Yesterday I opened a gmail account I rarely use and found an email from my high school boyfriend <all the pins drop>. Nothing major just a checking in/hey how are you doing kinda thing, but it struck me as odd because he’s crossed my mind a few times since we saw The Fault In Our Stars on Sunday. I mean this guy was basically the non-cancer version of Augustus Waters back in the day, and I don’t think I’ve checked that email account in more than 3 months.
While I was weeding out the spam I found another email from my dear, old friend Susan. Old as in the friendship, not the person. Strangely enough we’ve been re-pinning each other’s stuff on Pinterest, and when she clicked through to my site realized it was me. Crazy awesome sauce, right?! We’ve been friends for 20 years and lost touch, but now I guess we’re back in touch. Woot!
I don’t keep up with astrology or read much into it even if I come across my horoscope except if it were to tell me I was going to win the lottery in which case you would find me. But today when I was sitting in bed, room spinning from yet another anxiety attack, I remembered overhearing the other day that Mercury was going into Retrograde. This lady at the grocery store was in a major flap about it making me wonder if she might hole up under her bed for the duration.
Mercury? Retrograde? Wha? = basically my response.
So while I was in the horizontal I looked that biz up on the nets and here’s some of the stuff it said:
- Mercury Retrograde is when the planet Mercury slows down and appears to stop and move backward (retrograde). Me: So what? I don’t live on Mercury, I live on Earth. I think.
- People and ideas from the past resurface for resolution and integration. <eyeball emoji>
- People who resurface have an emotional pull on your soul or psyche. <eyeball emoji x2>
- It’s a time of tracing emotional memories to their roots and picking up lost meaning.
- It’s a richly contemplative time to go over and over things you may have missed, sometimes to rediscover your true calling.
- This time around Mercury Retrograde starts in Cancer, a water sign of origins, pointing us to things like home, family and invisible ties that bind.
- It is a time for soul searching and then putting things into a bright, new perspective.
Nuts, right? (ps-got all that info from astrology.about.com just so you know I’m not making it up)
With everything going on it really helps to hear from people who have known me a long time and known me well. There’s a certain comfort and grounding in that familiarity. Even though I haven’t talked to either of these two in years, I still think about them. They’re kind and intelligent and very funny people who live vividly in my memory. It feels good to know I’m alive in theirs, too.
So who knows about this Mercury Retrograde thing? Might be a bunch of baloney, might have some credibility. Either way, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it unless there’s a lottery involved. Seems to me I’ve made it 40 some odd years without even knowing squat about it so no need to go into hiding every time it rolls around.
That being said: not sure what brand of crazy hangs onto a picture like this from the 80’s and drags it clear into adulthood but hey, that’s my peeps! Pretty big of him to admit it, and no I don’t mean my hair. AHAHAHA! (somewhere out there Chris passes out laughing)
4 Comments
So great to re-connect!! And thank you for not including a picture of me from that era in your post (shudder). ;))
You got it girl! And Susan, you always had sweet locks! I’ll email you this weekend. xo
When I worked in retail my manager was a certified astrologer! I actually found it really interesting and like the thought that if we could just be more in tune with the universe, we’d have a much greater understanding of ourselves. That picture is a keeper!! What’s he holding – is that a bottle of Bacardi or something??
Hey Jen,
I, too, think there are certain natural rhythms to the universe and, whether we embrace astrology or not, if we were just more in tune to our surroundings we would be more aware of those cycles. Kind of cool!
RE: the bottle. Um yes, rum. Some sort of Ron Cabana? Good grief, what a picture to hang onto. I almost passed out laughing when he emailed the picture of the picture. I was thinking dude, why are you traumatizing yourself and your family with that insanity? We laughed a good one! Old friends are gems 🙂