I was supposed to live to be 102 and be shot by a jealous wife

bookplate at vintage inclination

I am taking a little blog break this week to

1. celebrate a very big birthday (yes, I said very)

(although my memory is mostly still intact because just yesterday I was reminiscing about another birthday morning when I put on my red striped Jackson Arts & Craft Camp t-shirt, a pair of denim overalls with white socks and looked at my recently permed reflection, yes a Toni home job, and solemnly wished that I would look like that forever ... )

2. gather information about this "grave" thyroid prognosis I have just been given

(which started when an eye doctor while looking at my eyelids asked "do you have a rash on your shin" - I do - and yes, I said eye doctor and yes I said shin - the auto immune system is a tricky thing folks - when she asked me such random correctness I actually felt my teeth chatter - I thought she was about to rip off her face and confess herself an alien - it was the same feeling I had when riding in the car with my father many years ago listening to the radio and he said "what year is this?" - I thought he had lost his mind on the way to the mall - and I stammered "...uh, 1986" and he said, "It is?! I thought this song was older." - which is totally unconnected, but a totally scary moment, and again this is the birthday season of reminiscing folks)

I am pulling this week's giveaway and will bring it back when I have the time to give it a proper promotion (and yes, this involves t-shirts and balloons and the Miss America pageant hand-wave).

There is a LUCKY new moon this Sunday (I know you are thinking, not another new moon), but trust me this one is a goodie - you must be starting something new now - you must - this is the time - I will post more on this later.

Saturn Saturday - a wrap up and intro to this month's fun

greek goddess art print by LipsticKissPress

This post wraps up my Saturn and Nodes of the Moon charts for last month's volunteers. I am so grateful to all of you for letting me get my feet wet with this again - thank you!

Over the next few weeks I'm starting a new series working with the energies of the first four asteroids sited in the 1800's - Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta.

Just like the planets of our birth chart, the position of these asteroids at the time of our birth carries meaning about our astrological makeup and reflects how our goddess energies influence us!
(plus they are fascinating!)

Ceres (known to the Greeks as Demeter) is the mother - the provider, the nurturer - the goddess archetype of spring. Ceres represents the part of our nature that longs to give birth and then nourish and sustain new life. She represents the essential bonding or lack of that occurs between mother and child. She is the impulse to nurture and also to be nurtured by others.

Ceres's daughter, Persephone, was abducted by Pluto, lord of the underworld. The grieving mother, Ceres wandered the earth in search of her missing child.

In her grief, depression and anger, she caused a famine, withholding nourishment from the world until her daughter was returned. Persephone meanwhile had eaten pomegranate seeds, a symbol of sexual awareness, which gave Pluto a claim over her so she could not be returned permanently to her mother.

(damn you pomegranate seeds!)

A deal was reached so Persephone would spend part of each year in the underworld with Pluto caring for the souls of the dead, but each spring would be reunited with her mother in the upper world as she initiated the dead into the rites of rebirth (spring).

Ceres in our chart alerts us to any challenges with nurturing and directs us to the kinds of experience we need to feel unconditionally loved and accepted.

We'll take a look at her and Pallas (known to the Greeks as Athena) next week.

If anyone wants to know how the asteroids Ceres and Pallas harmonize and clash with the other points in your chart send me your birth date (yes, I need year, too - sorry), place and time or leave this info in the comments section at the end of this post.

Now to our next guinea pig volunteer : Bliss.

no more phonebooths = no more heroes - is anyone investigating the possible connection - call Soledad

anyone can be a superhero

Being a hero was a tricky job.

Besides being able to change into your superhero cape in a tiny little phonebooth and besides being able to leap tall buildings in a  single bound, well, we pretty much required that you be ... perfect.

And because this perfection, this state of rightness, doesn't really exist it required some conspiratorial bullshit to keep your superhero cape on straight.

We are living in a time of incredible change - the beginning of ... well, something else - something real.

A world where real trumps right;

a place where there is no perfect and the real heroes are the makers

(anyone making a real life and making real choices, even when things get messy and scary and we don't know what the hell we are doing yet or where the hell this is all going)

who are scared to death but putting ourselves out there anyway. This stuff is not for sissies.

Courage is telling our story,

not being immune to criticism

- Brene Brown

(and if you haven't watched her TED talk lately, it's HERE)

This new paradigm has the superhero confused.

(and we can't really blame her because we are the ones who gave her that cape, and pointed her toward the tallest building and told her she could fly in the first place)

Tomorrow is hub's birthday and I just bought the makings for his cake (and yes, we're talking Duncan Hines here). It reminded me of his 21st birthday when I made him a cake and it was such a mess that I tossed it and bought him a store made one. Then he called and said he couldn't wait to come over and eat the cake I baked. Ugh. So, I tossed the bakery box in with the cake I'd baked and presented the faked-baked-cake as my own.

Now, this is not such a terrible thing to do, obviously - I've done way worse things than this to hubs over the years, but George has gone on and on about this cake for decades - I swear to God he married me because he thought I would bake a cake like this faked-baked-cake everyday for the rest of his life (poor guy). This morning when I asked what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday his eyes sort of glazed over (this could be a dry eye thing - we are old now) and lamented, "remember that cake .....".

Our heroes, like everything else we see, are mirrors. We see ourselves in them and now that life is requiring us to go deeper we are not always liking what we are finding.

(like mistresses and performance enhancing drugs and drones and cake boxes hidden in garbage cans)

And whether we believe this go-deeper thing is a planetary cycle change where everything that isn't like our current vibration comes up to be looked at (like I do) or that this go-deeper thing is an internet, nothing can hide here anymore thing (like I do, too) - it doesn't matter - it only matters that we somehow, someway find the guts to be real.

Maybe we can't be right and learn something.

And yes, I'm going to confess to that faked-baked-cake or maybe just let hubs read this post. I think he might be as disappointed in me as the world is in Lance Armstrong. Marriage is not for sissies either.

all decisions are really two decisions ... (on why there are no wrong choices)

Let's not take action to make up for a lack of focus ... but once we decide we must take action.  

"A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided." 

- Tony Robbins

And once we decide and then take action we make a second decision.

"We choose and in making that choice then have to choose again to be right with that decision or to be bitter and regretful." 

- Kathy

 

and of course if everything falls (as grandma would say) to hell in a hand basket we always have this