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Tatjana juggles, it is something about her that endeared me from the moment we met. She’s actually quite good with a ball – she was a national basketball player for Croatia, she’s good at handball; she just has great eye hand coordination.

I don’t. I usually duck if a ball is headed my way.

But I am the master of juggling proverbial balls in the air. Right now I feel like the Cat in the Hat about to take a spill. I need to take a big deep breath. I have Re-Bridge’s gala coming up and that is only after The Waldorf School’s gala, but then I also have my work and back to back reports, and then I have my new company of which I’ve yet to set up a bank account for, and then there are the rentals – I field inquiries all day long and we have three confirmed rentals thus far – yee ha! Oh and did I mention that we are purging and reconfiguring the house.

Oh, and that little other fact, we have a toddler!

I ran, not walked, but raced the truck to yoga today because I have not been to the gym in a month of days and I got there 15 minutes late, and within three minutes Catherine transported me to a place where I was breathing evenly, moving fluidly, and still.

God bless you Catherine and all the yogis out there who are keeping us overworked overwrought Americans sane.

Yesterday, the bill came in for all the work that has been done on the LaLa and after I picked myself off the floor, I just thought to myself, well everybody and everything needs something. Right now, we have a son in school that needs help from parents, we live in a neighborhood with two historic bridges (watch this video) that need help, we live in a 100-year-old house that needs constant TLC, we have dogs that need exercise and love, we have cats that need ____ (who knows what cats need), we have a toddler that needs you to sit with him when he eats (me too), and I’m sure the list is longer than what I’ve put here, but suffice to say everyone needs someone to lean on.

If there is one thing we have learned since the 2005 Federal Flood it’s that we all have to pitch in and help each other, there is no mommy or daddy waiting in the wings to help the grown ups.

I was speaking to a friend of mine who lives down in Florida and plays one hell of a harmonica and he said he doesn’t come play New Orleans because we don’t pay our musicians enough. Lord today. That’s why I impress upon Tin that he has to tip the musicians when they play so nicely for us as we walk through the quarter. They’re our responsibility. Much like the bridges that I’m working on are our responsibility. It would be nice to think that there is someone out there that will wave their magic wand and take care of all of this for us, but the truth is it all comes down to you/us.

Evan Christopher put together a pop up jazz brunch at Clever today and maybe because he’s Tin’s godfather, he also made it a family friendly one. Playing with Evan was James Singleton on bass, Herman Lebeaux on drums, and Matt Lemmler on keyboards and when I say the joint was jumpin’ I mean it was on fyyyy ahhh. No where in the world was there a jazz brunch like this one for the kind of music that was rolling off these talented four. Amazing.

Bart from Crescent Pie and Sausage catered the brunch with quiche, brisket and sweet potato hash, yogurt parfait, bread pudding and Clever was serving some delicious bloody marys and belinis, Yum. The joint became standing room only, and in the audience were a few celebrities too: Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown and his beautiful family and Lars Edegran. Another celebrity in her own right, Evan’s beautiful wife, Nina, was serving up the grub in back wearing the best looking apron I’ve seen around.

Like godfather, like godson

Last night we had an incredible celebratory meal, an Indian Thanskgiving, complete with pooris, red lentil dal, another sprouted dal, pork vindaloo, raita, carrot salad and if you can believe it, we ended with carrot cake. A feast that I’m still waddling around from.

I was in a celebratory mood because we just received our first check for a rental! Yee ha.

One of our guests has a habit of saying, “When it’s right, it’s right,” and everything about last night felt right, except the tightness in my pants this morning!

I was reading a quote by a Czech guy who said Truth Will Prevail and was thinking to myself, yeah but whose? Then this morning I was walking the dogs along the bayou and it was just after the Susan B Komen Breast Cancer race and I was listening to Ram Dass on my iPod and right when he was talking about God and Satan going on a walk and God sees a shiny object and picks it up and says, “Ah truth,” and then Satan says, “Give it to me, I’ll organize it,” a woman came running out of her house and said, “Do you need a bag?” And I didn’t understand at first because I was engrossed in the sunshine, watching the dogs swimming in the bayou and listening to Ram (having just run into my therapist on her bike who said, “Careful not to fall asleep while you’re walking,” when I told her I was listening to him) and I realized that one of my dogs must have gone to the bathroom and I was blissfully just walking away.

It turns out I knew the woman and she realized she knew me and so I went back and picked up the dog shit where she was pointing to it. Apologies all the way around. Shit happens.

What Would Jung Do?

When one of his patients would come see him and say, “I got a raise!” or “I got a promotion!” Carl Jung would say, tsk, not good, not good at all. If they said, “I got laid off,” he would say, “Now, we’re getting somewhere.” Jung believed we cannot make progress, work on the soul, until we were faced with a crossroads or a meaningful event to shake us up and make us grow.

So for all of you out there dreading leaving your job or getting laid off or fired or whatever the euphemism is for that nowadays, even though we are in a recession, the fact is that forward is the way to go.

And then failure is not an option.

Someone tweeted yesterday that what you think and how you feel materializes some way in your body, in health or disease. Nothing could be truer because the last few days I feel like someone gave me happy pills, I’m lighter on my feet and gone are the tossing and turning nights. I feel like a thoroughbred that was getting trapped more and more into a tight stall, and I was pawing and snorting at the gate THAT WAS UNLOCKED but instead of opening the door, I kept whinnying and whinnying and kicking up hay.

The reality that set in earlier this year when things changed yet again, brought me into action mode and as soon as I took the first step towards a plan, the Universe rushed in with all sorts of details. First, how are we going to afford this house if we want to stay here. Answer, let go of how you have been living in it, and have it bring you revenue. Second, what will I do if I no longer do this, well, what do you want to do, this but in an expanded version, but for myself. It’s not that this never occurred to me before, it’s that I was loyal to a fault, which served me then, but did not serve me now.

I was speaking to someone on Friday who said, “Rachel, you are going to be saying to yourself, why didn’t I do this before?” and I responded the timing could not be more perfect for me, because I’m ready. Later someone else reminded me the timing couldn’t be more perfect to launch my company because it is on the heels of the economy recovering and I will be prepared when the turn around comes.

Yesterday, the stove was installed in our new second kitchen. The locks were put on both den doors so that we can work our way back through the house as guests are invited in. The beginnings of our new life is starting to move down the tracks we have laid and oh, what a difference to me.

I feel like someone gave me the biggest B-12 shot and I’m fired up. There is nothing like fear to create your own trap. But if you take everything and spin it around and find out what it is you aspire to be, you can start to take the baby steps necessary to make that life. I aspire to own my own company and help other companies figure out what they cannot see. Hence my tagline: Greenlight Global Research breaks down the roadblocks that keep companies from reaching their destinations. I aspire to participate in the larger world and give back, hence GGR’s DNA has philanthropy built in. I aspire to work with people who inspire me, hence the people I choose to work with are an important part of the context of my new path. I aspire to live a life that is expandable that could include Spain for two months in the summer, that could include going home to Croatia with Tatjana, that could include taking my son to see the world with us. I aspire to happiness.

And that is progress.

Okay, so a few months ago I began preparing my life for the inevitable which happened yesterday and let me tell you, the universe always provides if you have faith. I have so embraced change that I’m scary. So let me tell you some of the steps that occurred to get me to this point – I just went through my closet and loaded five contractor garbage bags the size of the Superdome with clothes from my closet that we are sending to friends in Russia who need clothes. I did this because Tin is sick, Tatjana had to be at school today, and because it was just damn time to purge!

When the year started, I had switched from my decade long work to begin on a bunch of initiatives – all paths I wanted to go down, but then one path went sideways, the other found a wall, and well, the rest is history. (btw: on my desk is a piece of metal that says, “Every wall is a door.” – little did I know that one wall would greenlight my way). So I began thinking about what Plan B would be and I started writing down on orange index cards ideas and I began taping them up to my office door. The ideas were all over the place – write a book, open a hair salon, run a wine company, Voice Over, open a B&B and more.

I ended up amassing 22 potential ideas for what Plan B would be, and then I had dinner with my accountant/mentor and he told me something interesting about why I should start my own corporation and what I should think about doing. Then my ex source turned life coach decided he wanted to take me on as his project and he systematically went through all the possible things I could be in my new life and the result was very similar to what I had heard at dinner.

When the news came that this would be the last year with my company, I was ready. Locked and loaded for Plan B. The house was being carved up for vacation rental (workers are still finishing), the logo was being designed for my new company, the life I wanted to lead was so clearly in front of me I felt I was looking through a crystal ball to a magic wonderland that awaited me.

And let me tell you something, it’s all coming together, and Rachel is back, baby.

Yeah, baby, she’s back.

Yesterday as I had said earlier was the landmark day and I had so much that I had been thinking about, but no time to sit and write about any of it because Tin was not feeling well and was in need of some major attention. So I put aside everything and sat on the floor of his room with him and played Legos.

And then my friends came over with a bottle of champagne to celebrate the end of an era for me, and the beginning of a new chapter in my life. We drank, we laughed, and then we all went to sleep and I slept the sleep of the dead for the first time in a long time.

This morning, we got up and let Tin sleep late and had almost decided he wouldn’t go to school when he popped out of bed and said he wanted to go. So he did, and then an hour later I got the call that he was sick and needed to come home. But it was hard to describe what it was he had, he just wanted to be held, and kept complaining that there was a triangle on his head and he wanted it off. He had been saying this for three days and we thought at first he meant literally the triangle that they play in nursery school when they are singing, and then we thought it was some fictional triangle and so Tatjana performed an exorcism ritual on it last night, and then today the triangle was still on his head.

Long day of crying, holding, and then the appearance of bumps and we headed to the doctor and find out he has hand, foot and mouth disease and it seems so does every other kid in the city. Oh lordy.