No Foolin' Mercury is Retro in Aries Monday Morning/Weekly Check-In Post

In typical Nora fashion, I have felt the effects since Mercury entered the shadow phase a couple of weeks ago. “Links not working”, “File won’t download”, “Password doesn’t work”, etc, etc, etc, and a giant leak developed in our bedroom ceiling which we discovered after many hours of rain on Friday night. This had us scrambling a bit as we had our last Reiki Master Teacher training class the next day.

The next morning, while trying to dry the floor with a hair dryer about 20 minutes before I needed to start the class on Zoom, we blew a fuse. So, yeah. Here we go. Somehow we got everything where it needed to be in time to start the class even with our landlord fixing the roof throughout the last half of it.

I am sure my planner will be covered in White Out in no time. And yes, I still use a physical planner alongside my online scheduler. Everything there is copied onto the physical one. Call me “old school”, but I was grateful I already had this system in place years ago when the person who owned my old online scheduler died and we all were locked out of our accounts. I observed people in an online forum and on Twitter losing it due to having no access to their calendars and scheduled clients and events.

I also used the “finally getting the thing done” energy that Mercury-when-Retrograde can provide and bought a laptop, after a solid two years of shopping for one. It’s being built and is supposed to arrive by April 10th - April 12th. And yeah, I know this was a risky move considering we’re leaving this house and this state on May 1st, but the support person I spoke with said it should not at all be an issue.

I’m walking the tightrope with this one. It was just the right decision to make sure I am running some underlying anxiety at all times right now until it arrives and I’ve got it up and running. What an excellent choice as the clock runs down on our move which happens one month from today.

This outcome is partly due to my indecisive nature when it comes to making purchases. It’s a combination of money worries and fears about making a mistake, the biggest fear being that once I spend the money it’ll be gone and then I’ll be stuck with what I got. This applies to all purchases no matter the cost. I still have memories of grocery shopping and doing the math in my head as I filled my cart based on the little I had in my bank account at the time.

Yeah, I know. I know, I know, I know. This is mostly just mental torture, and I know it’s mostly not real, and yet money is real as is the truth that I don’t know how it is that anyone is surviving financially right now.

From the USDA
“In 2022, food prices increased by 9.9 percent, faster than any year since 1979. Food-at-home prices increased by 11.4 percent, while food-away-from-home prices increased by 7.7 percent.”

While the increase percentages have dropped significantly this year, food costs are still rising, and the damage has been done.

At dinner the other night we were sharing with our server that we are moving, in part, due to the obscenely high cost of rentals in the Valley. She said, “I wish more people were talking about how hard things are financially for so many right now.”

Pluto in Aquarius will not keep us in this space, and the next couple of years will probably be bumpy as we adjust to taking the wealth, power, and privilege out of the hands of the few and distributing it to the many.

Hang in there, everyone.

I used to think I needed a laptop to be a writer. This would finally fulfill my vision of walking down to The Farmer and The Cook, laptop in hand, grabbing myself a blueberry rooibos latte at the counter, and sitting on their patio as I typed away.

I had it backward, as I often do when I am resisting doing the thing I want to do, telling myself I need all of the parts perfectly in place before I can do it.

Nope. It’s the doing of the thing that always opens the door to doing more of the thing and bringing in more support. It also typically looks very different from the imaginings I had been creating. For instance, I won’t be walking down to the F & C.

My big fear is that once the laptop arrives I’ll stop writing, and it’ll sit there mocking me, calling me a failure, and all of the other terrible things I still direct at myself when my anxiety and trauma points are activated.

There was some wonderful magic this weekend. Our Reiki Master Teacher Training finished on Saturday, and Jon and I both feel so fortunate and privileged to have spent time with those of you who attended as we witnessed and experienced your profound healing abilities, love, and commitment to yourselves and your desire to be of service to others.

I’ve been needing a haircut for some time now. It’s been six years since I have had my locks trimmed due to COVID and because the person I love most who cuts my hair moved away from the Ojai Valley years ago. I’d been thinking about messaging her to see if she had plans to be here in April. She still comes up every once in a while. She’s the one who last cut my hair in 2018. I also kept asking people locally if they were available to cut my hair and then would not follow through with scheduling an appointment.

On Saturday during the class, I got a message from her asking me if Jon and I needed haircuts, that she’d been thinking about us a lot, and that she was going to be here in Ojai this Thursday. Yippee!!!!! Sometimes my procrastination is NOT actually procrastination and just me waiting for the magic to unfold.

Tomorrow, Jon and I will celebrate twenty-five years together. I don’t know how this has happened. Time does travel faster the longer we sit in these bodies. I’ll be sharing a piece about our first encounters.

How are YOU??? Please let me know in the comments below.

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