zeptember

As if I didn’t already have enough going on in my life right now with taking on a new highly stressful job in its first week and the wedding planning, I was asked at the end of last week if I’d be interested in doing syndicated horoscopes for a company. And then this week I discovered that I had TWO pending astrological report requests - the money’s already been sent and the customers are waiting for their charts.

Instead of issuing refunds and owning up to the fact that I’m overtaxed, I was my usual stubborn self and refused to concede full defeat. Well, as far as the syndication, I said thanks but I just can’t, and it was heartbreaking, because last spring, this was my dream calling - this was what I was after. Ugh.

Anyway, I just finished one report and I’m on to the second one. If it’s not done by tomorrow night, I’m going to be very disappointed in myself, regardless of whether it’s fair of me to punish myself in this way.

Oh, and I’m taking the order page on the astrology site down for awhile.

10:17pm Edit: YAY! I’ve just finished the second chart and uploaded it! Thank [insert deity here] I was smart enough to create massive documentation and cheat sheets when I first started this venture back in April. All I have to do is copy and paste much of the output to the HTML files and fill in the blanks where self-instructed. Were I doing this for my full time job as intended last spring, I’d be able to crank out 3-4 charts a day and get better over time.

Now if I could only figure out how to fine tune this for daily, weekly and monthly horoscopes. At last frustrating try back in March, it was taking me over a month to get out a monthly horoscope for each sign. I have no idea how the pros do that…yet.

And besides, I have a day job again. So the astrology job is on the back burner until I can, over time, learn how to balance both. Right now I’m not trying at it purposefully, but wow, this week was quite the litmus test.

Customers are one thing, syndication for daily, weekly and monthly horoscopes is quite another altogether and would require full time, which I don’t have and won’t have for the foreseeable future.

I was out running errands when the director of the Evil Daycare From Hell finally called me back… at quarter after one.

She asked if I’d like to come in to work tomorrow. I said I would (not that I’d like to, mind you, but I do need the money. Badly).

I then called up my agency to ask if she’d called there, first. She hadn’t. So I asked them to call her back and make sure it’s all legit. They did and it is and I go in tomorrow.

The agency called me back just a bit ago, asking if she wanted me to work JUST tomorrow, or STARTING tomorrow and continuing through next week? I told them JUST tomorrow is all she’d mentioned. They didn’t sound too happy about that.

You know what, I’m tired of being in the middle, here. Aren’t THEY supposed to play middleman FOR ME? Geez.

Let’s hope I surive the day tomorrow…

And on the sickie front, my ears, nose, throat and head have all plugged up again. I’ve been doing the neti pot, nasal sprays, Life Shield mushroom spray (it’s $30 of useless, I say), and cough drops, but the only thing that helps are the things that make me loopy: Sudafed PE and Tylenol 3.
I’m only taking the Tylenol 3 at night because codeine is also a cough suppressant. Then again, had I lost more sleep by hacking up all the gunk last night, perhaps I’d not be back to square one with the stuffed head again today. But I thought I’d be at a job today and thusly needed my beauty sleep.
Feh.

I so cannot wait for this Mercury Retrograde to be over. It goes direct on June 19 but residual do0m is to be expected until July 4).

I didn’t have pain on Friday morning, though I was still bleeding. So I had really bad pain and bleeding for three days - on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - this time around. That for me is about right. A five-day cycle overall, with three really bad days.

I did go in to work at the new assignment on Friday. This place is a government-run facility, I’m told. There was order, stability, curriculum, and professional staff. I asked if they’d need me again soon. By lunchtime, they asked me if I really did want to come back, because they saw how well the kids responded to me, and said they liked my work.
Even though I have social phobia with other adults, and even though I felt extremely awkward, I really liked that center so much better than the first one I was assigned to.

By the end of the workday on Friday, I’d had a child plop down in my lap during story time, and another child drew me a card with flowers on it, and yet another child grabbed hold of the back of my shirt and decided to be my shadow during recess. Mad giggling ensued when I turned around and asked who was behind me - she moved with me every time I twisted and turned - obscuring her identity. I figured the only way to get her to let go of my shirt was to climb the monkey bars and go down the slide. It worked - and I “ran” to get away from her again, but she’d catch me every time and we’d have to repeat the scenario. After the second time around, I had upwards of six or seven children playing this game, running after me, giggling like crazy.

George went away by Friday evening, and just in time for a cold to settle in. I woke up in the middle of the night with phlegm and a very sore throat. Ugh. I began taking 1,000mg vitamin C and popping the Cold-Eze cough drops again (this cold tried to settle in a week or two ago and I thought I’d fought it off).
I’ve had this sore throat on and off since Friday, and today it turned into a cough. Great. Good thing I have leftover codeine cough syrup from a year or so ago when I was sick. Hopefully I can fend the cold off again.

That’s the risk you take when working with children. Their germs are evil little mutating bastards. I have this saying - “children will kill ya!”

Friday night, my man took me out to dinner at our favourite Thai restaurant, and afterwards, we walked around town a bit.

On Saturday, I attended a friend’s birthday party *and* another friend’s wedding. So much stuff seemed to go awry - I rememebered then that we’re in the middle of a mercury retrograde. Ugh! Poor bride and groom! I don’t think they believe in that sort of thing though, otherwise they’d have steered clear of the retrograde. But for me, I’ve been to several weddings in my life, and clearly something was amiss with this one. But then I should probably go back through all the other weddings I’ve been to and see if any of the others were in mercury retrograde to ‘prove’ my theory, here. Hang on…

…okay. So here are some weddings I’ve been to, dating back to the year 2000. None of them fell on a Mercury Retrograde. None! And none of them had the obvious and brutal problems that this one had.
Here’s one site that shows the Mercury retrogrades, and here’s another.
In my book, point proven.

I don’t force my way of believing on others. All I can do is observe, and report my admitedly unscientific and oftentimes seemingly superstitious and very subjective findings here for myself, for posterity.

Today, we gathered at the bride and groom’s house for brunch, and watched them do the official signing of all the documents. I got to hear funny stories about the groom - I always like to hear families tell such stories. I’m a huge genealogy fan, so hearing anyone’s history, no matter how embarrassing or not, holds a lot of interest for me. I am fond of seeing families together, chatting, hanging out - doing what our family used to do before gramma and grampa moved back to Kentucky and the family fell apart without their parents as a solid rock and anchor nearby.

Bah, but I digress.

It was when we were on our way home from our friends’ house that my cough set in. And now I’m back home again, and I’m depressed all over again. I have our own wedding to continue planning. I feel alone in this planning.

I still haven’t called together our ‘inner circle’ and I feel like I can’t fully do this until we have a caterer to let us know how many people we can add to our list of people we want to have. We only have 80 right now. We want up to double that amount. We can’t have that unless catering comes in low, budget-wise. We think the last caterer we saw can do that. But we still have to finish tastings and such with other caterers, first, before just rushing into a contract with the first dude who says he can make our budget happen. He was very disorganised for our tasting - our table wasn’t ready. We had food delivered before plates and utensils. One of the glasses was dirty and we had to wait to get another because they kept forgetting. The ceasar salad had been soaking in dressing for I don’t know how long - it was horrible. And on top of it, he didn’t listen to my warnings for gluten-free and yeast-free options for me to try. I asked how many other events he had scheduled on the day of our wedding and he couldn’t tell me - said he’d get back to me on that and never did. These things are HELLO, CRITICAL to me.

Bleh. I’m so glad I don’t work tomorrow. I’m so glad I insisted on a 32-hour work week. I need tomorrow as a mental health day, and actually, I wonder how much sicker I’ll get with this cold. It’s definitely not helping with my depression. I’ve been depressed since the beginning of June - at least, that’s what my diary says.

I don’t know what else to say. Journaling got a lot off my chest, but I’ve not solved anything and I don’t feel any better emotionally like I usually do through journaling. I don’t know what else I can say or rant about in an attempt to make myself feel better.

Hmmm.

Maybe drinking a lot of alcohol socially over the past two weeks hasn’t helped my depression, either. :p

I know what would make me feel better. Winning the friggin’ lottery would make me feel better. I don’t want to work anymore. I don’t want to worry about rent and bills anymore. I don’t want to stress over wedding finances anymore.

In my natal astrology chart, I have Saturn in the 2nd House. Saturn is the planet of karma and lessons. The 2nd House is the House of finances and possessions. This means that my whole life is spent in financial hardship. Much of one’s chart is flexible, malleable. Except for Saturn. Saturn sets things in stone. It’s a harsh monster - a mean bitch of do0m. In the Tarot, Saturn is associated with Satan.

*sigh*

One last thing, just so I have it preserved here - my thumb is doing much better. Ever since yesterday morning, or was it Friday night?… I’ve been constantly applying Curel lotion to my thumb. It’s healing up nicely, and much faster than applying that stupid steroidal ointment I was given from my doctor. I wonder if I’m also allergic to that. Wouldn’t surprise me. My ma is allergic to cortisone, and only found out when she had it injected for back pain. She can’t even have it topically - it makes her rash out and also look like some kind of leper.

Righto, that’s all I got.

I want to get back to researching earthquakes and astrology but I have no time. Now that I’m feeling better, I have a ton of work waiting for me elsewhere on the astrological front. This unnerves me, like I’m running out of time. And yet I have no time to devote to this. And yet not one astrologer so far has ever found a reliable link to predict earthquakes.

Alas.