Taurus New Moon: Don’t Cry Over Spilled Syrup

I bought a fancy glass bottle of pancake syrup at the supermarket. When I got home, I tried to gather up too many of the grocery bags at once instead of simply making a second trip from the car to the house. Naturally, I dropped one of the bags—and of course, it was the one that contained the bottle of syrup, which smashed, covering everything else in a fine layer of goo. A shard of broken glass tore a small hole in the bag, and as I carried it into the house, I left a trail of organic Canadian maple goodness along the sidewalk, onto the porch, and across the length of the living room and kitchen.

I yelled. I cursed. I think I probably stomped my feet. I was already in a bad mood; I’d spent the morning moping about some problems I’d had with checks that hadn’t arrived, or which had arrived and promptly been lost, and spending twice as long as I’d planned at the hair salon because I’d forgotten it was a “color” day. Now I was behind in my work, feeling broke, and would have to spend time I didn’t have on cleaning up syrup. Tallying my grievances against an uncaring universe, I stamped my feet some more, sending the cats running for cover.

Then, I spent the better part of the afternoon scrubbing maple syrup from tile and wood floors and hosing it from the sidewalk. But the next morning I hit a few residual sticky patches in the living room, and while I was still grumbling about my newly adhesive shoes, a website problem came up – just minutes before an out-of-town friend was scheduled to arrive for a visit. I was ready to sit down on the floor and have a good cry.

I’m not a sun sign Scorpio, though on the days when my Moon/Pluto square acts up you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Such emotional drama (as only a Sun sign Leo can deliver); so much throwing of crockery and swearing! I’m pretty intense to live with.

Fortunately, I married a guy with the Moon in Taurus. Taurus’ super power is the ability to diffuse tension and drama. My Taurus mother was particularly adroit at countering my tantrums and emotional firestorms with patience and humor. She liked my husband the moment she met him, perhaps sensing that here was someone to whom she could pass the torch, who could talk me down from the occasional emotional ledge without being intimidated by my … shall we say, passionate nature.

And bless him, he’s very good at it. Without getting excited, he offered to help me with the website problem. He cracked open his laptop, but before he’d gotten very far, an easy fix had already occurred to me. Something about his stabilizing presence always calms me down enough to think clearly, so that the obvious solution has a chance to present itself.

If Taurus could be distilled and bottled, the manufacturers of Xanax would soon be out of business. Before you get the wrong idea—because Taurus is forever being compared to things like rocks, and they seldom take it as a compliment—I mean this as a tribute to the Bull’s calm and steadying influence. When Taurus walks into a room, the level of melodrama plummets. Intractable situations are suddenly completely under control.

Taurus brings with it a degree of confidence and practicality that simplifies whatever is overwhelming and demystifies all that is vaguely terrifying. Taurus would have laughed about the trail of maple syrup, settled the visiting friend with a cup of tea and a friendly cat, and calmly diagnosed the website problem. There would have been no flapping of arms, no dramatic cries of victimization. Things would simply have gotten done, with no fuss. That’s the right attitude to carry into this New Moon in Taurus—capable, and above all calm.

In the end, I decided that the reason I was feeling so overwhelmed and victimized by trivial things was simple: I haven’t been sleeping well, and I was just plain tired. So I set aside my writing for a little while and took a nice, long nap. When I woke up, I got out a cleaning rag for one last go at some maple syrup residue I’d found on the living room floor. I checked my email and found that the checks are, as they say, “in the mail”. I calmly cored the last of the tomatoes from our garden for tonight’s marina sauce. With these small, homely tasks, performed methodically and serenely, I cultivated my own inner Taurus – and regained my balance.

© 2012, 2015 April Elliott Kent