Mercury Trine The Sun

So let's forget about all the truly nasty stuff going on in the background and focus in on what this blog was once supposed to be about - everyday astrology, and how, if you're obsessed enough, which I haven't been of late, you can experience it playing itself out in your life day by day.  (Of course, to immediately qualify what I just wrote, as usual, I'm aware the background stuff has a huge effect on the everyday stuff, just in case somebody might think I'm not.)

Anyway, as I haven't been posting very often lately (as though I ever did), readers are probably unaware that I lost my camera a week ago when sightseeing with friends who were visiting from Silver. Whether I put it down somewhere in Uniqlo and forgot or had my pocket picked makes no difference; the PowerShot SX110 IS I never really liked because it had way more features than I needed or could understand was gone, and I decided to give myself another Christmas present and get myself an easier-to-operate camera.

Skipping over a week of watching 1940s English black and white movies on YouTube while despairing over my lot (re truly nasty stuff going on in the background, not lost camera), yesterday, as the subject title perfected, found me at the Point and Shoot counter in B&H finalizing my order with Marty for a Sony Cybershot DSC-H70 with 16.1 megapixels and a 10x optical zoom (the only thing the PowerShot had that I really liked).

MARTY: Are you a university professor?
ME: (choking) No, I'm a babysitter.
MARTY: Oh, I thought for sure coming from Cambridge you had something to do with Harvard.
ME: Well, the woman I work for works there.

And with that scintillating scrap of dialog, I can remind myself I'm a playwright and get myself out of here and go over to Colony Music, where I need to get a couple of beginner piano scale and chord books so I can use my other Christmas present. I've got Mercury (the Trickster) square Jupiter this morning.

Mercury Sextile Neptune Again, and a Lot More

So instead of watching Jeeves and Wooster all day I watched The Way We Live Now, again thanks to YouTube, and thanks to Jupiter conjunct Venus, which I've been sneering at for the past two weeks and thinking that for once I'd escaped, I have the world's cheapest (and lightest - eight and a half pounds - far more important considering my current nomadic state) electronic keyboard arriving tomorrow as my Christmas present to myself, thanks to Amazon.

And thanks to my sister, I've realized a bit late that the Progressed Venus square Pluto transit that I've been waiting to manifest is instead in full force right now with another couple of years to go, a chilling and more than sobering thought. It's me and Ahma and I can only say her possessiveness over Star Child, which I simply had not realized - the words dumb ass come to mind - was as all-consuming and powerful as it is. Counseling, (which I thought would help, and I suppose in some dreadful way has, as it's brought this out into the open, even though it took my sister to point it out to me), is the culprit, and if you think this sentence is tangled you should try being inside my head, where all of that is scrambling around with well what happens when I go ahead and sublet and then don't have anywhere to live because I can't go on with life in the hallway, and what will I do with Sweet Pea if I move into a SRO in Cambridge (I should be so lucky) and suppose I go back to Silver to pick up the Volvo to drive to Morongo and it doesn't work and if it does Sweet Pea gets eaten by coyotes, and when I look at transits and progressions for 2012 all I want to do is be knocked unconscious on December 31 of this year and woken up on January 1, 2013.

Happy Christmas.

The Kindness of Strangers

Or, going to the library and then out for dinner without your glasses

So with Sun square Jupiter I finally get myself to the main branch of the Cambridge Public Library, going on to the Institute of Contemporary Art to watch best British commercials of 2010 (Venus trine Jupiter) with P, my one and only friend in Boston. (Saturday, prone on my bed in the hallway stuffing myself with licorice, I googled Boston Public Library Main Branch over and over again, hoping to come up with the branch on Broadway in Cambridge duh! I was looking for trying to check Sunday hours - yesterday the brain began to work and I realized I had to google Cambridge. It is not easy groping one's way around a new city at such an advanced age.)

It's a beautiful day, the sun's shining and I hoof it to Harvard Square, hoping I can skirt around the yard (now closed to those without student ID because of the Occupy Cambridge going on inside) and get to the library where I used to take Star Child for sing-along before she started college, discover I can, walk to the library, get all excited at the thought of actually being able to read Inside Scientology and reach in my bag for my reading glasses, which I immediately realize (all four pairs) are back at #326.

I see a stack right there on the ground floor called New Books and stand there squinting at the spines but can't see the book in the Rs, so indulge in my new ask-for-help-when-you-need-it behavior and go to the desk with big circles over it saying Questions? and Answers. The almost frighteningly helpful to a New Yorker young woman behind the desk immediately pulls up three copies of it on the computer, tell me they're all Speed Reads, which I translate correctly to One Week Expresses, and offers to take me over to the stack where they are to get a copy. Feeling a little as though I need a white cane or a service dog, I follow along behind, and when we get to the books she brightly tells me one of them is already in general circulation so I won't need to have it back in a week, a good thing as I go to New York on Wednesday for three weeks and wouldn't have been able to finish it in three days.

Having managed to take my library card along, if not my glasses, I check out the book and tap my way down the street back to Harvard Square to take the T (how Bostonian is that?) to meet P at ICA, my first visit to the museum - any museum apart from the aquarium - since my zip code changed to 02138. We watch the one-hour film of  Commercials, most of which I understand, some of which are funny, all of which are l-o-n-g, and then wander around the gift store with me picking objects up, waving the price tag under P's nose and saying "How much is this?"

The real trouble starts when we go to Legal Seafoods and are presented with a six page small type menu by a clone of the young woman behind the Questions? desk at the library. "Is there anything special I can help you with?" she says. "Yes," I say. "Do you have a spare pair of reading glasses anywhere for pitiful people who came out without theirs?" They don't, and she takes me seriously when I ask if she'll read the menu to me, but P obliges when I narrow it down a bit - "What isn't mahi-mahi, is fried and is under $25," and I don't need glasses to read the print on the packet of Walker's mince tarts that P has brought me for Christmas.

On the T on the way back from my Jupiterian (?) visit to the wilds of the Boston waterfront, I discover if I hold the library book just far enough away from my face and turn it at just the right angle to the light I can make out the print, and work my way through the first ten lines of the introduction by the time the train pulls into Harvard Square fifteen minutes later. This adventure in reading stops the minute I get back *home,* when I grab a pair of 2.0s, crawl under the covers in my little bed in the hallway and race through another ten lines before I fall asleep.

Life in the Hallway, Continued

So Ahma and I had a family therapy session on Tuesday morning, with Star Child safely in school. This is with Saturn on the Moon for Ahma and Saturn opposed to Mercury for me - yes, A and I have the Moon and Mercury in opposition natally, and have always managed to annoy each other not quite enough to cause a rift, but along comes Star Child and that no longer applies. I had my own session yesterday morning, Ahma will have an individual session and then we go back to what is essentially couples therapy - funny, really, or it will be in about ten years.

So here it is Saturday, a few hours after the eclipse, with my Saturn opposed to Mercury exact tomorrow (A's S to the Moon was exact the day after our joint session) and there's something almost enjoyable about lying here on my little bed in the hallway in broad daylight with no inclination to do anything else watching Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in episode after episode of Jeeves and Wooster (with Mercury sextile Neptune) and eating far too much licorice (Venus sextile the Sun).

Looking ahead at transits for next year makes me want to seek out a clinic where I can be put to sleep for twelve months, but I don't think they have any of those, so I'll just take a little nap and watch some Mapp and Lucia when I wake up.

Maybe If I Called This Life In the Hallway...

.... I'd write something more often, as, heaven forbid, after *discovering* astrology 15 years ago and jumping into it with both feet, it seems the thrill is finally gone, the love affair is over, the obsession with checking aspects daily too difficult to keep up with (!) now that life revolves around a three-and-a-half-year-old, and when it doesn't I'm on a bus going down to New York just in time to unpack before it's time to turn around and come back again. Violins, please, and pass the tissues. It's Saturn opposed to Mercury.

Saturn Square Midheaven

So along comes the Lord of Karma to make me look at every decision I've made in my life so far and, with apologies to Dr. Phil, see how that's working out for me in terms of, with apologies to the late Patric Walker, my personal and professional life.

 (Here followeth a brief description of my actions after writing that first sentence, which with the task-specific appropriate variations can be applied to any mission I currently undertake and, I feel, offers insight into the lack of accomplishment in any area of my life at the moment:

First, knowing this visit from the Cosmic Chiropractor is only the first of three, I got up from the couch and went into the computer room to get the ephemeris so I could inform my readership of the timing of the second and third visits. I came back to the couch, checked the ephemeris and saw visit two is in April of next year and visit three in August. I then spent a fruitful five minutes wondering about where I might be at those times: in Spain for my birthday in April? In Las Vegas, O Beloved Playground of the Past, before *home ownership* entered the picture? And August? In Silver, camped out in a cardboard box with the house occupied? In New York or Cambridge, God forbid, wandering around in that east coast summer laundry room from hell, face bright red, sweat running down my back if it could find a channel through whatever I'm wearing that's plastered against my skin - well, anyway, that little incursion probably took longer than five minutes to imagine and at least ten to write about.

Now we move on to noticing Goodle's spell check has underlined Patric in red, leading to opening a new file in Safari and googling the astrologer I so once loved to read. Yes, I was right, his name is spelled that way, but then of course I was compelled to read four different obituaries and then segue off into looking for him on YouTube, a wild goose chase as he died in 1995. No points for Google here, BTW, as they wanted to know if I was looking for Patrick Walker and still came up with nothing when I said yes.

The word 'astrologer,' however, led to an enjoyable viewing of as many 2011 astrological predictions for Aries as I could find, none of which bore any relevance to where my choices have led me, leading in turn to it being time for another cup of coffee, which I've just made and brought back to the couch.)

Humiliating though it is to admit, a quick reread of the above has taken me back to YouTube where I've found several videos offering astrological predictions for Aries for 2012. Sorry, Saturn, you'll have to wait. I'm busy.

Sun Square Midheaven

Exact at noon, and by 9:25 I'm out of the house and on my way to the Social Security office, conveniently located within walking distance if you're a New Yorker, to change the bank my SS check is directly deposited into pardon my syntax so I don't need to shell out $20 a month to Citibank for the privilege of letting them use the money in my checking account. And people wonder what OWS is all about...

The waiting room was full, and when I went to the touch screen check-in there was a choice of Appointment or No Appointment, and for a fleeting second I thought I might as well leave there and then, make an appointment and go back another day, but sanity prevailed and I took my No Appointment number. I doubt that I was there more than 30 minutes before I was seen, with most of the other people, presumably with appointments, still there when I left five minutes later. It was all astonishingly efficient and quick - photo ID, SS number, new bank info and bingo, all done.

There was still plenty of time to go to Radio Shack and get a new battery for the landline phone, bop into Trader's Joes for grapes and the fat-free Half and Half they haven't had for weeks and still don't have and be at the school by 11:55 to pick up Star Child. Now all I need is another prod to get me to actually call Citibank and tell them.

Venus, Mercury and Sun Opposed to Selves

Okay, so these happened over several days and not all at once, but there's a limit to what you can fit into a title. Saturday was the Venus to Venus, which had me polishing off the rest of the licorice I'd bought at Fairway the week before, and spending time with a woman friend I don't see very often and catching up, or catching up as much as it's possible to do with two hours non-stop talking. We then took ourselves off to the St. Mark's Bookstore now that it may be closing, browsed the shelves for an hour or so and eventually each bought a book, something I can't remember doing for ages except second-hand, pardon my syntax. Interestingly, (well, it is to me), the book I shelled out for was The Best Buddhist Writing of 2011, either a foreshadowing of Pluto about to transit my Ninth or an attempt to get used to bopping backwards and forwards from Cambridge to New York every weekend. I've yet to open it since I bought it but I'll take it back with me on the bus tomorrow and read it then ha ha.

The Mercury opposition - like all the others, six to twelve,  brought a wonderfully symbolic piece of mail from someone incarcerated in Texas - two pieces, actually, waiting at 326 when we all got back from New York. The first was from the prison - ooh, sorry, correctional institution - itself, and was a carbon copy of a form explaining - well, I have no idea what it was explaining, really, but something to do with an inmate using an envelope suspected of being used as contraband (?), and the other was a letter from the suspect inmate, once addressed to the Texan Tenant c/o me but, as the correctional institution had blacked out his name and left only mine, forwarded from Silver to me here in Cambridge. (None of this I knew when, in a frenzy of excitement at receiving hand-written letters, I tore open the envelopes, seeing only that they came from Texas and, if I thought at all, thinking they were from the Texan Tenants themselves.) i am now typing with one hand as sweet pea, who i've been stroking for the past ten minutes, has plonked himself down on my right hand and is purring loudly. as i'm leaving him behind for another four nights, i'm not moving him. this was a fill-in paragraph.

Then we come to Sun opposed to Sun, magnified by last night's full moon smack on top.  Late afternoon brought an email from a friend with a suggested sub-leasee for New York, evening was finger painting (perfect Aries symbolism) with Star Child before she went to bed, and as the full moon perfected and I checked email before I went to bed, a query about the Silver house from the Craigslist posting I forgot to delete when I decided to go with a property management company.

This is taking place with P Mercury literally on the cusp of my second house, entering in a few days time and thank you God thank you Jesus not about to retrograde. Looks as though the Trickster in Two is going to be some variant of commerce and not communication, and maybe my Taurus (real estate) ascendant is kicking in at last.

Jupiter R Square Pluto

I always thought this meant you'd be striving mightily to achieve something just a bit beyond you, but as all I've done today is take back library books, go to the post office and finish a Noddy dress for Star Child, I'm beginning to revise my opinion; except, of course, I did start the Noddy dress before I even left Silver and have worked on it the past two weekends I've been here (New York), so I suppose to finish it is some kind of accomplishment if you're willing to lower your sights.

Saturn in six is making himself known and probably contributing to my lack of energy. Playing tennis right before I left Silver I injured my right arm in some way, doing something to whatever's in between the elbow and  shoulder and diminishing my capacity to lift anything heavy with my right hand, and of course I've done absolutely nothing about it except to think every now and again I should probably get AARP supplemental Medicare insurance. I also caught some kind of cold/cough thing from SC in her second week of school, and neither of us have been able to shake whatever it is. I've been having a nice hot drink of Theraflu every night for the past week but still suddenly break into a hacking cough at intervals throughout the day, as does SC. Add those two ailments together and I'm not feeling on top of the world.

Venus opposed to Venus in a couple of hours isn't helping, although I am about to go out for dinner and can only hope I don't resort to three courses of comfort food. As I'm in New York ha ha the state of my finances will probably preclude stuffing myself. And if it's any emotional comfort, I've just remembered that my Progressed Moon is in an exact conjunction with Pluto as I write (I just checked), so maybe everything I'm feeling is magnified ten-fold (the slowest moving planet wins, metaphysical or not). That does cheer me up a bit as I've been wondering what that aspect might bring since August. Doorknob willing I can get myself downstairs, walk ten blocks, eat something and not encounter the underworld on the way home.

Saturn Trine Moon

This one would probably be a bit more enjoyable if Amma weren't making her way through a two-year Chiron square her Sun transit, which was exact for her for the second time yesterday. I was thinking we were doing quite well - and compared to last year, we are - but when Amma came downstairs to collect Star Child this morning and found her in bed with me watching Kingdom of the Shades on YouTube I got another I don't want her to be on the computer this much speech.

In a way, I was hoist with my own petard, as last night I got it into my head that all I wanted to do was sit on a couch as though it were my own and watch mindless television for an hour, and had begun to watch Law & Order while Star Child was in the bath. When Amma joined me, she started to watch too, and when Star Child asked to look at my iPhoto collection I said yes. SC then wanted to do The Meadow on Amma's computer, a request that got turned down as it was late, which somehow deteriorated into a crying bout on SC's part and me turning off the television. When the storm was over and Amma emerged from the bedroom, I said something about how I wished SC could amuse herself and play quietly or look at books once in a while without having an adult pay constant attention to her, which got thrown in my face this morning when I was discovered in flagrante delicto with American Ballet Theater.

SC usually stays upstairs in the mornings and I was surprised there was no outcry from above when she came down soon after waking up and snuggled up in bed with me. I know Amma is doing her best to accept the situation (me being back in the hallway again) and it is light years different than last year. I just hope we can chug along now in harmony, at least till Chiron retraces its path in December. I don't know whether to end with fingers crossed or yeah, right.

Progressed Moon to Pluto

So here I've been thinking that because I'm not in some gut-wrenching relationship feeling like some wretched love-lorn woman in a Dorothy Parker short story, as I was the last time this happened, I've been getting away with this scot-free.

Only this morning, wondering who's going to be picking up the mail now that the house is empty and thinking about calling Irrigation Woman to see what she'd charge for setting up a system in the front as well, did I realize that this time around moon = house and it's sitting right on top of Your Friend and Mine, Enforced Change Pluto.

For the past three years I've been astonishingly fortunate with my Craigslist posting and have found a succession of good people to live there and take care of it, but I guess with Uranus in Aries we all have a whole new life and an empty house is part of mine.

P Moon was two degrees off natal Pluto when the hoo-haw with the psychotic break Texas people was happening, P Mercury was squaring natal Jupiter exactly and I was doing my marathon backwards and forwards across the country act because of Sweet Pea the Escape Artist. Now P Moon is creeping up to conjunct P Pluto, barely more than 30 seconds of arc away from its natal placement, and that perfects this coming Sunday, October 9.

In theory, I'm going to be in New York with Amma and Star Child, as a mutual friend will be there, but I thought I was going to be in New York on 9/11 and I know what happened to that little plan.

Thanks to T the house is going to be listed with a real estate company that does property management, and the agent is sending me the inventory forms and agreements today. Of course I've already been through this once last month, when another company in Silver was interested in listing it until they called the next day to say the market was so bad they'd discontinued doing rentals. That was with P Moon to Pluto as well.

As my *prediction* for new Moon on Neptune last week was that I'd send a copy of Just For You out and I have yet to completely print the revised script, I'll stay away from guessing what might happen for the moment. Next week P Mercury enters my second house the same day of the full moon, which falls smack on my Sun. I expect I'll get the envelope from the rental agent.

New Moon on Neptune

So it's Wednesday and I have yet to get a copy of Just For You off to England, but I did spend my mornings off on Monday and Tuesday continuing to get ready to do so. A slight obstacle was my deciding to rewrite a crucial scene - Daphne and Doreen alone after the revelation from Dobby - a scene I still haven't finished, and changing fonts from Times Roman to Final Draft Courier didn't help either as I lost all the italic formatting, but undaunted, I'm soldiering on ha ha and at least (and for me it's not at least) I'm still focused on getting it done.

I have the mornings free now that Star Child goes to school, which gives me alone time to put all the formatting back and think about what Daphne would say after the denouement  and all in all after the last few weeks I feel as though I'm on vacation. Yesterday, with the Sun on Neptune and squaring Saturn, I took Star Child to the playground - it was the second good weather day since I've been back - and sat at one of the picnic tables in a pleasant little bubble, watching all the kids on the equipment and Star Child, who's fixated on the swings, lying on her stomach on one of them and using her feet to propel herself  backwards and forwards, presumably in her own little bubble.

One of the saving graces of having Saturn oppose natal Sun is that it's almost trining the Moon at the same time, because of the native sextile, and now the opposition is over I *should* be able to ease gracefully into the trine, supposedly giving me a time of equilibrium and balance in my daily life. With the tenants about to depart from the house in Silver on Saturday, leaving it empty, I'll take it, thanks.

Saturn Opposed to Sun

Thinking about making this post yesterday morning, I was feeling mildly apprehensive about writing that I seemed to be getting away remarkably easily with the titled transit. It's one of those you - (well, I) - see approaching in the ephemeris with something approaching dread - supposedly low energy, no sign of joy, battles with authority that you always lose and daily life too discouraging to deal with etc. etc.

As it is, now that the two ends of my yo-yo are Cambridge and New York rather than Cambridge and Silver City and Star Child is again part of daily life spreading her sunshine and all that, I feel nothing but a tremendous sense of relief that I have time to take a deep breath and simply be, rather than my brain frantically racing constantly to keep up and stay in place. It isn't easy, this bopping around from place to place, and I've yet to achieve my goal, set the day after Labor Day, of staying under one roof for five nights in a row, but still, this sense of peace and a deep well-being is a welcome change, Saturn opposed to the Sun exact tomorrow or not.

I took the 6:00 pm bus from Alewife Friday night. It was raining, traffic was awful, one of the headlights on the bus went out, we were delayed for an hour and didn't get to Eighth and Thirty-first till 11:15. When I swiped my Senior MetroCard through the subway turnstile I got the See Agent message, which let me know my attempts to change my hacked credit card that's on file for Autopay had been unsuccessful, and I had to go to the machine and buy a regular price $10 card. (That instruction is un-carryoutable when the booth is empty.) I did think then, fumbling for my glasses and credit card and trying to remember where it went in and which Zip Code I was supposed to enter, that I was having a bit of Saturnine opposition but I'm getting used to being a hayseed and at least there wasn't a line of people behind me tapping their feet and looking at their watches, pardon my projection.

By the time I got *home* it was way past midnight, but the ceiling hadn't fallen down and my key worked (my requirements for happiness get fewer and fewer), and, as always, this apartment felt like a sanctuary and haven, maybe more so as I'm also deep in another of those dreaded transits - Progressed Moon to Pluto. As with the Saturn opposition, I seem to be getting away scot-free as far as emotional pain is concerned, unless of course I am on too much medication and need to reduce the dose.)

It took me half an hour to find an extension cord for the air conditioner yesterday morning, but that's another story. Mercury conjunct Chiron for the day showed itself when I got a nibble on the house from the Craiglist posting and had to call the tenants in Silver, the first contact since we drew up an agreement two weeks ago. Mr. Tenant was back to his ordinary charming self after the psychotic break email, and we had a civilized conversation in which he told me he and his partner would be leaving at the end of this month and I asked him to be ready to show the house this coming Tuesday, if necessary, all very relationship healed and all.

This is getting very long-winded and off the point, and I want to get back to what I found myself doing yesterday as Saturn in Libra (the arts) finally manifested its opposition to my backstage Aries Sun in the Twelfth. I spent hours and hours online researching U.K. theaters I can send Just For You to, pardon my syntax, something I *should* have done when I first finished the play last year but didn't because I couldn't. The time wasn't right.  It feels like ages since I felt that sense of awe and wonder astrology used to invoke in me - which was the reason for beginning this blog - but yesterday it came back (P Moon conjunct Pluto in Leo?). I was watching Michael Lutin's address to the National Press Club in 2008 while I was taking notes on submission requirements, and couldn't help but laugh when he said predictions were impossible to make until the day after, when it because sublimely obvious what the manifestation turned out to be and how it could happen no other way, except he said it a lot more clearly than that.

Tuesday's new moon falls directly on my Neptune, which is natally square Saturn and will be opposed by transiting Uranus and squared by Pluto. Dare I write that with any luck I'll get a copy of Just For You off to one of the willing-to-look-at-unsolicited scripts U.K. theaters? Well, I just did, and if I can find the post office in Cambridge, I shall.

Sun Conjunct Chiron

So here's a time when something is supposed to happen that opens up an old wound and I'm given a chance to deal with it differently, and there's plenty of chances for an old wound being opened with me back in the hallway after the summer off and Amma having to get used to me being around again.

Star Child is having a difficult time of starting school, it appears. She's in the second week of it and the plan hysterical laughter was for Amma to take her and drop her off in the mornings before going to work and I would then go and pick her up at noon. The only bit that isn't working is that Star Child evidently refuses to let Amma go off to work and insists that she stay. I haven't seen any of this first hand but have no reason to doubt any of it. I know that when I arrive to pick her up she seems perfectly happy and also goes off to school happily each morning.

So yesterday I picked her up as *usual*, we came home, had lunch, I read two stories and she took her nap, again as usual, even if usual has only been five days. An hour and twenty minutes later I then had to do something I really dislike and wake her up to take her off to dance class. (It's the waking her up I dislike, not the dance class.) I've taken her twice before, changing her into her pink costume when we get there and then hanging around the studio a bit with all the other parents/nannies/caregivers until Miss Angela turfs us out and class begins. No problem.

Yesterday we barely made it on time, and all the other parents/nannies/caregivers/ were filing out of the studio promising not to cry while they were outside on their own, a stroke of genius as far as I'm concerned on Miss Angela's part. "Off you go," I say, gently pushing Star Child into the circle of three-year-olds. "'I'll be right outside." The tears start immediately and the little arms go round my neck as SC tries to get into my lap while I'm standing up. I look mutely at Miss Angela as her eyebrows go up, and without saying a word I try to convey that we're having a little difficulty with what I hate to call separation anxiety as I feel like a textbook but I suppose it's the best way to describe it and I'm really really sorry but could I break the rules and stay in the studio for a bit?

"Would it help if I picked her up?" says Miss Angela, and I give my now usual answer to any and all questions: "I don't know." Star Child and I retreat to the sidelines and Miss Angela starts the class, SC now comfortably in my lap as I'm sitting on the floor, arms still tight around my neck, one big tear drop not quite big enough to make it over the mound of her cheek glistening away on her face.

I start to do all the things Miss Angela is having the others do - touch our toes, walk our hands all the way up to our heads, clap hands, go back to toes and next time use a different method to make it back up - squeeze, tickle, go slowly, go quickly - not particularly easy as I'm reaching over SC the limpet to do it all, but slowly, very slowly, she starts to join in.

As we start the slithering on the belly business being crocodiles, though, she changes her mind, but as the class goes on she participates more and more and is absolutely thrilled when the shaky eggs come out and Miss Angela gives her and me (?) matching colors. Off we all go marching around the room shaking our eggs and making noise, and from that point on she joins in completely, as long as I'm doing exactly the same thing next to her, of course. Every now and again I catch sight of myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors and give quiet thanks I managed to lose a couple of pounds over the summer. I'm actually much thinner than Miss Angela but she's definitely lighter on her feet, not that this concerns me in the least. Thinking of my line dancing days in Silver when the transiting north node and Chiron hit my moon in the eleventh, I jump, hop, skip, prance, wave my arms, pretend to take a lick of a giant lollipop, join in whatever that game is where you have to suddenly stop whatever you were doing and freeze when Miss Angela sounds the gong, and realize any trace of self-consciousness I may once have had - and I had a lot - has gone, O joyful day.

Class ends with the children one by one taking turns to jump in imaginary puddles all the way across the room and then dance back to the barre. SC's the last to go as she's still standing very close to me and I'm pretending to be invisible at the end of the row. "Pamela, Pamela do it," she says, and it's my turn for the eyebrows to go up. A bit more unspoken communication between me and Miss Angela and she says, "I'm not going to let Pamela jump in the puddles because this is a class for little girls and she's big, and it's very special that's she's been in the class anyway this week." (Something like that, anyway.)

SC accepts this without a murmur, the door's opened, the little 'uns stream out to their waiting big 'uns and I try to hide behind the door in case any of the other big 'uns get bent out of shape because I've been allowed to stay. The next class (bigger 'uns) is streaming in as SC and I thank Miss Angela for her understanding in allowing me to stay, and she tells me I got a one-off and there are dancing classes for big 'uns I could take, this, I hope, for SC's ears in preparation for next week, although it wouldn't be a bad idea if I want to keep this weight off.

"You're a good sport," she tells me, as SC and I squeeze our way out the door. "You too," I say, thinking this is something I've heard many times before. I suppose that's what I am - a good sport.

Pluto Station? Yet Again, Whatever It Is, Continued

So I went back to Silver to get Sweet Pea two days after I left without him to find a slightly OTT email from the people staying in the house. This was with Pluto almost stationed at 4 Cap 54, opposed to Natal Saturn at 4 Cancer 51 and square Natal Neptune at 4 Libra 42, and Progressed Mercury square Natal Jupiter.

(The ultimate Pluto/Saturn/Neptune manifestation was trying to set up the irrigation system for the plants at the back of the house over Labor Day weekend, when every effort made was thwarted time and time again. IW (Irrigation Woman) had brought the wrong drill, didn't have the right glue, and my all-time favorite, there was a skunk in the well-house firmly ensconced in the insulation exactly where she needed to drill. Animal Control weren't working, they didn't do skunks if they were, and I was in no mood to call Skunk Busters and shell out even more moolah.)

Once again, days have passed since I began to write this, and I have absolutely no idea where I am in trying to record the past couple of weeks. I do know that with Jupiter to the Sun on 9/11,11, just as it was on 9/11/01, thank God, I called my repentant tenants and said I'd be willing to have them come back after I had left with Sweet Pea the next day, assuming they didn't want their $400 for expenses and were willing to tear up the check I'd just written them for the return of the month's rental, me being so big-hearted and all and not wanting to leave the house empty.

I know I got Sweet Pea into his carrier that Monday morning - September 12 - with only a couple of claw marks on my arm and secured the two zips with a baggie twist before carrying him outside and putting him straight into the car. I know my heart stopped as I was checking in at El Paso with him and the American agent told me there's now a form that has to be filled out for taking a pet on board, as this was the first year since I've had him I didn't take him to the vet in Silver and I had no current paperwork for him. Fortunately the agent was so full of apologies for keeping me waiting at the counter while she tried to find the form that when a colleague brought one over to her she rushed through it putting check marks everywhere and didn't ask me any of the questions.

I know when the cab driver didn't know his way to Concord Avenue from the airport in Boston I wondered just how long *this* was going to go on, this coming up against obstacles every step of the way, but then I remembered how I'd thought the Pluto/Saturn opposition would be some kind of nightmarish governmental/bureaucratic entanglement and said a silent Thank you Doorknob as we made yet another U-turn and tried to find Concord Avenue. It was more difficult to give thanks when B, who was taking care of the Volvo for me for the winter, told me its back tire had been slashed by Silver vandals, but hey, it's only money.

I know I went down to New York for the weekend and spent two days in bed, and I know with the Sun trine the Midheaven on Sunday I managed to stay awake and waded through a lot of the paperwork I'd taken down with me, most of which I'd taken out to Silver in May.

And now I know it's Wednesday 9/21, the Sun is closing in on conjuncting Chiron for me, Saturn will be opposing the Sun exactly in six days time, three days ago the transiting South Node went into my first house and I'm back to sleeping in the hallway, and finally finally finally Pluto is moving away from Saturn for me and I'm what passes for being up-to-date with this blog.

Whatever It Is, Continued Again

Okay, so I get to Cambridge, minus Sweet Pea, on Tuesday night, and Star Child is thrilled to see me. Semi-conscious, I get to take her to Sing-a-long at the local library on Wednesday and then to ballet class (!) on Wednesday afternoon.

In the meantime, Amah is telling me I am insane to have left Sweet Pea behind, and prompted by guilt, because of course I'm thinking exactly the same thing, I get online and make a reservation, using miles, to come (because that's where I am now) back to Silver ASAP. ASAP proves to be Thursday afternoon from Logan/Boston at the cost of only (sincerely) $50, and I make the reservation and email my tenants that I'm coming back to get Sweet Pea. I tell them I'll be in Silver for four nights, and if my staying at the house is inconvenient for them, I'll take myself off somewhere with friends.

Sunday September 18
Well, I'm not in Silver now, I'm in New York, but to attempt to continue this saga before Christmas is here, I rented a car and, drawing a veil over the fact I had no idea how to drive it and could go no faster than 48 mph for the first hour, got to Silver at about 11:30. Tenants, as requested, had left the patio light on and the door unlocked, as my keys were on the ring with the car key B was keeping for the winter, and the first thing I did after I dumped my bag in the house was open the laundry room door to the outside and call for Sweet Pea.

He was right there, right where he usually hangs out at night before condescending to come in for wet food, and miaowed immediately, but it took more than an hour before he would come into the house after his two nights in the wild. As soon as he was in and gobbling away, I checked my email and found an ultimatum - two, actually - from my formerly sane tenants.

Wounded and upset by my thoughtless method of informing them via email that I intended to return and re-occupy the house for four days and totally ignoring my offer to stay with friends if my return was inconvenient to them, they informed me they were moving out of the house until Monday and would return only if I shelled out $400 for their expenses for the long weekend. Should this be unacceptable, they would expect their $700 for the month to be refunded and would never darken my door again.

As the label says, you sort it out.

Whatever It Is, Continued

So as I said, as I was loading bags into the car on Tuesday morning and being lazy and piling them at the bottom of the front steps as I carried them out rather than taking them individually to the car on the pad, Sweet Pea managed to claw his way out of his carrier and take off for the barn. I believe the feeling that I experienced, watching this, is known as "stunned disbelief." If it isn't, I can 't come up with anything better.

Knowing what a complete and absolute waste of time it was, I followed him down the slope and got within ten feet of him as he sat in the doorway, but as I knew would happen - he might not be too swift mentally but there are no flies on Sweet Pea - as I got closer he bolted down to the crick and I turned around and went back to the house. I called B, who was going to come down to EL Paso with me and then drive the Volvo back and keep it for the winter, and she suggested I give it another 30 minutes and see if SP came back to the house. Again, knowing SP as I do, I was aware the chances of his coming back to the house to enter voluntary imprisonment in the dreaded black box for 12 hours were minimal, but I busied myself doing God knows what before calling her again for an update.

With hindsight, it probably (probably?) wasn't the best decision to have made, but on three hours sleep it seemed like a good idea at the time. "He'll come back to the house when he's hungry," B said, "and you can ask your tenants to feed him for a month or so and then come back out and get him." "Right," I say, thinking of Star Child awaiting my arrival that night and completely ignoring the fact that I know Sweet Pea won't go anywhere near the house if he knows strangers are in it and I'm not. "What's the worst that can happen?" I go on, Miss Stiff Upper Lip on Celexa and Wellbutrin. "He'll get eaten by a coyote or go feral. I'll pick you up in 15 minutes."

I leave a note for my tenants, who are still asleep, saying "You've got a cat" and explaining that he escaped, and go to pick up B, who is probably a better person than me to describe the subsequent drive to El Paso with me at the wheel. By the grace of something we make it to the airport unscathed and I get to Logan only an hour late, to be met by Big Thomas and Star Child, who has been waiting patiently for her Pamla, which, for the moment, makes it all worthwhile.

Again, to be continued. There's already lots more.

Progressed Mercury Square Jupiter

I've been wondering about this all summer. It perfects next Sunday, 9/11, and I was thinking as I'd be back in Cambridge by then I would go down to New York and be there for the day - the day being the 10th anniversary of 9/11, that fateful Tuesday now so long ago...

How it seemed to manifest was B introducing me to Upwords, a kind of three-dimensional Scrabble easy for a word person to become addicted to, and two or three times a week B and I took ourselves off to one of the local coffee shops after tennis and sat and played one or two games. B beat me almost every time - I think I won twice over the summer - but I managed to persuade a couple of other people to play with me and could usually beat them.

Every now and again I'd go and read a cookbook interpretation of the aspect, and smiled to myself (when I wasn't gnashing my teeth) at "You may consider plans for a significant journey under this aspect." This was when I was attempting to save myself paying American Airlines $150 to put miles back in my account by attempting to fly to England two days after I got to Cambridge. If I could remember what the title of THAT post was you could go and read what happened to that little conceit. Lightbulb moment - I can go and look for it myself and then provide the link. It's only money.

So the reservation to leave for Cambridge is made for the day after Labor Day. B is going to come to El Paso with me and then drive the Volvo back to Silver and keep it for the winter, with any luck eliminating the need for massive repairs every spring by driving it once in a while and not having it sit in the driveway at #14 for the winter.

[EXTENDED PAUSE]

I would go on with this account, except I'm about to leave for Logan airport to go back to Silver, as Sweet Pea escaped from his carrier as I was loading the car on Tuesday morning and took off for the barn. I made the choice to take the flight anyway, rather than disappoint Star Child who I knew was looking forward to seeing me, and of course once I got to Cambridge realized I had better go back quickly before - well, before any of the things that could happen to him happened.

Mars Sextile Jupiter with R-Jupiter sextile Mars

I know there's no way this can be separated out from P Mercury square Jupiter and T Pluto coming to oppose Saturn and square Neptune, but to pick out the most obvious manifestation of what's going on right now it would have to be that for someone with a twelfth house sun, there are a shit-load of people around at the moment.

Looking at what passes as an appointment book (Sorry Ll. I love it, I really do, and I'm getting one for myself next year) all I see are notations like "lunch M & A", "S and K here", "A 4-7", "D plant move with S" and "M & T 6-". (U.K. punctation throughout.)

It's all very well, and most of the notations mean I can draw another line through something on a "Things To Do Before Leaving" list, but my poor little natal Sun wants nothing but to be out in the *garden* with Sweet Pea, pulling up weeds and trying to do just a little bit of landscaping this year instead of leaving everything just as I found it in May.

It feels as though I only just got here instead of being here for three months, but what with Uranus square Saturn and opposed to Neptune when I arrived and the expired driver's license and problems with the Volvo and the garden needing tending and the veggies needing being moved closer to a water source and my credit card being hacked and my teeth needing root canals and my gums needing surgery and the raven pecking at the wrong thing on the utility pole and knocking out power to the house and my having no patience with my elderly neighbor when he wanted to climb up on the roof of the barn and nail back the corrugated iron panels that had fallen off over the winter, I suppose it's no wonder time kept flying by.

The past few days seem to have been crazier than *normal* but presumably that's to be expected as the time for leaving for the winter draws closer and more and more preparations for said leaving need to be put into place (thanks D and A for the plant sitting and everyone else for the offers of help if I need it - my own new life as an Aries - acknowledging I can't do everything myself and accepting help).

Okay, so this is degenerating once again into the maudlin and boring and it's time to do something constructive like stretch out on the couch and watch reruns of "Law and Order Criminal Intent" before I find myself in Cambridge for the second winter with no telly.

Last Vestiges of Pluto Opposed to Saturn Square Neptune

So I pick up A at 7:10 and off we go to Palomas for my 9:15 appointment for my three new choppers and as we're barreling down 180 towards Bayard I say "And you do have your passport, right?" Thirty minutes later we're barreling down 180 towards Bayard again, A now complete with passport, and I'm only 30 minutes late for my appointment. A sits and reads her book while I go in for my three new choppers, which fit perfectly, and off we go to the opticians for me to pick up T's glasses, as promised.

After standing for ten minutes while the sales people hunt around for T's glasses, I remember he told me two days ago on the phone he had had to go down to Palomas for a dental emergency and would pick up his glasses himself. A and I beat an apologetic retreat and take off for the Pink Store, who need to update the bit on their website about "No visas or passports needed".

We have a great poke around in the store and contribute absolutely nothing to Mexico's retail economy but keep their service industry going by spending $12 on lunch for the two of us. Then it's off to Pharmacia Express for me to stock up on anti-biotics for the next time I scrape my leg on a rusty piece of rebar and for A to pick some prescription-needed-in-the-U.S. medication as she's quit her job (the third person I know to have done this this summer - Uranus in Aries in action?) and no longer has health insurance.

Off we go now to Border Patrol Checkpoint, or whatever it's called. A is asked what's she bringing over the border and answers truthfully with name of psychotropic drug. "Where's your prescription?" asks Mr. Border Control Agent, armed with machine gun. "I don't have one" says A, "I never needed one before." "You need a prescription for [name your psychotropic medication here]," says Border Agent. "But I never needed one before" says A, and "You do now" says BA. "If you need a prescription, it's a narcotic." "But, but -" we both say, realizing at the same time this is hopeless. "You need to take it back to the pharmacy" continues Mr. Machine Gun, to which A responds "But they don't take refunds."

"They will" says Machine Gun, and, glossing over the bit about my suggesting A call her doctor in Silver but her doctor's office doesn't answer and the woman in Pharmacia Express calling the doctor who would usually write prescriptions if prescriptions were needed who turned out to be unreachable because she'd gone to Juarez, after 30 minutes they did, A got her refund and off we went again to Border Control - second Take Two of the day.

A different agent was on duty - a woman - who asked to see A's passport, ushered her through without asking any questions, took my Green Card and ushered me through as well. As we walked to the Volvo we saw Mr. Machine Gun standing on top of an SUV attempting to make the crossing, with two other agents poking around at the innards of the ve-hickle with a German Shepherd sniffing around the tires, and all I could think, just like Winston Smith in 1984 with his "Do it to Julia," was "Thank goodness it happened to A and not me."

Mars sextile Jupiter with JupiterR sextile Mars

Sheesh! Thing were getting pretty frenzied over the past couple of weeks while Jupiter came within minutes of sextiling natal Mars before retrograding on Monday, but add in transiting Mars sextiling natal Jupiter, perfecting tomorrow, and it starts to get a little bit overwhelming.

I knew my month-to-month tenants were moving in this afternoon (sooner than expected) so spent the morning removing every vestige of me from the addition and dumping it into the dining room or office. I'd just begun to start sewing in earnest and had actually cut out a dress (from a pattern) for Sirjana, but that all had to be packed up and moved from the big persons' room. Clothes had to be moved out of the walk-in closet, New Yorkers removed from the side of the bed and the silly bathroom given a cursory clean.

Round about mid-morning, I had to call Tracfone to add service time as today was my last day. I had tried yesterday to remove my old hacked credit card from my account online and replace it with my new as-yet-unhacked card. Impossible. Failed, failed, failed, was the only message I got when I attempted to pay for my minutes with my new card online, so yesterday I gave up and today made the supreme sacrifice and called the 800 number. No need to go into details, but after an hour on the phone I was told I needed to go a *retail outlet* and buy a card there. And can I use my phone today, I ask. Yes. And can I use my phone tomorrow? I can't answer that, says person from halfway round the world. When you go to a retail outlet and buy a card, that will reactivate your phone and you will then be able to use it again. I know this is not your fault, I say, but this is not a satisfactory outcome and I hope this call is being recorded.

By this time, I was running behind with my scheduled morning's activities, so took off for down-town, impressing myself mightily by dropping a big bag of itemized stuff at the thrift store before it closed at noon. I was then able to proceed to Vicki's for lunch with two women friends, and for the first time ever arrived before either of them did. This convinced me that all plans for the day were going to work out in spite of the Tracfone hurdle, and when lunch was over earlier than I'd expected I decided to go to Walmart and get groceries and the mulch and salt pellets I needed before I picked up A, the student helping me out in the past few weeks. I'd been obsessing since Monday when I sprained my arm or whatever I did over whether I was going to pick him up and have him come to Walmart with me while I was paying him his big $10 an hour, or if there was some way I could go to Walmart without him, get what I needed and then go and pick him up. Once I remembered/realized that the people in the garden center would load the salt pellets and mulch into the car for me, I realized I could go without him

So, on my last day of phone service, having cleverly written down Avery's phone number on a yellow stickie and taken it with me to lunch, I called him, told  him I'd be at his house to pick him up around two and took myself off to Walmart to get groceries and the mulch and salt pellets. I got the groceries and paid for them, went to the garden center, bought three bags of mulch and three bags of salt pellets, told them I'd drive the car round for it all to be loaded and promptly took off into town to pick up Avery, remembering only when I was a block from his house that I'd, er, forgotten to pick up the salt pellets and mulch.

With my grandmother's "More haste, less speed" ringing in my ears, I drove Avery back to Walmart, went to the garden center where three bags of salt pellets and three bags of black mulch were sitting on a pallet waiting for me, had them loaded into the Volvo and drove off to 14 Village, arriving a few minutes after my month-to-month tenants. I put Avery to work lugging the 40-pound bags of salt up the well house and got the groceries put away just in time before the man who maintains the well called to say he'd be up in 15 minutes.

I'd called him earlier in the week under the pretext of having a new tenant who needed the functioning of the well explained to him, glossing over the fact I've been in the house for nine years and yet couldn't explain it to new tenant myself. Jimmy was as gracious as most Silver City business owners and waited patiently for me to scribble down every piece of information he gave me about what was the pump (THAT was a revelation), what was the pressure regulator, how you turned off valves that supplied water to the house if there was a leak, what the blue thing down on the floor with a little dial on it was, how you could tell from the outside how much water was in the holding tank (THAT was another revelation), etc. etc. etc. And, glory of glories, when he'd finished and I asked him to send me a bill, he told me there was no charge as I was a good customer, defined, when I thanked him, as anyone who paid a bill on time. Does that have something to do with Jupiter in Virgo, my natal placement, and the two Jupiter-touching transits, me living to serve and be a good girl and all?

Once he'd left it was back to giving Avery tasks, at this point thinking my head was about to come off my shoulders and reminding me once again there is no way on God's earth I could go back to a *real* job. I eventually took Avery back to town an hour early, dropped him off at his house, bought some poor man's Kahlua at Food Casket, filled the gas tank for the trip to Palomas tomorrow, came back to #14 and made myself a big fat drink.

Tomorrow the Mars sextile Jupiter perfects at 23:01, and so far all I have to do is drive to Palomas for a 9:15 appointment to get my three caps, come home, go to knitting, have Scott New Renter help me take the plant table and house plants to the friend who is going to babysit them over the winter, come home and then go for dinner with my renters of two years ago who decamped with two pillows which I now need back and who have said I need not stay long but am very welcome to eat and run. See label.

Sun sextile Saturn

As always, this is a great one for getting work done, and now that I'm less than a week away from leaving, there's an awful lot of it to do, so much so that I really *shouldn't* be sitting here keyboarding away.

The Sun sextile Saturn happened on Saturday and manifested as a neighbor and I, with the help of a willing student, doing a lava rock/manure exchange, only the second we've managed this summer. I've barely done anything about landscaping this year, what with Uranus squaring Saturn and opposing Neptune and my driver's license expiring, the car breaking down, credit card being hacked and several trips to Palomas for root canals and gum surgery, and will probably do nothing before I leave, but at least there's a pile of lava rock waiting for me when I do get round to it.

Reading through the above, it's about as interesting as my describing what I had for breakfast, and it would be a better use of my time (and yours) if I went off and attempted to make the Noddy and Big Ears dress for Sirjana I've been saying I'm going to make since I got here. I do get a gold star for hemming two floor length curtains that have needed shortening to window sill height since I put them up five years ago, and am in the middle (again) of a total clear out and throw out of the house. There's a big bag of stuff for the thrift shop, a pile to go up the adobe and a pile for mailing, more commendable than it sounds as when I was playing tennis yesterday (Venus square Uranus) I fell lunging for a ball and messed up whatever muscle is in between the elbow and the shoulder on my right arm. I can move my fingers painlessly but can't raise my arm without holding on to my wrist and picking the arm up, which as I write it seems a little alarming.

However, with Mars square Sun today (and of course, yesterday - perhaps falling wasn't Venus square Uranus, or even more likely, it was a combination) I am on a roll, emptying out drawers, going through file cabinets, making phone calls and trying to plan everything I need to do in the coming week. One thing I'm determined to finish (Finish? I haven't even started) is the Noddy and Big Ears dress, so I'm going to lift my right arm up onto the desk so I can click Publish Post and take myself off to the sewing machine.

Venus sextile Saturn

So how long has it been since Elizabeth came by, left me the dripworks catalog and told me I could do it myself? No matter: with today's aspect I was able to sit in my desk chair for a whole hour and begin to look at the catalog and watch How-To videos on the website.

Before that I started to go through papers to begin to sort out the piles on my desk I made when I was clearing up for last week's Hot Dog and Bratwurst Barbecue. I would appear to have lost my Bank of America checkbook, so have had to transfer money to Citibank and write checks from the New York account for Silver City invoices, praying the checks won't get deposited till the money is there. Then once I started going through files and folders I brought from Cambridge I found an extra book of BofA checks which I could have used if I'd known I brought them without doing the transfer, which made me determined to go through every single drawer and file folder in this room so I know exactly what's here.

In the first five minutes I found two Christmas cards from friends I'm no longer in touch with from 2002, two 1950's booklets of knitted baby clothes patterns, six sheets of good construction paper, three sets of alphabet stencils, a Red Cross symbol from World War I, a dining room menu from the Pacific Steamship Company from 1924 and a photograph of Anna Pavlova and Mikail Mordkin of the Imperial Russian Ballet, probably also from the 1920s.

Still unable to part with any of these treasures, I put them back in one of the pockets of the plastic concertina folder I found them in and then took myself off to knitting for an hour before coming back and opening the dripworks catalog. I got as far as going outside and pacing around to see how much emitter tubing (!) I'd need before realizing I needed to draw out a plot of the whole *garden* area to do it properly.

At this point I remembered there was a new moon in Virgo coming on Sunday, ruled by a direct Mercury, decided that was a good enough reason to procrastinate a bit longer and stuck the winter coat I bought at a yard sale two weeks ago for 33 cents (clothes were a dollar a bag and I got three things) in the laundry. September sixth and I'll be back in Cambridge.

Mars Conjunct Natal North Node in Cancer in Three

So this perfects tomorrow at noon, and two days ago, Sunday, just happened to be the night I chose earlier in the summer to invite the neighbors over for the Third Annual Little Walnut Hot Dog and Bratwurst Barbecue, with 20 people whooping it up at #14 into the wee hours (well, 9:30) and Sweet Pea cowering somewhere behind one of the outbuildings waiting for everyone to go home. (Super special thanks to Tom for doing the sausage turning and for buying me the new barbecue grill that I didn't really need that he managed to sell to someone else by the end of the whooping it up. And any day now I'll post the image of the gash in my leg, as promised, just for him.)

Yesterday, Sunday, Tennis Partner and I played two sets and then came back here for UpWords as the piano I agreed to babysit six weeks ago was finally due to arrive. It did, in a U-Haul with two men, accompanied by its owner in her car, and after much discussion about gravel driveways and patio steps and calling in reinforcements, the operation was aborted an hour later and the U-Haul left with the piano still in the back, to go to its owner's storage unit. (The deal was not made on a retrograde Mercury.)

Today, with Mars less than a degree away from the North Node conjunction, a couple - friends of one of the neighbors from Saturday night - stopped by to talk about the possibility of their staying in the house for September, thank you God thank you Jesus, and as soon as they had gone, a friend whose sister once lived in this house stopped by to hand on to me from her the original Abstract of Title documents (dating back to 1897) regarding the tract of land on which this house sits, and as far as I'm concerned that's about as close to Mars to   the North Node in Cancer as you can get. The visit from the agent from Smith Property Management an hour later to see if the house fit their requirements for listing was a bit of an anti-climax.

I spent the rest of the day in the house going through closets, folding clothes and fabrics, sorting, starting piles for the thrift shop and putting aside all the clothes I brought out with me from Cambridge and never wore in a pile to take back with me. Perhaps tomorrow Mars in Cancer will get me to open the Dripworks catalog Elizabeth left me and start to figure out what I need for the irrigation system. And perhaps not.

Mars conjunct Saturn & Square Neptune

So I tried to be extra-careful on Tuesday with everything I did and only knocked one of the petunia baskets off the front porch (with a three foot drop to the ground) when I was dragging the hose around watering. And there were only a couple of inches of iced tea left in B's glass that I knocked over when I was helping her stage her house for a showing in the afternoon, plus she was using a plastic tablecloth and the photographs were in a manila envelope and only a few got really soaked, so everything was all right really.

At six I had a consultation planned with someone coming over to give me a quote for putting in a drip system for the plants, as getting them watered is a constant source of aggravation for me when I'm not here (and some people would say when I am, but to *garden* here is a labor of love and the payoff is worth the effort, except of course when I knock the petunias off the front porch).

Consultant took one look and said up front the work involved was far more than she wanted to do, but said she was confident I could do it myself (!), went over the dripworks catalog with me, drew diagrams, told me exactly what I would need and invited me to stop by and see the system she's set up for herself. Go Elizabeth!

That was Mars (action) square Neptune (water), perfecting at 5:00 am on Wednesday, and at 9:56 am on Thursday, as Mars moved on to conjunct natal Saturn (iron), I was outside again dragging the hose around all the different levels of gardens and beds trying valiantly to keep it all alive. I managed to forget the piece of rusty rebar holding some erosion control logs in place and as I stepped over it - actually as I DIDN'T step over it - I put a three inch long gash in my leg as the rebar scraped several layers of skin away. I did exactly the same thing on exactly the same piece of rebar two years ago, and no, I am not going to look to see if Mars was in exactly the same position.

Last time I ignored the gash completely and it eventually became infected. This time I went inside, washed it carefully, put Neosporin all over it, put on gauze pads to protect it and stayed inside for the rest of the day. Is this the way we're supposed to do it, just do it a little bit better every time? This morning, polishing my halo, I put a piece of brass pipe with a solid end over the sticking-up piece of rebar, so next time I bang into it I should just get a nasty crack. And who knows, when I do it again in 2013, I might even pull the piece of rebar right out of the ground. It's not as though, with the pitiful monsoon season we're having, there's any real need for erosion control.

Mercury in Retrograde

So on October 9th last year John and I each booked a flight to London for April 6th, 2011, using Air Miles - 20,000 for each of us, with me *gifting* him (for only $150) 10,000 of mine as he didn't have enough. As it turned out, he wasn't able to make the trip blah blah blah, and, as both of us had dropped the ball when it came to booking a return flight, I ended up paying for a ticket and going by myself. That left me with the choice, I discovered later, of paying $150 to put the unused miles back into my account or, within a year, making the same trip as originally scheduled - New York to Heathrow.

Miss Thrifty here, unwilling to pay $150 to put the miles back, decided it made more sense to use the original ticket, go to the UK for the second time this year even though this time there was no real reason to go, go on to Spain to visit my sister and fly back from Madrid to the U.S., rather than shell out $150. (This took no regard whatsoever of the fact that I could have paid the $150, put the 20,000 miles back in my account, used 12,5000 of them to get back to Boston when I needed to for *nothing* and still have 7,500 miles to use.)

Complicated? Piece o'cake. The first reservation I made, the day before Mercury went retrograde, with me leaving Boston near the end of September and returning the 9th of October (from Madrid, via Miami) was okayed by my sister but Ahma suggested an earlier trip, if possible, would be better to make sure Star Child's summer babysitter was still available in my absence, as said babysitter would be looking for a full-time *real* job before too long.

Okay. The day Mercury went retrograde I was back on the American Airlines Redeem Rewards site and the best I could come up with for *free* was leaving New York on September 9th, going to Raleigh/Durham, wherever that is, and then on to Heathrow, arriving at 10:45 pm, and then leaving Madrid at 11:00 am on the 19th, flying to Miami (again) with a three-hour layover before boarding a flight to Boston. Now in the mix was my having already made a (paying) reservation out of El Paso for the day after Labor Day, arriving in Boston late that night, Tuesday September 6th, meaning I would spend the whole of Wednesday in Cambridge re-acquainting myself with Star Child and she with me before taking off for New York on Thursday to spend the night in my apartment before getting to La Guardia at 6:30 am on Friday to fly to Raleigh/Durham and then on to Heathrow. Totally ridiculous, but I'd be damned if I was going to spend that $150.

This time the reservation was approved by all involved, and I had until midnight Sunday 8/7 to confirm it. I'd already been told by AA customer Service I'd need to call it/them before I could book the ticket, as I was no longer traveling off-peak and each leg of the new trip required 30,000 miles instead of the 20,000 of the original booking, miles I no longer had as I'd gifted 10,000 of them to John in October of last year.

Looking at the AAdvantage website at 9:00 pm Sunday, I discovered customer service closed at 5:00 pm, so called the regular old American Airlines reservation number, holding for 18 minutes before the call was answered. I went through my spiel about re-using a reservation made last year and was then promptly transferred to the AAdvantage customer service line and sat on hold for five minutes before the call was answered. Once again I went through my spiel and was transferred to the AAdvantage International help line.

One more time through my spiel about re-using a reservation made last year and could you please put the 20,000 miles back into my account so I can book this ticket and I was then told that as my new reservation left from La Guardia instead of from JKF, as the original made on October 9th, 2010, did, I would STILL need to pay the $150 fee for changing the airport of departure. But, but I couldn't get a flight out of JFK on the date I needed to leave to use the ticket, I splutter. Sorry, says Ms. Implacable AAdvantage, I have to charge the $150 fee for change of airports.

But, but, but, I continue to splutter, I'm only making this trip so I don't have to pay the $150 to put the miles back in my account. I understand, says Ms. Implacable, but I do need to charge the $150 fee for change of departure airports...

We go backwards and forwards like this for ten minutes or so, as I ask her to FIND me a flight out of JFK that will fit the AAdvantage Program's requirements which of course she can't do, and, inevitably, I say f*ck the whole thing, charge me the $150, put the f*cking miles back into my account and I'll go and see my sister whenever I want to.

I'm now wondering when, if and why I shall have to cancel the reservation I've made to get me and Sweet Pea back to Logan on September 9th. See label.

Venus sextile Uranus

I always like this one, especially when it's coming from Venus in Leo in the fourth instead of Venus in Aries in the twelfth, not that I have anything at all to back that up with because when I look back to April 29/30 when the aspect last happened, I have nothing written in my date book at all - no aspects written down and no notes about events of the day. Presumably I was still in recovery from the trip to England and Spain and not interested or organized enough to be checking aspects and writing things down. Should I go back and rewrite that first sentence to make it more truthful? No.

Ignoring the note in my date book to pay the car insurance, I took myself off to Ace Hardware as I'd just received my $5 reward card from them for spending $100. I'd sworn to myself I wouldn't buy any more plants this year, as it's simply too discouraging (and expensive) to buy plants and get them growing in the ground and then go off to New York for the winter and come back to frozen dried-out twigs, which is what usually happens as no house-sitter or tenant can be expected to put the time into watering that I do.

Immediate revision to paragraph above: I'd sworn to myself I would buy only annuals and native plants this year, see last clause of sentence above. I did buy portalucas and vincas soon after getting here, as they're irresistible - cheap, colorful and they last all summer - and I also bought some desert marigolds, artemisia, globe mallows and lavender, mostly native plants and others that do well here. Armed with my five dollar rewards card I took myself off to Ace and bought two Russian sage, another artemisia, a Japanese hollyhock and a clematis, all expensive plants by my standards but all of which I know will do well. Supposedly when you buy five or more plants at Ace there's a ten percent discount, which as it happened did NOT get applied to my invoice so I had to go back in the store and wait while someone voided all the plants, rang them in again and then took the correct discount. It's happened before and I'm on medication.

The aspect really kicked in when I got home to find a totally unexpected message on the machine from J, someone who was very kind to me when I was so terrible at tennis no one wanted to play with me (!), inviting me to dinner with her and her husband that night. Whenever I've seen them socially before it's been in a crowd of people, and much as I like them both there's never been time to really talk and discover how much we really do all like each other. Friday night there was. As I said about the Venus sextile Uranus aspect at the beginning, I always like that one.

Sun sextile Uranus, Mars sextile Venus

So forget about all this torturing yourself over not being able to write, Pamela sternly told herself. Just prove yourself wrong by posting two days in a row and getting back to what this blog was supposed to be about in the first place, experiencing astrology in everyday life. All you have to do is pretend you're tied down to the desk chair and can move nothing but your fingers until you've hit the Publish Post button, she continued to berate herself....

Only joking. What I'm really pretending is that Saturday's new moon on Pluto has given me a little bit of focus and determination, character traits sorely lacking in my present mode of life, and with Mars and Uranus showing up in the same day you could expect a bit of physical action

Two Days Later:
Note the lack of a period at the end of the above paragraph, graphically illustrating my lack of focus and determination and also the limits of my supposedly vivid imagination. Clearly, pretending I'm tied to this desk chair and can move nothing but my fingers doesn't work, and I need to give the economy the kick-start it needs by offering a daily hours' worth of work to anyone willing to come to the house, tie me to the desk chair and release me sixty minutes later. Hour flexible, and to be gradually expanded to tying me to the sewing machine, vacuum cleaner, outside wood protector, weed cloth, lava rock, etc. Many unpaid breaks, as no tying aide needed when employer is attached to a tennis racket or Upwords tile holder.

And now back to physical action on Tuesday: tennis, Upwords at Javalina, Walmart and then to B's house to get her started on clearing out her house for a showing in two weeks time - an aspect of Jupiter and Chiron in Virgo that I love fulfilling, and how better to fulfill it than with an aspect of creative change like Sun sextile Uranus, Pamela asks herself? In two hours B & I worked out a plan of action with a goal of uncluttered surfaces and all items not thrown out to be packed into labelled boxes in the closets, and ended up with ten times as many soft furnishings stowed onto a high shelf as before and a large pile of discarded stuff by the back door for removal.

As for the Mars sextile Venus supposedly arousing my sexual drives and making me seek a physical relationship with another person, one out of two ain't bad, and B and I definitely had a great time with her rolling up quilts and bedspreads and handing them up to me on the top of the ladder. In my book, throwing things out (Pluto in the fourth) tops the list of gratifying artistic activities, and as this blog is readily available to young children there is no need to go into anything nasty and disgusting like sexual repression.

Mars square Chiron

So because of my obsessive self-editing I wasn't outside gardening determined not to answer the phone in case I got into an argument when this perfected at 10:00 am but still at the computer changing me and my toothache and my toothache and I backwards and forwards half a dozen more times before I made the post, which led to a bit of an aha! moment, me being so consciously aware at all times and all.

Could it be, Pamela thought, sitting up in bed with her laptop on her knees taking a break from cutting, pasting and exchanging me and my toothache with my toothache and I, could it be, Pamela wondered, that her Mercury-ruled Chiron in Virgo in six in her natal chart symbolizes her difficulties (oops, sorry, bad word - challenges) with the act of writing itself and not her ability to proofread and copy-edit that she has always thought was the bane of her existence because, with Neptune also in the sixth in Libra, she has always pined after the *ideal* job and under no circumstances, for a person with three planets in Aries, albeit intercepted in the twelfth, is proofreading an ideal job. Unless of course they do it at night ha ha, preferably in a hospital, library or prison, which, thank God, Pamela has never done.

What Pamela didn't think then, as she was so blown away by what she thought was a new understanding of herself and therefore the solution to all her problems, was that she was, at the moment the aspect perfected, copy-editing away even then (if replacing me and my toothache with my toothache and I and then reversing the placement ten times in a row can be considered copy-editing) so she was back to square one - Chiron in her chart DOES represent the Virgo pickiness and attention to detail that makes her such a good proofreader and copy-editor that she wishes she wasn't because she'd like to be an interior designer or an art director or a scenic designer or a fireman or an astronaut, but then of course Mars in Gemini is going to set off two things at once anyway, so who the hell knows?

So okay. Pamela no longer wishes she were anything of those things, although God knows she tortured herself long enough wishing she were. She's quite happy to play tennis at seven am and then go to a coffee shop with her tennis partner and play one or two games of Upwords and then go grocery shopping if she needs to and then go home and check email and read The Daily Mail and water the garden so that before she  knows it it's time to get Sweet Pea in and watch the DVRed Doctor Phil and a couple of episodes of Law and Order Criminal Intent and go to bed. Who wouldn't be happy with that?

And now, having completely lost track of what this post might have been about in the first place, Pamela is going to pour the rest of her drink down the drain, watch today's Dr. Phil and retire for the evening. Tomorrow night Pamela will be watching the DVRed last episode of Finding Sarah with her friend and neighbor A, and hopes she will be given valuable insight into the psychological process necessary for finding oneself and forging bravely ahead into the wild blue yonder without choking on the guacamole and, as poor Sarah did, murdering herself.

New Moon on Pluto

Well if this one doesn't get me to write something I may as well give up and start breeding Norwegian Forest Cats, take cooking classes and begin quilting - not that there's anything wrong with that -

- which is exactly as far as I got before the second real monsoon rain of the summer began and the power went out. Did I rush to the computer as soon as the lights came on again and finish the post I'd just started? Of course not, as by then I was stretched out on the bed happily READING A BOOK by flashlight, something that hasn't happened for weeks (reading a book, that is, not reading a book by flashlight). (To give myself some credit, I did go to the computer and submit That Is What I Did to a ten-minute play contest somewhere in the U.S., which for Pamela is tantamount to Fergie dragging her sled across the Arctic wastes for 26 miles with only her personal trainer and a camera crew for company.)

Reading a book - what a concept! I remember that, but it seems to take no computer, no TV and no power to work the sewing machine (as though there was the slightest chance that that was going to happen, except that earlier in the day B and I had pledged to have a sewing day together, which takes me right back to the new moon on Pluto that happened on Saturday that I am doing my best to persuade myself is going to shake me out of my torpor and begin to DO SOMETHING, pardon my shouting) for me to do it now, a transformation I would actually like to reverse.

Anyway, my reclaiming my power (as I'm choosing to interpret this new moon) got off to a good start as on Saturday evening the great Lava Rock/Manure exchange with a neighbor/friend happened, something we've been talking about ever since me and my aching tooth arrived in Silver at the end of May.

(Department of TMI: In the past minute I have changed me and my aching tooth to my aching tooth and I backwards and forwards three times before deciding on the grammatically incorrect version on the grounds I like the way it sounds better. Thinks - could this compulsive self-editing be why I find it so difficult to complete a piece of  prose?  Hmmmm - and a *piece* of prose? Hmmmm again.)

But, ruminations on my writing style (!) aside, the lava rock/manure exchange took place and on Sunday - yesterday - I played tennis, played UpWords, played Perquackey, pulled out all the fabric I've been accumulating over the years that I vowed to throw out this year if I didn't do anything with it, gave a lot of it away to upcoming sewing session partner and also, new moon on Pluto in the fourth, emptied and gave to sewing partner a travel chest I inherited from John that was full of stuff I *should* have taken to a thrift shop and was taking up far too much place on the closet floor.

I then proceeded to link my new credit card to both bank accounts and perhaps finally sort out the wreckage from my card hacking back in June which had culminated (I hope) in it taking me 75 minutes to pay my bill on Friday, balanced both check books, paid bills, wrote down all my new passwords and in general made yet another attempt to organize myself, and then began to make a post to this which takes me handily right back to the beginning of this, er, piece of prose.

So there you have it. With any luck I'll be able to call American Airlines this morning and sort out my upcoming trip to England, where I have to go if I want to use the 20,000 miles it will otherwise cost me $150 to put back in my mileage account, and if the gods are really smiling the electrician I managed to track down last week will call me and come and ground the water heater so I can then call the plumber and find out what the damage to the copper pipes is because of it not being grounded.

And now, with Mars square Chiron perfecting in an hour's time, I intend to go outside, not answer the phone, plant the rest of the plumbago I've been given and transform my denuded flower beds. So there.

Every Third Day Astrology

So here I am on the fourth day of Uranus stationing as close as it comes till March next year to opposing Neptune and squaring Saturn with one day's worth of pain pills left after gum surgery in Palomas two days ago, listening to the Ben Webster MP3s Anonymous sent me last year and wondering what would happen if I emailed him - Anonymous, that is, not Ben Webster.

So - knowing that it's July 21 by working backwards I can figure out I must have written the above on July 9, which is 12 days ago. And what are the conclusions to be drawn from that, she asks, immediately answering her own question by saying perhaps she no longer has any motivation for writing this blog, which would certainly seem to be the most obvious conclusion to be made. Or forget about motivation - perhaps she no longer has any desire or need to write this blog.

(For those of (the two of) you wondering about the reference to self in the third person, please be aware Pamela has been watching poor Sarah Ferguson going in search of herself at 8:00 pm every Sunday night for the past month, babbling on about her perfect childhood while her mother beat the crap out of her and becoming a princess when she met Her Man (which as far as I understand it, never happened because she became *only* a duchess on marriage while her children, the Ugly Sisters at The Royal Wedding, are indeed princesses because they are daughters of a prince) - anyway, after listening to poor Fergie going on and on and on about murdering poor Sarah, Pamela has become somewhat fixated on the idea of referring to oneself in the third person and has begun to find it rather amusing.  (Ah ha! Does Pamela think she is murdering HERSELF by not writing? Does Pamela think if she does not write she is a worthless waste-of-space like Fergie? Does Pamela need to go off and meet a Shaman in Arizona and shriek "MOM!" as she flattens herself on the ground, because, just as Sarah was, Pamela was also deserted as a child by her mother? No, is the answer to that because Pamela wrote a play in which her mother gets beheaded, so Pamela has taken care of the past ha ha and has no need to fall to her knees and implore her mother to come back. Or get angry. Or something.)

None of which gets us any closer to the reasons for Pamela not writing her blog on a consistent basis, when she's supposed to be so blown away and all by the way she experiences astrology in her day-to-day life that she is totally compelled to share her findings with the world (or rather with the two or three people who occasionally go and check to see if she's added anything to her blog in the last month).

Well, Jupiter squares Pluto for Pamela in three hours time, and while there's been another manifestation of that transit she can write about next time she logs into this account, surely that expenditure of a tremendous amount of energy in an effort to succeed has something to do with her being able to bang away at the keyboard for the past 15 minutes.

Every Ninth Day Astrology

So on June 26th I wrote that I had been, until then, incapable of writing prose for a living, and so far the only result of that is that I've been incapable of writing anything for nothing, not quite the desired result.

Never mind. Perhaps it's because of Uranus opposed to Neptune, which is supposed to be electrifying my sense of spirituality and giving me glimpses of cosmic unity with all creation. Any glimpses of cosmic unity that I've had have only made me wish this transit would hurry up and be over with (Uranus is squaring Saturn at the same time), and so far the only electrifying that's happened was last Monday when a raven pecked at the wrong thing on the utility pole and fried itself, knocking all out all power to the house, not that I knew that that was the cause at the time. All I knew was I was standing by the fridge wondering if I could eat lunch when I'd had breakfast only an hour before when there was a sudden loud POP and the whirring noise the fridge that was in the house when we bought it nine years ago usually makes stopped. Further investigation (flicking on a light switch) showed nothing in the house involving electricity functioned.

My immediate thought was Oh shit, another thousand dollars (not that my poor old Volvo has cost me a lot of money since I got here or anything), as after a month I am still waiting for an electrician to come and ground the water heater which evidently was not done when it was installed five years ago and has subsequently caused tiny pin holes to appear in the copper pipes (don't ask, but it's not a good thing). When the men from the power company finally arrived two hours later and one of them picked up the fried raven by one of its wings and brandished it at me to show me the culprit, I was so relieved it wasn't going to cost me any money and wasn't my fault I managed not to recoil and cheerfully said Life in the country.

And speaking of life in the country, the jungle sounds outside let me know poor Sweet Pea is being sexually harassed by #12's cat as I type - no! He's up on the windowsill meowing piteously to be let in and saved from his fate. Duty calls.

Hey, I wrote something.

So Forget About Facebook

No danger of me (My? Never did understand gerunds.) being bumped off of Facebook for posting too often from my blog. After spending at least an hour yesterday (Mercury sextile Jupiter) trying to link the two, looking at how-to videos, reading discussion boards and trolling through Blogger Help, I finally gave up and went back outside to continue toiling in the fields of the Lord and attempting to bring life back to my twigs, although I've surrendered even there.

Yesterday, in spite of the local boycott of Walmart because of its (another gerund?) selling fireworks when fires are raging all over New Mexico, I wandered its aisles and forked out $17 on sprays of artificial flowers, which as soon as I've finished this I'm going to artfully arrange in the two planters on the front steps. I know when I'm beaten.

I know when I'm beaten on another level, too, and painful and humbling though it is, here goes. If (!) what Dr. Phil says about you can't change what you don't acknowledge, I, the undersigned, being of reasonably sound mind and body for a 66-year-old woman on Celexa and Wellbutrin with a couple of pounds of flab around her middle, hereby admit I have not yet been capable of any kind of sustained effort involving writing prose and concede that calling this blog everyday-astrology was yet another example of my wildly optimistic Mars in Pisces natal opposition to Jupiter in Virgo, which has, until now, led me to believe I could one day make my living by what has so far proved impossible - writing . Extended exhale.

There is much more to be written (ha!) about the above, but with any luck at all admitting that I can't do it will *free* me to be able to do just that. In the meantime, as the Sun gets higher and higher in the sky and my window of opportunity of being outside gets shorter and shorter, the call of the Gobi beckons and it's time to stick my plastic flowers in the planters. Photos to follow. That I know I can do.

Pamela Rose Reeves
June 26, 2011

Still Nothing to do with Anything

Still trying to link blog with Facebook. Progressed Mercury square Jupiter?

Nothing To Do With Anything

Yeah, right. Attempting (again - thought I did this once) to link blog posts with Facebook.

Venus conjunct Uranus

So the White Amah ignored my first three emails after I got to Silver and finally responded after a couple of weeks, skyping so I got to see Star Child and say hello. After that - I can take a hint - I decided to leave making contact up to her and have heard nothing since.

Thanks to T, my replacement, yesterday I got a photo of SC blowing a kiss to me, and promptly turned on Photo Booth and sent one back. Today, with Venus conjunct Uranus, I got a voice message attachment of SC shouting Hi Pamla, and, prompted by T, then saying Miss you and Love you. I immediately started bawling my eyes out and could barely read the message about SC kissing the iPhone when she saw my picture and talking about me all the time, telling a man on the bus I'd gone to New Mexico with Sweet Pea and took the plane.

Need to go and blow my nose now, but am officially up-to-date real time.

Mars Trine the Midheaven

Okay, so it's been two weeks since the Incident of the Expired Driver's License and let me confess right up front the post dated May 28 was finished five minutes ago and - thanks to the title of THIS post? - I seem to be able to sit behind the keyboard and do something other than read the Daily Mail. I have today until 11:00 pm to utilize the referenced aspect and if I am very fortunate I shall:

Call the electrician whose wife I left a message with a week ago and remind him/her that the water heater needs grounding.

Five days later: Well, that was amusing. I did manage to take down the winter curtains and put up the summer ones and presumably a few other things that I have no memory of whatsoever but which must have involved physical action, but the electrician remains uncalled, as does the real estate lawyer I need to talk to about an easement for if and when I do sell this house and go and live in a shipping container up the hill, Final Draft (once again I forgot to deactivate the software online when I left New York and need to go through the whole process again with a real live person), my stepfather who I promised to call when I left the U.K. in the middle of April blah blah blah blah blah, all of which items were going to be on the list I was making that began with Call the electrician.  Presumably the Mars energy took over and I could no longer sit behind the keyboard ha ha.

I can, however, four days later, remember the manifestation of Mars conjunct the Ascendant the next morning, which I suppose is something to be thankful for, she wrote dejectedly. My poor old Volvo, which had been in the shop for aeons after refusing to start in Walmart's parking lot soon after I got here, was finally ready to be picked up and with Mars in the sign of money got me 846 air miles closer to my next trip to Spain. I drove straight to Ace Hardware as GF Tom had told me they had a great native plant selection and got myself another 40 miles closer, then got home to a phone call from customer service at a shoe store which made me aware my Citibank Master Card account had been hacked and an anonymous stranger was bent on getting me across the Atlantic even sooner than I was planning.

It would be nice to think the call came because the store realized my buying a pair of Birkenstocks was definitive evidence of my finally losing my mind and wanted to alert me  to commit myself immediately, but the real reason was more prosaic - they were querying a Pennsylvania ship-to from a New Mexico address. So, Bernadine Nichols, of 16 Tibbitts Avenue, Bradford, PA, 16701, thanks so much for wanting to help me go and see my sister but don't stay home too much waiting for UPS, and to Tom at PS&E Group, many thanks for your fraud-catching radar.

I am now officially up to date as of June 14, 2011. Three days to go and I get a gold star.

Mercury Square Moon

So another week whizzes by in Cambridge and it's time to come out to Silver for the summer. Sweet Pea managed his usual trick of prising open the closet door and disappearing inside in spite of my best effort to keep it closed, but the gouge on my arm was only about a quarter of an inch deep and the three Band-Aids Amah put on it almost covered it.

No problems with the flights, Sweet Pea a good little Rescue Remedied boy in his travel case once he was in, got to El Paso at 9:00 pm on time and went to the Enterprise counter to pick up the rental (oh HOW American it makes me feel to write that), making my little speech about I asked for a car with only half a tank of gas because the last time I did this it cost me $40 extra just because the tank wasn't empty when I took it back blah blah blah. Just fill it before you return it, says the agent, and there's no charge. May I see your driver's license and credit card, please?

Oh, is that all I have to do? I say, handing over my two pieces of plastic and wondering if I should bother to say Well nobody told me THAT, and then I hear the agent say Do you have an updated license? What? Updated license? I say, closing my eyes, opening them to look at my face the way I looked eight years ago and the printed Expires 05/08/11, well aware that the day's date is 05/27/11. I close my eyes again, thinking This is it, this is proof, the way I'm living is ridiculous, it was bad enough when I lived in two places and now I'm trying to live in three this is proof I can't do it, it's crazy, and open them when I hear the agent telling me she's really sorry but she can't accept an expired license, they did it a couple of months ago and got into real trouble, and I say Of course, I understand, it's fine, it's not your fault but do you know a pet-friendly hotel nearby? I think the Wyndham, she says, and I pick up Sweet Pea in his carrier and drag my wheelie bag off to the board listing hotels near the airport to see if she's right.

Before I start that I call L in Silver to say Don't wait up for me, I won't be there tonight, and explain why. I can barely hear her reply because it's a new cell phone and I haven't learned how to up the volume, but I hear enough to know she's saying she'll come and get me and tell her not to. No way, I shout, I can hardly hear you but don't even think of coming to get me, it's six hours here and back and it's already ten. Mumble mumble, I hear, and repeat what I just said. Mumble mumble. Just don't come, it's crazy, I shout, but check online and find me a pet-friendly hotel. Mumble mumble I'll call you in ten minutes, I hear, which makes me think she heard what I said.

Then I call the Wyndham, 200 yards away, yes they're pet-friendly and they'll send a van to pick me up thank you God thank you Jesus, so I call L back and tell her what I've found out. It agrees with what she found out, and she'll come and get me in the morning.

Off outside and wait for the van, one minute later I'm checking in wondering if they're going to ask me where my kitty litter pan is and what I'll say if they do. Nobody asks, I get to the room and open the can of Gravy Lovers Fancy Feast I brought in case I didn't leave any at the house last year. Sweet Pea not interested. Fill the ice bucket with water, place on floor. Sweet Pea not interested. Open the bottom drawer of one of the bedside tables, tear up a copy of New York Magazine and place Sweet Pea inside the open drawer.  Immediately jumps out. Think the small drawer might be too confining. Open the bottom one of the larger chest of drawers, move the torn up pieces of paper into it, repeat the Sweet Pea process all the way through to his jumping out. Put the pieces of paper in the bathroom sink, ditto ditto ditto. Have a light bulb moment and take the top off the toilet tank, up-end it on the floor, repeat, repeat repeat except this time Sweet Pea retires under the bed in disgust. Decide he'll go when he wants to go and retire to bed with the New Yorker.