I have just been notified that The Atlantean Legacy will be out in July, 2010, instead of September! Also, as you can see above, the cover to the book has been designed as well. The process of publication is moving along quite well and I am very pleased.
I am blessed by the Universe!

It’s spring in Bloomington! All around it is jaw droppingly, fabulously gorgeous!
And this year everything hit at once, very condensed, like the finale at a fireworks display on the Fourth of July!
Bam! Pink, purple, white, red, yellow explosions of color everywhere!
Ii's fabulous eye candy, almost too sweet, too intense at times, like the feeling one has of having been in a dark room for a long time then walking immediately into a brightly lit room. Takes some adjustment, but it feels good! And after this winter I am so happy, no, thrilled to adjust to Spring’s incredible parade of colors!!!

Here’s an interesting tidbit I want to share...I took a walk a week and a half ago, on a Sunday and lost a butterfly earring. I liked the earrings. They weren’t expensive, having purchased them at a store at a mall in Indianapolis at what my twenty-something daughter has christened “The Cheap Shiny Store.” But they were lightweight and cute and they were butterflies!

Once I discovered my unadorned ear my husband and I diligently watched for the missing earring as we made our way back to our house. We didn’t see it. Maybe I had lost it in the house or in the back yard so I scoured the place. No luck. Oh well, I thought, I’ll just let it go....

The next Sunday, we took a walk along the same route and I found it in a place I swear I looked before. The brass butterfly earring was nestled near a crack on the sidewalk not far from the neighborhood school. And no worse for the wear amazingly enough since all the kids walking home could have potentially smashed it with their little feet.

So I wondered. What's the lesson in this? This incident is too odd not to have a something I'm supposed to learn connected to it.

Could it be something trite, but true like if you love something let it go and it will come back to you? Or perhaps it is representative of me finding my wings? That sounds plausible. Specifically butterfly wings, coming out of my cocoon, transforming, and taking flight! I do feel like I am in the process of that kind of a metamorphosis...and this glorious spring is certainly helping in making me feel like that...so much boundless energy out there!

Now that I think about it, a similar thing happened to me when I lived in New York City. I lost an earring, but this time it consisted of pretty autumn leaves dangling from a small chain. I wasn't even looking for it when, one day, as I was near my daughter’s school, I just happened to see something shiny that caught my eye, stuck in the crack of the sidewalk. And there it was, my earring, which I had just totally assumed was gone forever, had even forgotten about, a little scratched but wearable. The more I thought about it...NYC with all of their foot traffic...I was convinced it was miraculous! But I never figured out the reason for it. Maybe there doesn't have to be a reason, but we have pattern developing here that needs to be looked into.

An interesting connection in regards to these earrings is that we did leave the city in July 2001, thankfully missing 9/11. Maybe it was somehow prophetic in a very symbolic way. Fall leaves—falling leaves, autumn, 9/11, falling buildings...picking up the pieces, a little scratched and beat up, but wearable and putting them back together again.

AS far as the butterfly earrings go, maybe this time, for me, they are a positive sign of growth, once again found near a school. What is it about those schools—maybe referring to lessons learned or to be learned?

We shall see in the next season, whatever it brings. In retrospect, I may get a clearer vision of its meaning.

And I do hope you in-joy this fabulous springtime!!!!!!

Recently I read a wonderful book called Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and his Girl. Over and over my eyes filled with tears as I read their story and vicariously experienced the joy of Stacy O’Brien as she bonded with a beautiful, intelligent, and mysterious creature, a barn owl--a beautiful bird with a white feathered heart-shaped face. Given to her on Valentine’s Day when he was only four days old, he had been injured and could not have survived in the wild. She was able to keep the bird for nineteen years through all of his and her own life challenges. Always afraid that a well-meaning but uninformed animal activist would release her precious friend out into the wild, she kept Wesley a secret to most people, other than the researchers at Caltech where she originally was given the opportunity to be Wesley’s caretaker. She was a devoted mother and fed Wesley dead mice everyday, and kept packages of their frozen carcasses in her freezer that she purchased at pet stores. I can’t praise this story enough, but the most wonderful thing about it is that it got me in touch with the unique intelligence of our pets that we either take for granted or assume doesn’t exist.

I have been more tuned into my dog now as she is getting up in years, fifteen next October, and is going blind and is losing her hearing. But she has always been to me my angel puppy.I fell in love with her angelic presence when she was ten months old. I sat in a waiting room in the kennel where she lived and she approached me and laid her head on my lap. She looked up into my eyes and that was it! Although at the time we thought we had come just to look at the possibility of getting a Brittany, we left there with our precious Leah, the newest member of our household.

Oh how I love her! Her energy is so soft and gentle and loving and very sweet. She converts anti-dog people into dog lovers, but she’s still a dog and does dog things, actions that we humans may find distasteful. However it doesn’t matter because this actually makes her more perfect in her dogness. Her love fills my heart with joy.

Recently I’ve watched as friends have had to say goodbye to their beloved animals and know this may be coming soon for me. But in the meantime, since I work from home I have the great privilege of spending a lot of time with my precious Leah. And together we are enjoying this glorious spring. She tunes into the smells on an intense dog level and shares her discoveries with me; and I am her eyes and keep her from crashing into bushes and other possible obstacles as we walk. So for now all is well and life is a great adventure with sweet Leah by my side!

I wish you all the joys of this wonderful rebirth of energy that is the spring!
Blessings in this time of great creativity!