More WOW! Signs

I have something seriously freaky to talk about tonight. Remember I said I’ve been talking to a woman who may have a home for me and the kids? Well that ties into something I posted back on May 18. You may have to go re-read my post titled “Signs” from that night to be able to put everything together. So I’ll back track a little to try to make all of this make sense.

The May post was detailing a bunch of signs that I’d been receiving while I was trying to get the move to Maryland put together. One part of it read “…I was on the phone with Ellen, and we were discussing my move to MD. The only place that has allowed me to put my name on the waiting list (It’s HUD-subsidized housing.) is a place in Columbia, MD. It’s about an hour away from Ellen, not exactly ideal in distance, but if that’s what has to be for the time being, then so be it. Anyway, we were talking about other places that this one management company had available and most of them were in Columbia. As we were talking, I realized something. We were talking about Columbia. Yea, so, get to the point.

Well, a few days before that I’d been complaining that I was smelling coffee in my house. I don’t drink coffee, I don’t have any coffee in my house, and I don’t have a coffee maker. I was smelling coffee. Smack in the head, now. From where do we get coffee? Colombia. A day or two before the conversation with Ellen, a friend of mine that I’ve known for 20 years but hadn’t heard from recently suddenly wrote on my Facebook wall, just to say ‘hello’. His name is Al, and he was born in Colombia, South America. Then, biggest one of all – I was born in Columbia, MO. See the theme here? I do.”

Okay, so here goes with what happened tonight. This woman – I’ll call her Lila – and I have been speaking back and forth on the phone and trying to meet. She wants the kids and me to move into her mother’s home, on a barter system. I will be caregiver for her elderly mother, in exchange for a place to live. Her mother wants to live at home but Lila and her siblings all live out of town. She saw the ad I had posted on Craigslist letting people know that we need a place to live and, after speaking with me, she wanted to meet me in person, of course. (I’ll meet her sister and see the house on Wednesday but that’s beside the point right now.) Anyway, she called me tonight and asked if I could meet her at a local restaurant, so Ellen and I went together. Lila’s the sweetest person and I really enjoyed speaking with her.

The three of us chatted and laughed and got along great. At one point during the conversation Lila mentioned the name of her nephew and Ellen chimed in asking about the nephew’s last name. Turns out, Ellen knows the nephew and his dad, and has heard family stories about the nephew’s mom who is divorced from the dad, but is Lila’s sister. Talk about a small world. That tells me there is a reason this lady found me. We’re all connected in some way. Alright then, onward. We continued chatting and, before we left, Lila asked us if we were on Facebook, and we agreed to send friend requests.

The meeting ends on a very good note and Ellen and I headed home. We immediately sat down at Ellen’s laptop and she sent a friend request to Lila. A short while later I sent one from my computer. We were just chatting and listening to music on the computer in the kitchen when Ellen went back on to her Facebook account just to check it as she usually does. Lila had accepted both of our friend requests. So Ellen decided to check out Lila’s profile. Ellen noticed that Lila’s profile pic is of Lila’s tattoo – an outline of Colombia, South America. She had mentioned that her mom was Colombian but it was just in passing so I didn’t really think anything of it. So, just as I was about to remind Ellen that my friend Al was from Colombia (go back and re-read the excerpt from the May 18 post) it struck me – this was a HUGE connection to the Columbia references discussed earlier: HUGE. Now we understood why all the signs pointed to Columbia/Colombia. I know the city and the country are spelled differently but it doesn’t matter. Now we know which Colombia we’re talking about here. That just made both of us do a big WOW! while we sat trying to remember all my previous references.

So I obviously knew what my post tonight was going to be about, but I had to check one thing first. If you re-read the May 18 post you’ll notice the White House (Ellen and I said we’d be working there as advisors to Obama one day) and John Mellencamp references in there also, particularly the song “Pink Houses” being repeated. Before I began tonight’s post I did a little research. What I found out is that, not only did John Mellencamp once record for Columbia Records (Columbia again) but “On Sunday, January 18, 2009, Mellencamp performed "Pink Houses" at the Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial.” That’s a quote from Wikipedia, and we all know it’s not a reliable resource, but you can see a video of it for yourself if you look it up on Youtube. Now that’s seriously fucked up if you ask me. I still haven’t figured out why I got a marriage proposal from John in my dream but maybe that’ll come later; maybe not. Maybe it was just in there to get me to take notice of the dream itself. If he ever does propose, though, I’m accepting.

So that’s the scoop. Signs from four months ago are starting to tie into shit now and it’s really getting freaky. If you’ve never had it happen to you, you’ll just think it’s all a bunch of coincidence. Like I’ve said before, I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe things happen for a reason, especially when they’re a bunch of really far out and funky things. Who dreams of meeting President Obama and dusting pollen off his limo while contemplating a marriage proposal from John Mellencamp? Me, after I’ve asked for big, billboard-type signs from the Universe, that’s who. I asked for them, I got them; and it’s pretty fucking cool if you ask me. Now I’m going to go to bed and ask for some more signs; I can’t wait to see what they are.

Until next time…peace to all.