a week can be forever

so today is valentine's day - yep in NZ it already is. and it's a week since my last confession ... lol.

a week of lots of work stuff in my head, some personal stuff, plus a visit to the destination for our women's summit in October this year and confirmation with the team that this is definitely where we want to be. Beautiful alpine resort with thermal pools ... Hanmer Springs.

i am looking forward to welcoming women from around the world to join with us there - it is going to be awesome.

tomorrow i will tell you about my valentine's day. wherever you are, wishing you much love (for every day of the year).

one heart

i am feeling my heart tonight. my man is going through a healing experience and i feel like i am travelling the path with him.

listening to the incandescent voice and lyrics of Brooke Fraser, from her new CD albertine ... her music is so fully from the heart, it makes me cry.

http://www.brookefraser.com/

definitely listen to "deciphering me" - i adore this song.

with love

so i got tagged!

by ms stacy ... to write down 6 of my idiosyncrasies!

hmmmm food for thought.

1. I am pretty much a grammar/spelling freak. I pick up stuff all the time and it drives me a little batty when people spell badly, or bad spelling and/or grammar makes it into print, particularly in reputable newspapers or magazines. (In my job, this is a good thing, since I write articles and media releases for a living, and have to proof my own work).

2. For health related reasons, we don't own a microwave - which my children's friends (and their parents) seem to think is quite strange, and for most of their lives, we didn't consume milk or dairy products. Currently we have milk in the fridge, but i can't guarantee it is fresh, since i don't buy it every week (pretty much it only gets used in hot chocolate or occasionally in baking). My children grew up having fruit juice on their cereal instead of milk and they still prefer it that way.

3. I have only just allowed my sons to own cellphones - they are 16.5 and 14 going on 15. They have been hassling me for cellphones for probably about two years and virtually every child in their classes had one except them. My resistance was again partly for health reasons, but also because I think it is completely unnecessary to be constantly texting friends who you could walk over and talk to, or call on the phone. My older son now drives me (slightly) nutty by having a multi media "conversation" with his friends with up to five MSN messenger windows open and text messaging at the same time. That is one of his primary methods of socialising ... and all with the same people he spends all day with at school!

4. Not sure if this counts, but one of my close friends channels a Native American Indian called Black Elk - and i think it is very cool! :)

5. I hang out online with friends from around the world, and have made two trips overseas to meet some of them and stay in their houses - some think this is risky behaviour, but i love the connections i have made through the internet and see the travel as a natural extension of that! (and plan to do much more of it!!)

6. I am outrageously behind on my business tax returns and have been sacked by three accountants, so i currently don't have one! My powers of avoidance work overtime when it comes to this area of my life, even though i fully know that i need to get it sorted!

There!!!

That will do from me!

angel wings and floating candles

well the angel wings ... becos my good friends cailin and leigh seem to agree i have them, which brought to mind a certain photograph from many years ago.

anyway, to the floating candles. Last night we had a gathering of our women's circle at cailin's house and we finished the evening by floating lit candles off a jetty on the estuary near where she lives. Since it is summer here, darkness doesn't come till well after 9pm at night, and it was a cloudy rainy night when we gathered at 7pm. So we decided to wait for the candle part till after it was dark. We shared a lovely meditation then a meal, then stories ... until at 11.30pm (!) someone asked if we were still going to do the candles! by this time the sky had cleared, the rain had stopped, and we piled into the van to go find the water.

A little adventure ensued ... involving darkness (no torch to light our path to the water, but dark adjusted eyes worked ok) .... finding the jetty, then seeing the tide was very low. So clambering down the steps, clinging to the pole at the bottom and gently lowering our candles into the water with the precious intention we were sending out into the world.

Walking back my adventure concluded with a short trip over a chain i didn't see until i fell over it! There is nothing like a little fall to bring us right back down to earth!!!

this was a memorable and beautiful night in many ways ... and i value the memories we are creating as a group of women, connected.

i want these now

mmmmmmmmmmmmm cupcakes. Found the site with these on it today. Unfortunately they only deliver them in London.

But i want them. You can get vanilla or chocolate, with different decorations on the top.

Gorgeous!

(today was definitely a chocolate cupcake kinda day, but i didn't have any so it was chocolate brownie for lunch instead).

absent

for a few days i have had my attention focused elsewhere. mainly in the direction of my family, my dad in particular. spending some serious quality time with him over the weekend, i marvel at how much he and my brother (both of them actually) and I have in common ... not the least of which was how much our partners all complain about how much time we spend either online or in front of the computer! lol. and it definitely comes from his side of the family that we are all problem solvers, solution finders, creative types who like to ask universal questions and ponder the answers that come to us. my brother and i spent about 10 hours all together in the process of driving there and back again, more time talking face to face than we have in many years (since before our respective offspring were born). as a partial explanation, he lives in a different country from me, so the opportunities to get together are fewer than we would like.

but i was so stronly reminded of how powerful the ties of blood are within our family ... a family that is definitely not in each other's faces all the time, yet is still there when we need it.

i am blessed to have such intelligent, caring, loving men as my father and brothers in my life. i celebrate them all for the contribution they make to my life and to the world. i am in awe of the work my father has done over the years for the communities he lives in, and would love to see him receive some form of acknowledgement for his efforts, which have truly changed lives. he has never sought fame or attention, but has truly aimed to find better ways to get things done, and to ensure that people receive the assistance they are entitled to.

i wish for him that he discovers over the coming days and months, that his circle of friends and family is larger, stronger and more available than he has dreamed. that he discovers the value of connections made over the years, and the impact he has had.

i thank the universe for gifting me into my family - i love them all.

an brief explanation

you might be interested in something i put into my blog yesterday ... there is a little video done by a guy on the Barbara Sher board, all about bringing the law of attraction stuff into action in our lives.

he developed this technique himself to make sense of it all .... basically it is about writing down our top three priorities that we want to see happen in our lives, then EACH DAY, write an A-Z list with a word or sentence that relates to each of those priorities starting with each letter. Make sense?

what he says happens (which makes sense) is that you start to see alphabet letters all around you as you go about your day, and every time you do, it reminds you of something on your list ... which helps keep you focused and keep all the good stuff top of mind. Plus of course, the repetition each day helps cement things in our minds and keeps us aware.

he says that for the hard letters he often writes something like "youthful zeal" for Y etc .... which is ok, you can fill in the really hard ones with something that is generally helpful.

he gives examples on the clip.

go have a look!