That Pesky Mercury Retrograde

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted! I've been down a rabbit hole. Mostly I've been traveling and haven't had time to write online. Because it was Thanksgiving season, I did spend some time with my gratitude journal. I'm thankful for my family, friends and pets, for my health, job and spiritual practice. This year, I'm especially grateful for the renewed strength of my marriage and for my spectacular grandchildren, Keegan (7) and Kendall (3), plus two "new" grandkids, Piper (10) and Allie (7), the daughters of my daughter-in-law's brother, Joe and his wife, Jory, who moved to Southern California from Minnesota in August. These primary relationships bring great joy to my life!

And then there's Mercury Retrograde, that weird phenomenon that happens about three times a year, each time lasting around three weeks. Mercury rules communication. When its orbit slows during these retro periods, astrologers and some physicists say it throws the energy off on our planet enough to create annoying communication issues such as crashing computers, lost car keys, garbled words coming out of one's mouth or a dropped bag of groceries.

Mercury's most recent retro period started on Thanksgiving Day, which may be why we had two great turkeys - one smoked and one fried - but no gravy. None of us thought about not having any drippings for gravy and none of us thought about buying a jar of gravy at the market, either. Nor did Gary and I think about how beastly hot it would be at Charger Stadium in San Diego for the Chargers-Broncos game last Sunday. At least I remembered the tickets, something I did not do during the last Mercury Retro when we drove almost two hours in traffic to Del Mar Race Track and realized I had left the tickets at home. So this past Sunday, we sat down in the dark blue seats and roasted until we decided to leave at half-time because we were just too hot to enjoy the game. Thankfully, we found our way to a TV in the bar at the Old Town Cafe. The margaritas were considerably less expensive than at the stadium. And our Broncos won in overtime.

I like chalking everything that goes wrong up to Mercury Retrograde. It allows me to smile, take a deep breath and even giggle a little instead of stress over every bonehead mistake I make during these three weeks. We are taking a trip next week and for some reason I managed to book us on separate flights for the return! At least we get back into LAX within 30 minutes of each other, if all goes according to schedule. Long story, but if things go more wrong, I'll just blame pesky Mercury.