Touche (is that how you spell it?). I will try that, but I guess I will need to somehow use hardware to show that the values go through.... an led with PWM control perhaps, or maybe printing the values to an lcd?
Just another thought - would using software serial be a decent idea? I mean have the 2009 in my setup be connected through say pins 2 and 3 using soft serial to the lilypad, and thus have the usual pins 0 and 1 be open for normal serial contact with the pc... then just read the soft serial rx pin on the 2009 and print it out to the serial monitor - this should stop the "conflicting issue" i've been having, right?