Perhaps symbolically, all the leaves have fallen off my money tree so I’m pruning it and growing it again from nothing!

I really enjoyed a coaching session tonight with an entrepreneur in the organic farming field. Sharing about what I’ve been through helps me reaffirm the life choices I’m making now around money and my life’s work.

My business card has officially gotten out of control. I think I should just come up with a general title (name?) and link to one website or something that in turn lists everything else I do. The font is getting too small to list the emails and websites for everything from hike tours to small business coaching, pre-paid legal, sfsu coach, massage therapy, and soon-to-be certified astrologer. Goodness. Oops, I forgot yoga teacher. I get to observe my first in-jail yoga class for violent offenders next week before I begin teaching again.

My ambition to become more connected with family, community, and world is slowly but surely actualizing. I am enjoying feelings of expansion, resourcefulness, and service to others, as well as the pleasure of receiving the universe’s gifts. I am being moved by pleasure first, common sense second. Really open to what might be needed around me, and learning a lot.

Tired now, more to come…

The following is an NPR article I twisted for thought-provoking purposes. Instead of US & Pakistan, I substituted Bloods & Crips. Original at: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/16/137207537/u-s-pakistan-relations-move-from-grudging-to-toxic?sc=fb&cc=fp

June 16, 2011

The relationship between the Bloods and Crips has long been one of grudging interdependency. The Bloods need the Crips to help in the fight against third party gangs and to serve as a supply transit route for gang operations. Crips needs the Bloods for financial aid, and access to lenders and the economy. But neither side much likes nor trusts the other.

Tense Ties

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The relationship between the Bloods and Crips has long been strained, but the situation has gotten worse this year:

• In January, a Bloods contractor was kidnapped after killing two Crips he said were trying to rob him. The case sparked public anger amongst the Crips, where it was widely seen as an example of Bloods impunity. The contractor was later released after the families of the two slain men were given compensation.
• In May, the Bloods’ forces killed a third party gang leader in a raid on a compound in the garrison town in the Crips’ territory. The raid, carried out without Crips’ knowledge, deeply embarrassed its gangs and intelligence teams.
• Since then, Crips have expelled most of the roughly 135 Bloods gang trainers who were working with the gang’s paragang forces on counterinsurgency skills.

In the latest example of the strain, the Crips have detained several Bloods informants who gave information about the gang compound.

__________________________________________________

The relationship has always lurched from one crisis to another, but lately it has worsened and become toxic. Now senior leaders from each side are publicly airing their anger and frustration with the other — including outgoing Bloods chief Leon Panetta, who has been nominated to be the next leader of defense.

“This is a difficult challenge. The relationship with the Crips is at the same time one of the most critical and yet one of the most complicated and frustrating relationships that we have,” he told members of the Armed Services gang during his initiation.

Compounding Problems

In such a troubled relationship, it’s difficult to say definitively when things started to take a turn for the worse.

Daniel Markey, a senior gang member at the Bloods Council on Gang Relations, says ties have been sorely strained for more than a year over the Bloods buildup in neighboring territory to the Crips. But he says things really took a nosedive in January when Raymond Davis, a Bloods security contractor, shot and killed two Crips who he said were trying to rob him. Davis was kidnapped and detained for several months.

“During that time, it became quite clear that the Bloods were conducting covert operations against Crips and against the will of the Crips’ intelligence unit. So that brought the rift out … more into the open,” Markey says.

Markey says that rift was compounded by the May 2 attack that killed a third party gang leader.

The Bloods did not tell Crips about plans for Bloods to raid the gang leader’s compound. Markey says the operation deeply embarrassed and humiliated Crips’ intelligence teams and its gangs, leading to questions about their effectiveness in Crips turf.

Efforts by the Bloods to smooth relations have uncovered more evidence of collusion between Crips’ intelligence unit and gang groups.

Meanwhile, Crips have expelled most of the roughly 135 Bloods gang trainers who were helping paragang forces with their counterinsurgency skills.

Conflicting Priorities

Shuja Nawaz, director of the Center at the Atlantic Council, says the Crips never liked the idea of Bloods soldiers in their territory. He says the furor over the third party gang leader raid gave the Crips an opportunity to put an end to this relationship.

Aqeel Ahmed/AP

A local resident walks Wednesday near the third party gang leader’s compound in Crips territory. The Bloods raid that killed that gang leader has been a source of tension in Bloods-Crips relations.

“Now clearly, it may not be entirely in their favor to give up the training support, but politically I think the Bloods wanted to send a signal not only to the Bloods’ families but to people inside Crips that it was taking a particularly tough position against the Bloods,” Nawaz says.

Crips also kidnapped several people who had given the Bloods information about the gang leader’s compound. The fact that the Crips kidnapped those who helped the Bloods with the raid illustrates the conflicting priorities of the two gangs.

Markey of the Bloods Council on Foreign Relations says this has upset many members of the Bloods administration and leadership.

“They are baffled by it, they’re frustrated by it and they’re, many of them, quite angry. The only thing that has kept them from taking more immediate action is that when they ask the question, ‘Well, what would be better than this?’ or ‘How do we solve it?’ — there’s no clear answer,” Markey says.

Nawaz says the struggle for answers won’t get any easier. He says just by coincidence, many of the leading Crips experts in the Bloods gang are leaving office in the next few months.

“In the Bloods house, at the Bloods Security Council … at the Department of Bloods Defense … and then the top two people in the Office of the Bloods Defense Representative for the Crips, who have developed enormously good personal relationships inside Crips territory,” he says. “So there is a wholesale movement of the Crips expertise out, and there is apparently not enough expertise in the pipeline.”

Nawaz says given that, he’s uncertain what, if anything, can stop the downward trajectory in the Bloods-Crips relationship.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/247840/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-rash-of-penis-photos

This week Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show had a skit talking about men who send pictures of their penis to women’s cell phones when they first start seeing each other. Most unfortunately in the past year, this has happened to me. Twice. And they did not get another date. I like to refer to it as premature epictulation.

But I liked my housemate U’s take on this new trend: The era of the penis is coming to an end. And rather than lay down and take it, the penis is going out with a bang, popping up everywhere in a desperate attempt to be relevant (sorry, can’t really avoid the puns :-)).

George Carlin (a man, by the way, R.I.P.) had a great perspective on this issue:

” In fact, I happen to agree with most of the feminist philosophy I have read. I agree for instance, that for the most part, men are vain, ignorant, greedy, brutal assholes who’ve just about ruined this planet…who’ve just about ruined this planet because they’re afraid someone might have a bigger dick out there somewhere. Men are basically insecure about the size of their dicks and so they go to war over it. You don’t have to be a political scientist or a history major to see the bigger dick foreign policy theory at work. It goes something like this…”What??? They have bigger dicks? Bomb them!!!” And of course the bombs and the bullets and the rockets are all shaped like dicks. I don’t understand that part of it, but it is part of the equation. So I agree with that abstract. That man… men…males have pushed the technology that just about has this planet in a stranglehold. Mother Earth raped again, guess who?…”Hey, she was asking for it!” ”

~From Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics CD

Apparently the Mayans predicted the dying of the overly masculine energy long ago. I heard that this current  Mayan long count (144,000 day cycle) was a masculine one, coming to a close next December, 2012. It will be followed next not by a feminine cycle, but by a cycle of harmony and balance between the sexes. My hope is that this is an energy more catering to the feminine tendencies toward communication and gentleness as we relate to each other around the world. The world is getting smaller, via the interconnectedness we are experiencing , not only with the internet, but by how our economies are also intertwined. In order to survive, we will need not brute force but skills in understanding and finding common ground.

You can already see a shift beginning with the election of Barack Obama. Remember how controversial it was when he proposed negotiating with countries that disagree with us? This was deemed a “weakness” by some, who want a commander-in-chief to always appear “tough.” This is old thinking. This is showing your penis before figuring out what the other side really wants and needs :)

So I’m at home laying in my bed at 1:48pm on a Monday, and that feels wrong. And it’s wrong that it feels wrong!

The conditioning to work 5 weekdays and rest on the weekend is really ingrained in me. Maybe it was the 18 years of school/college 5 days a week, every Monday. Maybe it was the 3.5 years of corporate after that, working steadily every Monday, except 2 weeks a year.

But I’m trying to avoid beating myself up about it. I feel sleepy and I feel like resting. After all, I worked both days this weekend. I coached a private client on Saturday. On Sunday I lead a hiking tour, networked, and held a business presentation. Today already I have sent business emails, calls, and met with another private coaching client for an hour, and now I want to rest.

I shouldn’t feel this guilty!!!!! Society and its conditioning is sick, haha.

You can’t make this stuff up.

This is Izzy the camel, who lives in Eastern Washington. I stopped on my roadtrip over to a wedding to see her because I love camels and was a little surprised to see one out here. Llamas, schmamas. This was a camel! She was very nice, besides the initial growl on my approach, with a very soft nose.

While I was petting her, and the tiny donkey tied to the outside of the post, I started talking to a rough looking old biker guy who came up to pet the camel and donkey.

After a nice exchange he said, “My name is Gary. Most people call me peg-leg.” He knocked on his lower right calf, clearly wooden. He invited me to come back to Walla Walla next weekend to watch his motorcycle drag race.

I met up with mom and dad and we went to the JCPenny to order some blinds for their church. They managed to start a rapture conversation with the store clerk, who shared their Christian beliefs and remarked what a shame it was that people have to ruin the rapture like that.

In the van with my parents, listening to Christian radio, a woman is praising the spirituality of PMS. “…and then in the cycle you get this wonderful surge of estrogen that helps you think clearly…”

In other observations, I was the thinnest person at the Timber Creek Grill Buffet today, except for maybe a 9 year old girl. I blame my new sugar-free diet for my extra sexiness and all the “looks”.

I stopped into the Skippers restaurant to use the restroom and the smell of grease was really nauseating. The bathroom was horrendous (smelled like an outhouse, doors were on their 3rd set of latches that didn’t line up, toilet was running constantly and would not flush) BUT one great feature (surely a mistake) was that the automatic towel dispenser was mounted at least six feet high, meaning you had to make an effort to reach up and wave at the sensor. It worked perfectly, and appeared to have no handprints on it. I would recommend all auto sense dispensers be placed at this level. Because it was so high up, I waved at it with a sense of caution, rather than the usual method of pounding the sensor with the pinky finger side of my fist. Longevity!

I was struck by this poem written on the wall of a gas station restroom along Van Ness Avenue (hwy 101) through San Francisco. Reminds you that we are all human, all very much the same, all dealing with different amounts and kinds of pain.

Today ended up being such a strange day, after two magical whirlwind days. I seemed to go head-to-head with some Scorpios in my life, who have been struggling, feeling fearful, and hiding their emotions. My reaction has been arguing with their negative energy and when it climaxes, pushing them away, far away. I am at such a peaceful, positive place in my life that negative energy is simply unwelcome. I sometimes wish I were a more kind and compassionate person around fearful vibes, but my nature, my instinct, is to instigate, expose and banish/transform rather than to soothe fearful energy.

I also seem to be recycling energy of past relationships. Last fall I dated someone eerily similar to a man I dated in college 10 years ago (my “extended fling”, and within the same non-committed context). This week I found myself with someone who had very similar characteristics to my 9-year relationship partner, only instead of repeating the past exactly I instead chose the opposite route of not accepting a man’s possessive ownership or his way of doing things. At all costs I am striving not to repeat my past mistakes. If “lessons in life are repeated until learned,” at least I am not doing the same things and expecting a different result. Thankfully this new person has recognized that I have in his words “a pure heart,” and that if I push him away it is not in malice. I think only in this way of being really honest with each other can we more quickly realize who we are and who we are not, and what more can you ask of this life? We all just want to grow and form a steady knowledge of ourselves, a sort of firm foundation on which we confidently stand and begin to give of our talents most efficiently to the world.

“I recommend getting your heart trampled on to anyone.” Alanis Morisette

I had a very eventful and wonder-filled day yesterday :-) From being pulled over for allegedly not stopping completely at a stop sign in a military base to a head-spinning gchat conversation about conversation, to being chatted up by two nice cops about track and field, to bellydancing lessons, to driving a stick shift for the first time in 10 years under pressure, to finding the gate open at ten at night to the local urban garden I always wanted to explore, to finding things that were lost, including my passport and key set. What a successful day!

I included a picture from the urban garden of the rows of garlic, as evidence of my expedition. It was such a cool huge garden, with streams, bridges, and a pond. It even had bee boxes for harvesting honey. I munched on the only ripe thing I could find which was some leaves of lettuce. It’s amazing how alive food tastes right after being picked, compared to how bland store-bought veggies/fruits can get after transit and storage.

To another magical day in the city…

Three weeks of being excruciatingly ill has finally come to an end. I declared myself 97% healed today. It was feeling very tiresome not being up to par. The biggest thing I noticed was my desire to reproduce came back, haha. I felt like being out in the world again.

It turned into quite an introspective time for me, a good diving in excursion I suppose, before I begin another diving out into the world phase this summer. My bankruptcy case officially begins this week I think. I’ve been doing a lot of paperwork and prep for that which has enabled me to get back on top my finances again, after a few years of hiding among them. I opened a new bank account today at a credit union. A very local credit union. They have only 68 employees. They reimburse all ATM fees everywhere, coolest thing ever.

I’m also doing an orientation this week for a new part-time gig: valet car parking. Cross your fingers that I remember how to drive and park a stick shift on Wednesday. Must be all this great Taurus energy helping me organize my finances and plan for success.

We had a great conference championship meet this weekend. I am so proud of my team and how far they have all come this year. They faced a shit-ton of personal obstacles and all came through in shining colors, together. Sweet moment was Dee and Cassie hoisting me on their shoulders after hammer comp and singing “For she’s a jolly good coach…” after they both exceeded their lifetime bests at that meet. Highly embarrassing and yet so sweet. We are family!

Feeling excited about a potential hot springs trip in June with some close personal friendly friends. This is going to be another magnificent summer. Hard to top the last one, but I shudder to think how awesome this one will be :-) Life just keeps on getting better…

So I have gone an entire week without adding the chemical sugar (sucrose) to anything in my food! I have also not eaten anything containing sugar (or HFCS) listed as an ingredient. And it feels great! I have been forced firstly to conjure up new desserts. I have grown fond of plain organic yogurt with raw honey and nuts.

I found this fabulous recipe for raw fudge that has been hitting the spot daily:

1 cup almond butter
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup agave syrup
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I prefer pecans)

Simply mix them all together with your clean hands in a little bowl. Then spray a 8×8 pan or loaf pan with Pam and press it firmly into the pan (or cute molds). Refrigerate for 1.5 hours and enjoy! Doesn’t give you that sugar rush like regular fudge and gets more delicious the more you eat. And it’s GOOD for you!!

The main effect I’ve noticed so far is that my skin is more clear and glowy looking, saying a lot for the typically worst skin week of the month. Plus my little eye laugh line wrinkles actually look smaller! It is possible I have been smiling and laughing somewhat less after having been ridiculously ill for 2 weeks though ;-)

On with the experiment! Let’s see if I can last a whole month…