Carla and I quickly did our protocol and Morning Offering so we could keep our early appointment with the plastic surgeon. He took a look at the ugly wound that developed from a few sutures coming loose two weeks ago and said that even though there was a deep gully at the bottom of the wound it very well could heal without surgery if we continue to clean it and put the silvadean crème on it three times per day. It's a pressure wound that developed because on the opposite side of Carla's rear end is the skin flap that feeds blood to the entire skin graft and Carla had been warned to keep off that flap at all costs since even 20 minutes on it could kill the flap and graft. So she was very careful to stay off her right side and that meant lying on her left side and that is where this pressure wound developed. So we came home much buoyed by his words and determined to do what we can to get healing for Carla. Dr. McCurry said the Clinitron bed that we have rented is the gold standard for healing such skin grafts and will work greatly in our favor.

I spent my afternoon weeding all of our flower gardens and enjoying our landscaping.

Gary wrote of his day at the L/L helm:

• Started the day out attempting to make a routine payment for Carla's PayPal account, and upon logging in discovered everything was in Chinese, literally, and a bank account was added that I didn't recognize. Spent some time trying to get to the bottom of the caper, finally called PayPal, transferred to their security department, and learned that someone (presumably a Chinese-speaking someone) had gained access to her account, added their bank account, and were attempting to transfer the balance in the PayPal account to their bank. Fortunately PayPal noticed suspicious activity and froze the account before further action could be taken.
• Processed, prepared, and shipped book orders. Spent some quality time catching with my post office friend, H..
• Did my dance with the Books of Quickness for the weekly bookkeeping.
• Heard back from Troy who wants to continue assisting the prison ministry. Responded to her and looked into an event she's attending this summer: http://www.3ho.org/summer-solstice/. Looks like a good time. Yoga. Prayer. Energy clearing. Mediation. Service. Camping. And hugs.
• Corresponded with our friend Terry on the topic of getting all the Chinese translations of the L/L material onto the archive website.
• Canceled the blogtalkradio service while Carla, Jim, and Monica are on hiatus due to Carla's surgery
• Assisted Carla in getting a response to her IMU student
• Began my research into the legal intricacies of the non-profit entity. Wrote who I believe is the new CPA managing our accounts as our previous principal manager is on his way out.

Our evening was spent watching television and enjoying each other's company. We completed the third dressing change and now have a good protocol for it once again. We have developed and discarded so many protocols over the last two years that occasionally a flashback will temporarily make me wonder what planet this is. Then it all comes back to me. I said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I did her protocol and the we did our Morning Offering to get us ready for our day. Kathleen, the visiting nurse, came by this morning and replaced Carla's catheter. She also took a look at Carla's wound on the upper left side of the skin graft. She was aghast at how fast the wound had gotten worse. She called the plastic surgeon's office and got us an appointment for 9 am tomorrow morning. It is very likely that Dr. McCurry will want to schedule surgery for as soon as possible as there is a lot of necrotic material to be removed from the wound and then there is the need to close it, very likely with another skin graft. We will see how that all goes.

I went outside before the rains came and got as far as I could with the last of the retaining walls with the creek stones that I had to work with. Another half load of stones from Avalon should see the job finished.

Gary put in another busy day in the L/L office:

Today was mostly a day of long emails. Emails to L/L's FB coordinator, an email to L/L friend with relationship catalyst, and an email to another L/L friend regarding fear and realization of the Law of One. Also, wrote Steve about getting the formatting issue sorted out so that once and for all transcripts can be published to the archive website. Responded to Edgard about his idea to change the size format of the PDF's to A4, the most common sizing format, also producing more words per page equaling less pages when printing out. Got the first batch of prisoner letters mailed to Sarah - good luck Sarah! Shared a smile-filled lunch with Carla and Jim, this in spite of Carla's tribulation. Also, shared Carla's French fries.

Our evening was spent watching some television and then doing another dressing change. Carla said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I did her protocol and then our Morning Offering. We changed her dressing three times today and each time we noticed more change for the worse at the top left portion where problems began two weeks ago. Now we see a crater has opened up at the bottom of this area and it actually bled some during the last dressing change. We aren’t sure what we are looking at and what it all means so we have taken digital photos and emailed them to the plastic surgeon. We didn’t hear from him today because this is his day for surgery, so we hope to hear from him tomorrow and perhaps even get to see him.

I spent a couple of hours in the early afternoon building the last of the small retaining walls around the side fish pond. Tomorrow I will see if I have enough creek stones to finish the project or if I will need to bring more back from Avalon later on in the week.

I think I saw Gary in the L/L office today. There was someone who looked a lot like him sitting in his chair with head phones all day long:

• An email sent in mid-April by our friend and previously number one transcriber, Aaron, was never received on this end. Low and behold, it appeared (with the April send date) in the inbox yesterday. Not even "the email passed through the Bermuda Triangle" can account for this. At any rate, Jim and I replied, sending Aaron all of our love for a recent bike accident she experienced.
• Contacted an old friend, Mikey, who gathers a number of great, metaphysically oriented imagery, seeing if he had a particular one I was looking to use for the L/L Facebook page.
• Read IMU's weekly newsletter and learned of a city in Alabama destroying an ancient Indian mound to make way for a Sam's Club, and a Mayan pyramid that was destroyed in Belize by a construction company looking for material to fill a road! Perhaps this construction crew and this town in Alabama are simply working to help remove third-density artifacts for the coming density. http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=f155f4f5df7ab20ff6fde8f8f&id=27f5a9e7c2&e=baf19cdf1f
• Continued working with Sarah in establishing the prison ministry under her leadership, and per her recommendation took a tour of the website http://www.westonaprice.org/. Sarah runs an organic/natural food restaurant in her hometown, and cannot recommend this website more highly.
• Heard from Tobey that lawofone.info reported hits in the month of April from 99 different countries! Though counseled to "forget you the counting", I believe Don Elkins would most enjoy that news.
• Scheduled an energy analysis for Jim and Carla's on July 16, then upon hearing from Jim of the significance of that date, rescheduled.
• Watched a fantastic video sent by our friend Tom C. about the internet archive: http://www.wimp.com/internetarchive/. I had no awareness of the service-to-others oriented nature of the intent behind this project. It's got a similar ring to Wikipedia in that they hope to create true universal access to all human knowledge, not just through archiving everything that ever was on the internet, but by capturing all media, including every extant book. (Fortunately they did not mention cell phone conversations with my mom.) Currently they have almost 1,000 Library of Congress' worth on their hard drive. Its founder made an interesting point that access drives preservation. Meaning the best way to preserve it is not to limit access, but to open access to the fullest possible extent. s
• Alongside of Aaron K., Steve, and Austin, discussed and analyzed the pros/cons of a proposal Austin received for an L/L phone-study group.
• Wrote Troy, an assistant to the prison ministry, bringing Troy up to speed on recent events and asking regarding current interest levels in assisting.
• Heard from Fox that she intends on attending Homecoming and has offered to help volunteer, but won't be able to arrive early to lead the cooking effort as she so expertly has in year's past. It's undecided at this point, but I think we may try catering for the first time.
• In light of The LOOP Newsletter being out of commission for the time being, and changes to the prison ministry, edited and updated the LOOP page on the archive website and sent the request to update the page to Steve
• Received the edited transcript back from Wendy for the "Temple of Health" interview that Carla and Wynn did with Susan Kobb.
• And received a second (after the one received and reported on yesterday) transcript from Jeremy for the 2012 Homecoming. Thanks again to you both!
• Began digesting and responding to Jochen's thoughts on a Law of One ashram. Much insight this one has. Will finish tomorrow.
• And heard from Renee that she lost someone close to her through an unfortunate, tragic death. Our prayers are with you, Renee.

Good grief! Look what he was able to do with those head phones on!

We finished our day watching some television including a block of NCIS and concluding with the Colbert Report. I said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I did our protocol and then our Morning Offering. Kathleen came by around mid-morning and took a look at Carla’s wound and gave Carla some relief on her catheter. Kathleen is such a blessing to us. She has been our visiting nurse for most of two years now and we rely on her for all kinds of supplies and support as well as her genuine friendship. Around mid-day a physical therapist came by to evaluate Carla and what kind of exercises that she might be able to do. Unfortunately in her process she injured Carla in the groin area and we agreed it was a little too soon to expect Carla to do much more than the walking that she is now doing to move back and forth between the beds in her bedroom and the living room.

I spent time outside getting our new cellar door painted with two coats and then I began working on the last of three flower beds around the side fish pond. I enjoy putting the different shapes together and am seldom pleased with the work while I do it, but when I come  back later to look at it I like it a lot better.

Gary reported a busy day in the L/L office:

• Left the mountains on Sunday after spending a great weekend with Steve and Trish (and seeing a momma black bear and her three cubs), stopped by a town in eastern Tennessee to visit two L/L-related friends, Seph and Sarah, the former in charge of the Glossary project, the latter volunteering to lead the prison ministry.
• Rewrote the basic blueprint of the prison ministry from scratch, and sent it to L/L's new volunteer, Sarah, who has graciously offered to take the reins of this service sorely in need of good stewardship. So grateful to have Sarah on board!
• Processed Homecoming material
• Wrote accountant
• Corresponded with Terry
• Processed, prepared, and shipped book orders
• Received a transcript of an interview with Carla from Wendy. It was perfect save that the speakers were not differentiated in the text. Asked Wendy if she could revise. Fortunately, she replied in the affirmative.
• Received a transcript from Jeremy for the Homecoming 2012 talks. Thank you Jeremy and Wendy.   
  

During the evening we enjoyed a block of NCIS. When it came time to check Carla’s wound area of her skin graft we were saddened to see that in a mere few hours the bottom part of the wound which had scabbed over was now oozing ominous fluids once again. We did our best to clean it and put more silvadean crème on it. We will send photos to the plastic surgeon tomorrow and we hope to see him soon as this situation is getting worse fast and needs some attention.

I said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I got her morning protocol done and treated her wound area of the skin graft. It does slowly seem to be getting better. The Clinitron bed and silvadean crème and lots of positive affirmations are our best treatments right now. She was able to take a couple of breaks from the constant vibration of the Clinitron bed and hang out on her old bed in the living room for a couple of hours.

I went outside a couple of times this afternoon and finished transplanting impatiens in the old herb garden in the back yard and then I dug up the area that is always under the Homecoming tent and got rid of the violets there. I plan to put a variety of colors of petunias there and though we cultivate violets for a green mulch in most of our other flower beds they just don’t look right with petunias in that area.

Our evening was spent watching the current inductions into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That gave us a chance to see a lot of our favorite artists from over the years. There are a lot of good new rock & roll musicians around these days and it is good to see the genre flourishing, but there really aren’t any great superstars around in the new folks like The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bruce Springsteen and the like. Carla said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I did our protocol and got her ready for her day. Her new Clinitron healing bed is both a blessing and a curse. The air is constantly being blown up from the base of the bed and moves the artificial sand against the one sheet between it and Carla’s body. So Carla’s body is constantly vibrating and she is constantly feeling the air pass around her body and this air cools her off while the overall effect of the bed is to create heat and make the rest of the room hot—and noisy. This constant vibration seems to be working well to relieve the damaged suture area but it is also wreaking some havoc to Carla’s bladder. So Carla takes an assisted walk twice a day to the living room to recline on her old off-loading air mattress and take a break from the vibrations.

This Clinitron bed is unique and  expensive. It would cost $35,000 to buy and it takes forever to get it through Medicare. Carla would not qualify since it is usually reserved for those who are bed bound. So we decided to rent it and were able to make a burst of  phone calls on Thursday and Friday which resulted in our getting the bed in one day. As expensive and difficult to deal with as this bed is it is the road to healing Carla’s skin graft. Hopefully another three weeks or so will see the healing that we are looking for.

I was able to make a quick trip to Avalon to get another load of creek stones that I will use to complete the retaining walls around the side fish pond. I got back in time to watch the Preakness with Carla. No Triple Crown winner again this year!

We enjoyed a block of NCIS for most of the day and then we ended our day watching Austin City Limits where Arcade Fire was playing. They were an interesting group with many layers to their sound and they even had a melody tucked away in all that sound. Carla said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I did her protocol and got her pillows fluffed for what may be the last time. We spent most of today completing the task we began yesterday: getting all the people necessary to sign off on a new healing bed for Carla and getting that bed delivered. After a slew of phone calls spreading out in all directions the bed was delivered about 3:30 in the afternoon.

We cleared out Carla’s old bed and put it and her in the living room as the guys delivered the new Clinitron healing bed. This bed is made for people who are bed bound or who have had recent skin grafts. It combines air which moves very quickly from the bottom of the bed and moves 600 lbs. of artificial sand beads and makes it look like water before you put the cover sheet on it and then your regular flat sheet before lying upon it. It gives Carla a constant massage from her lumbar wound on down to her feet.

This bed is very noisy and therefore the television needs to be turned up so we live in a much louder environment now. Also, the cats can’t come into the room for as long as this bed is here because  one claw puncturing the air pockets that surround the bed will cause all the sand to spew out onto the floor and it’s beach party time. We are sad to have to keep the kitties out and they aren’t real pleased either, but we are glad to go through all this if we can get the healing on Carla’s skin graft from this bed.

While waiting for the bed to be delivered I was able to get some dahlias, coleus, portulaca, and blood wart flowers transplanted. Our evening was spent getting Carla  settled in to her new bed and watching television with the sound turned up as high as it would go. If our hearing survives this type of therapy and the therapy works we will be happy campers indeed. I said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I did her protocol and got her pillows fluffed so she could be more comfortable today. We took a look at her skin graft after she spent her first night on her left side for the first time in three weeks. The plastic surgeon said that he thought the skin flap could take the pressure now and that she needed to get off her left side because the pressure there had caused the sutures to come apart and put that area in jeopardy. He felt the area was savable by putting Silvadean crème on it three times per day. But this morning we looked at the entire area and noticed a general reddening of the area and a spreading of the necrosis from the damaged suture area. It looked like everything was in worse shape from her new position. After trying some creative solutions of positions we decided to try for a new type of mattress.

 There are two mattresses that are better than what Carla is on now and one stands out as the type that patients are usually put on after skin transplant surgery and it is called the Clinitron which is a combination of the air therapy and sand, somehow! Medicare won’t pay for this because it is usually prescribed for people who are bed bound and cannot walk at all. It will be expensive to rent for the next couple of months but we need to give Carla the best chance to heal and so we are hopeful that this mattress will be delivered tomorrow.

Gary spent a very busy day in the L/L office:

• Did my routine with QuickBooks. Processed some Homecoming stuff, some email stuff, some Bring4th stuff, some IMU stuff, some accounting-related stuff, and a lunch, sort of, with Jim and Carla. Headed off now to spend the weekend with L/L's Webmaster/BFF in the mountains, along with my amazing fiancée.

Well, he looked busy. I wasn’t too busy today as we pointed our efforts at getting Carla up once per hour for 10 to 15 minutes to keep the blood circulating in her skin graft. Once we get the new mattress we won’t have to do this as much. We enjoyed our evening by watching a block of NCIS. I said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I did the morning protocol and then got her pillows fluffed for a couple of hours before heading out to see the plastic surgeon. First Kathleen came by and took labs for two of Carla’s doctors through her Power Port. Around 11 am we got her pillows transferred to the car so she could make the trip downtown and see the plastic surgeon so he could see the upper left part of her wound that she has been lying on so she would not lie on the skin flap that has been feeding blood to the skin graft.

We made the trip in good time and in relatively good comfort. We had to wait fifteen excruciating minutes until the plastic surgeon came in. He determined that the area was savable but not by adding more sutures. He gave us Silvadean crème which is supposed to help such damaged skin heal with directions to apply it three times per day. If the crème doesn’t work then he will have to do another, smaller skin graft over that area.  He also said that the flap looks good now and she can lie on it and stay off the suture area which means lying on her right side now. So we made all those adjustments when we got home and are contemplating moving the beds back into their original position after experimenting a little with her new position.

I trimmed some of our hedges in the afternoon and cleaned up a few leaves in my one hour outside today.

Gary was his usual busy self in the L/L office:

• Stopped by PO Box to pick up mail
• Put together monthly Merchant Express report
• Scheduled a visit from the electric/gas company to run an energy efficiency analysis on the house. I asked if they would test the efficiency of the movement of metaphysical energy through this house, and they said last time they tested this particular location, their love/light meters broke because the signal was too strong.
• Received a nice follow-up from Scott Mandelker after the trip to Taiwan. Responded him with gratitude for his help while there and the great day Trish and I shared with Scott.
• Sought help from Sarah, a friend who had previously volunteered for the prison ministry in December of last year but who wasn't chosen at the time due to two who seemed uniquely suited for the work. As the two who took the ministry up were forced, it seems, to throw in the towel, I wrote Sarah asking if she would still be interested in leading it.
• Looked into an termite traps systems for the house.
• Got the Staff Meeting pictures put together and shared with the group
• Responded to Mish in discussion of formatting questions. She shared with me this person's vision of a "vegetal city": http://vegetalcity.net/luc.html
• Worked my way through a long email from Jochen, and had to separate a portion of it! Seems he's got the verbosity bug that I have. He is a man of many dreams, possessing the will, the faith, the knowledge, and the capacity to manifest them into physical reality. Each of those hopes is centered around serving spiritual seekers using, as foundation and structure, the Confederation philosophy. He reports on meetings that German seekers are already having, his ongoing work with the translations, his development of a more formal study association or academy of sorts, his thoughts for a Law of One ashram that are informed and sophisticated enough (given his background in living in ashrams, managing social situations, serving in government, working in corporations, etc.), that I will make use of them should a more involved effort manifest on our end toward a similar goal. Though analyzing and responding to his most excellent blueprints is a task for another day.

Our evening was spent watching a  block of NCIS on television. We finished our day watching the Colbert Report for a little humor. I said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I did our morning protocol and pillow fluffing to get Carla set upon her day with as much comfort as possible. Then we did our Morning Offering and had our breakfast. Carla is a big fan of Cheerios and I prefer granola, so we are both into grains to begin our day. The Physical Therapist came by at mid morning and did an evaluation of Carla’s needs. She was impressed that Carla was able to walk with assistance three times per day, getting a little further into the kitchen each day.

I spent my afternoon weeding our various flower gardens and as this was my fourth time to weed this spring I was able to do the entire yard as I am actually up with the weeds. This doesn’t usually happen until the middle of August, so retirement does have its benefits.

Gary reported another busy day in the L/L office:

• Received the "rough draft" version of the 2010 Homecoming video from Renee. Shared the video with Jim and Carla. Talked it over. Did a detailed analysis, and sent back a report to Renee.
• Continued working with Steve and Edgard involving workflow
• Learned that one of the BBS shows I uploaded was five minutes! Apologized and uploaded an actual full session.
• Learned from a volunteer transcriber that the "free" transcription software was actually a 14-day trial. Did some research and replied with what I hope is the actual free version.
• Did some great work with Austin regarding Bring4th
• Read through all the Questionnaire responses from last year's Homecoming in order to improve and refine this year's. Among the great ideas was a suggestion to structure our initial Round Robin to answer four simple questions.
• Jim took dictation from Carla in her first response to her new IMU student. Posted to the IMU forums.

We enjoyed our evening watching the season  finale of NCIS and are properly on the edge of our seats for the entire summer wondering who it was that Gibbs shot in the last scene. I said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.