I used to say “retreats” were code for “stupid hippie bullshit”.  But now I have drunk the Kool-Aid.  (Sorry I mean the freshly-squeezed organic-agave-sweetened lemonade!)

People have recommending retreats for months, if not years, but I was reticent until a friend told me about a single-day yoga one in Sonoma.  It seemed like low commitment, and therefore low-risk, so thought I would try it.  It was life-changing!

Who knew that retreats were generally a group of like-minded women, all with their own stories to tell, heart-break to share, eating delicious home-grown food and working out to improve their mind, bodies, and spirits?  I CANNOT WAIT to do another one.  Thank you, so much Amy, for adding this to my life!

Trevor asked me when we could take down the dreamcatcher.  It had actually been a few weeks since I had had a nightmare, but last night I dreamt the zombies were coming and I was trying to run away from them.  Trevor drove by me on a scooter, shouting at me to get on.  I couldn’t run fast enough.  He was shouting at me to run faster and swearing at me to get on.  He made another pass but this time on the wrong side.  (I am actually one-sided when I get on MY bike, and on the back on his.  He has to dip it for me.  Is that even normal?)  Anyway, thankfully I woke up before the zombies got me and we could have a good laugh about the dream.  I told him the dreamcatcher is staying – at least for now.

Anyway, as synchronicity would have it, this was the only booking lying on the table when I went to acupuncture that day.  Freud didn’t have anything to say about zombies and husbands on scooters!

Can it really be true that some people dream in black and white?  And why would that even be?  I know I definitely dream in colour because the only other dream I had that night was about my blue nail varnish.  I was so confused and stressed when I saw it on my fingernails because I remembered taking it off.  (It was old and looking tacky.    I needed it off before I went to an important meeting.)  How the hell was it back there?  And that is when I realized I was dreaming 🙂 .

I LOVE lucid dreaming.  My favourites are out-of-body experiences when I wake up in the night and I am flying.  I do swimming  breast stroke along the ceiling, above people’s heads and they don’t see me.  I also love it when I “wake” dreaming in the night and I can swim downstairs and check out the house.  (Of course it is all dark and nobody is there, but it is still fun!)  It’s been a while since I have had one of those.  Actually, I haven’t remembered my dreams in a while until this weekend.

Damn you internets for letting me know this morning that Hostess is going bankrupt and laying off their staff.  THANK YOU internets for letting me know that Hostess is going backrupt and soon Twinkies will no longer be available!

Ever since Frenchie mentioned them in “Grease” back in the seventies, Twinkies have held an allure for me as something very foreign.  Very “American”.  I have never actually eaten a twinkie.  (Why would I?  They look disgusting!)  However, with the news that their days may be numbered (and they are becoming collectors’ items on ebay!), I immediately decide that they have always been on my bucket list and rush to my corner store to get one.  It turns out they stock plenty of Hostess “food products”.  (Don’t worry Paula and Miranda, I got enough for you!) Now, where did I put that medicinal pot?

UPDATE:

Okay, that wasn’t the MOST disgusting thing I have ever eaten.  But it wasn’t as good as last night’s dinner.

One update, because I am still laughing my arse off at the idea that Twinkies are selling on Ebay.  Here is the classic scene from Zombieland.
And even later update, due to the hilarity of social media sites, I am now sending twinkies to Austria, and Snowballs to friends in Denmark!  (I also made myself an green juice and had lentil salad for lunch, to counteract the negative effects of eating the chemical crap 😉 .)

I Facebooked about this earlier in the week, but I haven’t been this excited about an idea in as long as I can remember.  A bail out of the people, by… the people?

Rolling Jubilee works in the same way as huge corporations are bailed out and forgiven massive debts.  The “Rolling Jubilee” organization buys back real people’s debt at pennies on the dollar and “forgives” meaning “abolishes” it.  It is genius.

That means for every dollar you donate, $20 of debt can be abolished.  My $50 donation abolished $1000 of a PERSON’s debt.  (Not a multinational company.  A real struggling person.  It could be student loans, home repossession  you name it.)  Not only that, as a registered charity, my company will match my donation to Rolling Jubilee.  Now they are abolishing $2000 debt for my $50.  Oh, and of course my gift is tax-deductible, so it really only cost me $35 – to reprieve $2000 of debt from someone I, or you, might even know.  How cool is that?

Maybe consider donating ?

Someone on my Facebook page replied that they couldn’t believe I was “indulging freeloaders”.  I am choosing to believe they were joking.  My response is always that not all people that sleep on the street are drunkards and meth-heads.  If you haven’t noticed, some people really are down on their luck right now.   Want to go to college?  What happens if your parents don’t have a college fund?  Hmm, now where does some of this debt come from?

It isn’t just America… England is at it now, too.  When I went to Oxford, my education was free.  Not any more.  Now you have to pay tuition fees starting at £9000/year (and of course that is before books, accommodation and food).  Since when did only the rich get to be educated.  Okay \\rant off for the day 🙂  .

RollingJubilee.org has a live stream starting at 8pm tonight.  Spread the word 🙂 .

There are a couple of things going on right now that I am really excited about. One of them is what I like to call the “taxi revolution”.

Uber has been around for a few years now, and as most people know, is a blessing in the “limited medallion” city of San Francisco.

Yesterday the state Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday fined Uber, Lyft and SideCar $20,000 each for what is says is “illegally operating their high-tech taxi and limousine hailing services without the required permits”.   The suit also claims the service is unfairly taking away fares from San Francisco taxi drivers. “This is a matter of public safety,” Hagan said.

Um, no… this is a matter of money, and the SF taxi union getting less of it. I am almost 100% sure that all uber drivers have to be TCP certified.

Now there is a little fair market competition, the taxi unions are trying to fight this with money and legislation   Right now, you can order your yellow cab direct from Uber (as long as the driver is participating).  It cost $1 more than your regular cab fare.  The driver gets a 20% tip and you get a clean cab and a screened driver.  You know their name, and the direction they are arriving from within seconds of requesting your cab.  It is auto-billed to your credit card on file and the ride is a pleasant one.  Who doesn’t want that?  The SF taxi union, that’s who.

They claim that these companies are “charter-party” carriers that must obtain its authorization before taking to California streets (Authorisation, meaning permits, from, guess who?  The PUCS.  Lfyt and Sidecar describe themselves as “ridesharing” services, where two individuals agree to share a ride.  “Transportation has historically been a highly regulated industry,” reads the Lfyt’s post, “and the existing regulations weren’t designed to imagine a world where two neighbors who have never met are able to connect within a matter of minutes to share a ride across town.”  Imagine, that?  Connecting with people?  Wow, it is like the people can talk to each other without going through a complex telephone game with the governing ordnance.

And the union that was supposed to protect long-suffering taxi drivers?  They are now selling those coveted medallion for $30K!

I actually think the ship has sailed on Uber. They are well funded and smart enough to fight their own battles with the city.  I am not to sure about Lyft and Sidecar.  (I know less about them, but my uneducated guess is that with Uber now offering Uber X and real taxi service AND this lawsuit, they may turn out to not be viable business.  Which means I HAVE to get in one of those pink mustache cars soon!)  You know, dear taxi unions, if you had released a few more of those medallions early, “we the people” may never even have realized we had the need for the services and they might never have started.

You can sign the petition for Lyft and Side car here.

BTW, my Uber taxi driver last next was an ex-Schwab guy.  He gave me a $20 voucher to pass on to any new customer, so please let me know if you want it :).

I stopped at Whole Foods on my way home today to pick up a bunch of kombucha teas, and some other groceries.  I treated myself to some flowers and as usual, I accidentally bought more heavy things than I could comfortably carry.  As I was struggling home, I decided to stop emailing on my iphone and put some music on.  I fished out my sunglasses and walked the rest of the way singing outloud.  It occurred to me I was happy.  Really happy.

Maybe it is the sharp contrast of the recent lows that made me feel so high, walking home in the sunshine.  But life is actually looking up.  Work is going really well.  I am way too busy, but I have always responded well to that.  I LOVE my new boss.  Maybe there is some sort of karma in the world and it’s my turn to get some sugar 🙂 .

My friend Mags has really amazing taste.  She spends a small fortune on her handbags.  I asked her why once, and she told me it was important to live richly.  She said living richly can make you feel rich, even if you aren’t.  I think I might finally be understanding that.  (And I bought a new purse this week 🙂 .)

Yesterday I was invited to a classical performance at San Francisco’s exclusive Bohemian Club.  It is rather like an English “Gentlemen’s Club”.  (That is the term used by those that get accepted.  More frequently known as “old boys’ clubs” – although many in England now allow women.)

The concert itself was great.  The strings section was my favourite.

Just one more thing in the ever-growing litany of things I had forgotten I like, but I like classical music.  How could I have both forgotten and denied this?  What happens that you no longer accept something that makes you peaceful?

Listening to the recital yesterday reminded me of the long picnics we used to attend at Blenheim Palace, all dressed up, with our “posh” picnic hampers, champagnes, pâtés, and crystal glasses.  Not too far in that distant past I had been a pretentious English student and thought the whole thing was very Brideshead Revisted.

But yes, it turns out that I still love classical music.  I am listening to an Elgar concerto right now.  For the first time since I moved to America.  I need more music in my life, and not just House.  (Although I will never stop loving that.)  Maybe I should even drag my saxophone over here, next time I take a trip home!

Watching Chris play, I thought of an idea I would like to bring to fruition.  It would be so incredible to have a full orchestra play at Burning Man at night, with an accompanying laser show.  I need to start researching this. People wouldn’t want to bring their proper instruments as the environment is so harsh, but maybe we can just replace them with cheaper versions.  The sound wouldn’t be as perfect, but it should be just fine for a bunch of people tripping in the desert! 🙂  Now, who do I know that can help me with the laser show part…?

Oh, and the “listening and hearing” title was because of an argument I got into with Chris about the exclusivity of the club and the mobile phone restriction.  I ended up conceding.  I should walk around with a pad and pencil and write thoughts down, rather than using my cell and getting distracted.  OK, Chris, I heard you.  You were right.

These are a few of the books I have bought for myself or been given over the past few weeks.

The ones on grief and loss of a pregnancy, I find too painful to read. Not surprisingly, I am not drawn to finish these books.  I don’t want to slip back into denying anything happened to me, but at a certain point I also feel like you can just wallow in grief – and I don’t ever want to be that person.  (And believe me, I still feel plenty to cry about, when a glowing heavily-pregnant woman stood in front of me yesterday at Whole Foods, for example.  I had to turn away so she wouldn’t see me tear up.  How is is possible to be so happy for someone and not be able to just shut off the emotion that I wish that were mine too?)

The only one of these books I have actually finished so far is zombie-fiction one: The Twelve.  (Dana was reading it at the same time, which actually really helped me make time to sit and read.  That way, we could compare where we are in the book.  It triggered all my “work impulses” of not wanting to disappoint someone, and of competition, and the social aspect of discussing the book.)  For anyone out there interested in the genre, I recommend it.

I am a big fan of zombie, apocalypse, or vampire-related materials, especially when they concentrate on how humanity reacts.  Here are a few I like:

The Passage (the first in the series, to which The Twelve is the latest book)

Walking Dead TV Series (series one and two stream free on Netflix)

UK’s Survivors TV show (apocalyptic not about zombies, but reminiscent of the Walking Dead)

30 days of night (movie)

Let the right one in (quite probably the best vampire movie of all time)

[Rec] (the Spanish original, not the US remake)

Shaun of the dead (movie, too funny not to mention!)

28 days later (movie, if only to see London so deserted)

World War Z (book, a history of the Zombie world war.  I hear they are FINALLY making a movie of it. I read the script back in 2007 when we were thinking of licensing it.  I can’t believe it is finally getting made.  The trailer looks cool!)

The Zombie Survival guide (book. every home should have one 😉 )

From Dusk Til Dawn (movie, who can resist Tarantino?)

Let me know if I missed anything I should watch/read 🙂 .

I saw my acupuncturist yesterday.  I both like and respect him, but we had a disagreement yesterday.  He said it is too soon for me to try for another baby as he thinks I need to concentrate on making sure my own body and mind are healed first.   I told him that he was being as prescriptive as a Western doctor and we should be talking as a partnership, not him in a didactic role.  My thoughts right now are that if my body is really that weak, then it will deal with it itself and just not get pregnant.  He said he disagreed with that, and of course he is the doctor, so maybe he is right.  But we should be working together to achieve what I want, which is clearly a baby.  If my body wanted to deal with it by getting pregnant straight away, and that includes running from the mental pain of losing the last pregnancy, then LUCKY ME!  We would then have to work together to make sure I was able to keep and carry it.  Maybe THAT would be the excuse to finally stop working for a while.

Either way, I am not going back to IVF for a few months. I want to just see what happens.  And I don’t want people pushing me around and telling me what to do.  It’s my life and it’s my body.  I want support and guidance, not bullying.

Election day today.  I already voted (using Trevor’s mail-in vote.  What?  Don’t judge.  I’m not a citizen yet and he doesn’t vote 😉 .)  It actually sickens me that this can even be considered close, but don’t get me started.  On a much more important note… PICKLED ONIONS!  A friend in England sent me my favourite brand (and a Worzel Gummage postcard.  How cool is that?)

I’ve been working really hard.  I know I am supposed to be resting, but it is good to feel useful again.  I am trying to consider whether to go hell for leather at Zynga, take one of the  offers I am getting elsewhere (more equity, great folks), or take a real break and just concentrate on looking after myself and getting pregnant again (hopefully).

I am starting to get annoyed with the “professionals” telling me I am exhausted.  Sometimes “laughter really is the best medicine” and “taking your mind off it” is just what the doctor ordered.  Is this denial?  Does it matter?