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Rob and Megan assembling bookcase as Noah snoozes

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During times  of major transitions in our lives, synchronicities tend to flourish, our energy is more intense and focused, things manifest more quickly. We wrote about this phenomenon in 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, and experienced it when we moved our daughter to Orlando over January 8-9.

Megan graduated from college last May, moved back home, took a part-time job, and started applying for jobs in her preferred field, animal behavior/training. She landed an internship at Disney, training dolphins and manatees, and it starts January 12. This is her first experience of living on her own in an apartment.  She chose downtown Orlando, where everything is within walking distance and there’s a real sense of neighborhood, albeit a vertical one with neighbors greeting each other in elevators rather than across backyard fences.

Through an online service, she found a roommate, V,  an auditor who already lives in Orlando and is a few years older than Megan. V hunted for apartments in the price range they had agreed upon and found an unfurnished two bedroom/two bath place. V already has living room furniture, so Megan only needed bedroom furniture – i.e, she didn’t have to furnish an entire apartment.  They couldn’t move in until January 9 and Rob had to be back home by the 10^th for the beginning of a new meditation class. That gave us a day to get the job done. Crunch time.

Here’s how it went:

On the 8^th, we drive up to Cassadaga to stay for a night (that’s for another post) and figure we’ll head out early on the 9^th (day of the full moon!) to get Megan moved in. And moving in means this: unloading everything that’s in a car, a van, and a top carrier into a ninth floor apartment; buying a queen size bed; a chest of drawers, a desk, a bookcase, and some household items.

The bed is a must. We must find one and somehow transport it ourselves or she’ll be sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag for a week, maybe two. Beds, we found out, are not delivered overnight. Plus, the condo association would charge an additional $100 to use the loading dock! That’s  a surprise.

We have both dogs with us. Noah, the retriever has been sick and is on meds and we don’t want to ask our neighbors to take care of  him or Nika, the pup, for two nights. They are already watching the cats.

When we arrive at the apartment building at 11:30 AM on the 9^th, (so much for an early start), we’re told that a move in is supposed to be reserved, usually happened between 1 and 5 PM, and costs $100. We balk. A hundred for what?  A padded elevator for our exclusive use.  But the guy at the desk says we can move in immediately, 90 minutes early, so we pay the hundred and drive our cars into the unloading garage of the building.  The extra 90 minutes is our first lucky break.

Lots of irritating security in this building. All tenants carry something called a FOB  that gets you in and out of the labyrinthine garages, elevators, hallways.  So we trek back and forth between the garage and the elevators, FOBBING  every time we need to get through another door, the dogs hurrying along with us. The MacGregor carnival act.  Rob frets about our limited time to move in. How are we going to get a mattress and box springs and  a chest of drawers and transport them in our van and unload them before five?  And with two dogs along, how are we going to fit all this stuff in the van?

Every time we make a trek, we pass a mattress just standing upright against the wall. Beautiful mattress, a queen, looks brand new. The first couple of times, we ignore it, figuring it belongs to someone who is moving in. Then we begin to take in the details. It’s deliciously soft. Lean against it, test it, sink your fist into it,  press your cheek against it. Wow. Really nice. Rob notices that it’s resting against a wall next to a pile of old carpet that was obviously being disposed. So he asks one of the maintenance guys if it belongs to someone. He replies that it’s being tossed out and its ours, if we want it.

Not only is the mattress new and free, it’s the manifestation that makes everything else possible logistically. We’re able to obtain all the other stuff  we need in one trip; finish before our 5 PM deadline, when our loading dock closes; save at least $400-$500 on a mattress, another hundred bucks for a delivery.

We also somehow get the box spring for $90 instead of $150, savings enough to pay for a metal frame with wheels. We find a chest of drawers, a discounted floor display that we can take with us. We strap the box spring on the roof rack. Everything else fits, even with the two dogs.  We have extra time now and take the dogs for a walk along the lake and see flocks of swans so accustomed to people that they come up close to shore, hoping for snacks. A pair of black swans follow us as we walk along the shore. I take them as a good sign for this new chapter in Megan’s life.

The next morning, we hit Target and Office Max and buy the other stuff Megan needs, including a combo computer desk and bookshelf and chair, and all of it has to be assembled. While Rob and Megan do that, I make some sandwiches and then unpack  boxes and suitcases and get things in the bathroom put away, shower curtain up, and clothes hung or in  drawers.

By 12:30, we say our emotional good-byes out on the street where the van is parked. Hard, this is hard, different than when she left for college. Feels permanent.

In just 25 hours, we were able to get Megan settled in, with a full fridge, a workable kitchen, personal belongings arranged, a computer desk and even a chair to sit on, and a divine bed. It was that mattress that made the difference, just standing against the wall in the unloading garage, a kind of  Jack Kerouac with his thumb stuck out. Can I hitch a ride?

You bet, Jack. Any time.

Today we offer a fortune cookie post. It’s appropriately brief.

Fortune cookies are a form of divination, which makes those little messages inside the sweet cookies all potential synchroncities. Here’s a good one from Rob Lessman, who posted it recently in one of the synchronicity sites on Facebook.

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“At the Chinese restaurant, my wife told me about this thing she and her friends used to do: Adding the words ‘in bed’ to each fortune being read off. Right after she told me, I opened MY fortune cookie…

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We like to pose questions before opening the fortune cookie to see if we get an answer. We’ll have to try adding ‘in bed’ and see what happens.

Full moons are often a time of madness on the planet. The crazies come out of the woodwork, people are more accident prone, impatient, reckless.  At the heart of it, though, the hidden is illuminated – on both a personal and a collective level- and that can drive many of us to emotional extremes.

On January 9, the full moon in Cancer falls at 18 degrees, 26 minutes. Go here to find out where this moon falls in your chart.

Cancer is a nurturing, subjective, and family-oriented sign. It is highly intuitive, its feelings are easily hurt, and its energies are focused, directed. It dislikes emotional confrontations and, like the crab that represents this sign, it retreats at the first sign of conflict, withdrawing tightly into its shell.

What’s interesting about this full moon is that Mars forms a close and beneficial angle to it. Mars represents our physical and sexual energy. It’s our booster rocket in life, that part of us that explodes forward to pursue what we desire. It’s our heat sensor, our personal GPS. While it’s in Virgo, it’s able to get us from point A to B without any problem. We might even get from B to G. But too many steps beyond that, and we’re lost. We become Hansel and Gretel stealing off into the forest at night, tossing bread crumbs behind us in the hopes that we find our way back.

If we rely on our left brains, our ego-centered selves to get to where we want to go, we can pretty much figure we’ll be wandering for along time. If we allow our intuition to guide us, our emotions, our hunches, then we’ll do just fine during this full moon.

On the night of this full moon, Mercury and Pluto are widely  conjunct in earth sign Capricorn. This means that any type of visualization and meditation you do clarifies whatever confusion you have about something, and puts you in the power seat because you suddenly get it. Venus and Neptune are closely conjunct in air sign Aquarius, a wonderful indicator for creativity and the beauty of romance in any intimate relationship.

Jupiter forms a tight and beneficial angle to Mercury on the night of this full moon (in earth signs, Taurus and Capricorn) so your conscious mind is primed and ready for expansion.

Between January 1-22, every planet is moving in direct motion – they’re all behaving! Then on the 22^nd, Mars in Virgo turns retrograde until April 14. And that aspect is for another post.

The sign of Cancer refers to your native country.  Look for revelations about something that has been hidden. In the U.S., for instance, it might be this headline.

In your country, it might be something else. That headline may define the year ahead for your country.

I used to write monthly, individual predictions for each sign. Then I discovered Susan Miller’s site and she does this so well, so thoroughly, that I stopped. Check her out. If you know your rising sign, check that sign, too.

In numerology, eight is a number of power and money. It’s about thinking big and acting big. The caution is that playing with power can result in a steamroller effect, burying others in your wake, causing resentment.

So it’s interesting that Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucus by 8 votes. It doesn’t exactly cement him as the Republican’s candidate to take on Barack Obama in November, but provides him another slogging step in that direction.

Romney, of course, has big money and is using it to crush his opponents, but he’s not the most popular guy around. Three out of four Republicans don’t even favor him now.  But they will when he’s knocked all the others off the campaign trail.

No doubt the number 8 will haunt Mitt, especially in the general election. After all, favoring the top one percent at the cost of the middle class will surely come back to bite the Republicans and their candidate.

Then of course there’s that other meaning for 8 – as in being behind the 8-ball, and that’s where Romney probably will be with voters on Nov. 4.

Several months ago, I wrote about an unusual building that was next to the yoga studio where I teach meditation. When I take Noah, our golden retriever with me, I usually let him out after class and he walks in front of the adjacent building. A high fence surrounds the property, which is about two acres. The white building is two stories and takes up nearly half of the property, which includes a swimming pool.

There is no name on the building or gate, which is what initially caught my attention. Eventually, through some digging into property records, I discovered the name. But it was just a series of letters that gave away nothing about the nature of the business. A little more digging by this former investigative reporter and I discovered the folks behind the gate sell weapons and teach police departments how to interrogate suspects, among other endeavors.

Some time later, an interesting synchronicity occurred when one of Megan’s best friends got a job there. That’s when I found out even more. The company, she told me, has a weapons armory. So apparently they were shipping weapons out of the building to foreign countries or whoever bought their stuff. Good reason they keep the place secret, I thought.

In recent months, I haven’t paid much attention to the place. But the other day, after taking a yoga class, I let Noah out of the car. He walked over to the fence surrounding the white building, sniffed around, then suddenly charged along the fence. I gave chase and was startled to see the gate open and Noah racing inside the property, probably in pursuit of a squirrel.

I ran after him, breaching the entrance, and suddenly an alarm went off. It sounded like civil defense drill, that annoying guttural honking. Great, I thought. Now these interrogation experts were going to catch me and practice their techniques on me.

I shouted for Noah, and something about my voice caught his attention. It was the same voice I use when I think he might dart out in front of a car. He stopped his pursuit, and trotted back to me. I tugged on his collar and we both ran for the gate. I never saw anyone. Fortunately, it was January 2, a holiday, and there was only one car in the lot. I suspect that someone inside either spotted me, or reviewed a video tape and watched a bald-headed guy with a goatee chasing a retriever.

I dismissed the incident, didn’t think about it until that evening when I was on Facebook. I noticed a photo of Megan’s friend, R.L., the one who works at the facility, on the right side of the page. I hadn’t seen her in person for months and she looked a little different, her face thinner. So I clicked her picture, which led me into her Facebook page. At that moment, there was a knock on the door.

Abracadabra! It was her. Megan answered the door and I recognized R.L..’s voice. Perfect timing. Trish heard me laugh, and I explained the entire incident. Of course Trish wasn’t going to let that go. She walked across the house and brought R.L. back and asked me to repeat the story again.

R.L. thought it was a good synchro and wondered why the gate was open on the holiday. Then she gave me an update. “There aren’t any weapons there any more, just ammunition. They ship the weapons from a warehouse now.”

I wondered if that made me feel better. I was teaching meditation next to an ammunition dump, not a weapon’s armory.

Our mornings are pretty loose, but ritualistic. Rob gets up before I do, brings in the newspaper, lets the dogs out, starts the coffee and his day. By the time I reach the kitchen, the coffee is hot, the cats are waiting to be fed, and my beautiful grapefruit is begging to be sectioned. I glance at the newspaper, go through the email, then get out the laptop and take a look at my favorite news sites.

But there are some headlines not fit for breakfast viewing. Not fit for any viewing at all. And these are the ones I feel compelled to read because they underscore the shocking contrast between democracy – even when it’s shrinking, even when the Bill of Rights is being rendered irrelevant – and theocracy. Here was the headline that made me read:

Saudi woman beheaded for “practicising witchcraft”.  Or here.

In a statement issued by the SPA state news agency, Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was executed in the northern province of Jawf for “practising witchcraft and sorcery.”

What does this mean, exactly? None of the articles I read explained the specifics of her “witchcraft.” Did she reveal her knees to a man who was not a relative or her husband and, thus, lure him into temptation through the sorcery of her flesh? Did she read cards for a friend? Did she concoct some sort of Harry Potter brew for her neighbors? Did she treat an ailment with herbs?

Years go, we had a friend who owned a mystery bookstore in Fort Lauderdale. He had spent years in Saudi Arabia teaching English to the locals. He went there because the pay was fantastic and he didn’t have to pay U.S. taxes. But his stories about the country and culture were chilling. I remember one in particular: that it was illegal to offer weather forecasts. Yes, you read that correctly. In the Saudi worldview, weather forecasts – at least back then – were considered to be prognostication, telling the future, so they were forbidden by the kingdom laws.

So was this woman, perhaps, offering her version of a weather forecast? Is that considered to be such dire sorcery that you’re beheaded for it?

It’s shocking that in a democracy that prides itself on freedom of expression, we do business with a country like Saudi Arabia. It’s even more shocking when you consider that the majority of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudis. In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t permitted to drive, to leave home unless accompanied by a male relative, have to cover themselves and on and on. We recently mentioned Saudi women in another post – Plan B.

I read stories like this one about the beheading and about a Saudi woman who was raped by a male cousin, then released from prison with the suggestion that she marry the guy, and I get angry. Can’t help it. Then I look at the Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential election and realize they aren’t so different from their Saudi brothers.

Keep women oppressed.

Maintain control over women’s reproductive systems.

Make them pay for their poverty, their single motherhoods, it’s all their fault, they didn’t please their guy.

In China, another one of our staunch business allies, hearsay contends that female babies are often killed because females babies  are less desirable than males.

And on it goes. These kinds of stories drive me nuts. And if the law of attraction works on a grand scale, then my focus on the repression of Saudi women suggests that I could end up as a  Saudi female in a future life. Oh shudder, please, no. Anything but.

Okay, now I’m turning the newspaper page to something fluffy, about a dog that found its way home.

On New Year’s Day, Rob, Megan and I headed over to the dog park. The weather was just gorgeous, in the low 70s, a cloudless sky,  and the park was crowded. While Rob and Megan played Frisbee with Noah and Nika, I sat with a group of the regulars.

Colleen, who is unemployed right now, used to work for a company that is hired by banks or owners of homes and apartments to remove furniture and anything else that has been left behind by the renters or previous owners. Many of these places are foreclosed homes.

But last year, a friend asked Colleen if she and their sons could do her a favor – empty out a multimillion dollar mansion. The friend couldn’t pay her because she hadn’t been paid by whoever had hired her, but told Colleen that she and her sons could keep everything they removed. So one morning, Colleen and her son drove their truck over to the mansion.

As soon as they drove up to the place, Colleen was blown away. This place was one of the sprawling mansions you see around here that usually belong to the movers and shakers in the equestrian community. But this place had belonged to a woman who owned a health care agency. “I walked into her bedroom, opened this tremendous walk-in closet, and just balked. Inside were stacks of shoeboxes that had never been opened, handbags that had never been used, clothes with the tags still in them. We removed at least 50 pairs of Loeffler shoes, dozens of Luis Vuitton handbags, Chanel suits.”

A pair of Loeffler shoes goes for between $200-$800. A Louis Vuitton handbag sells for between $800 -$1000. A Chanel suits starts at about $5,000. When Colleen started tallying up the cost of everything this woman had left behind, it was staggering. The Loeffler shoes alone were worth about forty grand. Then there were Gucci shoes and handbags… Colleen figured the woman had left behind about a hundred grand worth of goods. None of it had ever been used.

Then there were the furniture items – an exquisite dining room table, a set of sofas, the outrageously expensive alarm system….

“My God,” one of the women exclaimed. “You could’ve sold it all on ebay and made a fortune.”

“Nope. I sent most of the shoes and handbags to my niece. I kept the dining room table and the sofas.”

“She was a hoarder,” another woman remarked.

Colleen nodded. “Sure. But it went deeper than that.”

You sometimes read about stuff like this – Imelda Marcos and her 1200 pairs of shoes, for instance. But this seemed truly extreme. “Why did she leave all the stuff behind?” I asked.

Colleen shrugged. “She didn’t feel like moving it. Look, this woman was so wealthy that one afternoon she went shopping and in just  a couple of hours, blew more than eighteen grand on clothes that she probably never wore. Pocket change to her.” Colleen tapped her temple. “Some screws loose.”

On the way home, I told Rob and Megan the story. I thought about what it night be like to have that kind of money, where eighteen grand is pocket change and you don’t look back as you drive away from a hundred grand worth of stuff you never used. Does it change you in some fundamental way for the worst? Or was this woman always like that and now she’s simply more so?

Here’s a list of the 50 most generous philanthropists in 2011. I hope these people outnumber the ones like this woman who never looked back.