Transiting Venus in Two and Other Musings

Okay, good, so Citibank have resolved my ninety-five cent dispute on last month's credit card statement and reversed the charge, just in time for me to look at this month's and find three other charges that were never initiated by me, totaling almost $100. All three are phone calls I never made, one from the U.K., one from Panama and one from Luxembourg.

(Note to The Dwarf Planet; having to squander $60 on a Universal World Adaptor Plug in Marbella so I could use my computer at my sister's in March was a mildly amusing manifestation of your beginning transit through my Ninth. This is getting ridiculous.)

In further Venusian news and involving a slightly more significant amount of moolah, negotiations with my landlord's attorney are drawing to a close and will probably be completed soon, leaving me homeless with a huge IRS payment due next April, but let's look on the bright side; I won't have to wash the kitchen floor and who needs a cheap apartment on the Upper East Side anyway?

Venus Trine the Moon

This might be "a good time to look about for ways to beautify and decorate your home," but I don't have one at the moment - not one I'm living in, anyway - so I did the next best thing - helped someone else.

With natal Jupiter in Virgo, I'm a bit of a dab hand at organizing, and in an hour or so me and Helpee had two Whole Foods bags filled with SC's outgrown clothes to be passed on as hand-me-downs, should we be able to find any child in 02138 in need of such, and Helpee had a closet where you could catch a glimpse of the back wall, if you looked carefully.

In one of those amazing coincidences so often brought about by astrology, Helpee, with a Venus/Mars sextile in effect, was having a good day for working to beautify her immediate surroundings. Quite what to attribute her buying us all a very special barbecued ribs lunch to I'm not sure. Probably some happy combination of all the Venusian/Lunar sunbeams in the ether dancing around and bumping into Mars in Virgo ha ha.

Jupiter Square Moon

I always thought it was Mercury that was the trickster, but Jupiter put up a big (!) fight for the title when it squared the Moon for me on Wednesday. Supposedly a week-long favorable transit making me generous and forgiving, that effect got lost somewhere in the build-up to it due to the current influence Saturn is treating me to, although now I'm in the process of writing about it and putting a bit more thought into it, I have to acknowledge relationships on the home front have been improving lately.


Anyway, the day Jupiter squared the Moon exactly had me sitting on the floor in a pre-kindergarten classroom watching a four-year-old on her Birthday Walk (holding a miniature globe in her hands and circling a lit candle symbolizing the Sun once for every year of life) and bawling my eyes out at the thought of not seeing very much of her in the not-too-distant future


In touch with my emotions? Yes ma'am, and thank God for my thirty-year-old Jackie O sunglasses.

Saturn Square Midheaven

This little gift from the universe last appeared near the end of November last year, as it became more than apparent, had I been willing to face facts squarely (ha ha), my days in the hallway were numbered.


Now it's returned and the scales have dropped from my eyes, pardon my cliche, it's very obvious my days in my rented room are numbered - 50, to be exact, assuming I stick around for two weeks more than the original arrangement - as are those in the apartment that's been home for the past 38 years. I can scarcely wait for the middle of August, when presumably wherever I've managed to set up tent by then will be swept away by the tides of this new life Uranus is bringing to us all, especially, so I am led to believe, to those born under the Sign of the Ram (pardon yet another cliche), a group to which I can claim membership. Pessimistic or realistic, take your pick.


(Looking ahead to August, and, as is now usual for me in this life-in-limbo I'm existing in, wasting time instead of dealing with the here-and-now, I see the day this aspect returns is also the day of a New Moon in Leo in the Fifth for me, presumably (again) giving me the creative power to gather up the tent poles and turn them into a tepee for me and Sweet Pea. Now THAT'S pessimistic.)


An evaluation of goals, eh? A feeling of loneliness? No longer having the strength to go on in the direction I've "chosen"? What a load of old bollocks astrology is. Anyone would think I'd be in a situation where I had to try and decide what to do about my public life hysterical laughter and my work and career. Force myself to go on with my half-hearted rewrite of Just For You so I can meet the deadline for an international playwriting competition in the U.K., where it would actually stand a chance of being considered? Take whatever but-out my landlord is going to offer me or go to housing court, fight, and risk the judge having a bad day? Pack up all my stuff and send it 2,000 miles away to Silver, where I could accomplish one goal at least - living in my own space with Sweet Pea where he's able to go outside and I can as well? Pack up all my stuff, put it in storage and throw away the key? Save a lot of money and throw it all out instead? Forget about babysitting and start to learn Bridge? Do a babysitting resume (!!!!!!!) and go to the Nanny Conference this weekend?


Thank goodness astrology IS a load of old rubbish. Otherwise I'd be experiencing a heavy-duty Saturn transit right now, and that's something we wouldn't wish on anyone. 

Venus Conjunct Sun

Well, with Venus symbolizing friends, it was only fitting that this became the day SC and I went out to play with just about my only one here - Penny.  It was the third day of school holidays last week, and SC and I got an early start. I plonked her in the stroller, took a deep breath, got on the bus with it (and her), took the T to Charles Street where we met Penny and Baby L and then hoofed it through what I think is called Beacon Hill to the Public Gardens, SC on the lookout for Mrs. Mallard.


There was no line at the Swan Boats and we barely waited at the barrier before getting onto the front seat, which we had all to ourselves (Last year, without the cooperation of Venus, we waited on line for half an hour and all got squashed onto the very back seat.) The sun was out, the sky was blue, the trees were green and there were plenty of Mrs. Mallards out to make SC happy. A brief sit on a bench for a Sherbet Dip all round and it was off to the carousel near the aquarium where Penny again (she insisted on treating us to the Swan Boats for SC's birthday) shelled out for us both.


After that I started to think about SC's quiet time and nap  (MY quiet time and nap, actually, but it's fun to pretend) but Penny is indefatigable and next thing I knew I was buying a ticket on the ferry to Charlestown and asking if there was a discount for seniors. (There was - $1.70 instead of $3.40.) We didn't get off - just made the trip to Charlestown and back to the harbor - and then hoofed it up Atlantic Avenue (I think) to South Station, where SC and I shared a grilled cheese. 


After that it was the Red Line and home for all, with SC lasting until we were ten minutes away before the singing from the stroller stopped and she gave in to sleep.. I had to wait a bit longer before I got to a chance to close my eyes, but when it came I didn't put up much of a fight. It's exhausting, enjoying yourself.

Venus Conjunct Uranus

Last year, at the time the Grand National was run, I was at the house of my nephew and his wife who were holding a race viewing party for the family before we all went on to the, er, U.K. premiere of my play, Soldiering On. I'd bet on State of Play, after going to a sobering rehearsal a couple of nights before, and won about thirty pounds. The play was well received and I held the winning raffle ticket at the theatre fund-raiser, but that was then, when Jupiter was on my Sun, and this is now, with Saturn slowly moving away from an opposition to Mercury before turning round and coming back to do it again in September.

With transiting Venus in Gemini conjunct Natal Uranus in the first on Grand National day this year, the mission was two-fold: to watch the race one way or another - TV or online - and to put money on State of Play, who was running again. (I'd been looking at horses and runners and odds for at least a week beforehand.) Several of the U.K. online bookies offered punters the ability to watch the race online if a bet was placed, which got me very excited until I found out U.K. betting shops can't accept money from the U.S. Online bookies in the U.S. are happy to take your money but don't broadcast the race, and also require you to state whether you're betting to win or to show BEFORE you wager your moolah, I discovered AFTER, by mistake, betting more than I want to mention for State of Play to win. (He didn't.)

All of the above *research* was done the day before the race, which took place at 11:15 am EST on Saturday. I'd given up by then on watching, as the National is broadcast only by the BBC and is carefully guarded, but had found its radio sports channel, and was listening to the build up to the start. At about 10:55 I did one final Google search for "Watch Grand National Live Online" and up popped a "Watch TV on your Computer $49 One Time Only Unlimited Access Fee." With my usual careful consideration and forethought, I reached for my wallet while clicking download, and a minute later started to download a program that would take eight minutes to get into my computer, ignoring the screen that told me to use Chrome.

Eight minutes later, when the TV watching application wouldn't start, I downloaded Chrome and suffered through another eight minutes or so, watching the clock get closer to 11:15 by the second ha ha. This time the program, Satellite Direct, launched but told me I needed updates of two supporting programs, and while I was looking for those I was eyeing the clock and congratulating myself that I'd at least found good old radio coverage on BBC Five. Just as I started on the second update, an announcer's voice informed me that the race segment (!) of the Grand National wouldn't be broadcast due to copyright infringement, and the radio went dead.

The next ten minutes were given over to a frantic scramble from newspaper site to newspaper site, looking for live blogging of the race. Saturday was also the day that Mercury opposed Chiron for me, and I got a full taste of what THAT one feels like when I finally discovered which horse had won the National - a rank outsider called, yes, that's right, you can't make this stuff up - Neptune Collonges.

Retrograde Mars Stationed Direct in Five

"Wherever you have Virgo in your chart" Michael Lutin wrote on his website earlier in the week, "you are in for a shot of cosmic B-12," and by an amazing coincidence, children, love and even a hint of personal creativity have reared their respective heads for me over the past couple of days, with Mars stuck at 3 Virgo in my Fifth.


Of course, children (in the shape of Star Child and all her little friends constantly asking me if I'm her granny) have been around for a year and a half now, but three days ago, due to circumstances beyond my control, I found myself babysitting all day for an eighteen-month-old, taking her with me to pick up SC at noon and having her till five o'clock when her father picked her up.


The love bit happened the next day, and did not, of course, involve me, but sprang from my roommate asking me what the big deal was about Wuthering Heights, one of the books available to her at no cost on her Kindle, which I am not going to link to. This led to me going immediately to YouTube, finding the 1939 Laurence Olivier/Merle Oberon version, emailing her the link and then losing myself completely in passion, hatred, revenge, vengeance, bitterness, animosity, retribution and death, otherwise known as love. 


Yesterday the eighteen-month-old appeared again, when her babysitter stopped by to give me my birthday presents, and last night passion, hatred, revenge etc. reappeared in a watered-down form when I started watching Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, and I'm not going to link to them either.


As for the personal creativity, on the bus down to New York last weekend I began making changes to Just For You, and will continue with it tonight or over the weekend, depending on how many other versions of Wuthering Heights I can find and whether or not I start to read the book again. I'd work on it now, but I need to go and pick up SC. I'm going to pretend I'm walking over the Yorkshire moors on my way to Penniston Crag.

Retrograde Saturn Opposed to Mercury Exact

No tricksterism from The Cosmic Chiropractor on the day itself - communication pure and simple was the focus. I was already on my second Tracfone, the first succumbing to a protracted soak in Nyquil, interestingly enough on a long car trip last Easter. I'd bought the original on John's urgings back in the days when Uranus was in the Eleventh and I was making frequent trips to California to see him, often in the dead of night on desert back roads. There would have been no reception anyway if I had ever needed to use the phone. but I never did, and my having it set his mind at rest.


These days I need the thing only when I'm babysitting, and am so unused to it I often forget to charge it. This, I've learned, makes it lock itself into emergency mode, which is impossible to get out of without, I've also learned, removing the back, taking out the SIM card and re-inserting it. Major problem here is I'm unable to get the back off by myself (!) and have to take it into a Radio Shack to ask for help.


This past weekend, after a week of carting around an unusable phone, I took the miserable object down to New York, where my apartment is three doors away from a Radio Shack, intending to get the thing back into service. I was being met at Boston South Station on my return on Monday morning, and after my experience in Madrid when I was twelve hours late and had no way of getting that information to my sister who was meeting me in Malaga, had no desire for a repeat of that experience.


The fly in the ointment, or the perfection of the Saturn opposed to Mercury aspect, was that I left the phone's charger in Cambridge, so even with the back taken off and the Sim card reinserted, the battery still wasn't charged and the phone put itself back into emergency mode only. (Exactly what this is I have yet to find out; maybe it will only make a call to 911? To say what? "Excuse me, can you lend me a charger for my phone?")


To make a long and boring story short ("Too late," the ghost of  George S. Kaufman whispers in my ear), the only choice, if I wanted to be able to communicate, and I did,  was to shell out $40 for the cheapest new phone in the store - AT.& T's version of the Tracfone. The Lord of Karma strikes again.

Solar Return or Birthday - Which to Celebrate?

I won't be celebrating either of them - not in the generally accepted use of the term, ("mark a significant or happy day or event, typically with a social gathering") anyway, but I think I'll pick today, Saturday, solar return day, over tomorrow, birthday as known by non-astrologers and the calendar day of April on which I was born. It's a bit of a toss-up, because if I choose tomorrow I'll have Venus trining Neptune and, thanks to a natal sextile off by one degree, the Sun sextiling the Moon, but all things considered I'll pass on having Saturn oppose Mercury exactly on a day that's supposed to set the tone for the rest of the year.


Of course, as Astrodienst is quick to reassure me, "this does not mean that the whole year will be disappointing if the day doesn't work out exactly as planned" - very good news for me as it seems absolutely nothing has worked out as planned for me for a very long time, not to sound despondent or defeatist in my thinking or anything.


Anyway, as I'm receiving a new impulse from the energy center within me, this could be the day I get myself to the post office with the two packages of books that have been sitting on the mantlepiece since January; in my current state of physical torpor, this would be enough of an accomplishment to carry me through for at least another couple of months.


Also, as "any new venture that I start at this time will ride the crest of this new energy and will very likely come to an acceptable conclusion," and as, on the bus down from Cambridge yesterday, to my own amazement, I opened Final Draft and began to rewrite the second act of Just For You, I'll continue with that because "whatever I do or begin today will bear the stamp of my individuality more than anything else."


That way, with Venus trine Neptune tomorrow, I can revert to my usual occupation of watching films noir on YouTube and eating licorice. Whoever said Saturn opposed to Mercury is a time of questioning and self-doubt got it completely wrong. I know exactly what I'm going to do.

Progressed Mercury Into Second House

Surprise surprise - Progressed Mercury into the Second, following in the footsteps of the Sun a few years ago - has not manifested as my suddenly being showered with shit-loads of moolah for my writing skills, in spite of its being in Gemini ha ha. What it has manifested as is a renewal of my liking for word games and an introduction to a couple of new ones, UpWords and Lexulous, both of which I lose every time I play as I'm up against the maestro of maestros - the maestra of maestras, actually, except Spell Check doesn't like that - someone who's being playing Scrabble since kindergarten and knows every two letter word that exists.

Admittedly, the one stock I own is on what can only be described as a meteoric rise - (no prizes for guessing what it is). That could be down to Progressed Venus coming to square Pluto though, or a combination of that and the new entrants into the Second House, but aren't stocks more of an Eighth House thing? Don't really know, and it doesn't really matter till I sell something as until then it's all still on paper.

Speaking of selling something, though, and indulging in my favorite useless pastime of  trying to see into the future, I can't help but wonder if, when Progressed Mercury catches up with the Sun at the end of 2013, I'll finally sell the house in Silver. Stay tuned.                              

Retrograde Saturn Opposed to Mercury

Alert regular readers will notice an abrupt overnight change in the appearance of this blog, the combined result of my attempting to switch from its rather dated appearance to something looking as though I'm aware the current year is 2012 and not having a clue about what I'm doing. The sinking feeling I got last night as even after hours spent on Blogger Help I was unable to revert to the previously looked-down-upon fuddy-duddy old Scribe, was, I think, a manifestation of this post's title, as was my deciding I could be focused enough to attempt to make the change. 


Mercury, as I'm beginning to realize is normal, is in full Trickster mode this week, ruling buying and selling while I attempt to negotiate with my landlord's attorney over whether he buys me out or lets me renew my lease and sublet for the coming two years. We started yesterday and he said he hopes to have an answer for me by the end of the week; fine by me as transiting Mercury will no longer be retrograde (albeit almost so and just about stationery) as I need all the help I can get. While the thought of having only one checking account is enough to get me dizzy with excitement, the thought of giving up a place that's been home for 38 years is more than sobering, but that's Saturn when he gets himself mixed up with Mercury.


This wonderfully light-hearted aspect was in play with Saturn direct before Christmas when - well, best to draw a veil over it, really, as Saturn went on to station opposite my Venus, and we all know what happened then, and will reappear in September for a third and final blast. The aspect perfects this coming Sunday, which just happens to be my birthday. I don't understand a word of all the "the universe is impartial" stuff. All I know is I'd bet my life it has a very black sense of humor.