Mars Trine Saturn

Only with this in effect could anyone (me) put the little sticky pad things that they bought weeks ago on the bottoms of the legs of the dining room chairs at 8:30 on Christmas Eve.

Most productive day I've had for ever - even washed the bathroom floor in the bnb room and put on two coats of sealer, not that it looks any different but still I did it.

Saturn Goes into Eight...

... and a friend asks me to print out her last will and testament. Whew!

Sun Square Jupiter

It really shouldn't be such an outlandish idea to plan to stop at a fabric store on the way to Palomas to get my permanent new choppers - Deming's an hour away, Palomas two, drive to Deming, stop and get fabric now I finally know how I want to cover the couch, back in the car, drive to Palomas etc. etc.

I mean I wrote down the directions and the phone number, but then when the store turns out not to be where the directions say it was you have to have remembered to take the phone with you for that to be of any help.

I hadn't, so I decided to go to Palomas, get the teeth thing over with and then on the way back through Deming get out of the car and ask people if they knew where Sew and Sew was, but what I didn't count on was having to wait ninety minutes at the dentist to be seen so by the time I got back to Deming it was 5:30 and I didn't bother to stop.

Jupiter Opposed to Sun

Well let's see - does realizing you need an oil change and going straight to Jiffy Lube instead of putting it on a list and thinking about it for days and not doing it and then putting it on a new list because you've scratched out all the other things to do on the original list count as a manifestation of this? 

How about dragging in the big old wooden steps to the front of the house that got replaced years ago and burning them in the fireplace even though they're much too big? (Hint: stick them in diagonally and prop up the three feet that won't fit on the coal scuttle and as they burn move them in inch by inch until they're all gone.)

Pluto Square Sun

So here we go - Pluto gets to 16 Cap 05 against my 18 Aries 04 Sun and the Silver City town council in its wisdom would appear to be considering not only charging airbnb operators in the town Lodgers' Tax (fine) and Gross Receipts Tax (not so great) but banning airbnb completely (awful).

More will be revealed.

Saturn Trine the Sun

"At this time the circumstances of your life and your own inner energies are working quite well together. But this influence will not seem especially lucky; rather, your life as a whole will run smoothly, and whatever you do will come out well. Without any special sense of effort, you are actually able to make significant progress and get a great deal done. "

Astrodienst again, of course, that I can't be bothered to link to, Saturn trine the Sun or not, but in spite of all thinking I'm bored (!!!!!!!) with astrology after 20 years I'm still left slowly moving my head back and forth at the mind-boggling completely unexplainable (unless you believe that it works haha) machinations of it all.

Weeks ago I emailed M, Zen Carpenter Extraordinaire and builder of my life-changing closet in the little back room, to see if he might have time in the reasonably near future to take his skills and talent down a couple of dozen notches and install the new blinds for the airbnb room that have been languishing in their Ikea box for months and take care of several other "handyman" tasks that try as I might (and I don't haha) I am totally incapable of doing myself. 

[Addendum: and once again I stopped writing this but suffice it to say <GROAN> M called as the aspect perfected and with no special sense of effort as I did nothing and M did it all, I was actually able to make significant progress and get a great deal done.]

Sun Opposed to Uranus

So a friend asks me to hook up a new (old) printer and that takes about three minutes as we establish quickly that the printer isn't Mac-compatible.

Onward and upward to searching online for the $21 printer friend has found on Amazon but not bookmarked. Suddenly - no Internet access and we enter the dreaded loop of "please restart your device and continue when it has finished restarting."

Fifteen minutes of this and I realize I can't leave friend with no Internet access - horrors! - and take a deep breath and realize I have to call CenturyLink. This is, shall we say, an older household and a tethered phone has to be brought from another room and plugged in so I can talk to CenturyLink and be able to see the monitor at the same time.

All things considered, we get to a tech quite quickly (only about five minutes of me repeating "Agent, Agent" while being taken through an automated menu) and he tells me to take out the black wire from the modem - done - and then to take out the green DSL wire.

"There is no green DSL wire," I say.
"There must be," he says. "It's a DSL connection."
"There isn't," I say. "There's a yellow ethernet cable."
We repeat the above a couple of times before establishing my friend has had a DSL Internet connection for the four months she has been with CenturyLink without a DSL Internet connection, all working perfectly until Miss Sun-Opposed-to-Uranus made an appearance.

There's more to this, but I stopped writing about six lines ago yesterday and just picked it up this morning, Saturday. O for the discipline to write!

Venus Trine Jupiter

Blimey - ANOTHER pleasant respite? I had one yesterday with Venus square the Sun (ah, the oh-so-mixed blessings of having natal Jupiter inconjunct the Sun haha) and decided to reward my scrambling around to keep the wood dry before it snows tonight efforts by lighting a fire and parking myself in front of it for the afternoon while watching The Thick Of It. 

This morning I see my efforts were indeed efforts as the tarp has blown off the biggest of the wood piles and I shall have to put it back and weight it down with many more rocks than I did originally  - Pioneer Woman fail big time. Doesn't exactly forecast grace, ease and social interaction but the cats might come out and watch me while I do it, so you never know.

Well I know you're not supposed to look ahead...

... but I can't help noticing I'm up for a period with Saturn trine the Sun and sextile the Moon while Jupiter opposes the Sun and I'm allowing myself to believe it's going to be the perfect time to get all the *things* done around this house that I've never been able to manage before.

Imagine: The raw wood trim in the closet that hasn't been touched since 2002 in the master bedroom painted! The raw wood on the doorway thresholds lemon-oiled! The raw wood trim around the built-in closet in the little back (my) bedroom painted! Do we see a pattern here?

Whether we do or not, there's the pantry/tool (haha) storage space to clear, the CDs to be copied to the hard drive and then given away - or, thinking of YouTube where they can probably all be found anyway just giving them away in the first place, the this to be sent to the where, the what to be given to the whadyamacallit, the doings to be put on eBay or Craigslist, the stuff to go on Grant County Goodies, the coils of wire I have no idea where they came from to be taken down the barn and hidden and oh Jesus it just goes on and on and on and I try to remember that I only have to do all of it ONCE and then it will be gone for ever and never need dealing with again so please please please whoever's in charge of all this let me get going with it and be done.

Almost worth an exclamation mark at the end.

Mars Trine Uranus

"You are not satisfied with your daily routine under this influence, which signifies a time when you can break away from the routine and introduce into your life fresh elements that will keep you alive psychologically."

Hahahahaha. Right, not satisfied at all, if my daily routine involves being on my feet all day and doing productive things, not that it does all the time.

Took myself off to Walmart early (ish), passed on going to Ace for a tarp and new hardware for the Cruces acquisitions from last week, passed on going to Foxworth for more lava rock and came straight home, did my Consuela airbnb act and went to bed for the day with Michael Connelly. Excuse, not that I need one, is that my eyes hurt and when that's the case the whole day gets shot anyway.

"Consequently this is a time of personal growth and self-discovery that can be quite significant in your psychological development, as well as being positively exciting and interesting."

The Poet's really good, haha, but I knew that before I picked it up. There was the tiniest bit of Uranian excitement when I remembered I wanted to order a photo from New York City's 1940 Tax Building Photo Archives and went to the site ready to do a lot of poking around, only to discover, dear reader, that there's a button labelled "Order Photo" and I was able to work through the whole process in less than three minutes. Too bad the photo's for someone's birthday next week and the order takes a month to process, but you can't have everything. 

Mars Opposed to Pluto

O Earthling once again - yesterday I wrote on here that I had better rouse myself and get out of bed as with the subject aspect I had a lot to get done.

Little did I know, to coin a phrase, that I would then spend the morning watching Andy Murray and Milos Raonic battle it out in what can only be called a gripping semi-final at the O2 in London, setting the stage for Djokovic to bat aside Kei Nishikori in slightly more than an hour. 

Now that's got bigger because I had to do a cut-and-paste to get Kei's name spelled correctly, and I'm too lazy to change it. And far too lazy to reword that horribly grammatically incorrect last sentence. 

Mercury Opposed to Uranus

Put the brakes on in my mind? Haha - so wiped out from yesterday's little six-hour excursion involving picking up furniture and having two teeth capped spoke to not a soul and merely packed a big box full of dishes I never wanted and never used to be taken to some lucky thrift store here if I can manage it. Am sure they will be absolutely thrilled to get eight saucers and no cups.

Looking on the bright side, the saucers DO match the eight dinner plates, two platters and eight side plates, and looking on the VERY bright side, I now have empty shelves in the kitchen cabinets.

This is all part of the master plan of having nothing in this house that I do not use or love. I think that's it. Was it "use, need, want or love"? Is that redundant? Or do I mean superfluous?

With Mars opposing Pluto for the next nine hours, I think I'll stop worrying about vocabulary and get going.

Chiron Opposing Jupiter in Virgo

Well I dunno about my religious philosophy and broad intellectual framework being subject to a certain amount of suffering but I sure am getting a lot of throwing out and organizing done.

Neptune stationing with South Node on Mars

So whenever I think the thrill has gone and I can't be bothered to write anything on here any more there's a day like today.

I've been coming out here (Silver City) for years now and always smile (let's be honest - I roll my eyes and "tut") at the road signs on the way to Deming with the metaphysical "Dust Storms May Exist" warning.

Fifteen years and nary a sign of one, but today in-between Palomas and Deming with the sun shining and turning everything gold and the tumbleweed, er, tumbling across the road with monotonous regularity and my little Zippy shuddering a bit in the wind I must have gone through ten mini storms, none of them bad enough to cause me to slow down but each one making me shake my head in awe at how absolutely fucking amazing the workings of astrology and the world are.

And just in case someone thought I needed bashing over the head with symbolism, I got home to a call from the plumber saying he'd picked up the new stove and could he come and install it - this after a two-week wait - and install it he did, natural gas to liquid propane conversion kit and all.  Sheesh.

Mars Trine Chiron

"Energetic and self-assured" - blimey. After three days of weather extreme even for New Mexico, the ground is soft (read soggy) enough to be able to dig out a bit more grass in preparation for wildflower seed,  clear grass away from a giant rock formation making it stand out a bit more, and then wonder of wonders, clear out the adobe storage shed that's been full of boxes and crap (literally - now I know where all those baby squirrels that end up decapitated on the doormat come from) for the fifteen years I've been here.

Off to Palomas now. More later.

And Lo, the South Node Moves Away from Mars....

... and the Instant airbnb Booking appears and the voice of the turtledove is heard in the Land (of Enchantment).

.... Mars to the Midheaven

In the public eye: ah, yes. After having the "Put Air in the Tires" light come on for at least a week, I did get myself to Snappy Mart and shell out my seventy-five cents and do what I usually do - fumble around with the hose and eventually get it in the correct place on the tire thing so it stops hissing and then count to ten for each one, hoping against hope that no one is watching and that I'll finish before the money runs out.

I was on the last tire when I realized someone had pulled up next to me and was watching, although all he was really doing was waiting for me to finish, but it made me so nervous I got in the car and drove away without putting the little caps back on, something I've realized only as I'm writing this and listening to the laundry in the dryer, where those four probably now misshapen bits of plastic are whizzing around in the pocket of my black cords.

Venus Trine Sun

Well this came and went without a trace. I did manage to print out a photo of the long-gone kittens with lines all over it as I must need new cartridges and get it in the mail as a birthday card but other than that it's scraping the bottom of the barrel to find a manifestation.

Kind of like the other aspect of the day....

Sun Square Pluto

So with Pluto coming to square the Sun in a few months, can I take Sunday - the day this was exact - as a rough example of what I can expect?

I hope so, as I've been thinking gardening - read, where I currently live, as prying massive boulders out of the ground to eliminate every last vestige of crabgrass roots, attempting to dig trenches in what is basically nothing but rocks so the brine runoff from the water softener doesn't get into the planted areas and lugging massive tree trunks around to redo past landscaping errors - gardening, as I said, might be a *good* way to go along with the coming transit and attempt to counteract some of its potentially more alarming aspects.

O Earthling! How we love, admire and try not to pity thee.

Transiting South Node conjunct Mars in Pisces

Solitude would seem to be the key word here, solitude in the best way as in being perfectly happy alone and not wanting to do anything that involves other people.

Coincidentally (hah!), even airbnb is cooperating and sending no one my way, a good thing as the airbnb room is currently filled with the four wooden dining chairs I've been attempting to sell for weeks.

The replacement chairs - stools, actually, as attaching their backs seems to require a human bottom sitting on the seat to make inserting a screw upwards easier - huddle under the table in the dining room awaiting the passing of the transit. Wednesday.

Department of Simplistic Truths

Gosh - guess what? If you have had things on a to-do list - or not even on a list, just lurking around in the swamp somewhere, which is probably worse than on a to-do list but never mind - as I said, if you have had stuff that needed doing and you've ignored it for ages and then finally get around to doing it, the feeling of relief and accomplishment is so great that you can hardly believe it and even better, you are spurred on to even do something else!

Golly.

Jupiter Trine Uranus

So the new chairs got put together apart from the backs - the instructions helpfully suggest having someone sit on the seats while that part gets done to make it easier to apply pressure upwards. So I have four stools and at least the old wooden chairs got photographed and are up on Recycle Grant County for forty dollars less than I put them up on Grant County Goodies for, pardon my syntax.

So then another five hours outside in what I was considering an amazing Indian Summer until yesterday when it was pointed out to me this weather is yet another manifestation of climate change - the upside of the hideous month of July this year and something to remember when I'm lying in front of a fan next July.

Transiting South Node Conjunct Natal Mars in Pisces

The world is too much with me, and all that. Could very happily not see another soul for a week but it's not possible. Have thought of printing out definition of Twelfth House Sun to hand out to non-astrologers but would probably not help.

Mars Trine Jupiter

Aha! This explains the Opening of the Boxes yesterday - the boxes containing four new dining chairs that I bought before I sold the old ones and that have been sitting decoratively in the living room for the past six weeks or so. That was as far as I got - opening the boxes and taking all the bits out but still, it's a start.

And later on, deciding I wasn't going to wait for *someone* to come and fence off the new back yard for me and making at attempt at doing it myself in just one corner, so that the surroundings of the house look more and more like the yard at Restore with mis-matched bits of wire and part of the old front steps all cobbled together in an attempt to keep the deer out, instead of going on with the bits of landscaping I'm supposed to be finishing before winter and adding a new one - oh boy. The difference between rambling and ramshackle is making itself clear.

Jupiter sextile Pluto

So there are these two giant stones that have been embedded deep in the driveway near the border of the cactus garden for as long as I've lived here. There was no cactus garden when we bought the house, just a big old ore pot from the mimes sitting in the middle of the driveway, and my encircling that with rocks, of which there are many here,  was the beginnings of the garden.

Over the years I planted agaves - as plentiful here as the rocks - put down weed cloth, covered it with lava rock and it became a handsome centerpiece to the driveway. What I didn't realize when I planted everything was that, er, plants grow, and if they're as suited to the climate as  agaves are and given a drink of water every once in a while as the agaves were they grow big - really big - and if you've planted them too close together as guess who did, before too long - well, in three or four years - you have five massive three feet around agaves crowded together with no hope of being able to dig them out by hand.

Skipping over the details, two weeks ago today a neighbor with a back-hoe dug out three of the larger agaves and planted them elsewhere, leaving me with a cactus garden looking exactly as one would expect a cactus garden to look when a back-hoe just took out three enormous agaves.

A choice now rears its head: go on with this less than enthralling story or go to Geigo and ask for an online quote so I can stop paying the $1,200 a year highway robbery haha car insurance AAA is charging me.

With Mercury currently opposing the sun I shall choose the latter, and with any luck write something on here again before another week has passed.

Pluto Square Sun

It's still three degrees away but as it's a once-in-a-lifetime I'm going to try to work with it haha instead of it coming along and blindsiding me.

So - after having a backhoe dig deep down (get it?) underneath three giant agaves I planted too close together in the front of the house, wrench them from the ground and deposit them in deep new holes near the front driveway to the house, I've spent a week now undoing the resulting devastation in the cactus garden, with the past two days spent digging out the crabgrass that had wormed its way under the rocks defining the space and was at some points six inches deep in the caliche.

Deep. Under. Digging. Get it?

And on a less literal note, I am also doing my very best to begin the much more difficult task of rummaging around in the depths of my memory and attempting to get the metaphorical crabgrass roots out of THAT murky swamp, not that crabgrass grows in water, to immediately wander off into a digression as it is here that there be dragons.

Plant sale at Ace! I'm gone.

Venus Square Moon

Amorous mood? Partner? How about eat lunch and then decide the perfect dessert is half a packet of digestive biscuits (now available in Walmart for $2.89 a packet so help me) with butter and apricot "preserves" read jam?

Eaten in bed, of course, because it might rain, and then followed up with a handful of Andes mints which I've now begun to buy for the peeps <hysterical laughter>. Free will? <more hysterical laughter>

MORE Mars in the Eighth

It's getting quite exciting - I finally groped my way through requesting a refund for the $25 American made me shell out in Miami in May when I had already shelled out $25 the day before for baggage when I left TCI. It was an international flight, they said, when I got my credit card statement and complained, and told me to request a refund if I wasn't happy.

I wasn't happy, but the refund process is so *%#*$ difficult I've given up several times before.

MAYBE prompted by the knowledge I need a new stove I was a bit more persistent today - or am I helped with Mars training Venus, who knows - but lo and behold I've managed to submit my request for a refund and can now wait for the Refund Specialist (!) to give me an answer.

God willing it will come while Mars is still in the eighth and I'll have a bit of fight in me.

Mars Trine Venus

Well this is kicking in with a vengeance, if attempting to dig a trench through soil that barely warrants the name as it's mostly rocks can be called beautification - which it can in a roundabout way as it's to prevent the salt water from the softener running into the *garden*.

Mars in the Eighth

Apple's on a roar, I get my first *tip* of $10 from an airbnb guest, another one wants to book for $115 instead of $130, I say no, he books anyway and I get a reservation for March 2017 as well.

That'll do, pig.

Mars in the Eighth

No transformation yet but it only went in yesterday so it's early days.

In the meantime, I'm left with the strange sensation of having completed something yesterday that I set out to do - photograph the four chairs I want to sell and post them on Grant County Goodies. It's been so long since I did anything other than piddle around outside I feel quite astonished, and who knows - today I might even be able to finish doing something else. What a concept.

Sun Conjunct Jupiter

And fifteen years ago today, with the subject aspect in effect,  I had a mission - go down to the concourse in my lunch hour to look for a  cosmetics travel bag for my upcoming vacation in New Mexico, where I was to meet a friend and, as a joke, look at a house I'd found online nine months earlier and had been obsessing about ever since.

Actually I think - this was a long time ago - on the upcoming Friday I was flying to Tucson, where I was to have dinner with my vacation companion and his mother, who had been on HER vacation with him for a week. The three of us were to spend the night in Tucson, she was to fly back to New Jersey the next day, and he and I were to rent a car and drive to Silver City, New Mexico, where the house I'd find online was.

Neither of us had been there before. Neither of us had heard of it until I began my search for a house in New Mexico we could perhaps one day buy together. Silver was in the south-west corner of the state, a part we'd never visited, not that we'd been to too much else of it anyway; Santa Fe in May two years before to visit a friend of John's, when we both took shorts and T-shirts and it snowed, Ruidoso a year after that when we thought we'd just hit a patch of bad weather when it rained every afternoon and we didn't know about the monsoons, and now this trip number three.

As it happened I didn't get to buy my new cosmetics bag that day as the concourse I was going to look for it in was in Tower Two of the World Trade Center, and when I did walk through it with a stream of other people at about eleven all the shops were closed and dark, and I didn't get to fly to Tucson that Friday either.

So fifteen years later, now that I live in the house we were planning to see on that vacation, the mission for the day is to search for the tie-backs if that's what they're called and even if it's not that I once cut off of one of the upholstered seats of the dining room chairs when I thought I was going to recover them - something else that never happened - and then photograph them and get them up on Grant County Goodies and hope they sell quickly as I have four new chairs from overstock.com arriving tomorrow or the next day.

Should be easier to accomplish than buying that travel bag.

Mars Trine Sun

Decisive action? hahahahaha.

The most decisive thing I did was decide the crick was too high for me to go anywhere so pass on my lunch and later cocktails with tennis peeps and stay in bed with Michael Connelly watching the US Open and eating Digestive Biscuits.

Definitely a hard life if you don't weaken.

Sun Opposed to Mars...

... AND Venus square Saturn while it conjuncts Neptune

And this tailed off to nothing before I could even add " which is sitting on top of Mars along with the transiting South node."

No wonder I can't do anything really.  Don't even remember when this was but it wasn't long ago.

Success! Mars Trine the Sun?

Found all my posts! And all I had to do was create a new Google account which then locked me out of *all* my blogs, go back and try to log in with the signalpeak account I've finally cancelled so no longer have, ask to have a text sent to give me access to that as I've forgotten the password, click on something else, do God knows what else and hope I'll be able to recreate it all as suddenly there's my three blogs, including the new one I started last month and haven't been able to re-access once I did. Piece o'cake.

This is Getting Very Annoying

This blog, that is. Here I am getting all involved with astrology again and wanting to post and somehow none of the posts are showing up so I can't get back in to edit and don't even know what I have posted ha ha.

There's going to be nothing for it soon but for me to use my Saturn and figure out what's wrong, which may or may not have anything to do with Saturn opposing Uranus almost exactly for me right now.

Healing Conversation (again)

Aha! The dreaded Mercury Retrograde must be upon us, as this aspect occurred last Saturday when I went to the races - the Duck Races in Deming that is haha.

This time I'm prepared, having just received an email from someone calling me Pam. There is little I ask in this world, but someone needs to be set straight. And I shall do it.

Venus Conjunct Chiron

So by noon I've eaten half a pound of Tire Track licorice and two hours later a container of Talenti Sea Salt Caramel Gelato has joined it in my stomach AND I DON'T CARE.

In fact I don't care so much I then demolish half a packet of digestive biscuits as Walmart now carry them for $3.98 - might even be $2.98, will check when I'm there later today to replenish stock haha.

And later - more than twelve hours later as at 71 I still can't remember I can't drink coffee in the afternoon - I realize I am never going to set the sewing machine up in the bedroom as I thought I would when I bought the little white desk and I can move all office-y equipment back into the bedroom and reclaim the dining room, which makes absolutely no sense to anyone but me but I DON'T CARE.

And I thought I was losing interest in astrology.

Sun in the Fifth...

... and off we went to the races - the Duck Races in Deming that is haha. And there's no help for it - I shall simply have to resort to Picasa so I can get some photos on here, as the DRiD is definitely a case of a picture is worth a thousand words. Ditto the Abode Deli where we went afterwards.

Mercury Conjunct Chiron

Well there was a bit of a healing conversation, at least I hope there was, although my suggestions of what I thought might help a friend didn't seem to go down very well.

Sun Sextile Saturn

Blimey - only a few hours of this left to see if I can manage something constructive after the past couple of days of pure idleness. It's all Michael Connelly's fault for writing such beautifully constructed and totally absorbing *crime novels* so I am absolved of all sin.

On the other hand it would be pleasant to see the top of the dining room table again as it's been covered with bits of paper for a week now, all part of the less-than-half-hearted attempt to deal with and organize and file the dreaded hard copy mail, sitting there untouched while I run around with the point-and-shoot and document the amazing results of a little bit of rain before diving back into bed again with The Scarecrow.

It's a hard life if you don't weaken.

Possible Manifestation of Neptune Conjuncting Mars

Walmart unable to fill a prescription as they don't have enough of the medication.

Venus trine the Midheaven and Ascendant

Well I don't really know what it has to do with anything but there were two turkeys in the driveway when I left this morning. Neither of them offered me a job or seemed particularly thrilled to see me.

Been home now for a couple of hours and am back in bed with the cats playing Lexulous (they're not very good), doing the crossword in the Guardian, eating jerky and watching the rain (yeah! yet another day NOT to paint the wellhouse) and the birds at the feeder.

Works for me.

Neptune Conjunct Mars

Well the old point-and-shoot's been used more in the past week than it has in the previous two years, and if I could figure out how to get photos on here without using Picasa I'd do it.

I also seem to be surviving the potential turning into an alcoholic or drug addict aspect, which is a good thing - a shandy in the garden at four every afternoon doesn't seem to me to be taking me too far down the Primrose Path.

We'll see.

Mars Opposed to Uranus

I'm not really in the market for lashing out in anger, what with natal Mars in Pisces and all, more the weird and out of the ordinary as it squares Uranus in Gemini, so beginning yesterday with a hike in the forest and ending it with a community viewing of Bernie Sander's Our Revolution live stream was about as perfect a manifestation of the subject aspect as you could get for me.

The change is afoot, Watson, at least as long as this Neptune conjunct Mars thingie lasts.

Neptune Conjunct Mars

Well, I don't know about spirituality but I've been taking a lot more photos than usual, buying plants like a madwoman and hitting the shandy and the shady spot in the garden at around four o'clock in the afternoon for the past week or so.

On the day this was exact (yesterday) I went hiking - an event in my life comparable to someone else going to the moon - and once again contemplated painting the well-house without actually doing so, my supposedly clever attempt at making it look so bad I wouldn't be able to stand looking at it any longer by scraping off most of the already peeling paint failing miserably.

In my defense, it did look as though it was going to rain (Neptune, haha), otherwise I just might have been able to gird my loins and do it. And it did indeed just rain, so there's always tomorrow.

Jupiter Trine the Midheaven - Found the Draft

See last post about losing a draft: found it and it has nothing to do with what I thought it did.  Oh well - for my many followers, here it is, abrupt ending and all:


I was wondering why I was feeling so good, went to Astrodienst that I'm sick of making links to and lo and behold, there's Jupiter making a trine to the MC.

I'm slipping, but I knew that. In the olden days I used to sit with a day planner, go to Astrodienst and write down all the daily and longer-term transits, along with the time of exactitude, for the couple of weeks or month ahead, and be aware of where the Progressed Moon was and all that stuff. I don't think I've done that at all this year, although I must have as I've managed a couple of posts on here and would still desperately like to keep this blog up to date. Not desperately enough to do it, but still.

It was worse when I first *discovered* astrology - the real thing, I mean, not Patric Walker in Town and Country, though he was pretty good, but actually studying with a real astrologer and learning techniques and things. Back then, twenty years ago, I had a three-ring binder and would print out every full and new moon chart with my chart on the outside and have those pages face a two-week calendar and scribble -

Sun Square Ascendant?

Well somewhere on here is a post I started on Monday about Jupiter training the MC and me wanting to expand the back *garden* and a teenager supposed to be coming to dig post holes for me so I could put up a fence and then he never came. I'm pretty sure that exists as a draft but now Blogger has gone berserk (or changed since I last got on) and none of my drafts are visible. Grrrrr.

My $130 a Year South Node

Haven't written a play for five years but still shell out the annual renewal fee for the Dramatists' Guild so I can have "She is a member of the Dramatists' Guild" on the resume I never send out because I don't submit any work. South Node in Capricorn, yes ma'am.

Sun Sextile Uranus

So on Friday I get my reminder call from the doctor's office telling me my six-month checkup is this morning, I set the alarm for six, can barely get out of bed but am on my way out the door at 7:15 (it takes me a while) when I get a phone call telling me the doctor is not yet back from maternity leave and can we reschedule.

Sun SEXTILE Uranus?

Venus in the Fifth

Take a break, says Astrodienst, as I put down The New Yorker for five minutes and go to see what I should be doing.

As my morning's activities consisted of washing and replacing the dishes used by the bnb-ers and planting the white Lady Banks and honeysuckle I bought yesterday before retiring for a little lie-down with whatever I can get my mitts on to read, I would say the directive is being followed to the letter.

Of course, don't tell anyone, today's sequence of events could be almost any day of almost any week, but it's good to know my sloth is for once officially sanctioned by all them balls of rock and ice whizzing around out there - well, one of them, at least, and the others don't seem to be putting up too much resistance. Lucky me.

Sun Conjunct Pluto

So just as I'm losing interest in astrology after 20 years - not losing it enough to NOT go to astrodienst every day to check out the transits but not having it fill major portions of my everyday  life as it did for years- I realize again what an astonishingly useful tool for living it is and am inspired enough to make a post on here.

So this morning I'm expecting something not to function and wondering what it will be when I go to log on usual to see what's happening in the rest of the world and get the "You are not connected to the Internet message".

My network doesn't show up in the list available, and instead of getting annoyed I realize my bnb guests must be online and their connection is knocking me out. Having met them yesterday, I'm pretty sure they won't take kindly to my knocking on the door and asking if I can reset the modem, so take my cup of coffee back to bed and start reading The Dukan Diet that I got for ten cents at one of the thrift shops on Wednesday. I digress by adding I then went straight to Albertson's and bought the eight pieces of fried chicken for $3.99 but I don't care.

So - at 10:28 I see bnb-er's car take off down the driveway and by the time I've reset the modem and told Network Diagnostics yes, it's fine, I always give you access to my keychain and you don't have to ask me every time etc. etc., I finally get online at about 10:45, with the Sun conjuncting Pluto at 10:57.  Haha I beat Pluto.

Saturn Opposed to Uranus Exact

So maybe it helps to put down on what has now replaced paper that you can't help behaving like a lazy useless big old good-for-nothing and are tempted to stay in bed all day rather than face what needs doing. Certainly worked for me, and if I could figure out how to get images on here without using Picasa I could post some pretty impressive Before-and-Afters, if I'd taken the Befores that is ha ha.

Anyway, as a result, I'm feeling pretty chipper today even if I have gone back to bed for a little while. My weekend airbnb-er cancelled so I've moved back into the big room and figure if I stare at the broken screen that needs replacing long enough I'll figure out how to do it. I mean, this IS being written by the woman who fixed the water pressure in the bnb bathroom all by herself last week, and who any day now is going to get out the drill and make the hole in the dresser in the bnb room so the wire for the toaster oven disappears from view. Any day now.

Saturn Opposed to Uranus

Well I suppose I thought that with transiting Saturn in the Seventh opposing natal Saturn in the First this was going to manifest in a big blow-up with someone or at least difficulties in some kind of one-on-one relationship <hysterical laughter>, and have been almost congratulating myself that neither of those things have happened.

(Please God let me not be writing too soon, as this is exact tomorrow and then again at the end of September.)

Slowly slowly slowly it dawns that what's actually going on is that that Uranus in the First, presumably one of the sources of that wonderful creativity other people seem to recognize in me and often congratulate me for, is under siege from boring old Saturn and all the *structures* in my life that very definitely demand attention at the moment, with the result that I go off in the morning and run around the tennis course for the lesson and then come back here and retire to bed for the rest of the day rather than tackle any of the *things* that need doing.

"Scrape all this peeling paint off me", screams the well house, "but make sure to put a cloth of some kind down on the ground first so you can pick the fragments up easily, and then when you've done that get the roller and the long pole and the paint you bought last month and for chrissake paint me so I don't look as though I've been abandoned for years.

"Then when you've finished with that, get the hose and clean off the water trough thing that has unused Earth Boxes in it in front of the well house and spray it green and then repaint the white wooden steps leading up to the door and everything will look spic and span and fresh and cared-for and well-maintained and look as though you have some pride in the place where you live and you will feel fabulous."

"Yeah, what about me?" says the saltillo tile floor in the living room that still has the paint remover smear on it from a year ago when I was dragging the huge wooden-framed mirror that came out from New York that I was trying to strip from the front porch to the back patio when it was only half done for reasons I can no longer remember...

Let's not even go near the unanswered emails and the unopened mail and the dust on the black shelves and the scanner that's been in the box it was delivered in probably three months ago and the "play" that's been in the works for six years and the "Color TV in Every Room" sign that needs holes drilled in it and the arroyo that's going to flood because the pipes that go underneath it don't work...

Exactly. Let's not. And I always thought the slowest moving planet won.

Mercury Sextile Uranus

I don't think I've ever played Monopoly. If I did it was so long ago I can't remember and I have no idea who I might have played it with. Do I need to go on?

Neptune Conjunct Mars...

... and squaring Uranus, Saturn opposed to Uranus and squaring Mars, Uranus approaching Mercury and squaring the Midheaven and somewhere in the middle of all that a Jupiter return  that I think is having no chance at all to manifest until I realize my airbnb-ers who just left live in Budapest and brought me some real-life Hungarian paprika.

You couldn't make it up, that's for sure.

Mercury Square Venus

I'm not sure this has anything to do with today's aspect but things are definitely looking up - I just *activated* (pulled a tab out from) the solar lights for the bnb peeps' outside steps which I bought only two months ago - huge progress.

Now if I can just replace the Anderson window opener thingie that's been here since April of 2015, set up the Blu-Ray player that came out of its box last week thanks to M, call T the plumber to deal with the low water pressure in the bnb bathroom, buy a new shade for one of the windows in the bnb room, get the room ready for this afternoon's peeps and maybe - but this is so big I don't think I should put it on today's list - take the scanner I bought THIS April to digitize old photos out of its box and get THAT set up.

I mean I don't want to get carried away or anything. It was only last week that I got the ashes out of the used-twice-this-winter fireplace, dusted off the fire screen and put cardovan shoe polish on the bricks. No need to over-do it.

Mars Opposed to the Ascendant

So I pay $95 a year for a American AAdvantage credit card that gets me air miles and gives me the first checked bag free. Not particularly money-savvy, but there you go. I'm loaded.

This past April I was leaving Providenciales, TCI, me being loaded and all, and was told by the American Airlines agent checking me in the first checked bag free applied only to domestic flights. Twenty-five dollars please. OK. The flight was to Miami, where I went through Immigration and all that stuff and then took another flight to El Paso, and was once again charged $25 for my checked bag.

Yesterday I decided to call Citibank, the issuer of the card, to contest the $25 at Miami and was told that since the flight originated in Providenciales the flight from Miami was considered an international flight.

Deciding not to get into an argument I let it go, and wonder if I am really going to find out who the CEO of American Airlines is and write to tell him of my, er, displeasure.  Here endeth one of the more poorly written of the posts made to this blog.

Mercury Trine Midheaven

Well it got me to posting on here, for a start, and it also has me thinking that with the minute amount of knowledge that I have on the subject after studying it for 20 years (astrology, that is) the best I can figure out is that there's not much point in trying to do anything unless the transiting symbols in the sky point to whatever it is you're trying to do having a chance of a successful outcome - speaking for myself, of course, whose natal chart seems to suggest you may as well stay in bed all day unless you want to be emptying bedpans on the night shift in a mental institution.

For weeks I've been looking at this house getting messier and messier and dustier and dustier with more and more unopened mail piling up on the desk in the kitchen and more and more unopened boxes from Amazon piling up on the bedroom floor, and still going outside to do yard work and transplant things and try and dig holes in this *soil* which is nothing but caliche and water things and trim the vinca and do all the other hundred things that need doing if you're attempting to garden in the South West - until today when Mercury trines the Midheaven and Venus trines the Moon and all the mail is opened and most of it thrown away and the bathroom cleaned and the pantry/storage space tidied and the floors swept etcetera etcetera etcetera, as Yul Brynner was so fond of saying in the King and I.

'Tis a  puzzlement, I believe he also said.

Sun Conjunct Uranus

Well I don't usually open a bottle of beer at 2:00 pm and sit and watch television so I guess today is working out according to the old cosmic plan.

I do have to say in my defense (and I obviously feel this behaviour needs defending) that i) it's a holiday and ii) the French Open is on the Tennis Channel and not on Dish, meaning I can't access it on my computer, and as I've had a bnb guest over the weekend occupying the room where the sole TV in the household now resides...blah blah blah do I need to go on?

Transiting North Node to Jupiter

Money money money, except I have to work for it but what do I expect with a natal Jupiter in Virgo? I live to serve, that's my motto, and with a house twice the size I need I consider myself fortunate indeed those guys in San Francisco stuck an air mattress on the floor a couple of years ago and started a web site. Natal north node in Cancer doesn't hurt either.

It's been a bit hairier than I'd like with the current *planetary position* but you'd think I'd know by now if someone says they're arriving at five they're going to call at two and say can we come at three - I DO know but somehow lately haven't been able to act on it, and there's been a lot of scurrying around with the Windex and a dustpan and brush, but no one's complained and all those $116s for two nights add up.

That's only when there's an in and out on the same day, and with the current occupants here for another seven nights things *should* calm down a bit. I'm even optimistic enough to think that by the end of the week the back patio might look like a back patio and not like the yard at Restore. After all, if I'm posting on here, anything might happen.

.... Mercury Trined Uranus...

... I - let's make this short - responded to a posting looking for someone to practice Spanish with and drank three and a half beers.

And on the same day...

... as the Pizza Chena feast, proving once again that if there is a god he/she is possessed of a wicked sense of humour, the Sun trined Pluto for me and after lunch I spent the rest of the day in bed with a hangover from the day before, when......

Venus Opposed to Jupiter

Invited to an Easter Lunch and if I knew how to use my iPhone would post a photo of the spectacular Pizza Chena on the table. And of course, if I could remember how to make a link (!!!!!!!!), would do so to one of the many web pages I'm finding with recipes for said spectacular item of food. Pitiful, really.

Neptune Square Uranus

Unpleasant revelations? How about seeing a photograph of yourself eating breakfast the day before on *holiday* and looking unrecognizable - that is, looking pudding-faced, tired, toothless and OLD? Now THERE'S an unpleasant revelation you've been keeping from yourself.

Holy shit. I must be nearly seventy-one.

New Moon in Pisces Opposed to Jupiter

And not just the Jupiter Above, the one in my natal chart, and here I am, innocent optimistic soul that I am, attempting to make an appointment at the Genius Bar in Palm Springs to check the battery on my iPhone which seems to run down in about ten minutes.

Ah, the days when you could pick up the phone and call the store and say "Can I have an appointment at the Genius Bar, please".

No longer possible, of course; you now have to download the app - don't know WHICH app but you gotta download it - OR you can do the web crawl thing and tell lies and hope that after about twenty click throughs you'll get to something that might let you make the appointment. Might.

Sun and Neptune Together, Almost on Natal Mars

No chance of landscaping as fingers all blistered from chopping down cholla so only thing to do is stay in bed, watch "Truly Madly Deeply" on YouTube and sniff at the end.

"Dogma"s up next.

Conflicting Energies

From recent personal experience I can safely say that having Uranus to the Sun at almost the same time as a Jupiter (in Virgo) return is a perfect description of the post subject and in my case resulted in something close to paralysis - temporary, thank God, and vanishing almost as soon as the transit to the sun was over.

Now, as Jupiter is almost on top of its natal placement, I'm busy redoing some of the landscaping around the house and moving lava rock, handful by handful, to a new position. Did I take a Before photo? Do you need to ask?

Lazy or Seventy?

I don't know. I've never been lazy (although I've been doing a pretty good imitation of it for a while haha) and I've never been seventy so it's really hard to tell.

Uranus to the Sun

So it's almost here and I'm supposed to be going off in a completely different direction and I suppose I am - changing all the landscaping around the house ha ha.

Venus on the Midheaven

So this is when you're supposed to spend the day in the company of others beaming goodwill to one and all and in general being your own little point of light because if you don't you'll feel miserable and lonely.

But what if you have natal Venus in the Twelfth with a Taurus ascendant? Aha! The story changes. The sun's shining, you have bare arms for the first time in months, and what can possibly make you happier than beginning to re-"landscape" the triangle of land to the north of the house by extending it  a couple of feet or so into the driveway: read lugging concrete blocks around, digging up weeds and trying to chop down and unearth the cholla and prickly pear you planted that you now want to replace with agave? In a word, nothing, and if you don't speak to another earthling all day, so be it.

The Most Boring Person in the World

That must be me; here comes Uranus to the Sun and I'm playing Lexulous and reading the Daily Mail and still in bed at nearly ten o'clock in the morning.

Can I at least say that *it's* got something to do with my posting on here again, having lost interest and given up doing so months if not a year ago? Is this some echo of when the Progressed Sun came to natal Uranus in 1996 and I discovered - through Michael Lutin thank you god thank you Jesus - that astrology really works? Should I be thankful that Saturn has not come to my Sun in the Twelfth as it did then when I was sitting alone in a room at an advertising agency proofreading with nothing to do for weeks on end? (That one I can answer. Yes.) Is this sudden re-interest due to the new moon on *my* moon on Monday? Is there significance to there being a new moon smack on my Sun on my coming birthday in April? Is there any significance to natal Mars being smack on the ascendent of my Solar Return on - duh - the same day with a stellium of planets in the first house (not that I spend any time looking ahead or anything)? Should I just stop asking all these silly questions and get out of bed and start to do something? Probably, except that TC has just played a move in Lexulous. Is there such a thing as free will? Hahahahaha.

New Moon on Moon in Aquarius

Well if it did nothing else it got me to get the ephemeris out and sit with my haha engagement book and put in the dates for this year when Neptune will conjunct Mars and square Uranus, and when my Jupiter return will happen and a couple of other key transits I've already forgotten, which is what I used to do obsessively with all transits right down to the Sun.

That of course was in the olden days, beginning in '96 when I first *discovered* astrology, or discovered that astrology works, to be more exact, and now I can segue off into the Leaving Astrology piece I began to write at the beginning of the year except I have to be somewhere in less than an hour so need to get my skates on.

P.S. Those *other* transits I managed to forget? Uranus to the Sun in a couple of weeks and its sextile to the Moon in a month. Amazing.

New Moon Smack On *My* Moon In Aquarius...

... and the electric kettle gives up the ghost.

And while I've summoned up the energy to actually make a post, I'll add I have another two weeks to go before Uranus hits *my* Sun for the second time, first time being last April when I bought a hand-held vacuum cleaner for the car. It's been in its box in the pantry ever since until yesterday when I opened it and used it for the first time. Who says astrology doesn't work?

Uranus Approaching the Sun

Difficult enough to write an astrology blog when you've lost interest in astrology (and everything else ha ha but that's another story) but horrifying to realize Uranus is soon to conjunct your Sun (in the Twelfth - there's SOME excuse, thank God) and all you want to do is stay in bed all day and read the Daily Mail online.

Update on Venus Opposed to Uranus

Well it wasn't Mick Jagger but a friend I don't see nearly enough of emailed and is coming next week for a sleepover. THAT'S better than filing.

Venus Opposed to Uranus

Things have come to a pretty pass when the subject aspect is in effect and all I do is attack the pile of unfiled paperwork from 2015 and attempt to deal with it. It's not exact till tomorrow morning so there's still a chance Mick Jagger's going to turn up and see if I want to go to Blake's Lottaburger, but I won't wait too long before eating something.

I am, of course, writing on here, strange and unusual as it is. Maybe if Venus could just stand still in its tracks I'll manage another post tomorrow.