Marley Was Dead, or, It's Christmas Eve

And in a desperate attempt to make the title of this blog vaguely resemble reality, I'm going to make as many posts as I can before the end of the year.

So - if anybody would like to know what I would like for Christmas, here goes.

1. Someone to put air in my tires.
2. Someone to show me how to get the lid off the new water softener so I can set the controls.
3. Someone to hold a ladder so I can clean the high addition windows and
4. Someone to ditto so I can clean the gutters which haven't been touched for a year and a half and are probably about to fall off because they are completely choked with pine needles.

However, as me and Barbra know, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world and I am not complaining, simply making my wishes known.

Pluto Sextile Mars Exact

It is of course nothing but a coincidence that also on this day when I need to clean up this house and make it presentable for airbnb guests on Boxing Day Mars is sextiling natal Pluto for me, which at least explains why I found myself taking out the ironing board at five o'clock yesterday afternoon and ironing pillowcases.

It also happens to be the day that progressed Mercury meets the progressed Sun in the second house, and if I dare to assume that the woman who saw my FaceBook post on "RECYCLE: Grant County" about the memory foam for $25 actually comes to pick it up that will take care of that one nicely.

So I could list all the things I would like to do and all the things that I have to do and at the end of the day see how many of them got done, but as both of those are very very long lists I shall be better served by simply getting out of bed - O MBA, thou art my downfall - and getting going.

More later.

Progressed Mercury Conjunct Progressed Sun in Second

So this perfects tomorrow and yesterday I spent the whole day in bed playing Lexulous with two different people simultaneously.

In my defense, although I am shameless about this and don't really think I need one, there was a winter storm with wind and rain and snow, I've over-estimated the time my car can go without an oil change and when I start the ignition the low oil warning comes on and I was not about to drive to JiffyLube under yesterday's road conditions and now that I've moved myself into the Tiny Back Room it seems ridiculous and extravagant to use and heat and roam around in the other rooms of the house, especially seeing as how I've been buying myself Christmas presents since Thanksgiving and had to turn my head when I saw my credit card statement for the month.

The latter part of the above paragraph, however, has not deterred me from buying myself a copy of Dame Edith Sitwell's English Eccentrics from alibris before beginning this one, the end result of a google search for a dimly remembered quote from said dame along the lines of everyone needing to spend one day a week in bed and, I suppose, yet another manifestation of P Mercury (buying and selling) conjunct P Sun (me) in the Second (money).

I did not find the quote.

Pluto Sextile Mars

Well, the bathroom sink pop-up drain thing being too big problem is solved. I showed it to the installers of the water softener and one of them whittled it down for me so it fits down the drain hole, so the chopping board - which has been in the bathroom sink for three weeks to remind me not to turn the water on - is back in the kitchen and the toothbrush and toothpaste are back in the bathroom.

The water softener is installed but as the proud owner I have to input the settings myself, which means I have to find the results of the water testing I had done at the Mimbres Health Fair a couple of months ago. Good luck with that.

The kittens have been gone for a week. Admittedly they have not been mentioned before on here as I've been so remiss about posting, but they are gone and Good Girl - also not mentioned before - is as happy as is possible for her to be while Pretty Boy George is around. (That little saga may or may not be documented on here one day under the heading "Cats I Have Known Recently," or "Saturn in the Sixth.")

The ceramic wall heater has arrived and I need to attach it to the wall in the Tiny Back Room so I can call Delgado and have them come and take out the wall furnace, but as Home Depot, for reasons unknown to me until I call, has cancelled the order for the mirrored bi-fold doors which will go on the front of the closet the removed wall furnace will make room for there isn't really much rush on that.

The 80lbs of kitty litter delivered by Amazon by mistake has finally made it into the living room from the front porch.

In three days I've managed to pack and ship one of the three boxes I'm mailing for Christmas, and yesterday, in a burst of energy, five Christmas cards got written and I'll take them to the post office today.

There's a lot more, but that's all that comes to mind immediately, other than Onward and Upward and Little by Slow.

Mars Square Saturn

OK, so I read astrodienst's interpretation of this and remember it was this aspect that prompted me to start this blog - well, not this one exactly but its predecessor with a slightly more optimistic name - and knowing that I need to drive into town remind myself that I have to go very very slowly and very very cautiously.

Now the day before - Monday - with Mars conjunct Neptune, I did manage to pack up one of the three boxes I'm sending for the festive holiday season before deciding I wasn't going to part with a precious packet of digestive biscuits and opening and eating every single biscuit before retiring to bed to work my way through a second viewing of every season of The Wire.

Not much to do with Neptune there, but the installers did show up with the new water softener before realizing they didn't have the right parts and taking off again, telling me they'd be back the next day, the Mars square Saturn day, and that was the reason I had to go into town to buy salt, one of my favorite things to do, lug 40lb plastic bags around and dream of MetroCards.

So - and if I could only make myself write this every day this boring boring exposition wouldn't be needed -  I decided to be very purposeful and print the label for the one box I did manage to pack up, reminding myself that when I got in the car I would be very very cautious.

OK - remember user name for USPS site, print label, cut out label, take label into kitchen to tape on to box, look at label, realize - because this had happened once before when I was shipping twelve boxes back here from Cambridge and got to the post office with them to be told bar code hadn't printed - that, yes indeed, no bar code on the label, take a deep deep breath, remember what post office service assistant told me on the phone when it happened before, go back to computer, save label as a PDF, print label, bar code prints, tape correct label to box and marvel yet again at the completely unexplainable way that jolly old As Above, So Below continues to work itself out.

Progressed Mercury Conjunct Sun in Second House

 By now I'm resigned to the fact this doesn't mean I keyboard my little fingers away writing the next Broadway hit but does mean I play about ten simultaneous games of Lexulous every night with B and D, taking a break from watching The Wire for a second time because of all I missed on the first go-around every time I hear the little ping that means an email's come in.

The aspect perfects, I think, on 12/23, and I already had airbnb bookings for 12/26 - 27 and January 2 - 3, Mercury proving yet again that among the many things it/he? represents business is high on the list.

Last night, at 11:30, watching The Wire and playing Lexulous, I got a little ping and lo and behold, there's another request for a two-night stay 12/29 and 30. It's beginning to look a lot like me being Mrs. Mopp for the holidays.

Jupiter Square Sun

Oh boy, my kingdom for a packet of digestive biscuits and this every day. That Christmas is only ten days away sunk into my head with a vengeance and I spent hours rummaging through closets trying to find all the stuff I've been amassing all year, unearthing several forgotten treasures and making piles on the dining room table to go into the flat rate boxes.

I've been thinking about my  brilliant idea of going through fifty years' worth of photographs and sending most of them to the person pictured, and yesterday I began the project in earnest. The coffee table is now covered with envelopes with photos sticking out so I know who they're going to and just as soon as I find the Christmas cards I can get going on that.

In the meantime, it's get the boxes packed and shipped, and the minute I get out of bed I'll start on that, but first I have to go and read the Daily Mail. If I do decide to make a new year resolution I think a good one would be to stay out of bed once I get up in the morning and not return there with my cup of coffee and MacBook Air. My *productivity* would probably rise by about 50%.

Pluto Sextile Mars

astrodienst calls this "On a grand scale" and I suppose it's because natal Pluto is in the Fourth that each of the three times (with one more to go next year) it's happened there's been some kind of home-related *circumstance* going on.

Last February I was back in Cambridge shivering inside the locker at Public Storage where the remnants of my New York apartment were costing me $50 a month trying to figure out exactly what those remnants were.

When it happened the second time in June I was back in Cambridge again (I mean, you gotta love this stuff), taking most of it to a thrift shop, having some of it stored by a friend and boxing the rest of it up and shipping it to myself in Silver, thereby saving myself $50 a month.

So here we go with exact transit number three and a new water softener is being installed tomorrow, Eric came and picked up most of the chicken coop yesterday and I need to call him and make sure he's coming back for the rest, I've got two little easy chairs in the addition that has been there since 2002 so I ought to stop calling it the addition that need furniture to match, any day now I'm going to finish painting the little corner thing I've bought and stripping the 1940s phone table/seat thing I got in March and will repaint the kitchen ceiling, a few other minor details in there that I can't even remember and on the grandest scale of all, there's going to be a closet in the little back room so I will have somewhere to hang clothes on this side of the house and will have successfully moved myself into the square footage of what was the original house that we bought in 2002.

I do wonder if, when this transit strikes for one more time in September 2014, I'll sell the house and move into a single-wide so I can recreate the railroad flat I had in New York. Anything is possible.

Mercury Sextile Neptune

Might this explain why this is the day I chose to try to replace the pop-up drain thing in the sink? Mercury (hands) and Neptune (water)? Probably not, as wouldn't a sextile give some chance of success, which it didn't, because after I spent half an hour crouched on the bathroom floor watching videos on YouTube on how to do what I was doing and was feeling so extraordinarily proud of myself, the replacement drain assembly thing I bought from Ace to replace the old one WOULDN'T  FIT DOWN THE PLUG HOLE AND WAS A MILLIMETER TOO SMALL AARRGGGHH!!!!!

However, none of the above is of any importance because since - never mind, I can't upload the image. Will figure out how and continue. Tomorrow.

Full Moon on Descendant with Mars Conjunct Jupiter

So all I was planning on doing yesterday was stripping more paint off the 1940s phone table seat thing I bought at the *estate sale* back in March when I got the tree trunks, painting the little corner piece from Marketplace white and slowly working my way through the long long list of other boring house things that need doing, fully prepared to wake up in the middle of the night to meet whoever was going to appear when the full moon hit my descendant/ascendant axis.

One of the items on the list was "light pilot on stove" and to my real and true amazement, by looking at how-to videos on YouTube and sticking my tongue out of the corner of my mouth, I was able to do it, so was already over the moon, as my brother would say, when D suggested we go to the SouthWest Women's Fibre Arts Collective Festival or whatever it was called at the, er, Silver City Convention Center next to Ace Hardware and just after Tractor Supply Co.

This of course meant a shower and a change of clothes and, in honor of the occasion, I decided not to wear my multi-purpose long corduroy coat (bathrobe, overcoat, indoor house coat etc. etc.) but to dig out the long off-white duster I bought, again from Marketplace, a month or so ago and had worn only once.  This became an object of much desire at one of the booths at the show, where a woman showing hand-dyed and painted clothing went into rhapsodies of delight at what she saw as acres of blank canvas awaiting transformation at her hand. We had a good laugh and I moved smartly on to the next booth, where I splashed out handsomely on two angora penguin finger puppets at a dollar each for Star Child.

So no 3:00 am visitors on the full moon but a definite break from my usual staying-home-by-myself-and-piddling-around existence. Since all women in Silver except me knit or sew or weave or dye or spin or quilt or make rag rugs there were several people there I knew and there was much animated conversion and promises to get together soon. I turned into a Sagittarius for a minute and greeted someone with "Wow! You look great. I didn't recognize you" and then tried to extricate myself by babbling about how long ago it must have been since I'd seen her and her hair was shorter then.

I did manage to leave with my off-white coat pristine, but the five turquoise buttons (cloth, not mineral or whatever the real things is) I got from Yada Yada Yarn will look fabulous once I sew them on, and I even said I'd go into the shop when I'd done it and not be a hermit for a day.

Oh, and I ordered a made-to-measure rag rug runner for the dining room, Silver being probably the only place in the U.S. where handmade things of beauty (honest) cost so little even I can afford such a seemingly extravagant gesture (wrong word, but I can't think of the right one).

Mercury Trine Saturn

Looking up how to do yarn overs and yarn round needle and yarn forwards and finishing rows and having too many stitches and pulling down and counting stitches while knitting and hoping this sweater is not going to be the result of Pluto sextiling Mars by the end of the year.

Mars in the Fifth...

...in Virgo of course, combine it with Moon sextile Moon and you get me going back to knitting with the ladies after recusing myself for several months and trying again to make the most complicated item I've ever tackled - the first complicated item I've ever tackled, to be truthful, as usually all I do is knit a scarf in moss stitch or something and pull it down as soon as it's done because I don't like it.

It's an adult version of a jaw-droppingly beautiful (and intricate)  sweater/tunic one of the ladies made for Star Child. The last time I worked on it was many months ago when Saturn was trining Mars, and with much concentration and counting stitches and pulling down and using every scrap of patience I was capable of I managed to get the sleeves done. Then I took it back to knitting, made an attempt on the first row of the back  (the hem consists of triangular lacy points), couldn't concentrate as the other ladies seemed not to want to sit in silence while working on their own projects  and decided I wouldn't go to knitting any more.

But Mars in Virgo and the Moon came to the rescue and I went back to knitting and sat with my tongue poking out of the corner of my mouth and managed to begin on the triangular pointed hem of the back of the tunic. As soon as I got home I had to pull it all down and start again as I had too many stitches but never mind, it was a start.

Sun Sextile Jupiter

So now that old age is finally showing up in ways other than the lines on my face and the grey in my hair and my flabby underarms I'm in physical therapy for whatever it is I've done to my leg that makes my right thigh hurt when I put pressure on it by going upstairs.

The stronger pain killers help for walking and sometimes I even forget it - whatever it is - has happened, but the minute I go up a level - and there are plenty of different levels around this house - I'm reminded.

Anyway, after my two beginning appointments I was allowed into the gym like a big person today and had a go at the stationary bike and then a very weird machine - arc? - that supposedly is like cross country skiing. Leg lifts, hip extensions, these stretches, those stretches, another go at the piece of rubber that I put my feet into one by one while it's tied to something solid and I swing my legs about, and none of it hurts.

I'm still convinced it's from when Good Girl bit me soon after Pretty Boy George arrived, as I think that even I, in my advanced state of walking around oblivious to anything that doesn't involve myself directly, would have noticed if I'd suddenly injured myself in some way, but whatever it is it's been around now for three and a half going on four months.

Here endeth this extremely boring post.

Venus Square Neptune

So here we are again with everyonceinawhileastrology, wondering when we shall finally admit to ourselves that we are far too lazy and also too disinterested to post on here, and if we changed the name of the blog to thisoldhouse we would have a lot more to write about.

That said, this post title had us (body and soul, that is) wandering around Ace Hardware for an hour or so this morning, first in the garden department for the hour and then a quick waltz around the aisles for a heat lamp and bulb for the well house and some acrylic paints so I can change the color of the handmade rug I've been given so it will fit in with the rest of the house.

Then, as there's a square between Saturn and Neptune in my natal chart, I spent the rest of the day planting the things I'd bought in the garden department and then doing yard work for the rest of the day. Not a loved one in sight and the only soft light came from the heat lamp I bought ha ha.

Sun, Saturn and Ketu

Or is it Rahu? I can never remember - whatever its name it's the one we're supposed to follow if we want to create the most fulfilling life for ourselves - something like that, anyway.

Take me, for example, with a North Node in Cancer in the third, with my signs all over the kitchen saying "Sandwich Bar" and "Self Service Only" and "Kitchen Closed" and my icebox that usually has a bottle of beer and two eggs and a shriveled lemon in it and my refusal to play any part at all in community life except play tennis with one person and UpWords with another.

That's the way to do it, especially if Michael Lutin's directive "Follow your north node and everything will come to you" made such an impression on you when you first heard it you wrote it down on an index card and stuck it next to your computer keyboard.

So - Sunday's eclipse in Scorpio (secrets) in the sixth (service) brought me confirmation that not only would I not be going to Belize (not a surprise, at this point) but that I needn't have bothered signing up for the new credit card that gives me priority boarding and my first checked bag free because I won't be going to Cambridge either - the news coming not from the horse's mouth, as I might once have expected, but from a closely related source in the stable yard.

But I digress. Here we all are, all in the same star ship, all at the same time, all having been given the chance for transformation IF we're willing to work like dogs to make it happen.

Whether cutting a piece of white foam core to cover the eyesore of a gaping hole where a kitchen drawer used to be that was once covered with a too-heavy piece of wood that fell off three years ago and push-pinning said foam core into place before embellishing it with fluorescent pink and green Avery label dots counts as hard work I leave to you, dear reader, to determine. In my opinion, however, it's a yes.

Venus Trine Venus

So when Mars squared Uranus  last Friday I got a call from a summer-time friend here to say she was leaving for Florida, where she and her husband spend winters, and was I interested in a big box of hens and chicks that she'd dug up as they wouldn't make it through the winter outside.

(This seemed like answered prayers as house guest and I had not been able to make it to the cactus ranch in ToC, but when I asked if he wanted any he said he didn't think his Home Owners Association would allow it. I let it pass.)

Along with the Hs and Cs was a great mound of Burro's Tail and a couple of small cacti, which house guest did take, and finally, yesterday, I spent a happy three hours potting up the bounty - photograph to follow just as soon as I figure out how to post ha ha. Okay, so I KNOW how to post. I wish I were using another template so photos would look better. Sigh.

Solar Eclipse in Scorpio in Six

Wasn't expecting much from this as it made no aspect to anything in my chart, and that's exactly what I got - except I had a enquiry about a possible month long stay at Little Walnut B&B in December, operative word possible. No response to my response, but still.

Sun Square Pluto

So my monday appointment was cancelled as the physical therapist was sick and it's Wednesday when I go for my appointment and put my name down on the sign-in sheet: me, time in 10:55, appointment time 11:00, and under doctor I write PT, feeling very accomplished at knowing the abbreviation.

One by one, the other people in the waiting room are summoned by someone in a uniform and disappear. By 11:15 I'm the only person left. (When I went for my follow-up after first seeing a doctor I sat in a windowless room for an hour and a half, going out twice to the receptionist and being assured I hadn't been forgotten, the doctor would be along in just a minute, which he was - 90 of them.)

Bearing that in mind, 15 minutes was a blink of the eye, so to speak, though how a PT session, even in Silver, could run over time I couldn't quite figure out. I'll wait another five minutes, I think, and then I'll say I can't wait any longer as I have another appointment scheduled. No need that I could see to mention the appointment was to go home and pick up my house guest so we could drive to ToC to the cactus ranch.

Just as I was about to get up and, with as much temperance as I could muster, say my piece, the receptionist looked at me and said "You're still waiting?"  Given the answer by the look on my face she looked down at the sign-in sheet. "Oh," she says. "You're here for physical therapy! You're in the wrong place! Go on through and go down the corridor and... etc. etc. etc."

"Oh!" say the physical therapy people when I go down the corridor etc. etc. etc. "There you are! We wondered what happened to you etc. etc. etc..."

When I eventually get back home with my circular piece of orange rubber to tie round a leg of the dining room table to do my exercises, a voice in my head prompts me to call the cactus ranch, a mere two-and-a-half hour drive away over a mountain range.

"Welcome to Bob's Cactus Ranch," says Bob's recorded voice. "We're open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from nine to three etc. etc. etc..."

Moon Conjunct Jupiter

So here I am with my heart full of love, kindness and friendship wondering what you're supposed to wear to physical therapy and if we'll make it to ToC today or not to go to the cactus and succulent nursery, we being me and a friend from Palm Springs who's here for a few days.

In theory we were going yesterday but a computer problem - his, not mine - took up most of the day and as ToC, like most *attractions* in this area, is two and a half hours away, put paid to that little pleasure trip.

Here endeth my yet one more time attempt as posting on here more often. With a heart full of love, kindness and friendship I am going to do the dishes from last night and see if I can stop the left front burner on the stove from only lighting halfway around and sending out three inch flames on the bit that lights because the fried green tomatoes bubbled over.

Only Moon Aspects Today

... and I'm thinking, Blimey, this is weird, physical therapy for the first time in my life and only the Moon trine Venus and the phone rings and it's the doctor's office and the therapist is sick and I'm postponed till Wednesday.

Wednesday aspect? Sun square Pluto. That's better.

And on the same day.....

....yesterday, while Venus was trining Pluto, Mars was trining Venus, and what do I do?

Interesting - just discovered I saved the above as a draft, and at this point have absolutely no idea what the answer to the question is.

Moral: write this blog every day or don't bother.

Full moon on Mercury

As I rarely write on here these days I have probably not mentioned that there's been a mild chance that I'd be spending ten days or so in Belize in the middle of November. Sometimes it's been a yes, sometimes a maybe, every once in a while a yes with conditions (sleeping under a palm tree), then a no again when the latter turned to be (fortunately for me) prohibited.

With my extensive astrological knowledge and past history of accurate *predictions*, I was pretty sure this full moon would answer the question for me once and for all.

It didn't. But I did get an email from my publisher (ahem) that a copy of one of my plays had been sold, making me a Canadian quarter richer.

Venus Square Mars

One of the better days I've had in a long time, but with no vestige of arguments or discord "arising from unexpressed sexuality" that I was aware of, nor did I find myself "inordinately attracted to find a partner without being very discriminating" (astrodienst as always).

I did find myself trying very hard to find someone who knew something about water softeners, which is turning out to be a futile pursuit, but with my new-found determination to understand the mysteries of the workings of this house it had occurred to me that there must be some way to bypass the water's going into the non-functioning water softener once it gets pumped out of the ground or the holding tank or wherever it comes from so it comes straight into the supply for the house.

 (For several days I'd been getting my exercise by hobbling up the hill to the well house when I needed to shower or flush the toilet or wash dishes, hobbling back down and doing what it was I needed to do that involved water and then hobbling back up to turn the water off when I was done, as whenever the water supply to the house was on the non-working-properly softener was pumping gallons of water out onto the ground so it ran down the hill and flooded the back patio.)

Peering around at the tangle of pipes on the ground near the water softener was as futile as trying to find a technician, but when I called T the Wonder Plumber he came through yet again, telling me the bypass valve was on top of the softener, and all I had to do was push it from one side to the other.

I did, and lo and behold, the incoming water to the house no longer pumped half of itself out onto the ground but all came waste-lessly (?) out of the taps (faucets to you). And this was only the beginning.

Next came a trip to the dump, one of the greater pleasures in life now that I live where I live, and after that it was over to D's house to pick as many green tomatoes as I could find, which turned out to be a lot.

Venus Opposed to Uranus

So on Tuesday I'd called Sears because the water softener up in the well house is going beserk. It's unplugged, because it hasn't been working well (ha!) for a while and with all the other house expenses I've had lately I figured I'd do without it for a while. Unplugged or not, I realized it had been discharging itself all night, with water being pumped out on to the ground, and while there was more rain this summer than in the past three or four years put together I'm not about to waste water like that.

Sears told me a technician would get back to me in 24 hours to make an appointment, but surprise surprise no one had called. Yesterday, with the subject aspect, I called Sears again and when the phone rang ten minutes later, with a rather touching faith I picked it up expecting it to be someone willing to come rushing out to fix the softener.

Instead, it was a DHL delivery man in El Paso, telling me he had something for me and if I needed to go out I should leave a signed authorization for him to leave the package in my absence. I asked him if it was from the U.K., he said it was, and I've been expecting my renewed passport any day now and said I would.

He hadn't come by the time I did have to go out, so I left a note and took myself off.  There was a notice in the mailbox to pick up two packages from the post office, which turned out to be the camera I ordered ten days ago and plants I'd ordered back in June, both of which I knew were coming.

When I got back to the house my passport was waiting on the front porch - three deliveries in one day, but not one of them a real surprise. The good real surprise was a notice from Tufts University that a subscription to their Catnip newsletter had been taken out in my name by my beloved A in New York. The bad surprise - the camera doesn't work and has to go back to B&H.

Venus Trine Pluto

Oh dear. How many times does it have to be proved to me that in my case Venus has absolutely nothing to do with love?

Let me now, as usual, immediately contradict myself and say I suppose it does, a little bit, as when A calls, as he did yesterday, and with many apologies for his lack of technological skills asks me to order a book from alibris for him, I tell him about six times, in all honesty, that it's no bother, I can do it in three minutes, it's not an imposition, I don't mind doing it and he can ask me any time he wants to do it for him. What I don't tell him is that he's someone who's become very dear to me, which I know he knows.

AND he insists on reimbursing me with a little bit extra.

Generalized Musings

for want of a better title. Just when, I ask myself, do I acknowledge   my love affair with astrology is coming to an end and change the name of this blog to Life In The Country?

Do I take the broad view and say Neptune in the Eleventh is wiping out any goals I may once have had while at the same time Pluto is making his way through the Ninth changing my thinking to such an extent that I've begun to drink water with a slice of lemon in it a couple of times a day so what do I expect?

Or do I do something else and go to Walmart?

Mars Square Ascendant

Okay, so we had a little bit of a disagreement about where exactly the house was, with me saying it had to be closer in to San Lorenzo and D saying the map said it was out by Little Toad Inn and me saying well Google Maps can't even get Village Road right let alone somewhere  thirty miles away from Silver but all that being said, at the exact time Mars squared the Ascendant there I was trying to get Zippy up a 30 degree slope strewn with rocks the size of dinner plates.

How how how how how can it be?

Mercury Square Pluto

Well, I don't know about hidden forces and psychological energies that could change my life being brought to light, but I did collect a gallon container of water from the well and take it off to the harvest festival in San Lorenzo to get it tested for free at the health fair - pretty nice, I thought: Mercury (enquiring minds) square deep-down (Pluto) the well, although I suppose Neptune should have been active there somewhere to make it completely accurate symbolically.

Oh! Thinks! Transiting Neptune's in Pisces! All's right with the world.

And speaking of hidden, I also had some blood drawn for a cholesterol test, and I'm expecting a police escort as soon as the results are known to get me to a doctor ASAP.

Saturn Trine Mars

So this is back again, for the third and final time, and while I'm too lazy to look back here to see what happened in January (assuming I wrote anything ha ha, although I think I was busy changing the name of this blog and starting it as a new one), I know in March I was able to knit two cable and lacy sleeves for a sweater for myself, the most complicated (and frustrating) pattern I've ever attempted. I haven't picked up the knitting bag since then and am showing no signs of doing so now, with a few days to go.

I have managed to paint the frame of the mirror I bought in Santa Fe for $4.99 and the metal surround of a clock I bought for $1.99 and hang them in the living room, although the jury's still out on whether I like the way they look or not.

Also, in a sudden fit of home improvement, I took down the two bits of poster board I was using as a bulletin board in the orifice and replaced them with the framed piece of green felt (frame also repainted black and jury still sequestered in the well house.)

Thinks! Is this Sun in Libra in the sixth? Will today's new moon bring the sewing machine out and lead to my making cushion covers from the yards and yards and yards of fabric I cannot stop myself from accumulating?  Will those summer dresses for Star Child finally take shape?

Not so fast, Dear Aries. I see Venus has just moved herself into my Seventh House, so the sewing machine will have to stay under wraps for a while longer, unless of course I decide, thrifty as always, to run up my own wedding dress.

Progressed Mercury Nearing Progressed Sun in Second

I'm boring myself with the Chiron square Uranus chronicle so will attempt a description of what the transit above seems to be meaning.  (And yes, I am aware it's not actually a transit above, it's the using the symbolic year for a day method of prediction which is even more mind-boggling than the regular old transiting planets aspecting natal ones.)

So - with both progressed planets in Gemini (commerce) and due to come together on Christmas Day, over the past year I've managed to refinance the house, saving me a chunk of change each month, begun a B&B which is not exactly bringing in a noticeable income, and sent many of my possessions off to a store in town which takes things on consignment, ditto re income.

I've become obsessed with playing Lexulous on line and am now playing with three different people, spending at least a couple of hours a night glued to the screen.

There's a well-paid copy-editing job in the works which may or may not happen, and also a possible trip to Belize (transiting Pluto in the ninth) which will set me back a couple of thousand dollars at least.

That's about all I can come up with at the moment, with an email telling me one of my partners has played a move waiting in my in- box, but when and if my word-addled brain comes up with anything else, you'll be the first to know.

More on Chiron Square Uranus

So yesterday I was off to get a second cup of coffee and today here I am on my first, and thank God, on the day the "series of unexpected incidents" perfected, all that happened was that with Sun sextile Pluto, I got the paint brush out started changing the many picture frames I've been buying lately to black - nice and appropriate for the Lord of Darkness.

Anyway, there I was on a Sunday afternoon with the water turned off and no more drips coming into the bucket, and lo and behold, when I turned the kitchen taps on to do some dishes, nothing came out! Once again Pioneer woman sprung to the rescue and, armed with a couple of empty plastic gallon water containers, made her way up to the well house, where she used the outside spigot (or is a ballcock?) to do a Jack and Jill, feeling very fortunate she had just taken a shower.

Next morning, she called T***y R, the plumber who had installed the plumbing in the first place, eleven years ago, and the morning after that, Tuesday, he returned her call and was at the house in thirty minutes. Then followed a very messy scene during which he got up on a step-stool and began to pull down about twelve square feet of sodden ceiling and a yard or two of dripping insulation while Pioneer Woman stood by stuffing it all into a series of trash bags and dragging them out on to the back patio.

I then, reverting to the first person, did a couple of sprints up to the well-house and back turning the water on and off while T***y looked up at the exposed copper tubing to see if anything was making a difference. It wasn't. As far as T could guess, the leak was the result of something called electrolysis, two of the pipes coming in contact with each other and causing a minute  honeycomb effect of tiny pin holes. According to him, the leak had been going on for months, building up a larger and larger pool of
water which had waited till Sunday to break through. No argument from me.

Next morning, T the Younger and his helper appeared and replaced the piping, telling me one of my neighbors was an expert sheet-rocker and would probably be willing to do the job of patching up the ceiling for me. Drawing a veil over the "When Father Papered the Parlour" aspect of the repair job, it was completed in a week or so, and any day now I'll have scraped the last piece of plaster off the French doors.

Against my better judgment, I then asked not-so-expert-at-all as it had turned out sheet-rocking neighbor if he would loosen the well-house water filter container for me, as I'd been trying unsuccessfully to do it myself for months. It's a ridged circular plastic thingie that's suspended off the pipe that goes from the water softener to the main water supply (or something like that), and you turn it by putting a tennis racket shaped thing without the strings onto it from underneath and moving it ridge by ridge. At least you do if you're not me.

And once again, to be continued. It's very long. And mostly boring.

Chiron Square Uranus...

...and Sun sextile Pluto, both exact today at 5:15 this afternoon. With Chiron square Uranus, astrodienst tells me, "a political party or like-minded group of people of which you were once a member has lost its appeal," and looking at the fast diminishing (?) number of posts I've been making on here, there's not much arguing with that - the like-minded group of people being those who believe in the validity of the "as above, so below" maxim.

This could take me seamlessly into a dissertation on the early days of my *discovery*, when Progressed Sun conjuncted natal Uranus, but that can wait. Having resolved yesterday, and so far being able to carry it through today ha ha, to write before I do anything else in the morning - peeing, weighing myself, feeding cats and making coffee excepted - that topic will be covered in full detail later in my, er, writing life.

Today I'll attempt to cover other manifestations of the Chiron square Uranus aspect, focusing on the fact that transiting Chiron is currently in the water sign of Pisces and "above" is intent on making that clear to me in case I'm not aware of it.

The leak in the kitchen ceiling appeared three weeks ago on a Sunday. I'd taken a shower and was getting dressed when I heard the unmistakable sound of water splashing onto a floor and discovered a gentle bulge - a kind of upside down hill - in the kitchen ceiling, with a steady stream of water trickling out. Black Range Woman sprang immediately into action and whisked the bucket from underneath the sink, dumped the rags and old sponges and assorted brushes and tins of hardened shoe polish it contained on the counter, placed it under the leak and wiped the floor dry with some of the rags, standing back when that was done to stare at it as it rapidly filled with water and wondering what to do next.

Here I have to admit to a certain pride in not only realizing I could probably go up to the well house and turn off the water supply to the house but actually being able to do just that, no small accomplishment for someone to whom the word "well" used to conjure up an image of one of those picturesque round brick things which Jack and Jill went up the hill to get a bucket of water from, not a mysterious collection of machinery with pipes and valves and pressure measurers and compressors that needs its own little house to live in.

As a second cup of coffee has now been earned, here endeth part one of the "below" chronicle of Chiron square Uranus as it manifested in the life of the author.

Chiron Square Uranus

A series of sudden and unexpected events, eh? And they'll strain my nerves to the utmost, especially if I've spent the last few years trying to please everyone? That lets me out, as ever since I came out here to live in June of 2012 I've done exactly as I pleased, admittedly as a reaction to the time in Cambridge before then.

Does a leak in the kitchen ceiling count? Having the two cats - an event in itself, really - fight all the time? (OK, OK, so I haven't written for a long time.) Doing something to the inside of my right thigh so it hurts, but only when I walk ha ha?

More to come. Maybe.

Chiron Conjunct Mars

Really, astrology is such a crock (?) - Chiron conjuncts Mars exactly on the 13th and it's not until Monday the 16th that I have my doctor's appointment to try to figure out what's going on inside my right thigh - off by three whole days, when I haven't been near a doctor's office for about ten years.

Mars Conjunct Pluto

Well at the very least this usually gets me to do the ironing or clean the kitchen floor, so I was a little perturbed when at two in the afternoon I was still in bed playing Lexulous and reading my library book - a biography of P. G. Wodehouse, now about a month overdue and which I opened for the first time about three days ago.

It wasn't that I hadn't gotten up. It was just that whenever I did there was an overwhelming compulsion to go back to bed, and having the will power I have these days I didn't fight.

I did eventually make it out of bed and stay there, and made up for my morning of sloth by getting straight into my widening the driveway project, which involves removing all the logs and rocks which used to line it on one side and which I regularly drove over and had to call Triple A to be extricated from, replacing them two feet further in and filling in the resultant slope with dirt. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that and just as soon as I find the camera/computer cord I'll save myself 998 of them, except I don't have a good "before."

After managing to dig up one agave, which I have just discovered, as will you too if you click on the link, is a genus of monocots (!) and was once safely (except when I ran over it ha ha) on the other side of the logs but since my widening project was now situated twelve inches into the driveway, I transplanted it to an area of the *outside* I'm attempting to landscape but haven't touched so far this year.

That involved picking up all the lava rock once inside the log barrier but now.....ditto the agave...., putting it in a bucket and carrying it to the to-be-landscaped area, and since I haven't been into town to buy weed cloth, cutting up the old almost worn out tarp covering the firewood and using THAT as weed cloth, putting it on the ground and covering it with lava rock.

This morphed quickly into weeding, an exercise in futility at best and being stabbed by hidden cholla at worst, worst winning out, which turned into weeding the cactus garden in front of the house, which turned quite quickly into thinking Mars had done quite enough for one day thank you very much.

I have now turned the whole thing over to Serena Williams and am now wondering whether I should just consider the match a foregone conclusion or have another beer and watch it through to the end.

Saturn Square Pluto

Five days to go and the bills are piling up - on top of the $1000 for car repair and sent-to-the-wrong-address doctor's bills, l got another invoice yesterday from the same doctor for $20 for "pharmacy charge" - calling in a prescription for me. Plumber's bill for well house is now paid.

Two days ago I took a shower, went into the kitchen and saw water dripping through the ceiling. Very proud of myself, I turned the water supply off in the well-house. A large part of the kitchen ceiling is now in garbage bags waiting for me to take it to the dump, and two (different) plumbers are up a ladder replacing copper pipes, invoice to be sent when job is done.

I haven't called the water softener people to tell them which error codes are showing up, as I'd like to delay that until I know what plumbing repair will cost. Ditto electrician to fix whatever is wrong, and until that's done, a new microwave is on hold.

Yesterday I made an appointment with a sports doctor (!!!!!!!) to try to find out what I've done inside my right thigh. That's not till the 16th and this aspect is over as of the tenth, but something tells me $$$$$ are going to be involved there.

On the plus side, I sold the big desk I took out of the back room when the daybed went in for $20 -  prescription bill. The dining room is now down to basics -  a table and four chairs. Tea dance every afternoon at four: admission $10.00. Less is more.

Venus Trine the Moon

This is what you get when your Sun and Moon are 60 degrees apart - an opposition to one one day and a trine to the other the next, in this case extremely fortunate as I was able to lounge around all day and watch the U. S. Open, a consequence of my overindulgence of the evening before.

Venus Opposed to Sun

This is scraping the bottom of the barrel, but when I went to Walmart this morning I'd parked and was walking in when a man with a trolley stopped me and said "Ma'am, would you like a good cart?"

And I did would like. I also bought some Clamato Juice - my newest addiction - and it tasted so good I downed three Bloody Marys all by myself.

Chiron Conjunct Mars

Do something for the body? In my case that's lots of ibuprofin and as of last night when I woke up at three an application of Deep Freeze Pain Relief or whatever it's called that I bought in Walmart last week but hadn't used.

It's been at least three weeks since I pulled a muscle or strained a ligament or whatever variation on those two things is going on in my right thigh, and my usual ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away isn't working. I'm getting used to going up stairs left foot first but I predict a visit to a doctor before too long it matters don't improve.

Maybe when Saturn goes into seven (can hardly wait for that) it will all get better....

Jupiter Conjunct North Node

So I did as I'd said I would and read through the revised script of Just For You for errors only, found a couple and hit Save just as the Jupiter conjuncted exactly *my* north node in the third, a more than mild surprise when I realized it.

No tennis, as we're on Every-Other-Day till D's knee heals completely, and feeling incredibly smug as I'd had the foresight to buy printer cartridges in Office Max when we went to Cruces two weeks ago, I pulled out the three-hole-punch I'd also bought and loaded up the printer.

Do not ever buy a Canon Pixma. Before it prints anything, which it often doesn't, it does a two minute warm up with grinding wheels and wheezing noises before the screen says Printing From PC, and the paper jams whatever you are trying to print.

When I loaded it with three-hole-punch paper, which at great and ridiculous expense I  bought when I got the ink cartridges, it printed a page and then jammed. Take paper out, hit OK, put paper back in and wait for grinding noises to subside before it spits out another page. Repeat for three pages. Notice middle hole of three is jagged and torn on all three pages. Realize Pixma cannot cope with three hole punch paper. Realize *should* have bought three-hole-punch and plain cheap paper instead of expensive already punched three-hole.

Also realize Mercury is opposed to Mars.

Sun Sextile Saturn

I've been working on the last scene of Just For You, for which there is not yet a link (note positive attitude), for probably two weeks now, changing a line or two a day and telling myself I must not know my characters well if I have this much trouble making them talk (note negative attitude).

Whether it was due to Sun sextile Saturn or being aware of an approaching deadline for a submission opportunity or both or neither makes no difference - I managed to have all three characters say something that was *better* than they were saying before and hit Save in the middle of the afternoon, vowing to read it through one more time the next day for errors only and CHANGING NOT A WORD before printing and sending it out.

Venus Trine Uranus

Ah yes, the unexpected - bored with my usual routine, I decided today was the day to climb down into the little arroyo that crosses my private path to the outside world and clear the tubes that the water is supposed to go through underneath the road from the debris that washes down and clogs them up, giving me my very own Lake Erie which, with the amount of rain there has been this year, is threatening to flood completely across the road and leave me marooned on my 5.9 acres here in the Land of Enchantment.

Have I ever mentioned I once had a creative writing instructor who told me I wrote as though I had to get every thought in my head out in the first sentence?

Saturn Square Pluto

Forget about all these piddly Sun Mercury Venus transits that I can never be bothered to document these days - here comes pass #3 of Let's All See Just How Much Money I Have To Shell Out Until This Perfects On September 10 - only another two and a half weeks ha ha.

I've needed an electrician and a microwave for at least two weeks, ever since the outlet spat out flames and did in the iron as well. I did break down and buy a new iron (for a big $17 from Walmart) as unfortunately my summer clothes need one. I'm holding off on the electrician and microwave as ever since I moved the day bed into the back computer room so I'd have privacy if there were an airbnb booking the airbnb bookings have withered on the vine, apart from the fact of course that I don't know an electrician to call if I wanted to.

So so far, because of my wondrous connection to the workings of the universe, I've had to call a plumber about what I now know (since I got the bill) is called the sillcock on the outside of the well house where the unsalted water comes out so I don't pour brine all over the garden as I used to and wonder why nothing grew. The water softener is playing up - the low salt light is on all the time even though there's plenty of salt and the Reset Salt Level doesn't work - so I asked the plumber to take a look at that for me.

He did, and told me to unplug it, wait eight minutes, and then see what error codes showed up so I could call Kenmore and tell them and they can send someone out to fix it for God knows how much. The error codes are 5R29 and R20, but I'll pass on calling Kenmore because of the other unexpected expenses that have been popping up.

One was the car that I scraped on one of the the picturesque historic two-feet high sidewalks that downtown Silver City boasts - that was $529, and then yesterday a bill for $500 from the psychiatrist I see in New York appeared with Pamela, Past Due, Please Remit written on it. When I called to say this was the first I knew of it, I was told 'Yes, we've had some trouble locating you. We've had several letters returned from New York and didn't know where you were', which confirmed me in my belief that when I had the phone consult last September right after Sweet Pea went missing Dr. X couldn't understand a word I was saying as I was crying so hard. I did NOT say that because of that I thought I'd been given a break and hadn't been billed, just closed my eyes and hoped September 10 hurries up.

Mars Opposed to Midheaven

No problems with this one - no one at home to argue with ha ha.

Mercury Sextile Uranus

This one's easy - more than enough excitement, thank you very much, when I found out fixing the bumper on the car that I scraped on the high sidewalks downtown on Saturday is going to cost $520 to fix, when I thought all it needed was a paper clip or two to join the bits of plastic together. Thanks to my Celexa arriving a week ago and my by now heavily sedated self ha ha I was able to take it quite calmly and determined for the Nth time this month to get my taxes done, not that there will be much of a refund this year as I haven't paid anything in.

Later in the day, and very surprisingly as I'd forgotten I had it - the Trickster reared his head or took over my fingers or something and I shortened and hemmed - O Wonder of Wonders -  the Fresh Produce dress I bought for $2 weeks ago when Tennis Partner and I were on one of our thrift shop crawls. Now if I can just take out the waist on the blue polka dot shorts, hem the capris, run up a few dresses for Star Child, make the twin size flannel sheets for the day bed, mend the Marimekko duvet that Sweet Pea tore to shreds at the bottom...maybe when Uranus gets to Mercury in three years or so.

Mercury Conjunct Pluto

So I have a strong desire to get to the bottom of every question, do I? Might that involve the foot high pile of papers and photos and god knows what else I've just assembled on the dining room table, there being no room to do it in the *office* any more since I got a smaller desk and me being determined to use the dining room as something other than a space to walk through to get to the bathroom and laundry room and all.

Talk about a mixture - it's all the un-filed paperwork from this year - work orders for the car, paper copies of the few bills I don't pay online, stray documents left over from the refinance, photos going back years and years and years, three sets of scribbled dimensions for the big desk I want to sell because I kept losing what I'd written before I posted, a membership form for the food co-op -  Oh Lordie.

I do finally have a workable configuration of furniture in the new bedroom cum office, so as I work my way through the pile I do in theory have a place to put every piece of paper, although the diagram with written instruction of how to work the shower in the MBR has me puzzled, unless I make a new file folder labelled *Useful House Information*, or stick it in the folder I made years ago called *Nowhere else to Put It*.

And as I'm only halfway down the pile and don't want to lose momentum, enough of this right now and back to the dining room.

Mars Square Sun

So I went to the dump yesterday and was determined to go again today, as I am ridding myself of all my worldly goods in an attempt to squash me and my belongings into the old side of this house so the addition, built in 2002, has none of my personal stuff in it and is instantly ready for all the B&B guests I haven't had for a month.

I also had stuff to take to the humane society thrift shop and something for Habitat's Restore, which involved loading up the car so what gets thrown out first is easily accessible and the stuff for Restore, which inconveniently for me doesn't open till 1:00 pm, closer to the front seats and last to go.

This involved a lot more thought than I am used to expending these days, and what with my Celexa not having arrived and trying to tell a friend what time I'd be meeting her for the little cultural outing we had planned when I had no idea when I'd have the car loaded or how long it would take me at the dump I was not, shall we say, calm when I turned off my very own little dirt road on to the bigger dirt road that leads to the *main* road into town.

It was with Mars/Saturn prominent in my chart that I began to write this blog, with STOP signs popping up wherever I drove. This morning it wasn't quite as literal, *just* three huge pieces of Volvo earth moving equipment right at the intersection of Village and Little Walnut. (For the first time in years there's been something resembling a monsoon season here, and the dirt road is covered with little rocks.)

I was looking at My Tax Dollars At Work, otherwise known to those of us cosmically connected to the mysterious and wondrous workings of the universe as Mars square the Sun. I was only ten minutes late for my appointment at the museum.

Venus Conjunct Jupiter

Hmmmmm....definitely something wrong here. "Infectious good mood"? "Optimistic, eager and outgoing, warm and friendly to everyone I meet?".

Ah, must be because it's only 7:30 am and I haven't run into anyone yet. I bet when I get to the dump and show my driver's license to the woman who checks you in I'll feel a lot different. "Good morning," I'll say to her. "Isn't it a beautiful day? And could you please tell me where I put this microwave that I blew out the other day and can't find a replacement for, and does this iron that also blew out go with big electronics or can I just throw it into the pit with all my regular trash?"

"Blew out your microwave and iron?" she'll say to me. "Hey, I know a wonderful electrician who's very reasonable and always comes promptly exactly when he says he's going to come. Would you like me to give you his number?"

"Wow," I'll say, "Yes, please, and do you know anybody who would like to buy the little desk I just bought that doesn't fit where I wanted it to go so I think I'm going to move the big old desk I was going to get rid of back into the little room where it was and so I don't really need the new desk now...."

Oh Lordie. Life in the country.....

Mercury Sextile Chiron

So I find myself getting more and more pissed at things that usually roll off my back like water off a duck's and a little bell goes off - it's been going off for weeks actually but I've ignored it - and I realize the Celexa - the website of which says is prescribed to treat depression but in my case works by enabling me to keep my temper - I ordered five weeks ago isn't here.

When I call the online Canadian pharmacy and push 3 to enquire about an order already placed - and this is the short version of the ensuing conversation - I'm told the prescription I sent was dated September of last year and prescriptions are valid for only six months, and that I was called a week ago to advise me of this.

What phone number did you use, ask I with sinking heart, and surprise surprise the phone number they called was the Boston landline of Amah who's been in St. Croix for the past six months and never uses that phone anyway but uses a mobile. Could you please change that phone number, I say, to the one that's been valid for the past fourteen months, and would you please tell me when it was that I paid for this order, along with free shipping for a year?

Oh, July 2, yes, that's when I thought it was, I say, and yes, please do fax the doctor's office and ask for a new prescription, I'd really appreciate that, and if the number you have for him happens to be his old number because I know he's moved would you please call me back and let me know so I can call him myself and sort this out, and no thank you, there really isn't anything else you can do for me today except send a valid prescription off to a pharmacy so I can get my mitts on the Celexa and -

No, I didn't say that last bit, but boy, did I think it, and if I have to dredge around for one good thing to say I suppose it's that it got me to post on here, seeing as how there's no one here I can vent to in person which is probably a very good thing...

Please allow three weeks for delivery? I don't think so.

Sun Conjunct Pluto

Not a criminal or axe murderer in sight unless the woman in the post office is leading a double life, and she certainly didn't exert unreasonable power over me, just took the envelope marked Media Mail and charged me $2.38. (She's the one who endeared herself to me the last time I was there by asking as I was leaving if she'd already asked me if I needed stamps - scarcely someone to be wary of.)

So - a totally innocuous manifestation but perhaps Venus square Uranus on the same day toned it down a bit.

Mars Trine Mars Part II

So if what I was supposed to do yesterday was take the initiative and start a new project, I was successful. According to astrodienst, I was "most strongly motivated toward tasks that bring credit" to me and express me as an individual, and while I haven't noticed too much credit coming my way so far there are probably not too many landscaping (read keep the deer out) projects that involve cast iron head and foot boards and a broken metal screen bought for $1 from that room at Ikea near the checkout counters where they have all the damaged stuff they can't sell for full price.

True to my usual extravagant purchasing style when buying anything other than plants, I'd bought only one can of Hunter Green Hammered Rust-O-Leum when *planning* this project, and that ran out before the two bits of the screen were painted and ready to be made useable by joining them together with a stretch of wire netting, a solution that's taken me six years to come up with.

First order of business today after I've rewritten the last scene of Just For You, printed out two copies and mailed them off ha ha is a trip to Ace, and with Sun conjunct Pluto and Venus square Uranus I might just manage to get Serious Deer Barrier #1 in place before the sun goes down. Or not.

Mars Trine Mars Part I

So last night when I get back from ABQ I check out astrodienst, see this will be the aspect du jour today and consider it auspicious for the one thing I am telling myself I would really like to get done today - print out a couple of copies of Just For You and get them in the mail.

Note I say "the one thing I am telling myself I would really like to get done today." None of this intention or goal stuff for me, not with natal Mars in the oh-so-energetic sign of Pisces, even it is being trined today by transiting Mars in Cancer in the Third, chart sector of information and communication (and of course short distances and neighbors and in-laws and a lot of other things I hope not to have to bother with today).

I've been awake for exactly four hours, since 6:00 am, and what you see here is as far as I've gotten so far towards the thing I'm telling myself I would really like to get done today - writing down that I'd like to do it.

One of the things I have done - (as well as, among many other things, wander around outside and do some weeding, torture the Silver Lace Vine to get it to go where I want it to go and not where it wants to go, clean out the litter boxes, read an article on storage solutions in a March 2003 edition of This Old House that I've just found, spray on old iron headboard with Hunter Green Rust-O-Leum (don't ask), take all the plants out of the kitchen window box in the probably deluded hope that I'm going to climb into the sink to clean the window later in the day and decide I want to take a course in Spanish at WNMU) - is divide the number of days in the year so far by the number of posts I've made on here to see just how *accurate* the name of this blog is.

Pardon my cliche, but to my surprise the result is 2.40, which means I can leave the name as it is and not have to change it to Whenever-I-Feel-Like-Writing-A-Post-Astrology, which has been my MO since I began it. And now that this has brought my day to year posting ratio down to 2.37, it's time to check my Apple stock again and wipe the spiders' nests out of the corner of the kitchen window.

to be continued

Jupiter Conjunct Saturn

Confront my own inhibitions and self-restrictions, as well as the restrictions placed upon me by circumstances?

How about wish this paralyzing grand trine in water we are all being treated to right now which also involves my natal Saturn hurries up and passes so I am capable of  DOING something?

Jupiter Square Neptune

So after barely watching YouTube after my six-month sojourn sleeping on the floor in Cambridge last year when I did nothing but watch films noirs night after night, suddenly I discover The Barchester Chronicles and lose myself in period drama *of the highest order* - Donald Pleasence, Alan Rickman, Nigel Hawthorne as I've never seen him, Susan Hampshire and the one and only Geraldine McEwan as the first wife of Hyacinth Bucket's Richard of Keeping Up Appearances (look them up yourself) - all comporting themselves in exquisite costumes in a green and pleasant England where the sun always shines and the lower classes know their place down to the last correct missing haitch - who could ask for anything more?

Not me, now that I'm done with Barchester and working my way through He Knew He Was Right, not quite as compelling but compelling enough to keep me in bed all day yesterday watching it  while Neptune cooperated fully and kept a soft and gentle rain falling, slowly turning the parched and barren land a spring-like green and - blimey, it's a very good thing Saturn's about to enter the picture and git me off to git my railings cleaned. More soon.

Sun Square Sun

Blimey, read the astrodienst interpretation for this and you'll pull the covers over your head and stay in bed all day - "a time of challenge and crisis.....occurs in the form of persons working at cross-purposes to your efforts....you may be very angry at these people.....challenges in connection with your efforts to build something up..." - sheesh!

I thought it was supposed to be more to do with it being three (or nine) months since your birthday and you *should* be looking at your goals (hah!) for the year and seeing how far you'd gone towards accomplishing them.

Whichever, a Sun sextile Jupiter following on the heels of the square must have somehow shoved me into printing out a photo I took in June of Star Child wearing a dress a friend of mine bought for her two years ago and sticking it an envelope for said friend with a note saying thank you for the book she sent me this past Christmas.

I also managed to parcel up the eight-gore embroidered coral colored Ghost skirt I bought on eBay.uk and had shipped to my sister without telling her (I did tell her but she didn't read the email) so that when it arrived she thought her fairy godmother had sent her a present, put it on immediately and waltzed off to asda (England's Walmart) in it, only to be told by her daughter not to be so stupid and of course it wasn't for her, read the packing slip.

That was two years ago and I've been meaning to send it back to her ever since as she's much taller than me and it looks much better on her, and on top of packing that up for the post office I sent another printed out photo and a child's dress I was going to put on eBay to someone else as yet another belated thank you but that one's too complicated to even go near explaining.

That made three things I managed to get done - pitiful by many people's standards, I know, but I can only compare myself to myself blah blah blah and it's a good day if I cross one item off a list these days - and bearing astrodienst's warning in mind, I wondered exactly what I might meet at the post office where any transaction involving another country seems to cause consternation and stress and learning new software to the counter person and takes at least twenty minutes, and thank God I'm where I am and not New York or the people in line behind me would riot.

Imagine my surprise, then, dear reader, when all went smoothly - I put the letter in the right slot in the lobby and the woman who dealt with the packages was unfazed and civil with not a challenge or crisis in sight.

Au contraire, as a matter of fact, as she endeared herself to me as a kindred spirit by saying as she gave me the receipt "Have I already asked you if you need stamps?"

astrodienst nil, me three.

Retrograde Mercury in the Third

So Mercury is retrograde in the third conjunct the Sun no less, and I'm trying hard to deal with the mass of old letters, photographs (fifty years' worth), postcards written and unwritten and all the other *stuff* I shipped back or brought back from Cambridge when the locker got emptied (Yeah! No fifty dollar fee this month!).

The photos are the most intimidating task as I've decided I need to send the ones of other people on to the other people concerned, keeping just one or two for myself, so they all need going through and sorting into piles and then go into envelopes and then I have to look for addresses and write a note to go with the photos and write BEWARE - THE PAST IS INSIDE - on the back of the envelope and get stamps and...

The letters are easy - shove them in the box with the ones I had already here and don't look at them, although as it's beginning to look as though I might actually sign my will in the next few weeks the best thing to do with them would be to sort them out and have them all ready in big envelopes to be given back to the writers of them in the event of my death, but no need to get carried away here.

Postcards are easy as well, same method to use as with the letters. It's the five photo albums and the three shoeboxes full of photos I just dumped on the desk in the addition that are the challenge. How long is Mercury retrograde?

Venus Sextile Uranus

So no tennis because we thought the courts might be wet and the only thing to do was to watch Wimbledon - men's semifinal, Djokovich and Del Potro.

Exciting? Yes, a great game. Different? Yes, the other matches I watched this week were after the fact when I already knew the result, and I'm not usually given to lying on the couch watching television first thing in the morning. Beautiful? Well, Del Potro is definitely a hunk but he'd be Mars, wouldn't he? And nobody was shelling out moolah for me to lie there supine.

Four and a half hours later, still watching Djokovich and Del Potro, I roused myself enough to check email on the MBA and found a reservation request on airbnb for a room that night, pardon the product placement.

I'm supposed to have a two-night minimum and I suppose now I should add "24-hour notice please," but $63 is $63 and if it proves yet again that astrology is *real*, who am I to argue?

Sun Conjunct North Node....

...which in my case is in Cancer in the Third House. Start with playing tennis at 7:15, losing all three sets (as always), McDonald's for breakfast (bacon, egg and cheese biscuit), back to the house and work outside for four hours on *landscaping*, lie down on couch to read The New Yorker (this way yesterday, The Glorious Fourth), almost fall asleep, woken up by phone thank God, shower and drive to D's for dinner.

Stop at Snappy Mart to pick up beer, step outside, almighty clap of thunder and monsoon rain begins, get in car, reverse out of parking lot into petrol pump so driver's side mirror shifts 90 degrees, realize what have done, go back to parking space, attempt to move mirror from inside car, get wet, close window, sit for ten minutes wondering what damage have done to car body, attempt again to move mirror, successful but soaking wet, decide to drive home and pass on dinner invite.

Drive very slowly in pouring rain back up Little Walnut, rain stops, now driving on dry roads, change mind, drive to house where invited for dinner, eat wonderful dinner with four different items of food on plate at same time, extremely rare. Damage to car body minimal.

Drive home very slowly and go to bed immediately to prevent further mishaps.

Saturn Trine Saturn

So according to Michael Lutin, who as far as I know has never been wrong, Saturn's current "stopped motion in Scorpio provides a rare opportunity for choice to rediscover purpose and creativity and a reason to keep plugging away at turning the great wheel, and to make this transition with love."

What transition, I ask? The transition to actually being purposeful and creative? God knows that would be a transition for me, Miss Been-Saying-For-Twelve-Years-I'm-Going-To-Get-This-House-Organized and right now wondering what I'm going to do with the three boxes of paper *ephemera* I mailed out to myself - more precisely, where I'm going to put it all as I'm in the process of turning what used to be the computer room into a bedroom for myself so I don't have to sleep in the dining room when I have B&B people and be all perky and dressed and bed made by 7:00 am in case they wake up and want to know how to get to the Cliff Dwellings..

Once you've done it, you won't have to do it again I keep telling myself: this last influx of *stuff* leaves an empty storage locker on the East Coast, and even though a few pieces of decent furniture have been farmed out there, the chances of them ever making it out here are minimal and nothing to concern myself with unless and until they get here.

The two big boxes of photos from the past five decades post more of a problem. I started to go through them in Cambridge and realized the thing to do was to send the ones depicting people I still know directly to them and hope they didn't go into cardiac arrest or a deep depression at the unexpected sight of themselves twenty or thirty years ago.

This led to a couple of nights of sitting in an armchair with little piles of photographs all around me on the floor, each intended to go to a specific person, but then there was a birthday party and then we went out for dinner and my flight was for 5:45 am and all the little piles went into one box for me to sort out in my spare time here ha ha.

The point of all this - if I may be so bold - is that this station of Saturn directly trines the natal placement of Saturn for me, and was exact at 7:00 am this morning. At 7:00 am this morning I was on the tennis court warming up and about to lost all three sets we played to my partner, but that's par for the course. What's different is that I have spent the past few days and intend to spend many of the coming ones trying to clear my desk so I can downsize to a smaller one so I can swap out the day bed for a full sized one AND - O wonder of wonders, spent a lot of yesterday online searching out submission opportunities for the plays I've written.

It's probably a couple of years (!) since I've done this, turning the great wheel, as it were, and I would really like to go on with it. (All I've done so far is make notes on which theater companies don't require you to live in a specific state, be in a specific age range or write something on a given topic, allow submissions on Tuesdays and don't charge a fee. What comes next is checking on email or hard copy, bio needed or not, synopsis needed or not, playwright's name on manuscript or not, how many copies, what you have to be wearing when you submit etc. etc.)

And evidently I'm supposed to do it with love.

You are so on the brink, it's completely exciting. Of course a lot of it has already been written,
but not necessarly all, so it's up to you now, at least in part to decide which brink you're on

ou are so on the brink, it's completely exciting. Of course a lot of it has already been written,
but not necessarly all, so it's up to you now, at least in part to decide which brink 
It's cosmically fortunate that Jupiter has entered Cancer precisely at this momentous point in space-time.
You need every bit of help from the Universe you can get.
Saturn's stopped motion in Scorpio provides a rare opportunity for choice
to rediscover purpose and creativity and a reason to keep plugging awat at turning the Great Wheel,
and to make this transition with love. 

Venus Sextile Chiron

So we start playing tennis at 6:30 now as it gets hot so quickly when the Sun comes up - singles if there's two of us and Australian doubles if there's three.

It was Australian doubles this morning and - in spite of having visited astrodienst last night and read its admonition about the dangers of a careless word - it was still all I could do keep my trap shut as the doubles side chattered away together instead of playing, wasting valuable time while the Sun was still below the university's roof.

Polishing my halo, however, I can write that I managed to restrain myself and merely hopped from foot to foot while waiting for them to stop, which happens to be a brilliant disguise for frustration should you be playing tennis.

Sun Square Neptune, Conjunct Saturn Late Evening

I'm definitely overcome with feelings of inadequacy after an unsuccessful attempt at putting together the piece of plastic I bought tlast week to contain a compost heap - not an unsuccessful attempt, to be accurate, but an abandoned one once I realized I'd made it too small and would have to take out the four bolts I'd already put in and start over. Too hot for that.

Mars sextile the Sun going on at the same time probably helped get me started on it, or perhaps it was all the little bits and scraps of organic matter I've been saving up for days and leaving in containers in the kitchen that are beginning to give off whiffs of decomposing organic matter that was the spur - who knows, and of course everything weaves itself together as usual.

NOT as usual (unfortunately) was the bit of time I spent going through paperwork and lo and behold, O miracle of miracles, assembling all the needed bits of information about making a will (no, I still haven't done it) and putting it all in an envelope to send off to the attorney so the documents can be finalized and I can die happy.

Date on paralegal's original letter to me requesting information: February 5th,(of this year, being thankful for small mercies).
Today's date: June 25th
Number of times I have thought about doing what I did today: However many days there are between February 5th and now multiplied by two.
Places I have taken the paperwork with an envelope and a stamp so I could do it from afar: San Diego, New York, Cambridge.

Decision to be made now: Whether to let Saturn crack the whip and go back outside, disassemble the piece of plastic, redo it with a larger circumference and dump all my little saved bits into it, covering it with pine needles I will have to sweep up, or to float along on Neptune's tide, open a beer and turn on the telly to see what Serena did today.

Jupiter Sextile Venus

Well I certainly didn't seize the initiative and put myself out to take advantage of the benefits that could have ensued from this one, mainly because I was asleep for half the day.

Got up to the alarm at six, played tennis at seven, went to McDonald's afterwards and had one of their berry shake drinks and then, as they're directly across the street from R&L, the people who took care of my Volvo so well and for so long, drove over there and made an appointment for Friday morning to get the transmission fluid changed on the Hyundai, which I had an appointment for in El Paso on the day I came back from Cambridge except as I usually do in El Paso I got lost, cancelled it and drove the three hours straight back to Silver.

That seemed like more than enough exertion for someone who got four hours sleep and Ginger and I retired to the day bed, now in the little back room, for Lexulous and the end of physical activity for the day, save for stumbling into the *guest*room at about six, stripping and washing the sheets, putting clean ones on for myself, dragging the hose around the garden to keep the plants alive for one more day, taking a shower and going back to bed, this time in the big people's one.

Venus Opposed to the Midheaven

So here I am, finally acknowledging (admitting?) to myself that I do NOT do catch ups here and unless I describe the manifestations of a transit on the day or day after the transit occurs there is not a snowball's chance in hell that I will do it later, and I go to Io Sprite and there is the Moon sitting directly on my South Node - 13 degrees of Capricorn in the Ninth House.

I have absolutely no idea what that means - I shouldn't be writing? Writing this blog is *bad* for me? (A good thing if the latter's true as I rarely do it ha ha.) I *should* be following my North Node in Cancer in the Third and cooking up a storm for the neighbors?

Well, for what it's worth, I have just been sitting on the front porch with my two B&B guests watching the wild life (one fox, many deer), waiting for the sunset (unspectacular), chatting away and feeling as though they're old friends, and with Venus in its current position in Cancer at the bottom of my chart I would say that's worth a lot, as is their opinion of the accommodations  - "Better than advertised."

Take that, JDG, with your four out of five stars and the flat pillows and sandpaper towels, and while I know you'll know there's a smile after that, I'm putting it anyway.

Sun Square Chiron

Just checked astrodienst and saw this and I'm staying home and not picking up the phone with it due to perfect in five hours.

Seem to have survived this morning playing Canadian Doubles and UpWords Singles and going to the P.O on my way back to pick up my three boxes of books - two boxes of books, actually, and a box of boxes so help me - and if I can stop playing Lexulous on this computer I intend to move my little bed into the back room so I won't be sleeping in the dining room this weekend when I have *guests*.

I ought to be able to get through that without hurting anyone's feelings. Let this not be famous last words.

Mars Conjunct Uranus, Part II

So as this became exact I was doing what I've been thinking about doing for months - making a kind of green salady drink in a blender.

I started with spinach but nothing happened. Took it out and washed it, put it back in wet, nothing. Looked in fridge and found a jar of dill pickles so used some of that juice. Success, and it began to blend itself. Put in a few chopped scallions. Then I added an avocado and gave it another whir, put a dollop of plain Fage yoghurt on top and that was lunch.

Recipe definitely needs refining.

Mars Conjunct Uranus

Lots of catch up to do, surprise surprise, but am now back in Silver after successful trip to empty storage locker which will save self $600 a year from now on. I'll take it.

Have been watching this aspect approach and as usual guessing unsuccessfully at what might occur. First thought was the eight large flat-rate boxes I shipped myself on Tuesday might arrive - wrong! They arrived yesterday and were waiting for me at the PO when I went to pick up held mail. Maybe today I'll open one of them ha ha.

Most surprising incident to happen so far this morning (three hours to go) involves Ginger, not me. After being kept inside for two weeks his need for adventure is high, and when I let him out this morning after coming back from tennis he immediately headed down the hill towards the barn, instead of hanging out in the shade close to the house. As I've just been told by my neighbor at #12 that he's seen two wolves (!) hanging out there at dusk this was not a direction I wanted Ginger to take.

Immediate sounds of yowling rent the air and I hot-footed it down to the barn to find him having a close encounter in the corral with #12's cat. At the sight of me #12's took off for home and Ginger, Clawless King of the Jungle, took off after him (her?) Rather cleverly, I thought, #12's jumped into the drainage pipe that goes underneath my *road* where it crosses the arroyo (stream, to easterners).

Not so cleverly (the pipe has a diameter of about a foot), Clawless King of the Jungle followed, and as I listened to the scuffling sounds that ensued I wondered just how much this little incident was going to cost me and how I would explain to the vet er, yes, well I do let him out but I watch him closely and he usually....

Thinking Greenies might come to the rescue I went back to the house to get them but by the time I left with them Ginger was already splayed out on the back patio, presumably unharmed. As close an inspection as I could get showed a speck of blood on his nose and a red earlobe, neither of which seemed to be bothering him too much.Wondering if an antibiotic ointment for felines is available over the counter and if so, which counter, I dabbed a bit of my Equate triple-anti-biotic for humans on both places and hoped it isn't poisonous. So far so good, and Ginger is inside.

Sun in Second House

So I'm supposed to be examining my relationship to the resources in my life. It seems to me I've been doing that for the past decade or so with other people's stuff, with things speeding up a bit in the past year about my stuff and culminating in the - oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! - emptying of the storage locker in Randolph MA containing the remnants of my apartment in NY before going back to NM tomorrow - me, not the remnants of my apartment.

Bookshelves, brand new Ikea office chair, silver and black speaker holder from the Seventies and God knows what else got dropped off at the thrift shop near Public Storage in Randolph which just happened to be called "My Lucky Day." (I am not making this up.)

Ama will take my beloved Minton-Corley Ball Chair until I bring Zippy back to collect it. She has the little round kitchen table and two chairs, my big mirror, framed Rupert poster and trapezoid-framed paintings of ballet dancers, the two banquettes from the kitchen with their foam pads, the two flower holders from a funeral parlor that I used to use for clothes I was wearing, the big tall red perforated metal trash can from Habitat, the little metal cabinet I love and the black perforated metal telephone stand from the Fifties.

TD got the chest of drawers and funny little corner cabinet that went into Star Child's room at his house, plus various and assorted stuff that went into his garage before Ama can collect it.

Not content with disposing of my own stuff, a Trader Joe's bag of Star Child's outgrown clothing went off to a grateful neighborhood mother in the afternoon, a mother so grateful for the loot she wrote both Ama and I a check, getting my annual Sun in Second transit off to a great start. My lucky day indeed.

Sun Square Jupiter

Well, if you need to get many many large flat-rate UPO boxes packed ready to ship and sort through a lot of stuff and give a huge box of unwanted postcards to the downstairs neighbor and throw in a two-and-a-half mile walk round Fresh Pond in the middle of it this is a pretty useful aspect to have.

Add playing Lexulous via email till midnight and winning a game (happens one in every 25 times) and finally falling asleep because the pages are taking so long to load and you end up with what you might call a very satisfying day.

Sun Square Mars

Another catch-up post

This was in effect the day the Sun conjuncted Uranus and I discovered Dr. M had moved, and the short post is to boost my contributions to this blog for the year and make it look as though I do indeed post nearly every day.

From astrodienst as usual, I've just amused myself by reading that my energy level would be high that day and that on the physical level, I should have tried to find an outlet for my vigorous energies.

It seems to me I didn't have to try at all, and as I also got through that day (which ended with a six and a half hour bus ride to Cambridge, 215 miles away) with no signs of irritable impatience with others, I guess my Wellbutrin/Celexa combo is working very well.

Venus Square Neptune

Happened on Thursday, posting two days later.

So as I may have mentioned I'm here in Cambridge trying to empty out my storage locker to save myself $50 a month, and the challenge on Thursday was to start to go through four boxes of postcards collected over 30 years and get rid of the ones I don't want.

Of course, you immediately get into "but XX  sent me this" and "xx sent me this" but I am learning to be ruthless - or rather I am improving on my being ruthless skills - and I ended up with a full box of post cards I no longer want.

The collection of motels from the '50s and '60s - nope. The ones from the Isle of Wight where I used to go on holiday with my mother, sister and brother - nope. The ones from foreign countries from people I no longer remember who they are pardon my syntax - nope. Etc., etc., etc, as Yul Brynner said to Deborah Kerr in The King and I. (Look it up yourself, I'm busy.)

So Cambridge is a far cry from Manhattan but according to Ama it's OK to put piles of stuff out on the street and hope people will pick it up, so on Thursday, with Venus squaring Neptune and because of the configuration of my natal chart also conjunct Saturn, I went through beautiful and/or artistic (Venus) postcard after postcard, and, strongly influenced by practical constraints (Saturn) of packing and mailing and spending money on mailing them but enjoying every moment (Neptune) sorted and sorted and ended up with the full box I mentioned in the first paragraph.

The box went out on the street, along with some plastic three-dimensional photo frames from the '70s and a few ancient wooden photo frames I'd taken the photos out of, and Ama and I went off to pick up Star Child from school.

When we got back, I immediately noticed the box of postcards had gone, but as we drove into the driveway and parked by the little lawn, there was downstairs neighbor sitting on a garden chair happily going through the box of postcards and sorting them out into what he wanted or not. Much merriment abounded as we told him they once belonged to me, and whether or not this in a very oblique way had anything to do with Mars trine Neptune ("Helping Others") I have no idea.

Probably not, as he told us with a great big smile that he'd come home from work early to work on his to-do list and had been sitting going through postcards ever since he got out of his car.

From February (!) - Mars Opposed to Jupiter

So this should really be called nearly-everyday-astrology-in-no-order-what-so-ever as I've just found a draft post of something begun the last time Pluto was sextiling Mars and I was here in Cambridge sorting through stuff and throwing things out and trying to decide what to keep. It was written on Tuesday February 26th, 2013, and is presented here in its entirety with the headline I gave it then.

Tuesday Noon Mars Opposed to Jupiter in half an Hour

This began yesterday with a trip to the post office to send off to Silver one box of clothes I’d forgotten I had and to pick up eight large flat rate priority mail boxes for all the other stuff I’d forgotten I had but once I saw it decided I couldn’t live without it. Then it was back to the house to assemble all the stuff in a heap on the living room floor and start to sort what came, what Ama got to take to a dumpster and what stayed behind till next time.

Two items that got packed no contest were cast iron figures – one of a Scottie dog, one of a cat with its tail arched -  which I had, in an immensely misguided moment, taken to Cambridge from Silver at some point in the past two years. Since then Star Child has been periodically staggering around the apartment with one or the other in her arms and I’ve been propping open the doors in Silver that need door stops with rocks from outside. I did use the word misguided.

Both are unbreakable and extremely heavy so they went, one each, in the first two boxes, surrounded by clothing that even though I packed it less than 24 hours ago I can no longer remember specifically, and somehow I managed to fill six more boxes with an assortment of accumulated objects I think might be useful

 Ama has given me a gigantic battered old squashie wheelie bag with multiple pockets on the outside, and some of the stuff that went in there I can remember – the pretend cow skin patterned jacket my sister made for me years ago that I love, a flouncy skirt I’ll probably never wear but was too good for the dumpster made of purple velvet

And that was the end of the post. The purple skirt has since been given to D and I have yet to wear the pretend cow skin patterned jacket but I'm glad I saved it, and am today - June 8, 2013, going through boxes of photographs and negatives and postcards to decide which to throw away and which to keep and either send flat rate priority mail or pack in the gigantic old squashie wheelie bag that I recently lugged a couple of hundred blocks through Manhattan in 95 degree heat.