I am sitting here in tears. And they are not bad tears.

A little bit of back ground might be in order. On top of it being term break, this week-end is a 3 day holiday - Coronation Day I think. The only people in my apartment building of 96 apartments are me and the guard. I haven't seen a face since Friday afternoon (remember it is Sunday here). Starting on Friday morning, the weather here turned really ugly. There was the remains of a tropical cyclone ... we didn't get the worst of it. It was windy and dark and rainy. I was going to try to get out to the store. I couldn't get transportation. I have a current work load that is hmmm...shall we say overwhelming? I am supposed to start a class in advanced statistics (which I really, REALLY need) on Tuesday morning and it will be taught in Thai by someone who I think is an idiot. I am chair of a committee for an international conference in December and I had a meeting with Apichai this week and sent all of the preliminary plans out to the international committee to get approval so I can get moving on it ( http://Buddhist-Economics.info ) and only one of the 18 people that it went out to have bothered to respond. yada yada yada - the list goes on.

After I posted this yesterday, I went back to bed with a book. I haven't been able to focus well enough to read lately so I anticipated falling asleep. It didn't work that way. I read most of the day. (Maybe the exercise in focus here helped?) And it was good stuff. It was a book on a contemporary Thai Buddhist scholar who challenged the Thai Buddhist philosophy, the operation and structure of the Thai Sangha, the Thai government and social structure. He left no rock un-turned. But it gave me such incredible new insight to Thai culture. I read, understood and synthesized from it. Unless you have been in the hole with Cynthia, Evvy and I, you don't know what an accomplishment that is.

Then in the late afternoon, I got a phone call. Mark had sent an SOS to Gayle and Gayle called. We were on the phone for over 2 hours. (My gawd, can that woman talk.....) She made me laugh and cry and kept a smile on my face for most of that time. The connection was broken and unbelievably she called back. I had already fired off a thank you email and laughingly pointing out that God was looking after dear Gayle's voice and broke the connection. I also found a message from John Berger (who is in Thailand).

Gayle called back and proceeded to tell me that if her ex-husband couldn't get her off of the phone, God couldn't. However, when I told her that I had gotten a message from John, she told me she was going to hang up and I was to send John a message and tell him that God couldn't get her off of the phone but he could, so he could call me. Result was that I talked to John for about 20 minutes as well. (We aren't going to be able to get together this time but next time we are going to work a bit harder to coordinate so I can travel with him and see the work he is doing here and hopefully we will be able to schedule things so that he or Sarah can make it to another conference I am planning for the beginning of the year.)

I got up this morning and the day is sparkling...the air is fresh from the rain, there is a lovely breeze and the sky is an unbelievable shade of blue.

The big black dog hasn't left me (from experience I am pretty sure of that) but you incredible people have held him at bay for a while. You have come together to be my Mary.

Evvy....I have written down the G's...thank you so much for that gift. I want to add a couple of G's to the list...

• G ood friends (you ALL know who you are.... G rimes, G ayle, G entry ....I don't know how to get G's from John and Evvy!)
• Just G ET HELP - (thanks Cynthia)
• G od (John)

One of the "symptoms" of all of this really is feeling alone ... and it takes someone prodding to help me remember that I have G ood friends and G od that I can get help from. (Who said that community on the internet is not real?)

ขอบคุณมากมากค่ะ (Thank you very, very much)