Mercury Square Moon

I would have expected Neptune to be in here somewhere but I don't have my house guest's chart and it wasn't really the time to ask him. He was washing breakfast dishes when the faucet JDG had told me needed tightening suddenly proved JDG correct and torrents of water sprayed all over the place. "Turn off the water!" house guest yelled, and I went haring up to the well-house, happy I, for once, knew how to do something.

Simplest way to describe the next hour is to say I kept repeating "Let me call the plumber" while house guest asked me questions like did I have a something or other tool (I never did) or was there a turn-off valve under the sink or was the turn-off valve under the sink for both hot and cold water and didn't I have any kind of wrench etc. etc.

Simplest way to describe the hour after that is to say I kept repeating "Let me call the plumber" while we all went down to what used to be Mr. Ed's Fix-it Center and is now Sun Valley Hardware and house guest engaged in long and incomprehensible conversations with Greg On The Floor about exactly which piece of hardware needed purchasing and exactly where it went in the line-up of bits that were going back into the faucet.

Simplest way to describe the rest of the day is to say I kept saying "Thank you so much" to house guest after he fixed the faucet that JDG had told me needed tightening and saved me the cost of having the plumber come to the house.

Jupiter Square Jupiter

So this has been going on in the background for several days with the somewhat ominous heading of "Impending Shortages" given to it by astrodienst. Funnily enough <roll eyes>, I've put myself on a strict budget since the beginning of the month and am attempting to buy only what I need and nothing that I merely want - this after a credit card bill for April of $2,600, which gave me pause even though I'm aware my putting every single item possible to put on it on it so I can get Air Miles often has it hover around the $2,000 mark.

I do - choke - pay it off every month but each month I do so takes another month of life expectancy with moolah away, so right now if AAPL stays where it is I'm good until I'm
73 - older than many people in the Obit column every day for sure, but the women in my family have tended to live into their eighties or nineties and being 85 with no moolah is not what I'd call an inviting prospect.

So - today was the day I applied for my Chase Select Credit Card, thus in some convoluted way giving myself another year or so of life + ability to eat if I can only stop buying anything that catches my eye, even if it does cost only a dollar or so in the PAWS thrift shop.

I did do well in Deming yesterday, spending absolutely nothing except at Lottaburger <deep sigh>, although of course to not spend money in Deming scarcely qualifies as any kind of achievement. There's a Walmart (and there's one of them in Silver), a K-Mart, a Dollar Tree and a Tractor Supply Company, one of which is also in Silver and into either one of which I have yet to set foot <pardon my syntax>.

Today I had to shell out about three dollars for some plumbing supplies but can scarcely complain as the house guest who fixed the kitchen faucet for me saved me an at least fifty dollar visit from the plumber. I did also buy a sixteen dollar wrench on house guest's advice as I've realized it's a crucial household tool I've never had, and definitely romps home to a win in the "need" rather than "want" category.

So we shall see. Twenty-three days to go until the end of this credit card billing cycle and I'm already up to $660 seemingly without breathing. And while I don't really WANT 100 gallons of propane, I need it and *should* have ordered it today.

Venus on the Ascendant

Okay, so I have absolutely no discipline and have been remiss, to put it mildly, with posting, and if I could only manage to get something up every day it would all make so much more sense as a narrative, but I'm not capable of it so it doesn't.

So - a quick backtrack to Easter when JDG arrived with three dozen eggs and a not-so-long ago backtrack to when the bikers were here and Food Basket had a special of two boxes of 18 eggs each for four dollars and then for two days in a row the bikers didn't have time for breakfast before they left for the day.

Result - lemon curd, which I made on Saturday night and left out on the counter to cool. Sunday morning I scooped a big dollop onto a spoon, started licking it, came into the computer room to check astrodienst for the day and there is was, five minutes off - Venus on the Ascendant. Love, art and money? Not for me, at least not on Sunday.

Jupiter Trine Moon

This seems to have passed almost unnoticed after the frenzy of having the bikers here and the lightning trip to Cruces to pick up the chairs with Jupiter sextiling the Sun and Mars sextiling Mars, but I suppose that's what trines do.

The bikers left late Sunday afternoon (this, of course, is glossing over five days of lots of egg-cooking and dishes and emptying trash cans) and I fell in a heap, played tennis Monday, came back and got the room ready for the two friends who are here for a week, had dinner with them, got up yesterday and had a tennis lesson, back to the house, friends went out and I fell in a heap again and caught up with The New Yorkers that pile up week after week.

So today I have the dregs of the trine and here I am at the desktop in the back room staring at the winter's worth of filing on the desk and planning a trip to the dump - both very optimistic house-related goals. We'll see.

Jupiter Sextile Sun

So Jupiter sextiles the Sun and here I am frantically emailing someone on Craigslist Las Cruces to get the measurements of the two wicker chairs they have on sale for $25 the pair




And three days later: that was exactly as far as I got before D offered to take me in her car so there'd be room for both chairs and we went to Cruces and got the chairs and then I came back and the bikers were here and....

Sun sextile Saturn

What I would really like is whatever aspect it is that makes you do a great big pile of ironing, but in the absence of that I guess one that makes you put a check that came to you by mistake six weeks ago into an envelope and forward it to the person it was intended for comes in second best.

Venus Sextile Mars

So for non-artistic people who aren't in a sexual relationship, this is supposed to be a time when they could beautify their immediate surroundings.  I'm not sure that taking every item of clothing one owns and piling it on the dining room table qualifies as such, but that's exactly what I did, congratulating myself that once it was all sorted through and either thrown away or put into a closet or dresser drawer so I knew exactly where it was I would never have to do it again.

Remembering the storage closet in Randolph cast somewhat of a pall on this wildly idealistic notion, but undeterred, with Neptune oh-so-appropriately trining Saturn exactly in the middle of the day, I soldiered on. Surely it was that - or Pluto beginning to sextile Mars again or, even more likely, both of them combined - that had me get out the hammer and the nails and do my handyman impersonation by banging together the broken bits of the bottom drawer of the tall boy that was making my dressing room a reality - truly, I could care less, as my adopted country-people always say, what it was so long as it will end up with my finally getting some kind of handle on this house.

Maybe turning the laundry hallway into a somewhat down-market dressing room would be considered "abstemious and self-denying" (astrodienst, as usual) by some, but for me, having all my undies in one place for the first time in eleven years instead of scattered between walk-in closet, drawers under day bed and cupboard in office in Silver and Manhattan and Cambridge (forget about Randolph for the moment) is tantamount to lying on a featherbed in heaven watching the original Upstairs Downstairs on Youtube with Bogie, Fluff, Sweet Pea and Ginger curled up next to me not fighting and a tin of mixed nuts and a packet of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups by my side. It's all relative.