I recently read a great book entitled E2 by Pam Grout. In the book, she talks about creating the life of our dreams by believing the universe is a giving place, and all it takes is connecting to the source and being aware.

One of the exercises is called the Volkswagon Jetta. The idea in this exercise is to think about something you want – you choose the something, and then believing that you will see whatever the something is consistently over the next 48 hours.

For my first go at this,I decided on hummingbirds because I have been trying to draw hummingbirds to my feeders for over a year now to no avail.

As of today, 72 hours later, I still haven’t seen a hummingbird at my feeder, but I’ve seen thousands on various Facebook pages and around the web. I’m told the universe has a sense of humor, and clearly she does as hummingbirds began to appear. They appeared as my sister in law’s new profile picture on Tuesday, they were a highly popular photo subject on the Open Group for Bedlam Farm – this amazing group started by Jon Katz, and my husband unexpectedly came home with a statue of one for me the other night hoping to ease the pain of none at the feeders.

Okay, so, admittedly, now I was hooked on this whole idea of making things appear. It’s the same idea as seeing pregnant women everywhere when you are expecting or green cars in droves once you’ve acknowledged to your son that there are very few green cars in town.

Anyway, this time I decided I was gonna go big. As many of you know, I am wildly in love with alpacas and llamas. I have recently come to own two alpacas and met a farmer who shares his farm with me on a daily basis. He has 37 alpacas, and more on the way. I manifested him, too, but that’s another story. Anyway, I digress…what I really, really, really want is a guard llama named Buster. He’s brown, he wears a red halter, and he is on his way to my tiny town to live with me via a trailer. He has been trained at the guard llama training society in Brattleboro, VT and he is mine – he just doesn’t know he exists yet. But in my mind, this was what I was manifesting next. What the heck. Go big or go home. Right?

Monday night at dinner I made the big announcement. “Kids, I feel it’s only fair to warn you that there is a guard llama named Buster walking towards our house as we speak. He’s brown and wearing a red halter. When you find him, please tell him where we live and help him fine his way home.”

Needless to say, they thought perhaps I had been in the heat too long and simply nodded stunned. My husband? Well, after 31 years, nothing surprises him anymore.

Fast forward to today, July 4. Our tiny town, population around 5000, does July 4 BIG. It is a four day event complete with a massive fireworks display and a parade down Main Street. The parade is normally an hour in length and features all of the surrounding town’s fire trucks, lots of fun floats and of course, local businesses promoting their products. My daughter and I had decided next year, we were going to have a float for our alpacas ; four alpacas with painted red lips, and we were going to call it the ride of the alpaca lips LOL! As she and I were discussing this, my two older sons , both adults now, come barreling down the hill towards our lawn chairs clearly excited beyond words.

“Mom, you are truly not going to believe this,” they huffed,” but there is a float coming down the street now from the Heifer project and guess what??”

“What,” I screeched over the sound of the sirens.

“There is a brown llama with a red harness riding in the back of a float.”

To say my jaw hit the ground is an understatement. I thought they were kidding around, giving their old ma a tough time. I truly didn’t believe them.

Seconds later, heading down Main Street in small town nowhere is a brown llama with a red harness riding on a float.

Funny universe. Very, very funny!