Our ancient Toyota is at the mechanic’s this week, getting a much-needed tuneup. My husband valiantly resurrected it, Lazarus-like, to begin what must be at least the sixth or seventh of its nine lives; and as you’d expect from a zombie vehicle, it’s running a little rough. Meanwhile, we’ve summoned a repairman to investigate the mysterious failure of our much-less-ancient refrigerator to keep food sufficiently icy. My spouse is battling programming gremlins, the CD player that lulls us to sleep each night is cutting in and out, one of our cell phones won’t hold a charge, we keep losing things, and now we have a freezer full of expensive food that is slowly but inexorably defrosting all at once. (It’s going to be 100 degrees here again today, and I really don’t feel like roasting a chicken.)
Taken together, these seemingly random events can mean only one thing: The upcoming Mercury retrograde period (September 6 – 29, 2009, but we’re currently in the shadow period) is going to be a whopper.
In other news, Mars entered Cancer on Tuesday and promptly began an opposition to Pluto that has proved pretty unpleasant. It would appear that I’ve reached that crossroads of middle age where you find yourself going to more funerals than weddings, and on Wednesday I found myself hurtling along the 5 North to attend a memorial service for a friend. This was a rather shocking death, a relatively young person; and although we hadn’t stayed close over the years, the grieving throngs, grim reminders of one’s own mortality, etc. left me heartsick and blue. Days later, I can’t quite shake the mood.
Not exactly helping: The invitation I received this week – to my 30th high school reunion. I have declined this generous invitation. Like most people, I really didn’t have a good enough time in high school to want to relive it, even for a single evening. And I could do without yet another reminder of my encroaching decrepitude, thanks, let alone a reunion with classmates who recall that even in my youth – my alleged prime – I was a bit of a mess. But who knows – maybe I’ll get lucky and prove to have as many lives as my old car. With any luck at all, I’ll live them more gracefully than I did my high school years.
In summary: Everything eventually gets old, gets lost, breaks down. So back up your hard drive, get an extra set of keys made, cross your fingers, hope for the best. Don’t put off reunions with old friends, and leave no words of love unsaid. It’s perfectly okay, however, to avoid reliving a youth that you didn’t much enjoy the first time around. And now is probably not the time to restock the freezer.
