I visited my parents for two weeks and then I kind of disappeared...
I actually disappeared to Montreal for a week (planned) because I wanted to learn about the history and architecture of a city in the east that I have never visited, as well as immerse myself in the French Canadian culture.
While there I wandered the streets enjoying the chilly temperatures; for the first time in years I got to wear my long underwear, LL Bean boots, big mittens, and toque all day every day and loved the "leg rot" itchies that wearing longjohns gives me on the hair on my legs. I gawked at the architecture (amazing stuff, the oldest building being a church, built in 1654!), chuckled at everyone freezing their asses off as they stood outside in dinner garb smoking in the cold night air, and pretty much enjoyed myself immensely. I even got to meet an Etsy artist based in Montreal who hand-delivered to me a ring that I purchased from her! The ring is called "Walk with me" and it now rests quite perfectly on my left thumb, thankyouverymuch.
And then I came home to my "Shangri-la" and shoveled!
While I was in Canada, Mayu went to Tokyo for a few weeks taking a course and spending New Years with her family and friends there, as I mentioned in a previous blog, so nothing had been shoveled for the entire time.
Upon arriving back to the Kansai International Airport (KIX) outside Osaka, I shipped one of my two suitcase home. We have that awesome luggage shipping service that is very very nice to utilize! I brought with me on the trains my other suitcase and my carry-on piece that is the max size for carry-ons. The "suitcase" I refer to is one of those big roller duffel bags with a hard outer bottom casing so you can pull it along on wheels comfortably.
Little did I realize that upon getting off at my train stop I would have to pull, push, drag, and carry these two pieces (one weighing 40lbs) through two feet of snow and slush to my house! And it was anything but comfortable! What normally takes me 10 minutes to walk took a good 30 minutes in the unplowed streets. Of course the wet heavy snow kept pelting down, soaking my gear and my clothes as I trudged home in the dark. My wrists and forearms are still sore from all the pulling, and carrying I had to do, but what an adventure it was! I have never done that before because Mayu has always been here to pick me up, so it was a first, and yet another experience to treasure. (While I was walking, two cars in the neighbourhood drove right past me and I had to move out of the way when they came and went... so much for "community".)
When I got home I had an hour's worth of shoveling to get to the house itself because nothing had been done during the duration I've been gone. Actually, when I talk to the neighbours (one put food out for Keiko for me daily, but never saw Keiko, however the food always disappeared), they said that it had only really snowed in the past two days. Lucky me! I was worried that it might have been snowing for the entire week that Yahoo Weather showed, but I was spared feet and feet of exercise. The house was still in tact, no burst pipes in spite of the fact that the indoor temperatures were about 1C (33F). It took a good three hours just to heat up my livingroom to a somewhat acceptable, but chilly temperature.
I got everything unpacked, did two loads of laundry, ate what was in the house for food: a can of tuna and frozen broccoli (same thing for breakfast, too with a little cheese I brought home from Montreal as emergency airplane food), had a shower and finally went to bed about 2am.
The next day I got up and spent another two or three hours shoveling some more just to get my car out! Mayu's car is not here at the moment so her side of the parking pad was full of snow (my car was semi-disappeared in snow).
I guess I could have not bothered shoveling out the entire parking area, and just cleared a path for me to get in and out, but I didn't. Instead, I cleaned the entire parking pad free of the feet of piled, heavy slushy snow, as well as the giant chunks of ice and snow that the snow removal tractors leave in front of every home when they go by and clean the streets.
Under ordinary circumstances, most people might seriously not waste their time cleaning the entire pad; most people on our street don't bother cleaning snow and just drive in and out of their carports. But Mayu and I have always shoveled our street in front of our house totally clean and kept as much of it clean down to the concrete as we possibly can.... it just looks so much better that way, and makes driving that much less treacherous in front of our house!
Besides.... if I didn't clean both sides of the parking pad, I felt that it would be a pretty good indication to The Universe that I didn't really want any visitors or guests to come over (can't park in the streets now as there is too much snow piled up there, and they are narrow enough to begin with). And that is sooo NOT what I want to transmit to the Universe as my request! So, as I was shoveling this very heavy, very wet snow, although I was tired, I was quite happy to do it, and grateful for the opportunity, because I knew that this would be one very good way to concretely show The Universe that I WANT/NEED to meet more people this year, and get out into the world a lot more than I have in the past five years.
I've had it with sitting here at the computer day&night in, day&night out with very little external human "touchy-feely" contact. I have vowed that 2009 will be my "Year of Getting Ootnaboot" much more than in the past! And because I want more people to come to me, I believe it is important to let the Universe know in no uncertain terms exactly what I want. It simply does not work if you say one thing, but act in a contradictory manner (eg. *mom to child as she lights up a smoke*, "don't smoke dear, it's bad for you 'puff puff puff'")
It is the same thing with making requests to the Universe, and manifesting things into your life. You really absolutely MUST think, imagine concretely and make your request so real in your head that it already exists in our Multiverse. Then you must continue to act accordingly as if it DOES exist. In my case, I opened up the extra parking space for visitors who will be coming to see me, and spend some time with me here this winter.
Guess what? Out of the blue today Masaki called and said that he and his mom were coming for a visit and bringing various kinds of foods and Japanese pickles for us to enjoy! Talk about a manifestation coming true! Masaki also brought over my new eto and I will showcase that in a future blog when I get some good light into the house during the daytime to photograph this amazing piece of art!
Oh! While I was in Montreal I visited an artist cooperative where many artists had their artwork on sale in the store. The artists volunteer to work at the store in rotation so it was kind of a neat place to visit and spend time in (out of the cold). There are things like bookmarks made of hand-made paper, magnets with art on them, furry hats, pottery, objet d'art, jumbo paintings, jewellery and so much more. I visited that store a few times during my week there. I picked up a couple of items for people and a really nice big fridge magnet for Mayu (we always get magnets for each other when we travel because we like to collect them).
And then I got this really cool "paper bag" flower vase that really DOES look like a paper bag! It is actually clay pottery, and as it is waterproof, you can fill it full of water and put flowers in it just like a regular vase. As soon as I saw it, I KNEW that I absolutely had to have it for putting all of our ohashi (chopsticks) in and storing them that way instead of the old wooden brown thing we have been using for far too long. It looks really snazzy, don't you think?! (did I just say "snazzy"?!?! OMG!)
Montreal was great, and I came home refreshed, educated, happy, and with new friends in that part of the world (bed & breakfast proprietor and staff).
And anybody who might want to come and visit me, I highly recommend staying away from winter in my Shangri-la because it is very wet, damp, chilly, cold and pretty much miserable. And outside the house isn't much better!
In summary, I have three things I'd like to share with you:
1) If you want to turn your requests into realities, you have to live your life as if what you need or truly want you already have, and see it already existing so firmly in your mind that you transmit that energy out to the Universe. The Universe will then respond by making that picture a reality for you because energy is energy is energy, regardless of the form, on a quantum level. The proof is in the shoveling.
2) If you see something that you like when you are traveling GET IT because the chances are slim that you will go back to the same travel destination a second time around. No regrets, no remorse! And...
3) I love you!
Cam
P.S. I think I'm still suffering jet lag; why am I writing this at 1:30 in the morning?!?
You know... I LOVE the Yahoo Japan Auctions. You can get a lot of really great stuff there. 
If there is anything that you guys ever want me to look for and get on auction for you, please let me do it for you. If you will give me a small service fee and cover the payment charges, etc. I am more than happy to do that and then ship it off to you! Just let me know, and we can work together on finding something that you really want, and that fits into your price point. (I helped Dunnster get a Harley Davidson, so we can get pretty much anything). Yahoo! Japan Auctions is apparently so good, and used by so many Japanese (there are a lot of Japanese in Japan....), that E-Bay could never get a toehold here. But that's OK by me. 
