blog Jan 10 - Feb 10

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	2/27/10: Tsunami Me I'm scheduled to head to Maui next week, and today they're expecting the biggest tsunami since 1964. I tried to contact the residents of the condo I usually stay at, but I'm assuming they are well on their way to high, dry land. At least I hope so. The complex is right on the beach. The earthquake causing the tsunami has been measured out in the Pacific at 800-900 times more powerful than the Haitian earthquake. I planned on staying a bit inland this time, and those plans have not changed. See my travel blog of my 9 days in paradise here.

	2/9/10: A Blogger Off the Old Block My son Sam now has his own art blog, appropriately titled, "Sam's art blog." He's a prolific and talented artist, and produces between 5 and 10 new post-worthy illustrations per day. This is destined to be the most frequently updated blog in history. Now if I can just teach him how to ftp, we'll be in business. Sam takes his art, and his blogging in stride. When I told him he had 29 subscribers to his other Web site, KidsDigDinos.com, where his dinosaur drawings are posted, he said, "That's great! What are we having for dinner?" From the dinosaur site, Sam has two pen pals, Laura and Whitney, both from Canada. Like mother, like son.
	2/8/10: Laughing Across the Border I have a new friend. His name is Doug and he's the funniest man I've never met. He lives in Calgary and we're pen pals. We would never have known about each other had it not been for the Internet. We exchange war stories, movie reviews, and share our love of Hawaii, our hatred of the cold, and our inability to figure out members of the opposite sex. He'd been chastising me for not knowing that PEI stood for Prince Edward Island. I then told him I assumed Canada was just another American colony, and besides that, we have Hawaii going for us. Here's his reply (Doug has a bias against apostrophes, so you won't see many of them. I mean "you wont see many of them." Yes we are a colony of the good ol' United States of Merica. But we're not the same... Your economy hits the skids, our takes a major dip but we somehow think loading every man, woman and child with 1.6 TRILLION dollars in national debt is, well... absolutely freaking insanity! $1,600,000,000.00 Thats a lotta zeros. You produce three million crappy movies in Hollywood every year. We watch them all. We make 9 movies a year. Eight of them are funded by the government and they're about buffalo. You dont see any of them. Neither does anyone here. You have celebrities. We have celebrities. But you think our celebrities are your celebrities and when they get really famous they move to the US anyway even though they maintain they "will always be a Canadian at heart" (eg. Michael J Fox, Celine Dion, William Shatner, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Dan Akroyd, Mike Myers, Kiefer Sutherland... blah, blah, blah) We're still pissy about that. You have an election and its on our frickin' TV sets 24/7 for an entire "please just shoot me now if I have to watch another minute of this" year leading up to election day. We have an election, you dont even know. Its not even on page 6 of the newspapers. We could elect a baboon and it MIGHT be on the Daily Show as long as Lady Gaga isnt wearing a new dress that day. We all know who are your freakin' President is. Every single person in Canada knows. You dont even know that we dont have a president. We have a Prime Minister. And you definitely dont know his name, nor could you name one past Prime Minister. You elect movie stars and even wrestlers to be governors. We just think thats hilarious. And we dont wonder why California is bankrupt. What, a muscular Austrian actor who specializes in being 'robot man' up isnt a great fiscal manager? WHO would have guessed that? After 9/11 you think everyone hates you so some doofus tries to light his underwear and WE have to tighten our security to the point of lunacy. Your banks fail and your government says, well, we cant have that, and gives them BILLIONS of dollars of YOUR money. Our banks have rules that dont allow them to give money out to people who cant pay it back. We thought that up all by ourselves. Yes, you DO have Hawaii. But only because you needed a military base in the mid Pacific after WWII. We only have two naval vessels and one of them gives harbor tours to senior citizens in Victoria. We dont need an island. I dont think our other boat is big enough to get there anyway. Not without three more guys rowing.
	1/28/10: A Word Ahead of Its Time A word came across my path recently: illuminous. The editor in me said, "That's not a word." I typed it in my word processing program and saw the telltale red zigzag line beneath it, getting my confirmation. Then I looked at several online dictionaries. I found it in one with the definition, "clear and bright." So it's not a word, but it's becoming a word. Sometimes words like illuminous, which sound like the words illuminate and luminous, start out as errors and end up in the dictionary. The early days of word usage might be a good time to purchase its URL. I recently sold a URL for $1300. Not bad for a $10 investment. I looked up "illuminous.com" and it was already taken. Clearly, someone was brighter than I.
	1/22/10: Too Young for Class? I heard DJs talking yesterday about Conan O'Brien. They complained that they'd heard from the Y generation that anyone who "didn't get" Conan was probably too old. Hogwash. Taste and decency shouldn't have an age limit. Conan O'Brien was foul, low-brow and, at times, disgusting. His brand of humor never rose to the class of Jay Leno, and certainly not Johnny Carson. What NBC was thinking when they replaced Leno for him is still a mystery. And now that he's off the show (with a $45 million severance), Jay will be back, and Conan's reign will be remembered like something that rises up from your stomach after too much Mexican food: unexpected, distasteful, and then gone. Recently I mentioned in front of three twenty-somethings that I wanted to see the movie, It's Complicated, starring Meryl Streep and Steve Martin. They groaned. "That's like a chick flick for older women," one of them said, managing to look arrogant even while wearing Lycra. I saw the movie with a friend. It was hysterically funny. As we exited the theater at 10:30 p.m. a long line of Y-genners sat waiting on the January-cold cement hoping to buy tickets to Avatar. I wanted to say to them as we passed by, "Cartoon flick for 20-somethings," but I held my tongue. We older people have more class. I can't explain why. It's complicated.
	1/21/10: Birthing a Book Many a writer has said that publishing a book is a like having a baby. You spend nine months or more "cooking" it, loving it, totally absorbed by it, and then you let it out into the world. Today I gave the fourth (and nearly final) draft of the manuscript for my nonfiction book, Mom and Dad, Can I Have the Keys to the Universe? to a member of my mastermind group. Next week I will also share it with three other members of my review team. And the thing is, I'm not worried if they'll like my baby. What I'm worried about is: is my baby as ready as it can be for the public? I don't want it to just get good reviews, I want it to do what I created it for: help parents teach their children how to create amazing lives, for themselves and for the betterment of our world. Then again, this book was conceived in magical, mystical Maui, so I have great faith it will live up to its promise. For the kiddos (age 11-16) I'm creating a seminar called I Can Do Anything. It will bring the principles of the book alive for them by using language and examples from their world. No translator needed. That's a tall order, but I have a great test market in my own household. Once in a while the planets align, and your passion and your profession are one and the same. This is one of those times. I'm as high as I've been in a long time. Oooh baby.
	1/18/10: A Man for the Times, A Message Worth Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. endured much during his widely recognized reign as civil rights leader. He was jailed 20 times, stabbed in the chest, his family's house was fire bombed, and there were numerous threats on his life. He spoke for those who had no voice, and because of that, he was alternately idolized and vilified. After his assassination it took more than 15 years of Congressional debate before a national holiday was named in his honor. By the time the national holiday was declared many states had already been celebrating it on their own for years. Today is not just a day off of work, it is a day of remembrance. And while we're remembering, here are a few things that may have been forgotten: Martin Luther King, Jr. graduated high school and entered college at age 15 By age 20 he was an ordained minister By age 26 he had his doctorate In 1964 (at age 35) he became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize He was only the second American to have a national holiday named after him (George Washington was first) When he helped lead the demonstration in Birmingham that led to one of his incarcerations, he did so at the invitation of local civil rights leaders at a time when that city was perhaps the most widely segregated in the U.S., with a record of brutality, unsolved bombings of black homes and churches, and unjust treatment of blacks in the courts. At the time of his arrest both black and white clergy in Birmingham wrote protest letters against the demonstration, and said that Dr. King, being from Atlanta, had no business stirring up trouble in Birmingham. Part of the letter Dr. King wrote in response to his detractors included the now famous phrase, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." It takes courage to speak out against entrenched power; it takes courage to speak out for justice. Especially today, we should all remember to do more of it.
	1/15/10: A New Year, A New Decade, A New Name, A Clean Slate Yesterday I filed the papework to have my name legally changed. No, I'm not becoming Dharma Teacher Brilliant Dharma Grains, the Buddhist translation for my first and last name. And I'm not, as I'd originally thought, taking back my maiden name: Yvonne Meacham. Instead, I'm adopting my middle name as my last name. Why I didn't think of this earlier, I'll never know. But since I made that decision, I've come to learn that at least two other women I know have done the same thing. I've never been fond of my maiden name, and although I liked my former married name, Buchanan, it was never my name. I kept it after my divorce only for the sake of my sons who are now old enough not to care what I call myself, as long as they can still call me Mom. So sometime after my court hearing Feb. 25, I will officially be Yvonne Aileen (yuh-VONN ay-LEEN). Yvonne = "yew" and Aileen = "light." I love both of those meanings. I realized the other day, when I was speaking to a friend, that changing my name has definite advantages. I have a whole new slate on which to write the rest of my life. While Yvonne Buchanan (and even Yvonne Meacham) may have made some mistakes in the past: in business, in relationships, in life, Yvonne Aileen hasn't made any! Yvonne Aileen has never let herself down when it comes to keeping a workout schedule. Yvonne Aileen has never taken a job that was beneath her, hidden aspects of her personality to keep the approval of her mate, starved herself on the Lemonade Diet, or bought an article of clothing she never wore. She has never had a speeding ticket, a parking ticket, or sat through a boring meeting when what she most wanted to do was run straight through the back wall, leaving an opening in the shape of her fleeing body, like they do in cartoons. Yvonne Aileen has never had an angry exchange with her children, or set a goal for herself she didn't meet. Yvonne Aileen has never been so afraid of losing someone she loved that she held her tongue when she should have spoken out. She has never forgotten an appointment, a friend's birthday or the name of anyone she's ever met. In short: Yvonne Aileen rocks! Yes, the other Yvonnes did share in some incredible memories. And the good news is, Yvonne Aileen gets to keep them, too. But starting a New Year and a new decade with a clean slate, with one less name to carry around, with names that I truly love and that have belonged to me since birth, wow. This is a gift I gladly and gratefully give myself.
	1/13/10: Would You Clean Up My Vomit? I've been reading lately. A lot. Part of is research for a project I'm working on, part of it is serendipity. A book leapt off the shelf yesterday when I was at Powell's and landed in my arms. I was there to get two books on publishing and a book by Bruce Lipton called Spontaneous Evolution, all three recommended by my amazing business coach, Kim George. But the book that leapt into my arms was Miracle in Maui. In this book, Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., a clinical and educational psychologist, wrote about his own miraculous healing in a bone marrow transplant ward, a place where death walked the halls like a tireless janitor, and patients endured pain most animals would not have tolerated: marrow removal, treatment and replacement, whole-body radiation, and burning, poisonous chemotherapy. During Dr. Pearsall's nearly two years of treatment, his wife, Celest, stood by him, often sleeping at his bedside. The nurses, the doctors, even one new doctor who had been dubbed "Dr. Death Vader" due to his pessimism, all remarked on the magnetic warmth they could feel, and the glow they could at times actually see between Pearsall and his wife. Their love created an energy that was palpable and visible. One patient in the ward confided to Pearsall that he had had many affairs during his lifetime, all of which were exciting, but he knew that none of his lovers would have stayed with him through his treatment, cleaned up his vomit. I have been lucky to have loved someone that much. And as I begin to re-enter the dating world after a four-year hiatus, I will use this question as a litmus test before I commit to a "relationship." Is he someone I would do that for? Would he do that for me?
	1/7/10: Shift Happens The movement of the earth's tectonic plates has caused the formation and break-up of the earth's continents over time, including occasional formation of a supercontinent that contains most or all of the continents. Then these supercontinents break up again. Why am I telling you all of this? Because this is NOTHING compared to the shifts that have been going on in my life lately. Ever since the beginning of the New Year, major movement has been shaking up my career, my relationships, and my financial and physical wellbeing. Some of these changes have been good, some have been friggin' awesome, and some have been heartbreakingly painful. All of it has been necessary. Shift happens. And when it does, we either embrace it or we curl up into a little ball and cry. I've done a little of both. * Part of this process will even be changing my name (stay tuned for further developments).