Saturn & Jupiter in Aquarius in Tenth

Getting deep into the layers here.  Forget  Dailies for once. I did read somewhere - TMA, probably - that Robert Hand considers what I do - try to pick out daily *manifestations* of minor in-the-scheme-of -things transits - craziness. 

He didn't mean me, I hasten to add haha. It was the end of an interview with him, and whoever the astrologer was that was interviewing him asked what he thought of doing what I do - thinks! maybe he/she did it his or her self but asked for a friend :) - and the answer was something like "Doing (that)? That's craziness".

I do usually agree with him haha - which reminds me, back to the subject. 

Both Saturn and Jupiter, when in Capricorn, wandered backward and forward over *my* MC in 2020, and Saturn there got me on a *Board* for the first time in my life - to make up numbers, really, as I have no experience whatsoever of what board members are supposed to do. 

Fortunately for me, it was in the summer, in the middle of lockdown, and as the organization involves one-on-one contact with clients there's been nothing to do. 

However, the two planets moved on to Aquarius, still in my tenth house, and yesterday the board decided to forgo meeting in person or on Zoom and emails started flying around about an issue which seemed to require a set pattern for responses. "I agree that....." "I agree that....." "I agree that....".

I stumbled along as best I could and no one has yet suggested I learn - is it Doyle's or is that games? - parliamentary procedure, I suppose, as it pertains to being a civic-minded (!) responsible adult. 

Just an observation. Just one of the Biggies churning away in the background. 

Venus sextile Moon, then square Jupiter

 Much excitement - well, not really - serious live action, as someone more articulate than me just described it - at tennis this morning, with 911 being called for a player with heart problems and then him being driven home and me driving around with my seven USPS boxes of bits of shortbread for hand delivery and one to the PO for Destination Hawaii. 

And then took a deep breath and loaded up the car with bags of trash and plastic and glass and aluminum cans that accumulate like wire coat hangers - all of it, not just the aluminum cans - and took it to the dump and then took myself to Walmart for the first time in weeks, spent an hour shopping, came home and fell in a heap. 

Non-perishable grub still in bags on kitchen floor. No jewelry or antique buying, but I did get one big and one small spatula for 87 cents. 

Venus trine Sun Part Two

 Didn't get dressed and spent the day *baking* with every single thing going wrong. Never mind. Went back to Christmas list to see what I didn't do and then folded up 10 USPS Small Flat Rate Boxes and put all the bits and pieces in each one for hand delivery tomorrow. As hand each one over, say "Really good on ice-cream" and run.

Zoom meeting with the The Tennis Team - NOT the Raspberries.  Started a fire but heart wasn't in it and let it go out. Decided all the house interior touch-up work I've been saying I'd do when it got cold is now going to wait for Spring Cleaning Time. 

Breakthrough mid afternoon with the realization measuring cups have metric on one side and avoirdupois on the other. Can't decide whether I *should* have noticed that before or not. Opens new horizons (Sun in the Ninth right now haha) and means Marmite Frosting Attempt #3 has a much better chance of succeeding now that I can use accurate measurements. 

Also realized Mars was approaching Mercury as the day wore on. Definitely have never assembled 10 USPS Small Flat Rate Boxes in one go before. 

Venus trine Sun

 Just brimming with creative ideas here and for the second time in six months have *messed* up at an attempt to make Marmite Caramel, using a US/UK conversion table. No need to go into details haha but why on earth can't all the European countries using the decimal system take a giant step backwards and  emulate the US, the most technically advanced of countries and Leader of the *Free* World (how ironic is THAT?), in using the out-dated and basically useless except in the US pounds and ounces system? 

There's a word for that that I believe is something like avoirdupois. Bingo!

Venus square Mars

This was at four in the morning. If I look at tomorrow, which I always do on the site that Google Will Not Let Me Link To, there's all kinds of stuff going on of which I can remember nothing, except that on Christmas day every year the sun opposes my Saturn and squares my Neptune and I hope some of it gets me to stop watching A Woman under the Influence and start making cheese straws.

Venus into Seven

 Well, when I asked a teammate <choke>  if he would pick me up for tennis if I was car-less one of these days he said yes, so that's a pretty good start.

And meanwhile Jupiter comes to square Venus at the end of tomorrow, probably a good thing (that it ends soon) -  as I have never had so much food in the house or so many Amazon boxes piled in a corner of the living room with new ones arriving left, right and center. 

It's all because Walmart's been having a line of people queuing outside in the cold all day long because of occupancy limits so I've been going to Albertson's, more expensive but they do have goat cheese and fat-free half and half. Then I tried Walmart's curbside pick-up system, but I didn't do it carefully enough and when I placed the order, it told me 50% of it would arrive (free shipping) in a week, 25% would arrive in four days and if I drove an hour down to Deming I could pick up the rest of it that afternoon. Cancel.

Then I had a go at Amazon and had to use their pantry, and by this time I had no idea what I was trying to buy that I didn't have and somehow I've ended up with two packets of Starbucks Pike Place, which I don't need now that I'm not doing airbnb so this morning when with great rejoicing I went to Walmart because they were letting everyone in I had to buy a French Press as I've been thinking of getting one for a while and there they were. 

For some reason I've started to watch TED videos (because they're like monologues, actually) and have somehow stumbled across a lot of people talking about happiness and consciousness. Funny. 

Saturn square Venus

 Well silly old me, thinking this perfected yesterday. It will be at noon today, as the people I play tennis with are emailing back and forth and switching courts with half of them going to the U, the rest to the high school, and me having a mild temper tantrum (unbeknownst to them, I hope) and not even going to play. Our previous president isn't the only one capable of behaving like a three-year-old, although it's a temporary state for me, not the way I live my life. 

And right about now Venus is sextiling Chiron for me, and as there's no "benevolent person around to touch a sensitive spot in me that I have hardly known or perceived myself" I shall have to be that benevolent person myself "and learn how to be a good friend to myself "haha. Not sure how getting annoyed with other people fits into that, but that's what's going on. Sheesh.

Jupiter trine Chiron

Exact today, no less. This was a surprise when I went to astrodienst this morning. I know there are all these major aspects floating around for me right now in the background, but haven't been paying attention to this one. It does explain why I've been listening to "Guide me, O thou Great Redeemer" and "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation". And "All People that on Earth do Dwell" - beat that one if you can. 

I guess it's all about self-healing, and, praise to the Lord, I've had nearly a year with not many interruptions to get used to living in this whole house and perhaps sort myself out a bit in the process.

I do know that today Saturn squares Venus for me and Jupiter's coming along to do the same thing in four or five days. Hoping I can take advantage of it.

Sun sextile Moon

This is an aspect I'm grateful to my mother for having natally, not, of course, that she had any clue what she was bestowing on me. Supposedly she went into labour very suddenley and was rushed from the hospital where she and other evacuated from London pregnant mothers were housed (?) to the country house where they were supposed to give birth in comfort and barely made it into the entrance hall before I popped out, what with me being born with Mars square Uranus and all. 

However, as usual I digress, or rather, attempt to get every bit of information into one sentence, so after almost a week of not writing I'm back to the keyboard, beginning with going through my emails and unsubscribing from any lists that will let me do so: no more NYT emails telling me how to live a cultured and full life under lockdown, no more iPhone tips of the day, most of which are for the iPad anyway and I don't have one, no more Fast Growing Trees, hand crafted shoes, Amazon deal of the Days - and the only with no Unsubscribe button, Just Fashion Now, or whatever it is. (I get about four of those a day.)

So, here I go, a time of psychological and emotional equilibrium with the different aspects of my personality in tune with each other haha, and with the Sun about to trine Jupiter later in the day, I hope to be back with a quick wrap-up of that. 

Cheers!

 

Mercury sextile Neptune and Mars to the Sun

 This was a treat. I got myself to Walmart at 7:45am and there was ALREADY a line of people waiting in the cold. I shall have to take this seriously and get there at opening time. Only as I was turning around to head off to Albertson's did I remember I was going to order online at Walmart and then go and pick it up.

Mid-morning there's am email that the tennis courts at the high school are open, would anyone like to play at 1:00pm? I would, I answer, and decide to take Mildred, who's been here since Last Thursday and hasn't been out much, as I can get to the high school through residential areas and won't have to go on the highway. (She's not yet registered to me or insured by me.) 

I've only driven her once before, but this wasn't like that time. As soon as I took my foot off the gas she would slow down, and there were rattling noises that I knew shouldn't be there, and she made it only a couple of miles before all the dashboard lights came on, the noises got worse and she stopped short, praise the Lord in the residential district we were in, which is not what you would call heavily trafficked.  

Addendum: December 10, 2020

Post not finished, as usual. Trying for a new start. 

Sun Opposed to Uranus

Well no surprising one-on-one encounters here as I haven't had a one-on-one encounter with anyone except checker-outers at Albertson's for more than two weeks, although going to Albertson's is unusual for me and happening only because I won't stand in line to get into Walmart, me being such a busy person and all. 

What I did do was write two *personal* letters - scrawled photos, to be more exact, or to be exactly exact photographs stuck to scrawled on paper - put them in envelopes, put stamps on the envelopes, address the envelopes, drive myself to the mailboxes, put the letters in the pick-up box and drive back to the house, and if that weren't Uranian enough, this was all before 10:30am. 

As for what I did for the rest of the day I have no idea as this was Tuesday and this is Thursday. It must have involved wood, as a large part of my life now is taken up with What You Have To Do If You Have An Open Fire, and yes, that's it, I DO remember what else I did on Uranian Tuesday, I took myself up the hill behind the house with an Ikea bag and picked up kindling for the first time this year, and for the past two days have done the same. Today I went up twice. And didn't light a fire. 

 

Sun Trine Pluto

 Transformative energy, and all that. I'll settle for hanging a mirror - that would be enough of an intense and powerful experience for me. Moving in is proving to be done at a very leisurely pace, with the mirror sitting on the floor for probably the last three months. 

The big decision, of course, is whether to hang it in the middle of the wall where it will pick up some of the light from the big window or hang it closer to the 'Open' sign where it will pick up a lot more of the light but not be centered. I have until ten o'clock to figure that out, but according to astrodienst the aspect's in effect for the whole day, meaning I could also use the time to patch my dungarees while they're still patchable before one more wash leaves them in shreds. 

Supposedly I can make these changes rather easily, and derive great satisfaction from making them. The great satisfaction bit I know to be true, but whether I make them or not is, I suppose, up to me and good old free will. 

I once asked Michael Lutin whether he *believed* in free will, and his answer was that on a good day, yes he did. So far today's showing all signs of being exactly that - sunshine, a beautiful room, blue sky, green trees, not a sound anywhere except my tapping on the keyboard, a cat sound asleep beside me, a (fake) shouting match with my amazing sister on facebook over my consistently winning Lexulous  where I expressed myself forcefully and with considerable impact - I could go on but if that's not a good day I don't know what is.

Now if I want to use the available energy to its fullest I'll have to find someone to make an impression on (not too likely under current lockdown restrictions) so I think I'll settle for hanging the mirror and rejuvenating the dungarees. Don't think either of those qualify as being ruthless or selfish. Phew. 

Mercury Opposed to the Ascendant

 "Enjoying Repartee", the site I go to all the time but am not going to name for once sums up this aspect, and I let myself stay in bed for two hours and write the exercise to upload to Jeffrey Sweet's Google Drive before noon. 

Too late to go to Walmart so I piddled around for an hour then zoomed into the meeting room, which had one other *student* there, and after a bit of back and forth we pieced together the narrative: There was a chance JS might be traveling on this Saturday, we were to be notified if there was to be no class today and we were not notified. Simple. 

Only one other student had uploaded a file to be critiqued. We emailed to tell her we were having a class with somewhat fewer participants than usual and soon after she popped up in her screen.  The three of us jabbered away for an hour and a half, able to ask questions of each other outside of class restraint and the two of us who'd submitted work got in a rehearsal for next time haha.   

Now the detail that always blows me away: 

aspect exact at 1:20pm.           

The three of us said "See you next week" at 1:30pm by my kitchen clock, which is ten minutes fast. I really should (AARRGGHH - I used the dreaded word)  stop marveling over this and just get on with it, but then I wouldn't have anything to write about haha.

So then off to Walmart secure in my knowledge that almost everyone in Silver is with family or friends on Saturday afternoons (SO easy for me to forget the pandemic) only to find, of course, that they now have two entrances open with a line of 30 or so socially distanced would-be shoppers at each one. 

When it happened last week it was only one entrance and only one line, but creature of habit that I am, I did exactly the same as I did then and took my lazy lazy self off to Alberston's, willing to pay through  the nose for the bare minimum of what I needed, mostly cat food, and vowing to be at Walmart at 7:00am tomorrow.

However, the pesky little trickster was still not done with me, and by an amazing coincidence, after I had been walking around for 20 minutes trying to find the peanut butter and ending up in the last aisle which is Produce and spying from afar the bread on the far wall and remembering from five years ago when I was looking for Nutella (story for another time) that the peanut butter was right by the bread - right then I recognized the art teacher from the University, putting I have no idea what into a plastic bag, (her, not me. I was fixated on Skippy's Extra-Chunky), she recognized me and there was the good old repartee back one more time before I grabbed the big jar of Skippy's without looking at the price and headed home. In Zippy. 

        

The interpretation above is for your transit selected for today:

Jupiter Trine Ascendant

 People at their best, eh? Well I only saw two but considering I ended up with a new (ish) car and 15 Ikea sponges I have no complaints.

Also lit the first (indoor) fire of the season which is me at my best haha as I'm so lazy I don't do it very often because of all the work and clean-up involved.

Pretty nice Thanksgiving.

Jupiter to the Midheaven

Here I've been quietly amusing myself by wondering what possible manifestation there can be of this considering my total and complete aloneness (? is that a word?) at the moment and then of course I realize it is indeed *true* - all I need to do is focus on what is taking place in my life and forget about dreams of glory of - of what? 

Of being *famous*? Nope. More of a horror than a glory to me. Of being *recognized*? More like it (thank you Michael for the Recognition chapter in Sunshines) but for what? Skipping lightly over that, what IS happening in my life with this aspect due to perfect tomorrow is that, for a start, I'm listening to a lot of hymns (!) on YouTube and have been for days and - and how could I have missed this, poor besotted soul that I am? - at the exact time of perfection the chimney sweep from A Better Chimney (DV, God Willing, If I'm spared etc.) will be here, er, cleaning the chimney.

OK, hymns first. Christmas is a'coming and I always start listening to real live Christmas Carols from England around this time. I don't remember listening to so many hymns of praise as I am right now - thanksgiving coming, very happy with my lot, rejoicing and giving thanks and all that.

Jupiter on the Midheaven: Culmination of many efforts resulting in success:

I must have been saying the chimney needed cleaning for five or six years. Wish I knew exactly when it was last done, but I know for the past few years, whenever I've lit the first fire of the season I've always felt a bit guilty and wondered if all the soot was going to catch fire etc. etc. It never has.  This year, about three weeks ago, after staring at "Chimney Swept" on the list for weeks and weeks, I did indeed call A Better Chimney and request an appointment. Surprise surprise, because of COVID they were very backed up and would have to call me back. At the end of last week they did (call back, that is) and give me tomorrow's date as the time they would be here - between 8:30 and 10:00am and the aspect perfects  at 11:30 or something.

About three days ago I put up the remaining tatters of prayer flags, all taken down when the back porch was redone at the end of May. 

And culmination of many efforts resulting in success: I have been noticing here some signs of actual change in my massive interior sort out and attempts to tidy up outside. Efforts been ongoing since August and finally, sometimes, I can acknowledge a change has taken place. Tomorrow I'll see if there's any concrete evidence of what I'm thinking. 

Sun in the Seventh

Well it's been there for five days and for this past week I've been totally alone, so I can't say as how I've learned too much about myself through any intimate one-on-one encounters so far. 

Early days, though. Two and a half weeks to go.  

COVID Rising

I wish I'd coined it but I didn't. Anyway, because of it the tennis courts at the University here were locked down (up?) last Monday for two weeks, leaving me totally depressed and miserable until I woke up this morning, went on eBay and bought myself a newer denim shirt than the one I have (in rags) that I may or may not like when it gets here but it made me feel much better and then I realized Venus is opposing Venus and went outside for more clean-up. 

Mars goes Direct...

 .... and I hang my head in shame at only today realizing his/its recent stationary retrograde position two degrees from *my* sun  just might *explain* my complete and total disinclination to do anything at all for the past two weeks except lounge around and read Carl Hiassen - yet another example of Astrologer Heal Thyself and You Cannot Do Your Own Chart. 

Never mind. The wind is in the sails now and I spent a happy afternoon playing with my indoor plants and then deciding, for the first time in my life, to soak my feet in a basin of hot water with Epson Salts in it and use a little nub of pumice stone to get the hard skin off my feet. 

Other than that I've never done it before, there's nothing too spectacular (and definitely nothing too glamorous) about it, until you realize that my natal Mars is in Pisces and Pisces rules the feet and so...

Here it goes again, being literal.

 it is maybe I haven't been feeling too energetic it's/he's the planet that rules *my* sun

Mercury trine Saturn

Serious thinking, eh? I'm not surprised, what with the past few weeks of Saturn squaring the little trickster and me not having Internet and then last week's preoccupation with Mildred, the 2004 Suburu Outback a long-time friend is giving me after its owner - friend's mother - died last month. 

And the problem with not doing this every day is that *preoccupations* with things like Mildred appear suddenly when they've been a concern for weeks, ever since I mentioned her to friends and one of them immediately offered to go to Boston to drive her back here, a wonderful idea except the poor old thing (Mildred, not friend) made it 200 miles to Poughkeepsie and collapsed, in need of a quadruple bypass and an organ transplant or two before going on. This while Zippy, much-loved little white Hyundai, sits in the driveway with the queen in the back seat in need of  a $1,800 new a/c system. (Zippy, not the queen.)

I know it's all part of the long-term transit of Uranus square Pluto that's been going on in the background for me and several million people close to me in age - for me, since May of this year and culminating in March. Nothing major haha, just sweeping away all the old and outworn structures we've built up and creating a total revolution in our lives, to paraphrase astrodienst, my favorite astrological site that Google won't let me link to, and I'm getting myself lost here in attempting to make up for not posting more often. 

Anyway, a nasty (hah!) day yesterday unable to do much except flop around and read Carl Hiassen, not the worst of all worlds by any means and you'd think by now I'd have learned that one day of sloth does NOT mean I'll never do anything constructive for the rest of my life, but there you go...

Today's a new day with sunshine and no wind and Pretty Boy appeared alive and well at the kitchen door as soon as I got up, having survived yet another night aside in the wild and heading straight for his plank when let in and sitting there squawking until brushed - and Trump has his share of VERY nasty transits ahead and all's right with the world. 

Mercury opposed to Venus

Exact just about now: The simple joy of still waking up as though the time hasn't changed, making a cup of coffee and taking it back to bed to read the UK and US Press online, something I haven't been able to do for more than two weeks, in case no one noticed.

Not a very favorable time for any difficult mental work that requires great discipline? Is it ever for me these days?

The wheel is always turning though and next up is Sun square Moon early tomorrow, i.e. today, unless I'm going to start sleep-walking. Hmmm - emotion up against conscious will. Maybe conscious will will triumph and I'll make some of the many phone calls I've been supposed to make for weeks. 

And a quick look at Trump, with his basket full of horrible aspects that knocked me out of New York after 49 years waiting in the wings for him:

Mercury sextiles his Ascendant today, quickening the poor soul's mind (all this info courtesy of astrodienst, as always, even though until I sort it out Google won't let me link) and increasing his exchanges with other people. Oh oh - Twitter here he comes. If he ever left. 

Saturn square Mercury

 No Internet for more than two weeks. Aspect perfected at 1:27 am. 

Centurylink, who were supposed to come Friday - and I found this morning DID come Friday but didn't think I was home - arrived eight hours later, a day before I was told they would come when I had to reschedule. 

Internet back. 

We Can Really laugh at Him Now

 I know we did when he was president but there was also the  possibility of bursting into tears at the same time.

Now, as he bangs his fists on his high-chair and tries to get breakfast overturned, we can really laugh. Last seven words important.

Bossie is an external adviser to the president, and he has been tapped to lead the Trump campaign’s legal challenges in key battleground states, even though he is not a lawyer.

Couldn't resist. 

Mars sextile Moon

 So off I go to tennis without my racket so head immediately for Walmart for grub and Ace for the soil I need to prepare for winter. At Ace I buy a bag of Australian licorice and by 11am have eaten it. This, I hope, is residue from Venus to Jupiter the day before, when I was congratulating myself on actually cooking onions and beets before roasting them - cooking things twice is not something that happens often here. 

Then back to digging overgrown mint and its deadly roots from a six foot by six foot patch of desert I've decided to *cultivate*, coming inside for frequent breaks of honey-crisp apples with Skippy Extra-Chunky Peanut Butter on top, stopping when it got dark, taking a shower and falling into bed at 7pm. 

Astonishing revelation when I weighed myself this morning and realized that physical activity (hard labour) uses up massive amounts of calories. I must remember this :)

Venus conjunct Jupiter...

...and I am making myself a cooked dinner of vegetables that have already been cooked once. This is Breaking News. 

It's all because of my half-membership in a CSA (I think that's right. You pay farmers upfront so they can afford to plant their crops and as it all comes to harvest you get a box of whatever's ready once a week. 

I'm beginning to feel surrounded by vegetables. And Pretty Boy George just came and sat in my lap so this is the end. 

Sun square Midheaven

 So I get up all set to take stuff to the thrift store and go and get soil for the garden and have plenty of time to be back here for playwriting zoom session at new time of 2:00pm instead of noon, and somehow do absolutely nothing except water the garden before logging on to zoom and discovering the new time of 2:00pm was of course EST.

Venus sextile Saturn

 So I'm supposed to sit down with a loved one or friend and make clear what I think my duties and obligations are to them and theirs to me.

As far as I know, the only person I'm sitting down with today is a hairdresser I've never met before  - for an event I haven't had for about 40 years as I've been cutting my own hair since the last time I asked a hairdresser to do something and they didn't. 

And as for my obligations and duties as regards the house I live in, I'm sadly lacking in that department, except I seem to be on a bit of a roll this morning: one load of laundry done, dryer full, washer full, doing this blog, with any luck I'll do a much-neglected Spanish lesson next, on the other hand I might not - have to pay insurance bills and put the new DMV sticker on my little Zippy, put the groceries away from yesterday - boy, it's a full life....

Detailed report from yesterday:

Paid car insurance, paid house insurance, discovered house insurance has gone up by $300 as AAA now uses "a new system to value housing". Paid it and will source new house insurance.

Tried to pay bill from Pinnacle Propane, which now (finally) allows online payment. Unable to register as account number required. My account number is REEPAM. Not recognized. Put aside for another day. 

Friend arrives with my share of veggies from our CSA membership.

Haircut - my first professional one for 40 years. Will definitely be my last for the next 40 years. More later on that one. Will wear sunglasses and a hat till it grows out. 

To a friend's house to discuss getting a car from Boston out to here.

Home to find my blue star junipers delivered, and also my mini transplanting pots for string of pearls. 

Go outside, pick a handful of home-grown lemon cherry tomatoes, go and sit in favorite chair in shady spot in woodland garden, eat them and wonder what it must be like to be born with this aspect. 

End the day with a Fluencia Spanish lesson.

Jupiter squares Sun...

 ... and I didn't even notice. Just like any other day haha. What'd I do? Yesterday I played tennis and then went to the in-town supermarket where the poor pay more and did a necessities for the day only - cat food, Granny Smith apples and Skippy Extra-chunky peanut butter. (That could have been a clue right there.) Friend over to play UpWords and then I pretended to be working in the garden by sitting in the old wicker chair in my favorite place outside, reading the New Yorker. Just like any other day.....

Mercury trine Venus and Sun sextile Pluto.

 B*gger. I just wrote a long post for this and it's vanished. 

Mars squares the Midheaven in nine hours, so maybe that's why. 

A Gift From God

 The "debate".

Venus square Ascendant

 Today I'm taking a personal day. This here Venus transiting the Fifth has meant I've been away from the house a lot in the past few days and I'm no further along with my move into my new room than I was last week, except I'm beginning to use the new counter as I'd planned to and it's slowly filling up but still unfinished and brown, an unacceptable color around here.

I need to call again (third time) to try to make an appointment for a mammogram. After probably 40 years I am planning to get a hair cut from someone other than myself if I can find the phone number a friend gave me of a *stylist* who supposedly does what you ask instead of ignoring it.  Pretty Boy needs an appointment for his annual checkup. There's about three other items on the list I made last night which is over on the desk and I'm NOT playing tennis this morning and am still in bed.  APPL's up, the sun's out, blue jays are squawking away outside which means Pretty Boy is out there somewhere stalking them, if not already eating one, and all's right with the world at #14. 

7:45 pm addendum 

I got the mammogram appointment, renewed my car registration, and bought a pair of shoes and two Blue Star Junipers, except the tree place emailed to say I didn't actually complete the order. Got contact paper on the countertop, not finished, may well never be. Had to unhook the TV from all the wires, take it off the counter, put it back on the counter, and now I'm able to get YouTube for the first time but no signal from Dish.

Venus in Fifth

 Invited out for dinner yesterday, invited out for Happy Hour tomorrow and Sunday evening for dessert and coffee. Another month to go.

New Moon in the Sixth

 Only appropriate, I suppose, to get me super-charged (ha!) in the re-organization of this house now that I live in it alone. Taking a break at 11:20 as I've already done more today than I have in the past month. Time to get that ToDo list sorted and written down here.

As well as calling Dish and Best buy, I need to:

Call the hospital to make an appointment for a mammogram.

Call R&L to see when I can take the car in as the a/c stopped working on Monday.

Set up new credit card with Rajesh as haven't paid since May thanks to Citibank's decision to change my Amex card number when I thought they were changing my regular old air-miles card. Quite WHY I am continuing to amass air miles I'm not sure but will leave that for another day.

Finish painting outside light.

Finish covering inside mirror with wallpaper. 

Send my brother a photo of my car with the Queen in the back seat. 

Do Good Girl's headstone and decide where to put it. 

List SOMETHING on Grant County Goodies and sell it. 

Move bookcase into dining room to see if it fits. 

Homework - writing assignment. 

Sun into Sixth

 No wonder I haven't been able to get a handle on anything - Sun was in the Fifth and I was out dancing in the streets all night and jetting off to Paris for the weekends. 

So my ToDo List for tomorrow is:

Phone Dish and BestBuy and sort out billing errors( in their favor, of course).  Best Buy's been on the list for about three weeks but now it's joined by Dish I simply have to bite the bullet and pick up the phone and do it. So far I am unimpressed by Live Chat. Citibank's is about two inches by three down in the bottom right hand corner.

As I'm falling asleep just thinking about it I'll complete the list tomorrow.

Neptune Opposed to Retrograde Jupiter

 The last time this happened I was running around taking photos. This time I've been watching movies by order of the Man Who Knows Everything about the Theater (honest)  running the zoom class I'm taking on playwriting techniques. What a life.

Klute, Breaking Point, some other noir film I can't remember the name of and now Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street with Edward G. Robinson as I've never seen him .

Add Venus sextile Uranus and you go and play tennis, go to Walmart, go to Ace to get the hardware the man who made your floating counter that doesn't float told you you needed to make it float, they didn't have it, go back to the house, eat half your breakfast, go to the doctor, find out your heart murmur isn't getting louder, go to another hardware store, get the stuff, go back to the house, start to finish breakfast, counter man comes, you have the wrong stuff, go back to the hardware store, get the right stuff, back to the house, finish breakfast, counter floats, man leaves, relax. 

Mercury sextile Pluto

 Quite how this aspect let me pick great letters from the bag of UpWords tiles I have no idea, but for one of the few times since I've been playing the game with B I was able to romp home with a score of 507 while she lagged behind somewhere in the mid-400s.

Usually I'm about 100 points behind in every game we play, and we've played many in the more than ten years I've known here. I've probably won five or six times, so today made it six or seven. 

Here endeth yet another fascinating post from my attempt to resurrect this blog. 

Mercury conjunct Neptune and then square Saturn

Felt nothing but hungover as Mercury sat on Neptune in the morning (was determined to get drunk on Labor Day and succeeded) and then in the afternoon had to put a metaphorical BandAid over my mouth as a good friend attempted to get the picture on my new Smart TV (hah!) to fit the screen. He couldn't and it won't, but I'm having great fun seeing the last letter of each player's home country on the left of the screen next to the score box on ESPN and trying to guess who they are. 

Sun square Uranus

 Well, that was a bust, except I'm not usually in the kitchen at ten at night eating cold grilled brussel sprouts and pork baby back ribs, so I guess SOMETHING out of the ordinary happened.

And there was a lot of activity around the house with the full moon on Mars with railroad ties getting cut and made into steps and a landscape gardener making me a new little rock garden. No complaints.

Full Moon on Mars

Not till tomorrow, but of course I've been thinking about it for a week, not that you would know it from this blog. Feels as though there's been a full moon on Mars for weeks, ever since I decided I would stop doing airbnb and live in the whole house by myself and then thought it would be an interesting experiment to move completely into the old airbnb room by myself, stay on airbnb and  rent out the five rooms that used to be mine when I DID do airbnb, beginning September first. The Other Side of Big Sunny. 

It didn't happen and may well never happen - oh, and I was going to rent a space on August 29 at the Women's Club and sell all my Marimekko stuff, but had sense enough to realize there are probably three women here apart from me who know what Marimekko is AND I didn't have a table and if I borrowed one it wouldn't fit in my car so that didn't happen either -  but my using the old space as my bedroom IS happening and the biggest thing yet to do is get a huge counter top installed in a corner so I can have my sewing machine out all the time and maybe even sew. 

When I realized tomorrow's full moon falls directly on my natal Mars I thought perhaps the counter would be installed then, but the hairpin legs it needed weren't due to arrive till September third. Then they DID appear on the back patio on Sunday while I was out, but the friend who's going to install them has another job till Thursday. 

ANOTHER friend is coming over tomorrow to cut up the five railroad ties that have been in the back driveway for more than a year and replace the stone steps I made myself up the old airbnb side of the house, and then those stones are going to be moved to the front of the house at the bottom of the two paths there to make it look a bit better, I hope. 

I also have Sun square Uranus tomorrow. Stay tuned haha. 

Whatever It Is Right Now

 I know I *shouldn't* be putting "Take a Shower" on a ToDo list and I haven't done it yet but sometimes in my darkest moments I think it might be coming.

It's not as though I don't have a To-Do list. It's just that every now and again I give in and don't do anything and then more and more things need doing and tag themselves on to the end of the already long list and then there's even more to do and then it's time to go bed and read detective novels. 

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Does tend to slow things down though. Not sure what I can blame it on. 

SaturnR square Mercury

 Second time this year for this, and some sense of relief as it perfects. Weeks of hotter than usual (as though there's a usual) weather and scarcely a drop of rain in what was once Monsoon Season when this corner of New Mexico got most of the rain it got for a year not much help to counterbalance Saturn's relentless demonstration of reality - this is what summers are like now and forget about growing clematis as the leaves do nothing except turn brown and any attempt at new growth or flowering withers on the vine.  

Sun opposed to Moon

 Time to call this Once-in-a-While Astrology if I can't get my act together. 

Yesterday was a nice little twist to good old Saturn about to square my Mercury from the Tenth: my first entry into *real* adult life by being invited and accepted to be a board member of Literacy Link, the local tutoring program (and much much more) here in Silver. Had I wished, I could have jumped right in and immediately become president but, praise the Lord, I declined the offer, as did the other newly sworn in board member present. 

Only after I was safely unpresidentially back home did it occur to me that I could at least have asked what the president's duties are, but I was so eager not to be it the thought didn't cross my mind at the time. Another month before the next meeting.

Right now, with Venus about to square Neptune and then conjunct Saturn, I'm waiting for the Dish technician to come and install the Hopper for me so I can watch my new smart TV and also waiting for the couple who are coming to look at and I hope buy the wooden cabinet the old 32" non-smart TV used to live in, which is now out on the front porch blocking the light to one of the living room windows. 

Generalized chaos throughout the house here as I turn the old no longer needed airbnb room into my bedroom. More to come, I hope before another week has passed. 

Sun sextile Uranus

I have no idea why I can no longer link to anything and get "Not Found Error 404" whenever I try. I could make it my day's ambition to figure it out but I think I'll wait till I make the leap to Google Photos and start adding images to this, whenever that may be. In the meantime I'll stick to boring old text.

So yesterday I was supposed to be not very disciplined, which is quite amusing as I haven't been very disciplined since 9/11, and the only time I was was when I was doing airbnb and had to be. Disciplined, that is. 

Now that I've decided I'm not, and am going to live in the whole house all by myself, it's a bit like living in the ruins of an ancient civilization as I go through every room, every cupboard, every closet, every drawer and every nook and cranny of this house and get rid of every single thing I no longer need or want. Any minute now I expect to look under a bed and find Ozymandias's head.

That hasn't turned up yet but what I did find was a scrapbook my elder sister sent to me in probably 1985, with photos of her trip to Scotland - the first holiday she ever took by herself, as her handwritten notes say - and assorted family photos of her children who are now grandparents. She herself might be a great-great. I can't keep track.

It's not something I want to go to Gospel Mission when I'm dead so what I started to do yesterday was go through what's left of my own *family* photos and sort out ones I can add to the scrapbook and send it back to her as a (very) belated birthday present. 

Today's mission, with Mars sextile the Moon, and if I can resist the temptation of being on the lookout for someone with whom I can have a passionate sexual relationship, is to go on with the project and god willing, get it done. Fingers crossed.

 

Jupiter trine Jupiter

"They" (astrologers) are right when they say this one could go over your head if you're not paying attention. Every little aspect of your own little life seems to go swimmingly, without any effort on your part.

You're selling off a lot of no-longer-needed household stuff and the local Women's Club decides to hold a sale at the end of August and you book a booth. 

Just as you've decided to look at the idea notes you've been keeping since March, The Dramatists Guild (I'd link, but somehow this new version of Blogger keeps telling me "page not found" so I'm giving up) invites you to a Sunday Zoom Seminar on where *Theater* is going these days, and then the presenter announces a ten-week course on his techniques for playwriting, so you sign up and have to pay through PayPal and discover you have $330 sitting there that you didn't know you had, so the course is free and you have $80 left over.

A friend comes to stay for the weekend and is enough of a friend to relieve you of your old not-very-intelligent TV and give you $25 for it, no less, and another $25 for  *items* that won't be going to the Women's Club.

And even when your new TV proves to be defective the woman at Best Buy's Customer Service puts shipping a new one in motion, sends shipping labels for the old 'un of course, and while I haven't pursued it yet, it looks as though I can have UPS come and pick it up.

If I didn't know about astrology I think I'd think a good fairy was waving a magic wand over me.

Sun Conjunct Pluto

"You may be concerned today with repairing something that has broken down, such as an automobile or an appliance" is the way astrodienst describes the possible manifestations of the title aspect, and glossing over The New Blogger's inability to let me link to astro.com I'm sitting here staring at my super-duper brand new out-of-the-box 2020 Samsung Crystal UHD TU7000 Smart TV with an eighth of an inch gap between the screen and the back at the bottom right hand corner. 

There are times I could wish I were not so closely aligned with the Universe.

Transiting Venus into Two

Uncanny, really.

The Women's Club here is having a "sell your stuff" sale at the end of August and I signed up for an outside booth, $10, pay by Paypal.

A quick scrabble around for the piece of paper I wrote my latest Paypal password on and lo and behold, I have a balance of $330. A balance. It said it right there: Balance, $330.

I have absolutely no idea where that money came from, who gave it to me or why it's there. All I know is the day transiting Venus went into my second house, I went to Paypal to send money for a table in an upcoming sell your stuff *event* and there it was.

Uncanny.

Sun Square Venus

It's a good thing you can't be born with this because you really would think life is just a bowl of cherries.

Started by playing tennis doubles for an hour and a half and then three of us came up here and played UpWords and I dug up delosperma for them. I am going to have to break down and start using Google Photos.

Tennis peeps left, shower and change and off to the local health clinic to apply for sliding scale - has to be renewed every year - and then realized I could WALK to the dispensary next door, walk back to the car (no leg pain) and drive to the supermarket for my Kilt Lifter (new favorite beer), then back to the dental clinic to get my teeth cleaned.

One discordant note which I'm too lazy to add now, then back to the house and piddle around outside till it starts to rain, which it did at a nice steady pace for a good three or four hours.

As there have been exactly three downpours when we are in what-can-no-longer be called Monsoon Season when it is supposed to rain every day from July Fourth to the end of August, this was probably the highlight of the day.

Memo to Self: Begin the process of sorting out your five Google accounts and trying to get them all into one.

Sun square Mercury

So I had one thing I wanted to accomplish for the day - a goal, I suppose, except I've never been very good at those: get the blue velvet wing chairs that were in what used to be the airbnb room and as of Friday were out on the front porch photographed and posted on Grant County Goodies for a giveaway price because the brutal afternoon New Mexico sun would fade them in no time at all.

Result: success by 10:30am, $50 richer and a nice little lesson in why I've never been very good at goals: they require motivation and a clear plan of action to carry them out. Who knew?

And from astrodienst,  "Unless your thinking and communications are very poorly thought out, you should be able to accomplish whatever you set out to."

Astrology is so silly.

Sun opposed to the Midheaven

Or it will be later tonight and I'm supposed to stay home but I got off to a good start at 8:30 this morning when I went to the dump, something I've never done before as I always thought there would be a long line of people in cars doing the same thing.

There was no one in front of me when I drew up at the Stop sign for the weigh-house. I just had to wait for the one truck that was leaving and being weighed before I got waved through to the Open Pits and could throw everything in. No more recycling here means a lot more to take to the dump.

Straight back to the house and started filling up more bags so I can spend the next two weeks torturing myself about having to go to the dump. Not doing airbnb means I have an awful lot of stuff to get rid off, mini-fridge, microwave and toaster oven to start.

Hope I'm not jumping the gun here, but if I am and get everything cleaned out and decide to change my mind I can simply rent out the other side of Big Sunny Space instead. See last paragraph of yesterday's post for more details.

Mars sextile Uranus

An off-shoot of Uranus square Pluto in the background leading me to think I've done with airbnb which I've been *doing* for seven years, I spent the morning - or 20 minutes of it, anyway -  dragging furniture from the airbnb room out on to the front porch, a slightly more stylish version of the Native New Mexican custom of loading it up with discarded washing machines and fridges.

Once the decision is made, says one of the Runes I get a lot, the doing is effortless. Not really what I'd call my morning's labor, but it didn't take long and I know the "effortless" is not to be taken literally.

For the first time since buying the place in 2002 I'm going to be living in the whole house by myself. The airbnb room becomes my massive bedroom and my dear little room in the Northeast corner of the house becomes the guest room, something so far beyond anything I ever thought I would have I was blown away when I realized that's what it'll become.

What I could do, of course, if I wanted to give it a try and I just might because it would make me keep the whole house in order 24/7, would be what I've joked about for years - live in the annex JDG built on for himself when we bought the house and put the old bit - *my* bedroom and bathroom, a living room, dining room and kitchen complete with front porch and back patio - on airbnb for an exorbitant amount of money haha.

More, as JDG always says, will be revealed.

Venus conjunct Uranus

Hot hot hot with no air-conditioning for the nth day in a row. Sunday friends coming over and we're going to attempt to watch Tom Hank's new movie on my non-smart TV in the airbnb room, thanks to my new iPhone 11 which gives me a free year of Apple TV.

Off I go to Walmart to buy the air-conditioner I said I would never buy. None to buy. To Ace for the same reason, same result.

A brilliant idea strikes. Get a room at the Motel 6 and have a mini vacation cum inside picnic with AIR-CONDITIONING. Pet friendly, so Pretty Boy can come as well. Check in at one, leave at eleven the next day - senior discount, cheap as chips, piece o'cake, great excitement, make the reservation, can I break it with no penalty if the others involved don't want to do it? Of course, cancel by six tonight, no problem.

Phone calls, great excitement, hey, why don't we.....?

We don't, as no one else is being visited by a Venus Uranus conjunction. Call and cancel the reservation. Discover need Apple TV box to watch Apple TV. Watch two old episodes of Jeopardy instead. Temperature drops to 85 by seven pm and we eat outside on the patio.

Mars trine Pluto

Finally - a scrap of energy after a week of heat-induced lethargy and sloth and an hour's *gardening* done before 8:00 am. Not that I'm not usually up at this time. Three days a week I've been playing tennis for 30 minutes with another hour to go, except yesterday I couldn't even manage that and gave up at 8:30, with my fellow players finally coming around to my "anybody want to start at seven" speech at the beginning of last week. Monday at seven it is. 

And only 81 degrees at 8:3 am, with the day's high supposed to be 87. Very good news when it's been hovering around 95 all week, and there was even five whole minutes of rain yesterday, the first to fall in July when we're *supposed* to be two weeks into Monsoon Season. 

Very strange to have been coming out here less than 20 years and yet to see climate change in full force right in front of *one's* eyes. 

Sun trine Mars

So yesterday I played tennis with the Raspberries, of whom I am thrilled to be one, and then went to Walmart to take back the Tracfone sim card kit I bought last week, which was supposed to have a regular, smaller (?) and nano sim card in it, except all the cards were exactly the same size and none of them fit into my new iPhone I've been threatening to buy for the past two years but have been putting  off because of exactly what's happening now.

So I tell the nice young man at the counter that none of the cards fit, and he tells me they will, so I ask him to put one in my new phone which I have very cleverly taken with me, and he does, and tells me I'll just have to trial and error to get the correct one of the three in the kit as I've mixed them all up in my attempts to get them to fit.

So I say thank you and come back to the house and take a photo of the one he put in its little tray, so I'll know just how it fits, and then I try the OLD sim card I've taken out of my poor little 5 SE and try to fit it into the new phone tray, as ENG told me I could do last week, and lo and behold, this time it fits, and I'm able to restore the back up I made from the old phone into the new phone, and all I have to do now is call tracfone and give them the serial number of the new phone and have them switch service over and I'm in business.

Piece o'cake.

Mars opposed to Chiron, Sun conjunct Saturn...

....and opposed to Neptune by the time the day is over.

This is my new resolution - to get back to posting on here nearly every day, which is what I used to do in the olden days when I was much more wrapped up in astrology than I am now, so even though it's only seven o'clock I'm getting a head start here.

What I *know *about the day to come is that if things go according to plan I'm meeting a friend at nine to go off to Bayard to pick free apricots, then coming home (I can say that after eight years) and another friend is coming for lunch (she's bringing it) and also bringing a new neighbour of hers she would like me to meet.

How this all goes I hope to describe on here later, no matter how crazy Robert Hand thinks I am.

To be continued.

Written two days later so as usual have lost interest. If I can start a new habit (of course I can, haha) it is to post in here - well, nearly everyday : All of that happened with a miraculous find of a thrift shop

Jupiter on the Midheaven

What to do when Jupiter returns to the MC while you're still in lockdown, just as you were when it made the first pass?

Sit yourself down and buy the new iPhone you've been saying you're going to buy for about two years, knowing your little 5 SE's days are numbered and its keyboard is so tiny texting is becoming more and more difficult.

Arrives on Tuesday, when Venus hits Uranus and the Sun squares Jupiter.

Mars conjunct Part of Fortune

My PoF is in Pisces in the Twelfth so I never expect diamonds and gold.

Went to play tennis in the morning and one of the women arrived with eight plastic Walmart bags and a big pail like you would use for concrete (?) half full of apricots. 

Best fruit ever apart from figs. Lucky old me.

Jupiter trine Ascendant

astrodienst calls this "People at their Best"

This  morning I went to Walmart, got everything on the list, only had to get assistance once at the Self-Service, knew where my car was, took the cart to a cart place, turned the ignition and the car didn't start.

The wheel seemed locked and wouldn't move, something that's happened before. I managed to weasel out of it somehow that time but this time it was hopeless. Get the Guide out, look up what the symbols on the - the - dashboard? The place where the symbols show. Brake fluid and battery.

Feel very relieved at having a working phone and knowing from past experience that having an expired AAA card doesn't matter if you paid the bill, off I went to Roadside Assistance, holding the card in my right hand in case they wanted a membership number.

Surprise! Friends I hadn't realized had been parked so closely recognize me and slowly drive up parallel to me smiling and waving, and I frantically wave my left hand holding the phone and my right waving the AAA card and they keep on going, leaving me feeling a little as though I'd been cast away on a desert island with a great big HELP spelled out on the beach in sea shells and the helicopter had just flown over with the pilot giving me a friendly wave before disappearing into the distance.

Well, not quite. There was nothing that they could have done unless they had some extra brake fluid on them. It was just one of those *you had to be there* moments, and they DID come back as I texted a mutual friend to tell her what had happened.

End result was I made it to an auto store, bought a new battery, store employee unable to leave the store "because of this virus thing" to install it for me, and a customer shopping in the store overheard my plight and offered to install it for me for ten bucks. A people at his best.

Mercury conjunct Natal North Node in Cancer in 3

This was Friday and Saturday, and I don't think I left the house except to play tennis early and go to Walmart before I had to wait in line. (I  have so far managed to schedule my affairs so that I haven't had to do that.)

And now it's already Wednesday and one day I might realize that if I don't do this every day I may as well not bother.

I was just about to link to the first astrological blog I did to prove that once upon a time I DID write every day but when I go to it I get the dreaded "Your current account does not give you access.....".  I wonder if other people can get into it if they want. The link is there for anyone wanting to try.

I think I started it in '08, '09, years before I was living here (NM) full time. THERE'S a little project I could give myself, trying to figure out which of my five google accounts would let me into it. God knows I made enough fuss about spending hours trying to get into this one, only to write in it once a week or so, but there you go, I'm only human.....

That was going to be a link to WNMU and the online art exhibition that was NOT supposed to be virtual but it's time for tennis and I have to stop.

Jupiter on the Midheaven

Second time around, and just like the first time, back in March, I'm here in this beautiful house with its three beautiful gardens (truth, not boasting, and to be absolutely truthful you do have to walk through a couple of uncultivated desert wastelands to get from one to the other but hey, I've only lived here full-time 12 years and to get a blade of grass to grow here is an accomplishment) - as I was saying, supreme cosmic joke continues as the world goes up in flames and I'm here watering the flowers and decorating the mirror frame.

A statement of fact, NOT a complaint.

Mars Opposed to Jupiter

I wondered why I was finally tackling painting the big mirror I had made before Christmas and lo and behold! astrodienst had the answer, as usual. Mars opposed to Jupiter 2:00 am tomorrow, when I hope I shall be sound asleep but fortunately for me, it's already kicking in.

The kitchen "garden" window is crying out to be cleaned, and all the plants in it, although they're succluents, are crying out to be taken out of it or in some way I've yet to figure out, be shaded while they're there.

They have to be watered every single day and still they're not happy. Thinking cap required.

Sun Square Jupiter

I didn't get very much done today but I had a wonderful time not doing it. No tennis, no need to be out of the house by 7:15 - that's an hour earlier than I used to leave the house when I worked - no need to be anywhere at all except here, here being the house. My house.

That's amazing in and of itself.

Uranus square Pluto

OK, so my Good Girl went out and never came back. I now have one cat - Pretty Boy George to give him his never-used full title. She was Good Girl Charlotte, but only me and friend who christened her knew.

Right now I'm not doing airbnb and am beginning to live in the bit that used to be the airbnb. Very nice, and I understand why people like it here. Big Sunny , that is. For the first time ever, I'm living in the whole house - the bit that was here before John and I bought it and the bit he built on for himself, even though he never wanted to buy it but was sober and felt that he had made a promise (to me I guess) and couldn't go back on it.

I say "beginning to live" because I'm not yet doing it properly - I'm scattered all over the whole house because my closet is in the room I'm not sleeping in now and the room I'm sleeping in now has a really big walk-in closet that I was envious of when John built it for himself but was the airbnb closet and I don't want to take it over completely in case I go back to doing airbnb in September.

So I spend a lot of time running around looking for things, which I basically have always done here because I've never really lived here. I believe I am in flux.

There's something else but I can't remember what it is.

Is the Midheaven Your Sun?

I have no idea whether it is or not, but it's a thought I posit (!) after  weeks and weeks of this Pluto on the Mid-heaven business that's been going on for me since March.  (I could equally as well have posted this under "Why You Can Never *DO*  Your Own Chart.)

Pluto to the Midheaven! And Saturn! And Jupiter! MY Midheaven - 24 Capricorn 58! I've been anticipating this for at least five years - much much longer - but that was when I did a three-wheel chart: Natal in the middle, transits next, and Progressed on the outside. (Thinks - what happened to THAT?)

ANYWAY - it was all very intriguing (if not excellent fodder for fantastical daydreams about winning a prize for writing a play and getting some RECOGNITION - well, that was it. There wasn't any and. That was as far as the dream would go for an Aries Twelfth House Sun - intercepted, no less - with Mercury and Venus in Aries close by to keep it company and then - O Glorious Joke that I Think I Have Finally Gotten  - a natal South Node in Capricorn in the Ninth.

So here's the time I've been waiting for for ten years or so  (you know, all those media appearances and being on talk shows because someone stole into my bedroom one night and stole (hah! That would be fun to explain  at Literacy Link) a script and somehow it got published and then produced or something - honest, I never did go any further with The Dream but I'm trying to make a point here) -  here on my six acres a mile away from the Gila National Forest in the very unfashionable south-western corner of New Mexico. Go through a stop light and you're in Arizona. (That is not true.)

And the joke - the joke? I'm actually not quite sure I DO get it.

Pondering necessary.  TBC.

Venus square Jupiter

I fully intended to spend another hour or so painting the front steps this morning, but waking up and finding myself with nowhere I had to go felt so good after being out of the house by 8:00 am three mornings this past week I was overcome with inertia and let myself enjoy having nothing to do.

Not that I did nothing; there's always watering to do, which takes an hour and a half, and will do so until I either get myself a cup of white vinegar and a toothbrush and scrub all the minerals off the holes in the irrigation system they're plugging up or pay someone to completely redo the irrigation system, which is the way it's been for about two years.

There were plants I bought on Friday to put in and shade cloth to wrap around the ones I put in yesterday, rocks to gather to construct what I've decided will replace the bit of the rock wall that caved in last year, many weeds to attempt to pull and much pondering over what to do with the *upper garden* I had enclosed two - three? - years ago, but by staying home and staying off the Internet I managed to avoid the spending lots of  money trap and all I bought was another year's subscription to astrodienst, which is the main engine behind my being able to write this sometimes less-than-fascinating blog.

Mercury conjunct Uranus

Scattered and hasty thinking, eh?

You mean like going out for groceries and leaving your wallet next to the computer at home because you've been trying to find a pair of chukka style tennis shoes online which don't exist and then having to drive eight miles back to the house to get the wallet and then driving back to the store with your wallet except the card you want to use is STILL next to the computer because this time you were sure you would find them SOMEWHERE.....

Sun conjunct the Ascendant and trine the Midheaven

May 15th is the day every year when the Sun comes out of its two month passage through the Twelfth House (where it lives) and gets to the Ascendant, trining the Midheaven a few hours before.

(1984, the year it happened by progression, I finally made it to California after moving to New York in 1963 with the vague idea of living there for a year, hitchhiking to California and then continuing on around the world, ending up back in England. Quite how I thought I'd achieve that I have no idea, and as once I did get there 21 years later all I could think about was getting back to New York as quickly as possible, it was never put to the test.)

Nothing quite as exciting last Friday, but I did get a phone call from the head of an organization I've been asked to be on the board of, pardon my syntax, bringing me up to date on the doings and plans of said organization - zilch and zilch - and in the evening a friend who is determined to chronicle the events of my life post 9/11 (I think) facetimed to ask a few more questions.

Oh, and a notice appeared in the local paper announcing an online art exhibition I shall be part of, but being the local paper of the town in which I live, no dates were given and there is nothing online.

Mercury trine Neptune

Well if there's to be a day when you decide you can't go on any longer without watching Withnail and I, this would be it.

Found it for free on Daily Motion in two parts and no ads. Now I know why people think it's so good, except I have to watch a couple more times as I couldn't understand half of what was said.

Mars sextile Venus

So I got my reward today for all the replenishing the soil with steer manure I've been doing for what seems like and probably is weeks - off to Ace for yet more garden soil and steer manure and then to Country Girls - no website but I think they're on Facebook - where I made the mistake of walking straight into the greenhouse before being told very nicely that there were already the lawful number of people inside and I'd have to wait until one came out. Ah yes, COVID-19. Affecting the lives of people everywhere.

Anyway, as is usually the case when Mars and Venus get together for me with no drug addicts, alcoholics or homeless people in sight (Natal Mars in Pisces), something creative gets done, and if it isn't that creative to plant annuals in a garden, the end result is pretty to look at and tomorrow I need to go and get some more.

This is probably the lamest post I have ever written. Hope so, anyway.

Chiron trine Pluto

OK, so even I know this is one of the biggies working away in the background and there's not going to be any *manifestation* at the time of day it's exact, which is a good thing as otherwise I'd have been really disappointed.

Astrodienst calls it "Learning to Trust" and it's something about realizing that most major events in your life have come about with no conscious effort on your part to make them happen. Must be a bit more to it than that and I can't say I've actually grasped it, but whatever it is it's pretty nice, wafting away there in the background with day after day of beautiful weather and nothing to do but work outside and slowly turn neglect into benign neglect, this year's aim for the look of the *gardens*.

Sun Square Moon

Gorgeous weather and outside all day trying to make neglect look like benign neglect. A long way to go before that happens, as it takes me 90 minutes every day just to water and it's been so hot already this year I have to keep coming inside to cool off, but today was cool enough to keep going and I did, for about eight hours, with not an argument or disagreement in sight.

Still looks like neglect as I've attempted to *cultivate* more than I probably should have around the house, but the basics got done years ago when I could still cart around rocks and tree stumps to *landscape* and a week or so of eight-hour days now will get all the fallen leaves raked up and dumped and there's only a few flagstones to move from the back to the front and the bricks that G gave me to figure out what to do with and .....

Now I have to figure out how to get images on here without using the dreaded google photos. I'm old enough to remember when you could upload images directly from your computer, in those days of innocence before google ruled the earth, which reminds me that for someone who made such a fuss about finally gaining access to this blog after years of trying I haven't exactly lived up to its title.

But these are challenging times and we are in uncharted territory in these unprecedented circumstances for all of mankind, and if I had paid attention I'd have realized the sun was about to trine Jupiter in the early hours of Saturday and THAT had a lot more to do with my eight hours of labour than its squaring the moon.

Retrograde Pluto to the Midheaven

Pluto's been hovering two seconds off the Midheaven for the last three weeks or so for me, during all of which time I've been sheltering in place at the house with very occasional visits from friends who are doing the same in their houses except when they come over here of course.

With it (him?) exact to the MC again today, yesterday some of those friends came over and were critiquing the beginnings of my makeover of the living room, in progress since last Christmas.

Looking at the black and white irregular polka-dotted fabric draped over the curtain rod to see if it would work (it does) against the one wall papered in smaller irregular black and white polka dots, one of those friends was prompted to say "Very original", which I suppose pretty much sums up my, er, public persona.

That's what you get when you have Uranus in the First square Mars in the Eleventh.

Venus Square Jupiter

Well I don't think I bought anything extravagant unless you consider $2.97 on a tension rod to put in a doorway for a little bit of extra privacy for me and my new camping-out tenants to be excessive, but it was a much better than normal day as I discovered I can still play tennis.

It's been in doubt for six months or so, ever since the pain in my left calf came back soon after I had the *procedure* to cure it - a kind of roto-rooter-outer  to blow out the accumulated plaque from the partially blocked artery. Six months to four years, the surgeon said it lasted, and I automatically assumed I'd be one of the lucky ones.

I wasn't. It took a record-breaking four months before my calf started to hurt again when I took more than 50 or so steps, which began to happen when I was on vacation in Hawaii in February while Saturn was squaring my Mercury, which just happens to rule my Sixth House. Astrologer, glance at the ephemeris when making plans.

Because I didn't finish this this morning when I began to write it I've now completely lost interest in it. I may or may not add to it tomorrow.

Monday May 4th

Not even the tomorrow. Three days later. Wrap-up - got myself a stair step machine, used it and think I have actually *cured* (or enabled myself to be better or whatever you want to call it) myself enough that I can play tennis again, which I just did.

Jupiter Square Mercury

So the (failing) New York Times lets me refer to Two Scoops (looking more and more like Three Scoops) as a liar but not as a liar and a coward. Maybe by the time this aspect returns for me when Jupiter goes retrograde the people approving comments will have changed their minds.

The coward comment, of course, was in reference to the day after the never-to-be-forgotten *musings* about ingesting bleach to cure COVID-19, when Two Scoops lumbered off the podium without taking questions from the press, if jabbing his finger at reporters and calling them losers can ever be considered taking questions.

But Here Lie Dragons, or whatever it was the old treasure-hunting maps used to say. All very well to spend last Thursday night giggling helplessly over IQ45's *intelligence*, but I've spent at least two weeks trying to figure out how to post a comment directly to the Times instead of simply replying to a comment already made by someone else.

Neither google nor the Times' own Help pages were any help, and direct questions to Times Support got no response (can't imagine why). Such a simple query - How do I make a comment to the New York Times? - and nowhere could I find the answer. How to reply to a comment already made - piece o'cake. Hit Reply, and there's the little box to write your reply, but how to make a comment - nothing.

(I'll gloss over the amount of time it took for me to figure out how to change my name from Pamela R to preevz, and just mention it had something to do with clicking on the Edit button next to Pamela R.)

Finally, in desperation, it dawned on me that the little box at the top of Comments that said Share Your Thoughts might have something to do with it. It was always there, whenever you clicked on Comments to see what other readers had said, but I'd always ignored it. I mean - Share Your Thoughts - what kind of obtuse way is THAT to say Make a Comment? Frigging arugula eaters.

I think the old 'people who live in glass houses...' is pertinent here, at least for people as self-aware and evolved as I am. (This is where you have to write <sarcasm> for all the people who aren't. I think I can get away with blaming it on Scorpio on the Descendant.) 

And let's face it, there's no denying it and no running away from it - he's president and I'm not.

Robert Hand Thinks This is Crazy

What I attempt to do in this blog, that is. I must have read it in an interview with him on probably The Mountain Astrologer, in the days that I used to subscribe to that. One day I'll see if I can search it out.

Of course it seems to me to be a perfectly logical way to go. You can read all the cookbooks you like about how to make macaroni and cheese but until you light the oven and get the mixing bowl out (talk about dating yourself) and stick everything in there and mix it all up you really have no idea.

To me it's the same with astrology. You can read all the astrology cookbooks you like about what might happen when Saturn comes to your Sun but until it happens you really have no idea.

In my case, with a Twelfth House Aries Sun, I was working as a proofreader for a new ad agency which had absolutely nothing to proof and I spent about three weeks completely alone in a huge room with nothing whatsoever to do. Fun.

OK, enough of the My Approach to Astrology. Off to the landfill.

Jupiter square Mercury

Have to be careful with this one.

Finding myself getting quite strident whenever I talk to someone about the disgrace for a human being currently holding televised campaign rallies for a couple of hours a day in guise of informative briefings on COVID-19.

Venus conjunct Sun

Blimey, what a relief this was.

Played around with my neglected houseplants in the morning and then a clandestine trip in the afternoon to meet friends who REALLY live in the country - so much better than bashing myself over the head for two days because I can't draw like Picasso while I was attempting a self-portrait for my online life drawing class.

Pluto to the Midheaven Really Exact

I may have mentioned I'm a Twelfth House Sun with Mercury and Venus there as well and a South Node in Capricorn in the Ninth. There again I might not have, so to make this anecdote make sense for any astrologers who might be reading it I have to make sure that's understood.

OK, I take a drawing class last semester and by a twist of fate the drawings me and my fellow students produced are to be organized into an exhibition at the local University Museum and we are to stand by our drawings at the opening and do whatever artists do at openings. I wouldn't know. It's a first for me.

The date chosen for the opening of the exhibition (which is to hang for two months) is one day off the day Pluto is exactly on my Midheaven. Pretty good, I think, for something that has had 75 years to play itself out.

Along comes Covid-19. Exhibition cancelled.

Pluto to the Midheaven continued: I am a dilettante playwright and to go along with my South Node in Capricorn I maintain a membership in the Dramatists Guild although the last time I had a play produced was in 2011. A few weeks ago, the Guild sent out a challenge for any member wishing to participate to write a two-character play about any subject of our choosing in 150 words. The deadline was the next day.

A pretty low bar. I decided I could do it, did it and sent it in before the deadline. Me and about 650 other people managed to stick to the given conventions. The Guild then organized, in alphabetical order by playwright, a week of readings of the plays, 60 or 70 a night, and sent the individual playwrights an invitation to a zoom meeting for the night his or her play was to be read, each program beginning at 7:30 pm.

The art class I signed up for this semester - figure drawing - is now online (don't ask) and on the night my play was to be read - when Pluto was exactly on my midheaven,  I joined in the drawing class zoom meeting, asking to be excused at 7:15 pm, left the meeting and went over to the Guild zoom site to listen to my play.

I live now in New Mexico. The Guild, as I know, is based in New York. New York is two hours ahead of New Mexico. The meeting was over when I went to join it -  a perfect astrological manifestation of a Twelfth House Sun with transiting Pluto on the midheaven.  Beat it if you can.

I do get four more goes though.

Pluto to the Midheaven Exact

Well, actually it's not - it's tomorrow early in the afternoon, so I suppose I should wait till then for the final report.

In the meantime, I had a very nice day watering the garden till I got fed up, trying to draw the self portrait that's my homework for my online Life Drawing class at NMWU, and generally *wasting*
away the rest of the day.

I have a feeling that the Universe is off by about twelve hours, but I'll wait till tomorrow to place my bet.

Pluto to the Midheaven l

My big day tomorrow this - the real reason I've been looking forward to 2020 ever since I realized what was going to happen in it. Pluto, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars - all whizzing around my 24 Capricorn 59 Midheaven with a couple coming back for extended visits.

To an Aries Twelfth House with a South Node in Capricorn in the 9th it was - was - was - well I didn't think I was going to get famous or anything after living in total obscurity for 75 years (actually I did but no one reads this anyway) but I knew enough about astrology to know SOMETHING was going to happen and it had to do with me being in the public eye. 

Living where I do, on a dead end off a dead end four miles from a small town that time forgot down in the unheralded corner of a southwestern state (don't ask), it's been an intriguing position to imagine myself in.

I could just go to Walmart and march around the parking lot with a sign saying "Anyone But Trump" and that would do it but I'm far too lazy (cowardly, actually, but I think lazy sounds better).

And of course the icing on the cake is the solitary confinement self-isolation I've been under for the past 30 days, very fitting for the Twelfth House but not so great when the Midheaven is involved.

And yet - something is a-stirring. I'm on here again, for a start, and I'm going to leave it right there for now. The Perils-of-Pauline part comes tomorrow when 75 years and six days of me living on Earth shows me what I've done.

P.S. I get four more chances.

Neptune Opposed to Jupiter

It's a good thing this peaked a week ago today as I was getting way too fond of a relaxation aid round about midday, a shandy or two about four in the afternoon and then maybe half a lorazepam to get me to sleep.

Stone cold sober for the past two days and enjoying the feeling.

Typo!

First post I've managed on here in years and there's a typo. Proofreader, heal thyself. With Neptune opposed to Jupiter, though, exact today, please may I be excused?

Google Will be the Death of Me

Really should not write something like that at the moment, but I think by now I'm up to five accounts with them in an attempt to get back into this blog - the nearlyeveryday one.

I think this may have done it but not completely sure. Have copied the URL into stickies. Not eben attempting to get in to everydayastrology because there's nothing on that, and it *should* have all of the posts on here, assuming of course that when I hit "Update" it will take me back to where I started. Assuming.