Mercury on the Ascendant

So when I finally sat down and went through the pile of unopened mail that had been building up for a month and found out my car had been recalled I immediately made an appointment for the fix for the first possible day - Monday May 13.

Only later did I realize this was the day Mercury (cars, duh) came to the ascendant, very fitting as the Hyundai dealer is in Tucson, three and a half hours away.

I was feeling very proud of myself driving down the hill to Lordsburg. I'd printed out a map of where the dealership was and knew what exit I was to get off at, and had written out the last part once I was off the 10 in big letters so I could read it while I was driving. I knew where the nearest Trader Joe's was. I'd brought a little insulated bag with one of those frozen ice things in it. I'd remembered to bring something to drink. I'd left the light on on the back patio in case something dreadful happened and I didn't get back till dark. Ginger was inside. I was in plenty of time for my 1.00 pm appointment - I'd left the house at 9:00 and the drive takes round about three and a half hours.

Running through that list in my head, I was feeling pretty smug  until the dreaded daylight savings time question popped itself up - what time is it in Tucson?

One would think that after coming out to the southwest for eleven years I'd have sorted this out by now, but I have enough trouble with plain old daylight savings time by itself without adding in living next to a state that ignores it. One could also think that having taken a flight from Tucson Airport last summer I would remember whether if it's nine am in Silver it's ten am or eight am in Tucson, and whether it's in summer or winter that it's the same time in California as it is in Arizona, but no such luck -  I hadn't even remembered time was an issue till I was on the road.

Once I did, dim memories from last year of being all excited thinking I could have Popeye's fried chicken in Willcox on the way to the airport and then it being so early when I got there Popeye's wasn't open began to surface, and while I couldn't remember what time the flight had been (surprise) I was pretty sure it had been earlier than one, meaning (in the way my mind works, at least) I was going to get to Tucson at 11:30, an hour and a half earlier than necessary.

I was right. The great big TA stop in Willcox thoughtfully provides its own simplified version of the array of world clocks on 57th and Madison - they only have four but frankly that's more than enough for someone like me, especially as I used to think there were only three - and there it was, time in Tucson, one hour away from Willcox, 10:30.

Anticipating this ever since I remembered the , I'd decided that assuming I got off at the right exit and the map was right and Trader Joe's was as close to the dealership as it seemed to be, I could go to Trader Joe's FIRST and get whatever I decided I couldn't live without in Silver and THEN keep the appointment, especially as I'd been thoughtful enough to bring the insulated bag.

And that's exactly what I did, stowing my two little logs of goat cheese away so they'd be cool while I waited for whatever they did to the car to be done, and best of all, because that flight last year must have been earlier than the dealership appointment, I got my chicken fix and wasn't even hungry in Trader Joe's. And I got back before it was dark.

Oh, and yeah, I forgot - the Ascendant's other people, right, so the man in the red van who had to swerve so as not to hit me when I pulled out too soon on the way to the 10 after the car was fixed was probably just saying hello when he shook his fist at me....

Mercury Trine Jupiter

So as soon as Mercury stopped squaring the moon and we got the  call the plumber/I can fix it see-saw out of the way its trine to Jupiter kicked in, and somehow I found myself in the computer room behaving as though I'm a playwright.

I pay a ludicrous amount of money every year to belong to the Dramatists Guild and for the past year or so have barely opened the e-newsletters they send every couple of weeks. I leave them unread in my mailbox and after a month or so open them and check the Submission Opportunities. Lo and behold, if there is ever an opportunity for which one of my plays meets the qualifications, the deadline is long gone and I delete the email, wondering if being on Wellbutrin for eleven years has turned me into an ambitious-less zombie or if I'm just pathologically lazy.

Whichever of those choices it may be (and maybe there are more than two choices - maybe I'm an ambitious-less pathologically lazy zombie ha ha)  I did see a submission opportunity for which one of my plays might be suitable, and - alert the media - sent a query. And, lo and behold II, received a considerate and thoughtful acknowledgment thanking me and telling me it will take about six weeks for all entries to be read, and that the theatre will then be in touch. Doesn't often happen.

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....