various jobs than he had known beforehand, so he did not return until 6 PM.

Jim and Gary had sent me back their corrections on my “thumbnail sketches” letter to our Board members and I incorporated them, proofed the document and got that sent out to all nine Board members beside myself. Then Gary and I talked about the next step, which is to render digital our Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws so that they, too, can be sent e-mail. We shall need to set a mid-year Board meeting in order to welcome our new Board members and also to amend the By-Laws to allow more people on the Board, and I’d like to have them see just what our Articles and By-Laws look like. For some things, nothing beats the real information in its original form.

Most of the rest of the morning work time was spent creating a quotes document for all the sources I will use tomorrow in writing my sixth article on Dana Redfield. Her writing is such a pleasure to share! I greatly enjoyed the time, copying mostly out of Dana’s unpublished manuscript, All My Days are Shadows of Tomorrow, but also getting down quotes from Joanna Shenandoah’s The Peacemaker, a poem from Ian B and even a poem from me, written back in the ‘70s, called Tree of Life. My brother, Tommy, and I sang it on one of our story-and-song tapes. This will be a fun article to write.

On my way downstairs for lunch, I collected a tasty-looking Italian Chicken Salad recipe for our in-house database. I change the recipes I find to include healthier ingredients and scale them to feed us for a week and usually end up adding some herbs to the recipe, so it’s always a bit of creative fun for me to work up a new recipe.

Gary had kindly fixed my lunch, part of a compassionate campaign to save my sore arm, and I enjoyed a good read before heading back upstairs to work on yellow ray. I read through my nineteen pages of collected quotes, jotting down all the categories I saw in these quotes. Then I spent some time organizing them into a solid outline.

For the rest of the afternoon, I went through the slow business of cutting and pasting the quotes so that they were in outline order. I had found, working with orange ray, that it might be a good idea to do that, as I had trouble finding and choosing quotes in writing the section, since my orange-ray quotes were not organized.

I did not finish this job, but the remaining quotes will quickly be placed in order, for I had done 14 of 19 pages before Jim called bath time.

Pam came over to do the books and stayed to start on a job i had asked her to do, creating office manuals for our three companies, the household, Jim's lawn Service and L/L Research. She continues to have trouble filling the rest of her work wek with part-time bookkeeping jobs, and i would like these manuals in place on the off-chance that she gets full-time work and needs to leave us. With two children to put through college, her first priority has to be earning money to pay those big bills.

Taking breaks in the afternoon, I cleared the desk, secured some contact information and powwowed with Gary over the material for which Gina Jones has asked. She wants a theme or title and questions I would like to see asked, for my interview with her on BBS Radio next Sunday night, live at 7:30 CA time; 10:30 here in Louisville. I may need to nap next Sunday evening, as usually I am less than alert by that time of night. To find my place in their schedule, go to www.bbsradio.com. I will be on Gina Jones’s "late-night" talk show. I thought she was doing a good job in preparing so carefully for the interview.

I also sent e-mail to several people involved in Dana Redfield’s manuscript of The Alphabet Mosaics, thanking them for contributions to our collection of things written about her. I wrote my husband about the possibility of a social event for Romi, Carmen, Gary and I some time this month. Our three-month summer vacation rather leaves them out in the cold, so I would like to see us get together just as friends once a month during the summer. I am one who follows relationships above all!! These are faithful L/L meditaters and we love them!

I wrote Gary to ask him to check with TermNet, who does our merchant service for in-house book orders, to see if they have an on-line merchant service as well. We are working towards having a complete on-line store. Presently, one can print out an order blank from www.llresearch.org and fax or mail it in, but we’d like a secure store where people can use their credit cards. We shall see. If not them, then other on-line merchant services exist.

And finally, I wrote Melissa T and Judy R, both long-time volunteers and friends, just catching up.

Jim finally rolled in, satisfied with his long day, as this is his prime time for earning money to pay our bills, and every customer he had asked him to do more work, which made his day lucrative. We had a refreshing bath and he iced my back for two minutes, for the second time today – a new regimen I have instituted to reduce the back pain. I had to go to this technique once before, rehabbing from being bed-bound in 1992. It took about two years of applications of the ice before I got the neck and shoulder pain that was crippling me then under control. So I know what I am up against there. It’s just a matter of doing it, and I am so lucky to have Mick to do the application.

It is easy and cheap! You freeze water in Styrofoam coffee cups. You then cut off the Styrofoam so that you have a “cone” to hold the ice by. Then you can apply the ice directly to the back without freezing your fingers off. It works by eventually killing off the nerve response in the skin. It’s not a good idea to do this if the pain you feel is at all informational. However this pain has no signal to it. It’s just noise.

We spent the evening with a block of Star Trek Enterprise, coming down at the Gaia Meditation and enjoying a late supper with Gary. Then Gary and I read for a while as Mick took care of some chores, saying good night to Gary about 10:30 and, to each other, a half hour later.