Hiding Out at the Motel 6 Monday Morning Check-In Post

How Are You??!!

On July 5th of last year, we awoke to an eerily quiet street. The glorious song of the birds that greeted us each morning was gone, obliterated by the explosions that occurred the night before. The sound waves were so heavy and destructive that not only did they chase all the birds from our neighborhood, but they also triggered an intense toothache. While it was happening, we sat with a shivering Zoey, who hid in the bathroom for hours, while Sookie, scared but not as scared as Zoey, retreated to the bedroom. Teddy was the only one who seemed unfazed. We’ve since noticed that he’s losing his hearing.

This year we left. Our original plan was to leave on July 3rd and not return until the 7th. We discovered a cool-looking dog-friendly spot in Southern Illinois right near the Garden of the Gods in the Shawnee National Forest, a place neither Jon nor I had ever been.

“Oh, it’s beautiful down there,” our friend Theresa said. “It’s going to be pretty hot and humid then,” she added.

We threw that plan in the trash. Part of the point of retreating there, besides escaping the fireworks noise in the city, was to be on the trails with the dogs, which would not be happening in 90-degree weather. We put a pin in that spot for another, less hot as hell time, and proceeded to have a million conversations and Tarot readings about what to do.

“If we’re going to travel, I really don’t want to be doing it on a holiday,” I finally said to Jon. “Maybe we should find a motel near the airport in an industrial zone where there are no neighbors nearby shooting off fireworks all night long, just head there when it starts to get loud and come home during the day.”

Hello, Motel 6, always dog friendly, always on the lower end of the price scale. I mean, if I am going to pay to sleep in two different places for the night, our apartment and a motel, without getting a vacation out of it, I am not going to make this an excessive expenditure.

By the time July 3rd came about, it was weirdly quiet on our block. Last year, the explosions began a couple of weeks before and increased in intensity the closer we got to the 4th, with the air already heavy with smoke late on the 3rd. This year, we had barely heard anything, just a random pop or two the weekend before, and nothing on the 1st and 2nd.

“Maybe we don’t need to go today,” I said to Jon on the 3rd as my resistance to leaving our apartment rose in my body like a wave. This sensation is one I am familiar with and always listen to. It’s not a resistance born out of fear, it’s the other kind, the one where my body is saying, “this is not the choice you need to be making.” I cancelled our reservation, rebooking only for the 4th instead, and while there was some random fireworks noise in the neighborhood, again it was nothing like last year and stopped before midnight.

Tariffs have raised the prices of fireworks, which are illegal in Illinois. People drive into Indiana to purchase them. Many people don’t want to stand out right now for any reason, especially people of color. There was not one thing to celebrate on this July 4th. These were all of the reasons I came up with to explain the dearth of noise, a weirdly happy outcome of the death of democracy in the US as fascism rises.

We decamped to the Motel 6 in Arlington Heights on the 4th at 6:00 pm, right as the neighborhood booms were beginning. The motel was next to the highway and not far from the airport, so the soundproofing was legit. We barely heard a thing while in our room, and the dogs slept soundly as Jon and I watched The Food Network “turned up to 11”, for some additional sound layering. I’ve said it before, as long as the dogs are happy, I am happy.

I’m writing this on the morning of the 6th. We returned yesterday morning from our fireworks escape. I knew there would be some noise in the neighborhood last night, and there was, but I weighed the disruption of another night in a small motel room against a couple of hours of worry in the comfort of our home, and our home won out. Around midnight, I cast a quieting spell, which included me going outside and yelling at the top of my lungs, “Enough already! Knock it the fuck off.” Soon after, the neighborhood fell silent. The birds are here this morning, and we are having a very lazy Sunday.

Uranus, the planet of revolution and expansion, is getting ready to make its move into Gemini, which will happen early in the morning of July 7th. Collectively, we are in for some massive and accelerated changes that will play out over the next seven years. For more on this, head here:

Revolution Ahead

For your personal experience, I am going to share

Audra White

‘s guidance suggesting you look at where Gemini lands in your chart. You can run a simple birth chart here:
https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/birth-chart-horoscope-online

I have zero planets in Gemini, but my 11th House is in Gemini, which is so on the nose for me. It looks like all of the reimagining of my work, social circles, ways of expressing myself, my writing, and everything else ruled by the 11th house is going to continue to revolve and revolutionize over the next seven years. This is also being kicked into high gear by my second Saturn Return.

For more kicks, I looked at where I have Taurus, which is where Uranus has been sitting for the past seven years, revolutionizing this aspect of my life. My North Node, 10th house, and MC, also known as Midheaven, are all in Taurus. The MC is all about public image, especially when related to career path and one’s desire to make a mark on this world. The 10th house also governs these aspects of one’s life, while the North Node is about growth and lessons on the path ahead, often daring us to take risks, heading into territory that feels unknown in some ways.

In 2018, right after Uranus moved into Taurus, Gaia TV licensed the show Interviews with Extra Dimensionals, introducing me and my work to a much wider audience. Over the past seven years, my public persona and work have grown and, with Uranus’s help, revolutionized in some very significant ways.

Predictibly, as someone with Gemini in the 11th house (which is governed by Aquarius), I began to challenge the status quo when it came to the new age world, spirituality, channeling, and began to explore how, as a channel, I could facilitate breaking the loop of suffering humanity has found itself in, a loop often supported by the idea that we create our own realities as if we each live in our own vaccuums and that we chose all of our suffering before we incarnated. These are tenets of the new age world that often present as a script through the voices of some of those who are channeling, and they appear in other modalities as well. I am no longer in agreement with these ideas, along with a whole host of other ideas, including those that suggest being neutral in the face of abuses of power is somehow a more spiritual act.

The evolution of my public persona occurred during the seven years while Uranus was in Taurus, where I have my Midheaven. Uranus moving into Gemini in my 11th House tells me that I am nowhere near done with my work or impact, that, in fact, in some ways, I am just getting started. It’s been incredibly freeing to leave the structures and dogma of the new age world behind me and sit now in this space that I have yet to define. I am excited about what lies ahead in how I will use my voice, while also feeling a sense of urgency as I look at the collective map.

I just went back and reread the title of this piece, laughing that while I was consciously speaking about our one night there on July 4th, it also seems to be a metaphor for the past year of my life, hiding out at the Motel 6.

How are you??!!!

Please leave me a comment below and let me know.

You can read more about astrological houses in this piece I wrote last fall:

Eclipses and Houses Monday Morning Check-In Post

---

Please join us on Thursday, July 17th, from 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm on Zoom for an “Anything Goes” transmission from The Pleiadians, Yeshua, Ursula, and all of the rest. We’ll be sharing about all things relevant at the moment and will be taking your questions about anything you need.
Register here: https://noraherold.as.me/anythinggoesjuly172025

---

If you’re not a paid subscriber to my Substack and would like to support my ad-free and independent writing, you can use the donate button here or consider becoming a paid subscriber if you’re reading regularly and enjoying it. Every little bit helps.