Retrograde Mars Sextile Saturn

So since the beginning of February, when the Dramatists Guild announced yet another new makeover of its website and invited its members (I'm one) to go and check it out and construct their own profile pages, every time I made a list I'd write "DG Profile" (and "Re-write Act II JFY" but that's another story).


At some point  since then, in between watching films noir on YouTube and eating soft licorice from Trader Joe's, often at the same time, I started reading "Manifesting Change" by Jim Dooley, on the advice of a friend. One of the few astrologers I know with no belief in reincarnation, I found myself rolling my eyes at great chunks of it, especially in the beginning - all that Louise Haysie (be prepared if you click - it's a scary picture) we choose our parents stuff, but I'm sure Mr. Dooley's mind will be put at rest when he realizes I have no argument with the our-thoughts-create-our-reality business.


Thus began an attempt on my part to remind myself that with two productions of a play behind me, I am indeed entitled to call myself a playwright. (As one production was in New York and the other in London, I could, should I not be me, refer to myself as an international playwright, but considering the people I run into in the course of a day -


NICE OLD LADY IN TRADER JOE'S: She's so adorable. Are you her granny?
ME: (attempting to stick Star Child in the seat of the shopping trolley with the plastic bit to sit on raised so her feet can't get through the holes) No, I'm an international playwright.


- it seems to be going a bit far.)


Anyway, with my professional credentials firmly in mind, I kept on writing "DG Profile" on every to do list I made, carrying it over to a new one as I crossed out the completed items on the older ones (coffee, Half & Half, kitty litter), until this morning when, lo and behold, instead of putting it at the top of the day's list, with retrograde Mars an hour off from sextiling natal Saturn, I scoured through two months of emails till I found the one giving me the new password to get on to the DG site. This led to much cutting and pasting and a lot of frustration until I realized the Guild had added a few extra vowels to my old User Name. Once this was sorted it was a piece of cake to log on (Mars), click on Members Only and then on Edit Profile, where I was greeted with a notice from Saturn-Obey-The-Rules telling me only full members, not lowly associates like me, are allowed to post a profile.


I can, of course, upgrade my membership, and am, in fact, determined to do just that. With "Manifesting Change" on my bedside table, my mindset has changed completely. No more shall I write "DG Profile" at the top of every list I make. It's "Upgrade DG Membership" for me now, and I'll keep on writing it until it's done. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens at the end of April, when Mars is direct and back at the degree it was today.

Uranus Square Saturn...

...and opposed to Neptune because of a natal Saturn/Neptune square. This is the second pass for me of what will be a total of four by the beginning of next year, and compared to the first pass, last summer, (dare I write this?) this has been relatively shock-free - no trying to rent a car with an expired driver's license, no credit card hacking, no gum surgery and three implants in Mexico, no ravens sitting on the electric pole and frying themselves, (although the power in my room went out for no apparent reason last week, which was a little eerie), none of my deciding I could no longer put up with Sunday night gatherings with the neighbors (several of them elderly).

There have been surprises, like the flight from Boston to New York so I could catch a direct flight to Madrid being cancelled, so I ended up at Heathrow with a six hour wait, after waiting six hours in Boston for the plane that never came and before I waited another six hours in Madrid so I could get a flight to Malaga. I was a little alarmed to find out it was going to cost 60 euros to check one bag the 340 miles from Malaga to Madrid on Iberia, but then on the American flight back to the U.S. there was no charge for the same (second) bag. I already knew my landlord didn't want to renew the lease on my rent-stabilized apartment, but it was on the day Uranus opposed Neptune directly that I was told he (the landlord, not Uranus) was willing to buy me out, or, if I choose, go to litigation and see what mood the judge is in that day.

Neptune was also in the air ha ha as the aspect perfected and twice in four days I left the gas on in the apartment when I went out for the day and Deb wasn't home. The first time the windows were open as it was false alarm spring; the wind must have blown out the flame but the gas drifted harmlessly (no hearses spotted) out on to Fayerweather. The second time the flame stayed on, and at least I know something to watch out for when I get the next go-arounds. I could, of course, buy a small French press and eliminate the problem entirely, but I digress. (The problem, should you be wondering, is keeping the kettle on a very low flame while I pour water through the Melitta filter.)

And Uranus (surprise) unearthed the identities of the FOA underhandedly (Neptune) reading this blog to my then landlady over the *holidays*, when, with Saturn stationed opposite Venus, I was told I was no longer welcome in the hallway. There's been the landlady here thinking I was bringing Star Child's knickers round to wash in the basement, but really, unless I'm having blackouts (never to be discounted) this go-around has been okay. The Saturn Uranus square doesn't perfect till tomorrow, so I shouldn't be counting any little chickens that haven't pecked their way out of the shell yet, but so far so good.

Addendum 3/31/12: The Saturn/Uranus square yesterday brought a phone call from my landlord's attorney, but in true Neptunian fashion, I didn't check messages until 6:00 pm.

Jupiter in Taurus on the Midheaven

Okay, so this didn't happen to me and never will as my Midheaven is ruled by Saturn, but is such a perfect manifestation it warrants being a developed Aries and writing about someone other than myself.

Last week, a friend with this transiting aspect exact got a phone call from the credit bureau he belongs to asking if he'd like to take place in a two-and-a-half-hour focus group for which he'd be paid $300. Why it was put in the form of a question I have no idea, but once he was capable of speech he said yes and when.

I've learned to keep my mouth shut unless asked when it comes to astrology and other people, but I still had to put a BandAid over my gob to stop myself from telling him that with Jupiter (good luck) on the Midheaven (public appearance) in Taurus (moolah), it was a shining example of  "as above, so below" - astrology playing out in and (literally, for once) enriching his daily life. It should happen for us all.

Venus Square Moon

The appropriate outlet

This influence usually creates an amorous mood, making you want to relate to another person...In itself the emotion is neither good nor bad; it just has to find an appropriate outlet. (excerpted from Astrodienst) Well, how I managed to get this text left-aligned when I quoted from Astrodienst and centered the quote before, I have no idea, but I can't do it now. With that out of the way, and having managed to justify this, when Venus seems to have no connection to romantic love in one's chart, that leaves beauty, money and grub, and I went for the grub.  SC and I had had sesame noodles at a small neighborhood cafe two days before, for reasons having nothing to do with this tale, and they were dreadful - at least, I thought so; SC polished them off in no time. (After one taste of her noodles, which I was going to share, I had a chicken salad sandwich and it was $4, if that gives you any idea of the upmarket-ness of the cafe.) Ever since I'd been dreaming of good sesame noodles, and as Amah was going out that night and I was babysitting, I was going to make them then.  As it happened, BT was at the apartment working on SC's bed, and with slim pickings to feed the three of us for lunch, my appropriate outlet for Venus square the Moon was to  forget about going shopping for all the ingredients I didn't have to make the sauce and go ahead and try to make something anyway. (It's fun being an Aries.) I found a recipe online (that I didn't bookmark and now can't find) that used crunchy peanut butter, which I knew we had, and while there wasn't any linguine or angel hair pasta, I scrounged up a mixture of whole wheat noodles and pasta wheels and baby shells, putting them in boiling water in that order, five minutes apart, while I mixed together the ingredients we had to make the sauce. The recipe called for a cup of peanut butter, which even I thought was too much, so used three-quarters. It needed vegetable broth, which we didn't have, so I substituted chicken broth, using roughly a quarter less of what was specified, ditto with the soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. One quick taste and I started sloshing water in to tone it down, by which time the noodles were done and I hoped BT and S were as hungry as me. There was no garlic and no scallions, so they were out, and no green veggie I could add in either, so the final result was a big bowl of different shaped noodles glued together with peanut flavored wallpaper paste. We were all hungry.

Jupiter Sextile Mars

Independent initiative
This is a time of high energy and independent initiative. You feel very self-confident and capable of tackling almost anything within reason. It is a good time to start a project, and most activities that you take up now should have a successful outcome. (excerpted from Astrodienst)

Yay - I moved a button! I took my sewing kit off the shelf, found some white thread, threaded a needle, took a kitchen knife to a button, cut it off and sewed it on again a quarter of an inch closer to the edge of the front of the jacket that was too small when I bought it a year ago - an astonishing display of high energy and independent initiative for me at the moment and yet another example of the principle that everything is relative.

Now this is a more than one day transit, and admittedly the day before Star Child and I expended a bit more energy than threading the needle involved by moving my poor Sweet Pea from Fayerweather, where he'd stayed while I was in Spain, back to Concord. This was a major operation necessitating the use of the stroller as dolly and was made a little more complicated by SC bringing her scooter along; said scooter was rescued from the trash by BT and watching her attempt to maneuver it along the sidewalk showed exactly why it was in the trash in the first place. For it to go forward in a straight line, the handlebars have to be held at a 45 degree angle pointing left, but as this was my first (and I hope the last - there's a birthday coming up ) - outing with it I was unaware of its idiosyncrasies. For the first block or so of what is fortunately only a two and a half block walk, the poor child had to listen to me saying "No, hold the handlebars straight or you'll go bashing into that wall", at which point she would obediently hold the handlebars straight and go bashing into that wall.

Once we sorted that out progress speeded up a bit, and while it took us two trips - first for his kitty litter and tray and food and brush and comb and his big clunky scratching post - and then a trip without the stroller just for him in his carrier, the activity most definitely had a successful outcome; we let him out of his box in the hallway and he fled up the stairs, opened the closet door and disappeared. Business as usual.

There's another manifestation I could attribute to this aspect if my ego were bigger, but something tells me Tim Cook had more than me in mind when he made the announcement on Monday about Apple's dividend. Still, with Progressed Venus in Taurus coming to square Pluto, me still with some Apple stock I haven't had to sell yet and not a lover in sight, surely a girl can dream. In fact, I know she can. After an hour or so spent in trying to figure out why copying something over from Astrodienst has made it impossible to get the subsequent text formatted with a left margin, when that hasn't happened before, she's going to post anyway and hope no one notices.

P.S. Ignore last sentence. An attempt to change the date of this post, something formerly available under "options," led to the discovery of "Remove Formatting" in the menu bar. I could spend another hour trying to figure out how to have this entry show as being posted on March 21, but I have many better uses for my time. The Daily Mail beckons.

P.P.S. It only took a minute.

P.P.P.S. But now I can't get rid of the white box around the quote, and I say to hell with it.

Mars Square Uranus

"You will be much more easily angered than usual, because you quickly interpret everything as a threat to your ego..." (excerpted from Astrodiensts' interpretation)

It's a good thing I've gotten used to Star Child's schoolmates asking me if I'm her granny because this was the day on my holiday in Spain four-year-old Hannah, meeting me for the first time, looked into my face and said "Why are you old?" Thanks to my association with SC and the endless questions she's always asking the answer was easy - "Because I was born a long time ago." Simple, really.

It was also the day I met a Wii up close and personal for the first time, as Hannah's brother, Sammy, seven, was happy to give me a demonstration of whatever game it was he was playing on it (with it?) while Hannah pranced around in the Cinderella Princess dress my sister bought her for her birthday. 

That was about it - no accidents, no rebellion, no explosions; just a day a little out of the ordinary; floor-length blue satin frocks don't play a prominent part in my daily life. As for the ego, the square from Mars was coming from Virgo and my natal Mars is in Pisces, yet another reason why cookbooks so often miss the mark and the only way to learn this stuff is to go through it yourself.

Sun Conjunct Part of Fortune

"When the Sun is conjunct the Part of Fortune, the person can shine with his whole being in response to the solar illumination."

(Interpretation by Eileen Kramer) 

Yes, but what about when the person just flew from Malaga to Madrid and then on to Boston with a short detour to Dallas because she was using air miles? Is the person then allowed to stay in bed all day, after one day already spent the same way, cuddle up with the cat she hasn't seen for two weeks who is for once willing to be cuddled up to and read The Daily Mail? 



Presumably, yes, as that's exactly what I did, and with a Twelfth house Sun it's scarcely an astonishing manifestation. Admittedly, the quote is for a natal placement and I'm talking about a one-day transit, but the symbolism of the Twelfth is there - the hiding away and the solitude. Not too much spirituality or mysticism involved, not with The Daily Mail, although I did check out Jonathan Cainer, and I don't think I was being my own worst enemy, either - one of the less soulful attributes of the Twelfth. I did start in on one of the giant bars of Toblerone I bought at the airport in Madrid, probably not the healthiest thing I could have done for myself, but I was forced into it as I had nothing else to eat after being away for two weeks. Life is hard. 









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Sun Conjunct Mars

"An excellent day for starting a new project, particularly one that you can work on by yourself, without having to take orders or coordinate other people's actions..." (interpretation by Astrodienst)

For me, with a natal Mars Uranus square, this followed on the heels of Sun square Uranus the day before. I was leaving on vacation the next day, which meant two loads of laundry in the morning, the last of which was still whizzing around in the dryer in the basement when the downstairs buzzer rang and Deb's landlady appeared, curious about who was doing laundry when Deb was away and the two women upstairs were at work. She seemed particularly curious about the size of my underwear and unable to believe it belonged to me, but I attributed this to her being more than ninety years old and English being her second language; instead of attempting to explain about Walmart's best three for five dollars cotton briefs I stood in the doorway doing a lot of head-nodding and smiling, trying not to think about how late this was going to make my picking up Star Child. My laundry-doing credentials and my ownership of the astonishingly small knickers in the dryer confirmed, I was back upstairs making sure I had keys, phone, glasses etc. to go and pick up S when Amah called to say the cleaners had been unable to get into the apartment at their usual time - 10:00 am - and could I stop off and let them in.

This was, to put it mildly, annoying, as Wednesday, the day the cleaners come every two weeks, is the day I need to get SC home from school, fed, watered, emptied, read to and asleep early enough to wake up naturally so I can plonk her in the stroller and hoof it a mile and a half past Harvard Square to be on time for dance class at 3:15 - difficult enough when the apartment is empty but close to impossible when I can't get access to the kitchen, the vacuum cleaner is going and all the floors are wet. (And yes, I am unashamedly whining about the terrible inconvenience of having people come in to clean.)

I told Amah I usually stopped off at the apartment anyway to drop off my computer so no problem, I'd let them in, which I did, leaving my bag on my old bed in the hallway before going to pick up S and realizing I'd left my reading glasses behind at Fayerweather. Knowing the earliest the crew would be out would be in 90 minutes or so, I decided to take S back to Fayerweather for lunch, pick up my glasses at the same time, and then go back to Concord for S to take a nap in whatever spot was finished and clean.

I decided on this course of action on the way to school pick-up, realizing as I did so the keys to Fayerweather were in my bag on the bed at the apartment, so once I'd picked up S we stopped off at the apartment and I collected my bag, realizing my glasses were in there after all. Telling the cleaners we'd be going out for lunch, off I went again to Fayerweather, SC in tow, very excited at the thought of meeting Sweet Pea and Mini (which is another story altogether). Neither of them, of course, were in sight, but a cheese sandwich and a promise that she could have quiet time on my old bed seemed to make up for it, and off we went again back to the Concord apartment to find the cleaners gone and the big bedroom fully accessible.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit this is being written two and a half weeks after the day it happened and is such old news I'm boring myself stupid with it. If you've read this far, thanks, and stay tuned as I'm now going to pick up my mail from the past two weeks while I was out of the country and see if there's been anything from my landlord's attorney. As Uranus is now squaring Saturn for me again, my guess is there has been.

P.S. I was wrong (again). Nothing in the mail.