The Tuesday before Christmas, I drove to Ocala and Cassadaga with galpal Theresa Hudson a/k/a Tigger.  It would be her first time meeting Catherine Wendell of Ocala Ghost Walks and the three of us got to hang out and chat awhile.  Cat delivers the magazine to the Ocala area for me, which I so totally appreciate!  On the drive to Ocala, I tell Theresa about my two clients and my earlier blog post Relationships: What Is My New and Improved Type? And I told her that part of the exercise I am doing with the 2 clients are to keep an eye out for what I appreciate about the men around me. Any men we run into all day long.  As we drive from Ocala toward Cassadaga, I tell her I wanted to see what I attract out of Cassadaga since I know some of the guys there yet not much interaction in all these years. And sure enough, we walk into the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Bookstore, and I run into Luke, a friend I’ve emailed and spoken with for years and just never met in person.  As soon as I saw him, he looked very familiar.  We were stacking the January Horizons in the corner and I kept trying to place him. Finally I just walked up to him and said, “Do I know you?”  He smiled because he knew it was me before I knew it was him.  Brat!

I was happy to meet my pal so synchronistically. We work with some of the same friends and customers yet have never run across each other in person.  I was at the bookstore a week earlier than usual and no one ever knows when I’ll be there until I show up, so the Universe arranged that one.  Also to show me, as I had asked, something to appreciate about the men I already know.  That’s what the week’s exercise was.  It’s important to remember what you’ve been asking for, so that you recognize when you get it.

More synchronistic happenings: Theresa is a very handy person, car stuff, plumbing stuff, she looks like a little slip of a girl but she’s got some serious skills.  I’m fairly handy myself but not in comparison to T.  I’d given that some thought the past few days.  As we park at the Cassadaga Hotel, I hear my bumper touch the concrete curb stop.  As we pull away, we hear a real crunch and, once on the street, we can hear that we are dragging something.  Theresa knows what it is right away.  We get out and look and part of the undercarriage cover had come loose, just as she said.

We go back to the bookstore and park on the concrete and have a look at it.  I’m on the ground looking at it because T is wearing a girley dress.  Plus the Universe is giving me a chance to show that I can be as handy as T is.  She said the parts of the undercarriage are fastened by screws and clips, so I ask Katie in the bookstore for a screwdriver.  My only tool is one little wrench I carry that seems to fit most stuff I need it for, like a magical wrench.  It just now occurs to me that a set of wrenches might be in the car’s own tool kit along with the jack equipment, hmmm, I should check that out. Anyway, 20 minutes later, me rolling around upside down in the parking lot, unscrewing the part that had come off, I cut the remaining part around the bolt that the magical wrench did not fit, and we’re on our way.

Then we’re heading home, albeit late at 4:45pm, and we stop for dinner at Durango Steak House on Hwy 50 and, before going in, I realize my wallet is gone.  I have never lost my wallet or my keys; I don’t lose things.  We look through everything in the car, somehow I manage to drop my cell phone and out of the corner of my eye see it in several pieces on the parking lot.  As Theresa reaches for it, my thought is, “whatever’s happened to the phone, she’ll fix it” and went back to retracing my steps and searching the car until Theresa hands me the phone she put back together.  She’s like Inspector Gadget, I’m not kidding.   I called the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Bookstore and Becky White answered.  She’d been witness to the earlier car fiasco.   I asked if she could check to see if my wallet was on the ground somewhere, and sure enough it was.  It must have come out of my jeans pocket as I was crawling around under the car.  Becky White saved the day!!!

So, here we were, at I-95 and Hwy 50, the store was closing in 30 minutes, we were an hour away and I don’t like to drive after dark.  We’re on the phone trying to figure out if I should just drive up again in the morning.  Then I hear my friend Luke was still in the store and he volunteered to drive the wallet out to me at Hwy 44 and I-95, which was about a 30 minute drive for each of us.  How perfect, how synchronistic – and how gracious, since he lives in Orlando and it was completely out of his way. I love the name Luke, it means “bringer of light”.  Now he was the bringer of the wallet, too and the savior of the day.  I joked to Theresa, since Luke had given me a small gift with a heart logo on it.  I held it up and said, “Great, is this another sign?  I’m here holding my heart and the man is miles away with all my money.” BTW: The gift he gave me was a Love Candle, and when he handed it to me, I said jokingly, “Oh No!, a Love candle… what if we end up getting married?”

Our plan was to get to the intersection to I-95 and Hwy 44, park somewhere and the first one there calls the other to say where we are.  As we get close to the exit for Hwy 44, I tell Theresa there’s a Chevron there I need to get gas at, and I go to call Luke to tell him that’s where we are headed and about 5 minutes away.  But the call says “error in connection.”  I try three times.  Same error message.  I’ve got the right number.  Then the phone rings, and it’s Luke and he’s at the Chevron waiting for us.  We get there one minute later.  More synchronicity.

We leave and head back home and we’re talking about our fun adventure and how good it feels to have a little challenge and work through it, to let us know how capable we really are.  And good to have a friend along with us to witness it, to make it go even smoother.  By now, we decide to skip dinner together since it’s getting late.  Which then reminds T that she may have tentative plans for dinner otherwise and just now remembered.  I don’t know how she juggles her schedule without an appointment book.

Then it hits me.  Theresa caused this entire day! The Universe wanted her to be un-fed by sundown and on her own way to another destination.  Because had the daily events not unfolded as they did, we would have eaten dinner about 4:00pm and she would have been home an hour later.

And I saw the results of doing my week’s homework.

It was a most delightful day.