Carla and I did our Morning Offering and then got her ready for her day. She is still feeling very nauseous and pain-filled so I did the reading parts in our Offering that she usually does because it makes her more nauseous to talk. We called her family doctor about the rash on her head and were referred to her dermatologist who in turn referred us to an opthomologist who was able to give a definitive diagnosis of shingles. That explains the extra pain and nausea as those are two distinctive traits of shingles. She will be taking medication for shingles the next couple of weeks to help the disease run its course, which it apparently does in that time period but the pain can last for months.

We also have to be careful now to not let people visit Carla who have not had chicken pox, women who may be pregnant, and small children or they could pick up chicken pox from Carla and for an adult that can be dangerous. The small pox virus lies dormant in people who have had the disease and then in the future if there is prolonged illness that reduces the body’s immune system the virus can reappear as shingles. Shingles is a disease related to stress on the body and Carla fits that profile perfectly.

I mowed my yards today and then took a couple of hours to power seed a customer’s back yard and completed my day in good time.

And today Gary did:

• Stopped by PO Box
• Mailed a batch of prisoner letters to Lynn as she hasn’t had time to continue with the library project
• Solved remote access question of telephone for Jim
• Generated Monthly PayPal report
• Received first translation of a portion of Session 1 of the Law of One material in German from Thomas!
• Received the Lo1 publisher’s six-month report. It appears that 1,230 copies of Book I sold over the past six months! Though L/L receives a small percentage of those sales, it’s still great to know that there is a gradual increasing interest in the books.
• Shipped Book orders
• Welcomed a new moderator to the Bring4th team! Username: Abridgetoofar. Now: Bring4th_Austin.
• Dialogued some with Tobey about his Friday appearance on Carla’s “In the Now” along with some discussion about the relistening to the final 31 sessions of the Ra contact
• Dialogued with Anne about her aborted trip to visit L/L
• Discussed moderator team options with our friend and other active moderator, Aaron.
• Requested help from the volunteer list for a transcriber to produce a transcript of Friday’s “In the Now”
• Moderated the Bring4th forums into the night     

Our evening was special in that we watched the University of Kentucky defeat Kansas University for the NCAA National Basketball Championship. The basketball season is now officially over with the rightful heir to the throne crowned champion for the eighth time in school history. I said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Today is Palm Sunday and April Fool’s Day as well. It kind of reminds me of the Divine Fool walking off the cliff in complete faith that there will be support under the feet. Carla and I arose and did our Morning Offering and got her ready for her day. Her day was very simple: try to survive the pain and nausea which have reached very high levels. She is usually able to read her mystery/romance novels, play a little solitaire on her laptop, watch a little television, and walk some laps, but all that is a little much as any movement at all has painful consequences. So she sleeps and rests and hopes for relief.

I busied myself with various chores around the house and then went out to fill my gas cans with gasoline for another week’s mowing. Gas prices are $4.15 for a gallon of regular now so I will have to increase the price for all of my mowing this week. I alerted all my customers to that possibility in February so no one will be surprised.

I kept the television on this afternoon and evening so that Carla could watch a little when she was awake and we spent a few sessions cuddling with me balanced between her bed and my chair. It feels so good to be close and we both enjoyed that as the high point of our day. We are going to have to get an appointment with her dermatologist to have her look at the rash that is taking over the left side of Carla’s face and which has swollen her left eye shut. It is painful and has also given her a headache.

I gave my mom her usual Sunday evening call and she continues to feel OK but have problems with her memory. Carla said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Carla and I arose properly late for a Saturday morning and then we did our Morning Offering. After completing the Banishing Ritual we got her ready for her day which was composed mostly of napping and taking her pills. For some reason the last two or three weeks have been difficult for Carla and today was the hardest day yet in terms of pain and nausea. She walked one lap with full intentions of walking more, but the pain was too much so we are hoping that more sleeping will allow her body to regain its usual level of pain and functioning.

I did some chores around the house and then ran my usual errands in Middletown. It was kind of odd not bringing Carla her usual fish dinner from Captain D’s but apple sauce is about all her upset stomach can handle at the moment, so I brought back two big jars of Mott’s Apple Sauce. Yumm!

If you don’t live in the state of Kentucky it may be news to you that both the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky made it into the Final Four in the NCAA playoffs. For a week now we have heard of nothing but this classic rivalry and the showdown that happened tonight. It was a very good game, but Kentucky had too much firepower for Louisville and won 69-61. So now Kentucky will play Kansas Monday night for the national championship of college basketball. It is fitting that that game should be sandwiched between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday—all three being holy days in the state of Kentucky.

Carla and I enjoyed our evening by hanging out and watching a little television. I said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Hi Gang. I’m back because Carla is experiencing a great deal more pain and nausea these last few days and she is just trying to cope with it all and survive her day. We did our Morning Offering and got her ready for her day. Today Kathleen came by and changed Carla’s dressing. Some additional tunneling has been found where the neurologist did his work last April to free the nerves on the north and south sides of her wound. We had hoped that all the tunneling was healed up but now there is more to heal.

Romi came by at lunch and brought one of Carla’s favorite Arby sandwiches. He and Carla were able to visit for an hour or so before he had to be on his way. It was good to see him as he has been gone for about a month to the Czech Republic to be with his mom as she had hip replacement surgery which went well.

I have been cutting grass for the last two weeks which is two weeks early due to the very warm temperatures and abundant rain that we have had for all of March. It is the warmest March on record and the grass is jumping out of the ground. Gary and I had a full schedule of yards to mow and we got the work done in good time and even managed to mow our grass here at Camelot as well now that the wild flowers have seeded. The blooms are magnificent. The dogwood, redbud, lilac, wisteria, and phlox are all in bloom now with just a few daffodils left over and a few tulips popping up her and there. We will have to plant more tulip bulbs this fall.

Carla had a very hard day with pain but she was able to get herself in good enough shape to do the blog talk radio show with Monica and Tobey was on the show to share his work with the re-listening project where he and a couple of volunteers have listened to all of the Ra session cassette tapes and found words and sentences here and there that were left out of the original transcripts. It is almost like getting a new Ra session. Some of the information is most enlightening and we are so grateful to Tobey for his dedication to this project. Carla said the prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

There comes a time in any flu or cold when you realize you’ve hit the nadir -

Bonk

- and today was it for me and this flu, definitely. I take comfort in this because now I shall begin getting better, and, I hope, quickly.

Once accepted, a momentary difficulty like this last week’s flu is not bad. I attempted to focus my mind on staying positive and cheery in my interactions, and maybe I am just a fool, but this works well for me. So much of my environment and life is a drop-down-absolute-obvious blessing that it takes only a bit if will power to start musing in the direction of counting my blessings and away from the bearing of complaints. I certainly enjoy myself far more with just that bit of discipline steering me away from the shallows of despair and out into the magical world of freedom and light.

Mick was quite busy today, as one of his customers had a party coming up and wanted a special cutting. Mick cut into the evening, but he did a gorgeous job for the guy. It did NOT help that one of his mowers flipped its drive belt, and Mick has never put one on. There was no direction on how to do it in the warranty book, which is always a broad hint to the owner to call in the experts. It is a pity because it means he will need to drop it at the fix-it shop before he begins business tomorrow.

There were seasonal rains around noon and all in all it was the most perfect spring day possible, misty and romantic. Our back yard is taking on that magical look because Mick does not cut our yard until all our wildflowers have had time to bloom and seed. In the meanwhile, Mick trims up all the pathways and walks. With wildflowers putting color everywhere and the clover fluffing up in its first bloom, everything looks as though it belongs in fairyland!

I got a nice note from Wynn and hoped he’d sent along a transcript of our show together last Monday, but alas no. So I wrote to ask him for that when he gets the time to send it. Wynn had written to share a thank-you note to me which he had received, and that was good to hear too.

Here is an unusual issue – I got a request from the man who is translating TLOO into German on how to spell my last name. Of course, when my father’s people were still in Northern Germany, I was a Ruckert, the u with an umlaut. When My foresires got to Ellis Island, officials  transliterated the umlaut as “ue”. And my birth-name became an All-American Rueckert. 

Ruckert. I told him, by all means, restore the umlaut for any German edition.

Monica, Tobey and I had a good e-round-robin about the Q&A show to come tomorrow night. It should be fun. Mick says he’ll join us. It will be a good show!

Gary worked hard today and sent down this list from the upstairs office:

• Trip to the US Post Office, The UPS Store, and bank
• Spent substantial time working with Steve today to assist in getting the new Bring4th chatroom online. A great success! Steve installed and integrated the new chat, worked out all the kinks, and finally was able to create a counter on the home page, on the forums page, and on the my dashboard page of the website that indicates how many people are in the chat room and who. Within an hour of Steve making it live there were ten members chatting it up.
• Received the transcript to Tobey’s Ra relistening project talk he gave at Homecoming 2011 from Jeremy, and relayed it to Tobey just in time as he goes live with Carla and Monica tomorrow.
• Responded to Thomas, the German translator, about the Germanized (or original, I should say) spelling of Rueckert for the German translation of the Lo1, and sent him wholesale information of books as he is interested in distributing L/L books in Germany
• Drafted a Guidelines for Moderators document which describes the philosophy and spirit of the role of the moderator, the technical aspects of how the job is specifically accomplished, and the limitations and code of conduct by which the job is accomplished
• Dialogued with a new L/L volunteer about their potential role as a moderator
• Thanked Gabriel for kindly accommodating our copyright requests regarding linking to the Lo1 material on the archive website versus making it available as entire pdf documents off site.
• Submitted question to Carla about epub formatting of non-Lo1 L/L titles
• Spent time catching up on the Bring4th forums

Thanks for all, Gary!

Mick cleaned up, after coming home late, and we spent a fine evening enjoying each other. At nine, Gary popped his head in and offered to share the Gaia Meditation tonight, and so sat with us and offered the closing prayer.

As our summery spring weather continued, Mick and I arose for our Morning Offering. He got me ready for the day and then took himself off for some hard work of his own. I love to think of Mick in the outdoors, doing what he loves to do.

This was another tough day for me, but I greatly enjoyed the beauty of the day and rested back into the passing hours to recoup my powers of health.

I did do a bit of e-mail. Ian wrote to ask what I would title my collection of poems, and I went with the plainest – The Poetry of Carla Lisbeth Rueckert. And Gary has assigned an ISBN number to the volume from the list given us so long ago by Bowker.

I was in the loop for the audio segments that Tobey sent to Monica to use tomorrow night in the Q&A show. I think it will be a very good one, thanks to Tobey’s superb and substantial work. And he’s very expressive and articulate, fun to listen to.

Gary sent along a kind note which a new IMU student had sent me. He also shared with me several of the most uplifting thank-you notes which have come into our Inbox! We truly receive bread on the waters in abundance. I am just taken away by the joy of knowing that our work is of use. It’s the greatest blessing I can imagine.

Gary was thriving today, praise the Lord, and sent down this list of L/L Research doings from the upstairs office:

• Shipped book order, talked with Hallie at post office for a while
• Talked with Steve for some time regarding forum upgrades
• Steve upgraded the forum to latest version and worked hard to create a new blog system but due to complications and work required in light of his limited time, we decided to scrap the plan
• Tested a new chat room that Steve created, about to go live with it but put it on hold as Steve discovered some issues
• Wrote Steve about other tweaks/improvements that could be made to Bring4th and online store
• Walked with Carla
• Received an enthusiastic message from Carla’s new IMU student
• Received first portion of Danish translation of the Law of One material! Ian okayed formatting.
• Responded to Danish translator of the Law of One with translation question. No word for “happenings” in Danish so translator opted for the Danish word for “phenomenon”, but Ian later suggested using the equivalent of “occurrences” instead as there are multiple uses of “phenomena” or “phenomenon” in the book already.
• Worked with Jim to transfer money between accounts per Pam’s suggestions
• Coordinated Anne’s arrival next week
• Caught up on forum posts and did some moderation
• Dialogued with potential new moderator to the forums
• Had advance review of Tobey’s new addition to lawofone.info that exquisitely lists the results of the relistening project and carefully explains the differences between the versions of the Law of One. Did standing ovation when finished reading.
• Other odds and ends of emails

Mick had some family matters in Nebraska to see to, and then we retired for the night, with me offering the closing prayer at our Gaia Meditation.

The glorious weather continues, and Mick was hard at work all day, after we did the Morning Offering together and he got me ready for the day. The dogwoods are now in their white bloom to complement the dynamic colors of azaleas and redbuds, and our whole street is illuminated with the gorgeous blossoms.

I wrote the Camelot Journal entry and trolled my Inbox for good recipes. I had good luck there, finding ideas for raspberry bars and baked eggs creamed in gruyere and mustard sauce. I was in a lot of discomfort today and did not try to walk after the first laps because of the back pain involved. I certainly hope this pain lifts soon.

Chloe was an especial treat for me today, staying close all day and being of tremendous support. She and I slept through the worst of my discomfort, and I awoke late in the afternoon feeling far better.

Gary was industrious, and left me this note as to his doings today:

• Troubleshot MS Word problem on Jim’s computer. Could not resolve. Sent Romi a request
• Asked Jim’s question of Pam regarding money transfer. Relayed info to Carla.
• Searched for an old donation-in-kind thank you letter. Found other helpful correspondence instead.
• Uploaded Tobey’s Ra clips for his appearance on the March 30 “In the Now” program
• Looked into two book-order issues
• Thanked Allison at IMU for notice about new student and relayed Carla’s welcome note to new student
• Provided an ISBN number to Ian for Carla’s new book of poetry
• Contacted Steve about the Ra mp3’s and Bring4th forum upgrade, along with a blog issue
• Contacted the individual who signed on to translate the Lo1 into German some months ago, informing him that, after not hearing from him again for a couple months, we are ready to relinquish collaboration, unless of course he takes the final offer now
• Responded to Boguslaw, the individual who has commenced translating the Lo1 into Danish, about some translation questions
• Responded to a request from a seeker to produce e-pub versions of the Lo1, explaining the limitations of the contract with the books’ publisher
• Responded to lovely emails from readers, including some wanderer stories
• Shipped bookorders
• Did work on the Bringh4th forums into the evening

Ah yes, that last item – when Gary told me he was going to be doing some moderating on the forums, I predicted he would be running out of time! I am thrilled to say that on any day, there’s a whole lot of good conversation going on there. It is so completely what I envisioned when Steve E and I first talked about his webmastering a site, and the cool thing is that it was what he had wanted to do as well, before he ever knew about the Law of One, or found L/L Research. So Spirit brings us together to this collaboration of love! Thank you, Steve, for B4!

Mick and I had a lovely, quiet evening. He offered the prayer at the close of the Gaia Meditation.

Happy Monday! Mick had a bumper crop of things to do and yards to mow, so we rose in the dark and prepared for the day early. I know it seems perverse to many but I actually enjoy being up in the early morning hours. Psychically they are nice and quiet, the empty streets of the town a physical exemplar of the empty channels of most people’s conscious minds, for they are asleep at that hour and free of worry and angst. I used to do most of my homework in the early morning when I was in school.

After we gave our Morning Offering and Mick helped get me ready for the day, he was off mowing until nearly 6:00 p.m. I wrote the Camelot Journal entry and during the day fished around for a couple of good recipes – a holiday frittata and a different sort of spinach dip which comes in its own loaf of bread, with the insides hollowed out and torn into bite-sized pieces so you can eat the dip with them.

Ian wrote me today concerning my poetry, which he proposes turning into an e-book, complete with its own ISBN number and the whole PDF thing. I said OK and promised to write an introduction for it. I’ll be delighted to see it available to any seeker who may find it helpful.

I sent out a round of invitations to my girlfriends, Connie, Fox and Dianne, asking them to a “Galaround” here on April 6^th. It’s been awhile. I hope it will work out! We have such a fine time together.

I heard from Wynn Free, as today is our interview date for the month. He wanted to talk about how it’s the little things that count, and I enjoyed being part of the show. I always enjoy speaking with Wynn and Terry Brown. They are wonderful spiritual company. For the second week in a row the show ran half an hour overtime. I also got to speak with Don Newsome, the guy who owns bbs.com, as he was sitting in as engineer on the program. It’s always grand to brush up against his enthusiastic and loving vibes.

Gary always works hard, and today was no exception. He sent me this summary:

• Swung by the PO Box
• Responded to some reader email
• Received Tobey’s audio clips for uploading to “In the Now” for his appearance this Friday, March 30
• Checked in with Aaron who kept an eye on the forums over the weekend
• Dialogued with Monica about the forums
• Alerted Carla to her new student for her online course at IMU
• Received a report from the mechanic who was at the house to fix a pump, a water heater, and a flood light. Typed up that report for Jim and paid the mechanic        

Thank you, Gary!  

Mick and I enjoyed our Gaia Meditation after supper, with Mick offering the final prayer, and then we turned to the Creator and each other for a beautiful energy exchange.

This time of year, the untidy and all too human doings of the human animal pale before the splendor wrought by nature! Out our front door are redbud and dogwood, out the living room window the lilacs are in bloom and the forsythia are in their glory. The Bradford pears are soft, white and so feminine in form, round and sweet, across the way. And our tulips are coming on! It was a perfectly beautiful Sabbath and we reveled in it.

It was a quiet, leisure day for me, still feeling quite under the weather, and a fairly quiet one for Mick, but he went out and weeded a good deal in the afternoon, trying to stay even with the needs of our numerous plantings. And he enjoyed watching the U of Kentucky Wildcats win their seat in the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament. It turns out that Louisville will play Kentucky, so the state of Kentucky is going to be very fired up next week for that game! It is a fierce rivalry.

I was lucky enough to have Chloe, my little black, amber-eyed  mushy-kitty, right under my hand to pat all day, as she was feeling sleepy and stayed for hours and hours, a fine companion, twelve pounds of kitty-cat devotion.

As to L/L Research endeavors, my day was innocent of them! I slept a lot and pray to feel better on the morrow.

I collected a nice recipe for pea salad with cheese and ham, and a cunning one for baked egg muffins. What a clever idea – a real McMuffin!

NCIS was offering an all-day marathon in our viewing area and I took good advantage of that, plus a Bourne film, while Mick was working at all kinds of chores around the house. In the evening he came in to share supper and a fine, gentle time of greeting the dusk and enjoying each other. Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Mediation tonight.

Mick and I embraced a late-rising Saturday with great affection, and eased our way through Morning Offering, puzzles, sports, and my morning protocol of this cream and that. My health continued to founder and I took it easy. I wrote the Camelot Journal entry and enjoyed collecting recipes for Classic Tuna Noodle Casserole and Cream Cheese Pear Tart.

Mick weeded in our yard, as the early weeds are just thriving. In our Secret Garden Mick pulled henpet away from the hostae, asilbe and ferns. He planted another rose bush and got the side-yard fishpond pump going – it was a puttery kind of day for him. He tended to our lawn also by spraying for weeds along our walkways.

With the outside looking fine, Mick came in to indulge in some basketball-watching. U of L won from the U of Florida and will be going to the Final Four in New Orleans. I am proud of my alma mater!

Mick and I shared a quiet supper and an evening of TV and each other. It was a lovely time, capped by the Gaia Meditation, with me offering the closing prayer.