Here's a new acronym    TBTB.  Too busy to blog.

It's 9 pm and I am finishing up packing to go to Seattle tomorrow.  Since the last time I blogged I have been barely keeping up with the incoming activity.

It's all good.  Karla Nagel is here again from Mexico, and Fumiko and I had dinner with her.  We have an exciting new idea.  Will tell more next week.

So many synchronicities have been popping up, I haven't had time to write everything down.  I really feel that I am living by the intuitive navigating system.  I had lunch with author and entrepreneur, Jim Horan (he wrote The One-Page Business Plan.)  I wasn't sure why I was having lunch, but my intuition said to go for it.  I was busy and could have used the time in another way.  But our conversation yielded several great ideas, that I have already implemented. I've given his name to Ellen F--maybe she can invite him to speak at her trade show in Las Vegas.  He got me to thinking about how to reach more people with numerology--how others could make money with numerology.  I was thinking, Oh, I should call Felix in Amsterdam and give him a tip on the new seminar flyer, but I thought he had it already done.

When I got home I had a call from Ingebord in Amsterdam with some seminar problems.  We made a list, and I was able to give her my new ideas.  She had been feeling bad that the flyer was behind schedule, but I said, No, Ingeborg, this is PERFECT!  She wanted to work more synchronistically, and that's exactly what happened.  She was following her intution to call me with questions, and I already had the solutions.  It was magical.

 Then I got a message that Abhi Naha in London wants to organize an informal dinner the night before the Utrecht seminar.  How fun!  We'll meet some new people.  Anyone can sign up for it.  I should do this more often with foreign seminars.  We all need to meet each other.

 Meanwhile, I drove Fumiko to SFO last night to fly back to Tokyo.  I found an old project that may be interesting, so I gave it to her to present to the editor.  Who knows?

The energy is flowing so strongly, I almost can't take any more in.  

I finished the best memoir by Eudora Welty--One Writer's Beginnings.  Rainey lent it to me, and I devoured it.  I realize how little time we all spend reading really good literature, and how much we read stuff like this--which is okay, but not professional quality writing that is so juicy you want to put it in your mouth and eat it.

Speaking of which, I finished off two pork chops in the refrigerator, and made the best mustard, sherry, cream sauce!  Also sauteed the eggplant to go with it.  Delicious and so simple.  Must remember.  Gotta pack.

It's Saturday.  Cloudy, quiet, sleepy.  Last night I gave a short talk at the East Bay Church of Religious Science on the Control Dramas from The Celestine Prophecy.  They were showing the movie for the second time.  There must have been over a hundred people.  It was nice to see Rev. Andriette Earl again after a couple of years.  We taught a class together before on life purpose.  She has a huge energy field and emanates warmth, humor, and rock-bottom commitment to the path.

My new business cards arrived, and I realized they have the exact same color combination as the Kilim rug in my kitchen--in all my rooms, actually.  Red, black, orange, and a touch of white.  I love them!

 Friends are coming over for dinner.  I think I'll make a chicken and sausage gumbo and Fumiko is going to make a lemon cake with coconut on the outside--maybe raspberries on top.

Robert and I were going to go bowling but we changed our plans.  He's working in the kitchen right now to change my laptop so that it can download Skype--then I could talk to Japan through the computer for free!  Fumiko leaves next Tuesday for Japan.  I've got my ticket for leaving on May 22--Sigrid's birthday.  But I'll see her and Trevor, Chloe and Jim next week.  We'll celebrate then! 

The rain is STILL pounding down outside my window!

I still love the rain, though, when I'm inside and can hear its steady patter.

I had a very nice reminder of the importance of letting go this week.  Fumiko and I had been trying to set up a schedule for a seminar in Japan and nothing was working.  We felt stopped and unclear about what to do next.  After a few days, we decided to just let go of our original idea.  The moment we "surrendered," we felt relief.

Within two days of our decision, Fumiko received  an invitation to participate in a conference in Nagano in May.  This time everything just flowed.  With perfect timing, our schedules  were open for this unexpected opportunity.

Without any effort on our part, we now have an event scheduled and several other opportunities to do business and see friends.

It seems that sometimes you have to stop doing what is not working and let something else come into your life.  Once you stop or let go, you create a void.  Into that void new energy will flow. 

 It's dinner time now--salmon, salad, potatoes.  Later babysitting.  More rain.

I am leaving for Los Angeles at 3 pm today.  I have lots of library picture books for Trevor and Chloe and some new paints, construction paper, and a box of craft items to make fuzzy people with big googly eyes.

It's interesting how many things we are exposed to every day.  Today it feels like a rain of sorrow, hopes, and fears--a promise of new collaborations, and lots and lots of details, and emails.  Sorrow--a friend called yesterday to tell me that her girlfriend had been murdered by her lover.  Shocking.  A reader shares her son's suicide.  Tragic.  Another friend called today who is suddenly freaking out at the purchase of a high-priced piece of property. We recognize her liftetime pattern for risk-attraction, and decide it's okay to move forward.

This morning's newspaper's front page features tiny, starving children and families in Kenya--and I'm eating breakfast.

My world expands in and out as Icorrespond with the organizer of my seminar in Amsterdam, and the people in Santa Fe for next Fall's tour.  Undeliverable messages crowd my email after sending out my newsletter--more work to be attended to.

For now it's back to the fuzzy people with googly eyes for awhile.

Sunday, Fumiko, Robert, and Ellen Falcinelli are going to see a screening of The Celestine Prophecy movie in Walnut Creet at Unity Center. 

Fumiko and I just finished dinner--cod with lemon/caper sauce, sauteed tofu, braised spinach, and sauteed asparagus.  So good!

I have to finish writing the monthly column tonight.  Since we've been back from Albuquerque, I've just been catching up on email and life.  Anders (4) came over yesterday.  He strides into the kitchen holding a new Knight of the Realm sword, and says, "Two new packets of gum, I see."

At three feet tall, I'm surprised he can see anything on my kitchen counter top.

I said, "Yes, those are for your cousins when I go down to Los Angeles on Thursday."

Augie (18 mos) is valiantly speaking, "Mio. Mio," when he sees Fumiko.  "Da (dog)"  "Haaaaaa, (hot) and "phhssssssshhhhhhhh (fish)."   

 I went for a walk with Rainey this morning in between rain showers, and we stopped for a cup of tea and a hot cross bun (Easter is approaching).  She told me about a play she attended written by a local Berkeley resident who used all the regulars at the French Hotel (a small cafe in North Berkeley) as the characters.  Her friend Dale was characterized as very obsessive compulsive, but apparently Dale was flattered.  She's beautiful and went to the play all dressed up.  "I don't really wear latex gloves when I shake hands with people,"she told Rainey.  But, she does, however, use a tissue to open doors.

Rainey should have been a character in the play, but the playwright doesn't really know her.  Rainey is going to go to France in July to the birthday party of one of the women she used to rent a room to.  This woman married well, and lives abroad.  Rainey also recently had lunch with the sister of Salman Rushie, and recounted earlier days of her eccentricities.  They lived
together in the house on Keith street. 

I 

I'm sitting in the Albuquerque airport waiting to fly back to Oakland with Robert and Fumiko.

This was the perfect business trip--fun and productive.  Things could not have gone any better. 

After talking to a few people, we found someone to lead our sweat lodge for the November tour.  We are going to have a full day of art, ceremony, sweat, music, and feasting.

With perfect timing, Fumiko and I met the people from Access to Santa Fe within two blocks and finalized the walking tour.

Flight's called.  Gotta go. 

I'm in Santa Fe New Mexico with Robert and Fumiko.  We got in on Saturday night.  We're scouting for our all-Japanese tour in November.  Yesterday we met my old friend, Jaye Oliver, the graphic designer, and she drove us around.

My favorite place here is the International Folk Art Museum--filled with astonishing crafts from around the world.  I love it!  I feel like making art again.

I bought a pair of wedding dolls--black skin and white clothes.  We all had tea on Canyon Road the art gallery area at a tiny coffee shop, Cafe des Artistes, owned by a Parisian man.  He turned a garage into this shop!  We felt very cozy as the snow began to fall in Santa FE!

I have to go.  We are meeting Jaye to drive out to talk to Raven, a man who leads sweat lodges--one of the sacred Native American ceremonies.  We want to offer a sweat lodge on our tour, and it will be interesting to go out and meet him on the Poaque Pueblo which is 20 minutes north of Santa Fe.  An adventure today.  We had planned to continue to Taos, higher in the mountains, but it may not be a good idea with the ice, snow, and winds up there.  We'll see. 

Yesterday we had another meeting of our EFT group (emotional freedom technique at www.emofree.com). There were 8 of us--all women.  We practiced the work until 7 and then broke for a potluck feast--quiche, turkey chili, bread, cheese, salad, wine and homemade lemon cake.  Lynn Fielder stayed overnight so she could go back into SF to attend the next day's Parkinson's conference. 

We learned a lot in our EFT practice.  I like the new "What if..." statements.  I used it today with a client..."What if I could have a stable income and keep developing my passion for life transition-work?"  The What if statement really helps bridge that gap between feeling stuck in a conflict and not knowing what new steps could get us closer to our goal.

Tonigh I'm cleaning out my office and tidying up old business.  Feels good, but I'm tired.  I still need to find that sweat lodge site to let them know Fumiko, Robert, and I will be in Santa Fe next week to prepare for our fall Japanese tour.

I've been having a lot of international conversations.  I love the man who wrote from Romania to tell me about the new library of spiritual books (about 600) that he and his friends have put together.  He said they had about 10 visitors a day.  I think I would love to visit Romania--a Romanian contractor and his all-Romanian crew remodeled my house and Gunther and Eliza's house last year.  We love Romanians!

I've been talking to Felix Brabander about the synchronicity symposium June 10th in Amsterdam.

A man from China just emailed and said he liked this blog!  How wonderful to have friends in China.

Patricia Caldwell, a life coach I interviewed last year, wrote to say hi from London!

A man named Nima wrote to tell me he is translating my books in Iran.  They don't have copywrite laws there, but he's doing it on his own, I guess, and sent me a beautiful picture of himself and his wife.  They look very poetic.

An old acquaintance from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, just wrote to say she had some synchronicities.

It's a wild, wild world out there, isn't it, Cat Stevens!

Good night for now.  Have to go fold my laundry. 

It's Sunday, and we still have a cold rain coming down outside.  I've been using the time to clean out a kitchen drawer full of rubber bands, garbage bag ties, birthday candles, kitchen magnets, recylcled paper for grocery lists, and keys to forgotten locks.

I'm also printing recipes off the food network channel and putting holes in to file in my red kitchen binder.  I made some extra copies for Gunther and Eliza of turkety-chili, oven-roasted halibut, flounder with red pepper cream and asparagus, and steamed pork wonton dumplings.  I invited them all over for dinner tonight because Eliza's mom, Carmen, is up here from San Diego.

Robert and I made the best dinner last night:  grilled butterflied leg of lamb, small steamed artichokes, eggplan sauteed with a Chinese garlic sauce, and rice with lemon and dill (Rainey gave me that recipe last week after our walk.)

 I guess this is my food blog today!  Maintaining my recipes, watching the food network, and trying out recipes, and having people over to eat them, makes me realize that if I were asked what my hobbies are, I guess I'd have to say cooking!

This is a much happier weekend than last when I drove myself crazy being miserable--focusing on an old story.  After two days, I vividly saw how I can turn a switch in my head and make myself miserable, and then just as easily, get off it by not dwelling on the negative.  Hmmm.

The rain is pounding on my study window.  It's dark, but I still have work to finish.

I love the lovely sound of rain, I always have.

This last weekend I went to see Matchpoint (by Woody Allen).  It is set in London, and the theme is being lucky and getting what we "think" we want.  And the cost of that.

I am also reading Snobs, a novel by Julian Fellows on the identical theme--set in Englad and portraying the English upper classes and those who throw themselves at this citadel of exclusivity.  Oddly, I am always fascinated by these same themes--I, who have always considered myself to be particularly plebian and "democratic." Of course, I have my own snobberies and elitism.   I love English movies and English novels.  I watched a TV special on Windsor Castle the other night.  Fascinating display of protocol and tradition. I actually went to Windsor Castle when I visited England the first time in 1970.  I wanted to see the famous doll house there--doll houses being another fascination when you get to see a good one. My boyfriend at the time, John, took me for tea, and I had my first clotted cream.  Fabulous!  The day, the cream, John, and the doll house.

But tonight, I'm printing labels for my brochures.  How extraordinarily mundane.  But a comforting task on a rainy night.