15 August, 2009
Venus Square Sun
True confessions time: went to Walmart this morning (which is NOT the true confession), among other things bought two four-packs of instant pudding, one butterscotch, one chocolate, had eaten all eight servings by 6:00 pm.
07 August, 2009
Venus in Three...
...and the first thing I do is back the car over a log in the driveway and get a flat on my way to play tennis with a partner I barely know. Fortunately, I do know her name, find her in the phone book and catch her just as she's leaving her house to meet me. I tell her our session is off and she immediately suggests driving out to where I live and changing the tire for me, an offer I am not about to refuse. I tell her where I live - four miles out of town - and am thankful I know enough to be able to get the spare out of its hiding place in the cargo compartment of the Volvo before she arrives.
I left the car on a slope in the driveway as soon as I realized what had happened, and the first thing she suggests is driving it onto level ground. I do that, and watch while she finds the right place to hook in the jack and starts to raise the car. You need to loosen the lug nuts while the wheel's still on the ground, she says, as if you do it when the wheel's in the air it will just spin and make getting them off much harder. I nod sagely, scarcely able to believe my good fortune.
Suddenly the jack collapses and the wheel is back on the ground. B says it's all her fault for not putting bricks in front of the front wheels and for placing the jack on gravel. The paving stones I bought two months ago for landscaping are still where I put them when I took them out of the car, and we put two in front of each of the front wheels. I suggest looking for a bit of old wood to put the jack on, but B says clearing away the gravel will be enough. It is, except now the jack is bent and no longer fits. B goes to get hers from her Suburu and lo and behold, it works. "We" - me wearing the white gloves that so help me God are in the tool kit of the Volvo and B doing all the work with bare hands - get the punctured wheel off and try to fit the spare on to the lug nuts.
No go. How can I have a spare that doesn't fit? I have no answer to this, but it doesn't, so I go into the house to call Triple A. While they're telling me all they can do is tow me somewhere where I can get a new tire, B yells from outside that she's sussed it and I hang up. There's a little spoke that sticks out and a corresponding hole on the spare that needs to be aligned before it will fit. Spare tire and tennis practice are on, and now I know how to fix a flat.
I left the car on a slope in the driveway as soon as I realized what had happened, and the first thing she suggests is driving it onto level ground. I do that, and watch while she finds the right place to hook in the jack and starts to raise the car. You need to loosen the lug nuts while the wheel's still on the ground, she says, as if you do it when the wheel's in the air it will just spin and make getting them off much harder. I nod sagely, scarcely able to believe my good fortune.
Suddenly the jack collapses and the wheel is back on the ground. B says it's all her fault for not putting bricks in front of the front wheels and for placing the jack on gravel. The paving stones I bought two months ago for landscaping are still where I put them when I took them out of the car, and we put two in front of each of the front wheels. I suggest looking for a bit of old wood to put the jack on, but B says clearing away the gravel will be enough. It is, except now the jack is bent and no longer fits. B goes to get hers from her Suburu and lo and behold, it works. "We" - me wearing the white gloves that so help me God are in the tool kit of the Volvo and B doing all the work with bare hands - get the punctured wheel off and try to fit the spare on to the lug nuts.
No go. How can I have a spare that doesn't fit? I have no answer to this, but it doesn't, so I go into the house to call Triple A. While they're telling me all they can do is tow me somewhere where I can get a new tire, B yells from outside that she's sussed it and I hang up. There's a little spoke that sticks out and a corresponding hole on the spare that needs to be aligned before it will fit. Spare tire and tennis practice are on, and now I know how to fix a flat.
01 August, 2009
Saturn conjunct Jupiter
This is the third and final pass of this, and I wish I could remember the effects of the first two. Manifestations of this third go-around involved attempts at getting the house cleaned out and organized. I don't have my astrology diaries here or I could look back and see what was going on when Saturn squared Jupiter seven years ago in 2003. Certainly the house was full of junk/stuff then, as all of Paul's stuff was here, a lot of John's still, and I was slowly sending myself out things from New York I thought I couldn't live without.
As the stars would have it, I was asked to join in a communal yard sale today, and spent a lot of last week and all of yesterday sorting through and pricing things, most of which had been left behind by various and assorted renters or were still leftovers from John and Paul. Prize item here was a life-sized baby doll - Phoebe - left behind by last winter's tenants. Its/her arms were loose and hanging out of their sockets, craftily concealed by clothing it/her in a baby sleeping bag thingie so you couldn't tell. Earlier in the week, in my dreams, I had thought I might replace the worn-out elastic holding the arms together with something with less give, but that was in my dreams and this morning I decided Phoebe, with full disclosure of her disabled status, could be free to a good home.
The sale was in a not heavily populated area of town (as though any area of this town is heavily populated) and when the first customer arrived mind-morning we were told there were four columns of yard sales listed in the Silver City Daily Press for today. In spite of admitting, at my prodding, that he had female grandchildren, he turned Phoebe down, as did the next four non-purchasing arrivals, and it was only when an expert knitter friend showed up that I was able to unload Phoeb as a model for her baby clothes. (By this time I had demonstrated Phoebe's infirmities so many times her arms had fallen off completely and were loose in the bottom of her sleeping bag.) Admittedly not a great example, but as we realized as the morning wore on, the economy here is so bad you can't even GIVE things away.
I think I made four sales for a total of $11 and bought a pair of reading sunglasses for $5 from one of the other vendors, so if I dare look in my money pouch I probably have $6 more than I had when the sale started, and I still have a station wagon loaded with stuff I don't want. I have at least decided that none of it is allowed back in the house and will have to go into the little adobe storage shed up the hill. This of course means that all the REAL junk - old headboards, bits and scraps of plywood, furniture too rickety to stand on its own, lengths of leftover molding too short to use - has to be removed and taken to Restore (where I bought most of it anyway) to make room for the garage sale stuff. The most I can hope for is that I get that done before Saturn gets to Pisces and opposes Jupiter.
As the stars would have it, I was asked to join in a communal yard sale today, and spent a lot of last week and all of yesterday sorting through and pricing things, most of which had been left behind by various and assorted renters or were still leftovers from John and Paul. Prize item here was a life-sized baby doll - Phoebe - left behind by last winter's tenants. Its/her arms were loose and hanging out of their sockets, craftily concealed by clothing it/her in a baby sleeping bag thingie so you couldn't tell. Earlier in the week, in my dreams, I had thought I might replace the worn-out elastic holding the arms together with something with less give, but that was in my dreams and this morning I decided Phoebe, with full disclosure of her disabled status, could be free to a good home.
The sale was in a not heavily populated area of town (as though any area of this town is heavily populated) and when the first customer arrived mind-morning we were told there were four columns of yard sales listed in the Silver City Daily Press for today. In spite of admitting, at my prodding, that he had female grandchildren, he turned Phoebe down, as did the next four non-purchasing arrivals, and it was only when an expert knitter friend showed up that I was able to unload Phoeb as a model for her baby clothes. (By this time I had demonstrated Phoebe's infirmities so many times her arms had fallen off completely and were loose in the bottom of her sleeping bag.) Admittedly not a great example, but as we realized as the morning wore on, the economy here is so bad you can't even GIVE things away.
I think I made four sales for a total of $11 and bought a pair of reading sunglasses for $5 from one of the other vendors, so if I dare look in my money pouch I probably have $6 more than I had when the sale started, and I still have a station wagon loaded with stuff I don't want. I have at least decided that none of it is allowed back in the house and will have to go into the little adobe storage shed up the hill. This of course means that all the REAL junk - old headboards, bits and scraps of plywood, furniture too rickety to stand on its own, lengths of leftover molding too short to use - has to be removed and taken to Restore (where I bought most of it anyway) to make room for the garage sale stuff. The most I can hope for is that I get that done before Saturn gets to Pisces and opposes Jupiter.
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