Food Network

I am addicted to Food Network which annoys my family so much I wonder why. What could be more harmless and easy to watch than cooking? I can't believe you can make ice cream without an ice cream maker. I can't believe you can buy potatoes you don't have to peel (Yukon Golds and Fingerling potatoes). I am amazed that pickle making should be so easy, or that soup doesn't have to simmer for hours and follow a complicated recipie. In short, I'm sort of learning how to cook and my family who only wants meatloaf or fried chicken and macaroni and cheese only out of the box is starting to wonder where it will all end. Where will it all end?
I want to eat roasted Beets and try fish blackened with cajun spices in a cast iron skillet. I want to coconut my shrimp and use a white sauce for once on spaghetti. My family is having the horrors and refusing to eat.
What is a mom to do?
Well, I go ahead and cook the same old thing and watch food network and write down interesting things in a notebook. I told you it's a real addiction!
Meanwhile, I wonder if Bobby Flay dies his hair. It changes subtly in color and early photos show him as a carrot top. I wonder why Paula Deen's sons changed so much on her show as time went on, they were so embarrassed by their mother once! I wonder if Big Daddy has a wife and really makes up all those recipies. I wonder if the Semi-Homemade lady really is like that, and if Emeril has an ego as huge as he appears to have. (Can anyone be filled with so much confidence and self-love?) I have to go now. I wonder what is on Food Network.....

What I Am Thankful For

My daughters are like two pockets full of sunshine in that they are so very much themselves and I am always impressed by them and amazed that I had children and those children are these two wierd and intelligent and fearless and energetic and enthusiastic people who are not at all like me.
I suppose it's what you get when children are a little spoiled as mine are, they have a feeling of entitlement. They think they are supposed to have things when they need them in spite of the fact we live below the poverty level. We do make fantastic efforts to see every need is met, but I am not Wonder Woman. My youngest informed me she need a laptop computer pronto. My magic wand is all out of power as my wallet is out of money. She is serene. She knows that somehow I'll find a way.
If you love them they grow up with a tough skin and a confidence that cannot be shaken later on. My daughter, who used to sing with a blanket over her head she was so shy, is now in the regional choir as the seventh soprano. We just told her she could sing, over and over and I guess she believed.
My eldest loves small children. She was able to get a job as a teacher's assistant. How blessed to do work that you love! I am so happy for her. Small kids fill her with energy and sparkle and she brings home tales of what this little boy or girl did all the time. She usually finishes by saying, "And they were so CUTE!" She is going to college to be a kindergarten teacher.
Actually our house is more like Rosanne's than Everybody Loves Raymond. We fight and yell a lot. My kids do very little around the house and washing dishes is out of the question. On the other hand, we are not model parents for we lost the power somehow to tell them what to do and them pay attention.
Oh well.
If they tell me to jump into the lake I am glad at least that they are able to tell me that. When I was a kid I didn't dare disagree with my parents and my Dad had a mean backhand slap. So in a way it's all kind of bittersweet.

A Need for Speed

I think some of us writers have a need for it, speed I mean. The mind wanders, real life intrudes, you lose focus, you forgot what you were aiming for originally, or worst of all, you get bored with it. Your writing for some is a polishing act, for some a book is written in a moment or one afternoon. The words just had to be written down later, you just had it all in a flash!
I dislike keeping a journal. Why? I whine a lot. I'm bored with writing down things I already know. Some things I don't want to remember, for instance I can conveniently forget things if I chose. It makes life livable. For instance, my best friend died and I was tortured every year when her birthday came around. I told myself to forget it, and I didn't remind myself of the date she died either. I didn't want to remember. Some things I do I'm not proud of, for instance I have great difficulty remembering when I was fired from a job. In fact, I can't remember when I was hired or when I quit jobs in the past when filling out new job applications, ya know? It slipped my mind. Sorrow is the impetuous for my forgetfullness. I'm wistful at leaving a job and the people I would know no more every time. I do creative filling out of applications, if anyone noticed they never said anything to me.
Creativity in a sense is a necessity. You have to tell the story of your life to yourself in a sense. I can ride out painful memories by flooding my mind with other things or keeping busy. I tell myself I am still a good person when I do something wrong. I tell myself I am a good person when I do something good or right. So basically I'm just flattering myself all the time. I need that.
What do I miss in books??? The sense that anything could happen I used to have. The sense that what I am reading is real, (I forgot it was fiction) There is magic in us for sure but people tend to churn out what they have read before. Do we want a suspense novel? Do we want a romance? Do we want an historical suspense romance science fiction paranormal? Why not? Publishing has it's niches of course. In a life, all those niches could possibly be present, couldn't they?
What is present is that people are reading books, regardless of what you hear. Reading itself for me is something I would do even if what I was reading was bad, I am that addicted. As addictions go it is a strangely wholesome one. My life is so small outside, but so big inside. (This sounds like a science fiction novel, doesn't it? Sci-fi loves the tiny and the giants colliding with us who seem to be the same (right) size.
What a book is is a mind. This mind believes certain things and thinks certain things are possible and others are impossible. It doesn't mean that's the way it is, it's just interesting to peek into the internal workings.
Scientists say our brain cells or whatever mirror the person speaking to us, as if in sympathy. This is a biological thing. They say books are all about emotions really. So we feel right along with the character and this is the way we were wired and this is the way God meant it to be. So when the book leads us we follow, no matter how unwilling we are in the beginning and that is the essence of what a novel or a movie is. So we are all mirrors, hmm.....
I think that is why we love Stephen King. He said himself he doesn't know where the story is going when he writes it, to him it is like real people moving against a changing universe and where his characters show hidden depths and where he travels along like another passenger wanting to find out the end. He likens what he does to archealogy, or digging something up that already exists. Now that does seem like real life to me where we don't know how things are going to turn out and where we are constantly suprised ( and disappointed).
My favorite King story is The Body from Different Seasons. Why? It stuck with me, that's all, with a vividness other things don't have. King remembers best being 12 I think. He writes best about being a kid.
What do I write best about? I don't know because my mind is all phantoms that vanish when I try to write them. Perhaps I'm not a writer at all. It takes a doggedness and a stubborness it may be I don't have. Maybe it's just that when things hurt too much I try to forget them and that is the last thing a real writer needs.

Opposites Attract

Who is our opposite?
Astrology says it is your Sun Signs opposite, if you are a Sagittarius then Gemini is your opposite, is you are an Aries then it is all Libras. Scorpio who always want to dig deeper for the truth find their opposite in Taureans, who just want to enjoy a good meal and fill their Venus ruled senses with pleasure. ( For an idea of who represents Taurus well, Cher has a peregrine Taurus Sun so could be said to be that almost perfect Taurean expression.)
If you do your natal chart then then it is the 7th house which represents "others." It is the house of lovers and also the house of open enemies. Don't lovers sometimes turn into enemies! Then look to the ruler of the 7th to see how your relationships pan out. The ruler of my 7th happens to be in the 12th house. It is said this is the house you cannot see, the house of your blind spots and it is true that I cannot figure out relationships. When they fail I don't know why, but vaguely feel it is my fault. (The 12th is associated with secret sorrows.) I find this interesting. Interesting that my 7th is Taurus and that I'm married to a Taurus. So what does the sign on the 7th house mean?
It means these are the people you are going to run into, for good or for ill, for your whole life. They seem to find you. You can run but you cannot hide, for your opposite is what you long for to fulfill you.
The Taurus love and appreciation of beauty and the sign's beautiful self-containment and caring not a whit what others might think is a wonderful thing. This is what we want in our opposite sign.

Watch A Baby Day Be Born

Whatever happened to the singer of "Brand New Key"? She sings I've got a brand new pair of roller skates and you've got a brand new key in her happy bopper song and my friend Sherry said she lost her credibility with such a silly song. At any rate I didn't hear her on the radio anymore. For me female writers and singers of songs are superior to that of males, the female capacity for understanding and empathy is just greater I've always thought. Melanie Safka inspired me when I was very young and I cannot even explain the hold she had on my imagination. I became a vegetarian for a short while because of her, and I find that strange for no one loves a burger more than me. I thought it would give me her spirituality and artistic ability but all it did was make me light headed. I didn't feel grounded eating vegetables. Is that wierd? It does seem to make one think more and all those higher I.Q. Asians and their rice diets can't be wrong can they? We believe things without proof, we feel our way through life, we emulate those we love just because we like the songs they sing so very much.

Do you have a photograph, when you were still in high school?

Were you happy in it, little reason lots of rhyme,

Were you happy in it at the time

Deep down in your memory do you recall the lines

when your heart was in it but your reason changed your mind

When you would love forever, but your reason changed your mind.

Melanie later in her career sang such songs of disappointment and she seemed so innocent and so full of love at the beginning.

You see she was the actress who played the part of snow

they asked her to play starshine she turned down the role

they asked her to play windsong well she'd give it a try then they asked her to play music,

her own sweet music ah,

they asked her to play music

and she sang 'till she died

So at sixteen I set my alarm for 5 just to watch a baby day be born just like in the song. Art might imitate life but I say life imitates art much more.

Tower

I used to imagine my room a tower
me a princess enslaved
and out there lovely meadows
till the cliffs met the sea
and no one to question
who I am as me
as I sit here watching the radio towers
that blink on my slow rivers
that may one day find the sea
I have loved my own words
better than life itself
and I find no reflection of
what I have understood
in what I meant

Wilderness

Does God see this wilderness
below his feet
and when He hears the poems
does he think of me
you see like Shelley
I wrote of him enough
and that's enough to be a troubadour
that's enough of love
there's a wind rippling by His ear
of songs each of us have sung
and if He caught a harmony
will He come?

Who?

You always told the truth you know
you said this day would come and then it came and now
there's no one else who understands me
so I talk not being understood
just to talk, enjoying the words I know you'd know
if you were here
but you're not and never can be
you led always I followed
but I cannot follow you there
Then autumn your favorite season comes
and I'm reminded of everything I might've done wrong
I want to work in this Mordor, this place without light,
until tiredness leads to numbness
until I can find the pieces of my heart

A Promise

I may do nothing now or never
to reach that something I can't define
I may run far never to get
away from whatever behind
the only certainty is that today
more than any other day
so uncertainly lived
I feel the need to escape
those tomorrows like today
and you like a tomorrow never seen
like a promise will shine
and smile in my dreams

Pallas, Vesta and Chiron in Astrology

Astrology seems to always have something new and the explosion of knowledge about Chiron is one example. Said to tell of where we are psychically wounded, it always tells of where we can find our greatest talents and strengths. Look at me. I am a writer. I have Chiron in Aquarius in the third house, exactly the same placement as Robin Williams although I haven't his sense of humor. Aquarius always speaks of something unusual and the 3rd house is above all the house of communication. There is more in my chart about the difficulty I've always had with talking to people or communicating.
I have the Sun in the middle of Mercury and Saturn, so my Sun is a blend of Mercury and Saturn. If there is a planet at a midpoint this is very important. Any Mercury Saturn aspect represents blockage and frustration. I have an aspect between Mercury and Pluto, which represents a childhood in which words would used cruelly or with the desire to dominate and intimidate the child. Mercury occupies however my 2nd house of assets. So the planet of communication is my greatest asset! Whew! So, am I any good at it, at writing? Where in my chart am I competent?
The asteroid that shows what you are good at is Pallas. I have Pallas in the 3rd house of communication. Pallas is very useful when looking at charts.
The asteroid that shows where you want to work hard is Vesta. I have Vesta conjunct Mercury. Once again work, communication and Mercury are linked.
My Arabic lot of Exaltation is Virgo. Virgo represents the secretary, the maid, the accountant, the sort of detailed work and preciseness my father did for a living as an engineer. Virgo is ruled by Mercury.
If you have your chart done at Astro.com you will see the x in a circle which means the Path to Fortune. What planets aspect the path of fortune are those which will help you achieve success. Mine own aspects Mercury and Jupiter in the 10th in Libra. What does this mean?
It means a Mercurial or Jupiterian career, career is also indicated by planets in the 10th. Libra is an artistic sign so this means an artistic career. Mercury in Capricorn, well Capricorn is a sign with drive and ambition and it's also an earth sign. The sign of Capricorn doesn't seem to be about a career as a writer at all, but I remember that the sign is our style of communicating and not what we chose to communicate about. What sign Mercury is in won't tell us what our career will be, rather it will say how we will talk to our co-workers when we get there. Mercury to some degree is about our intelligence however and what we are smart at processing with our communicating.
Chiron is the most interesting at all. It's said what we are bad at in Chiron in our early life is what is our greatest talent later on. Malcom X couldn't read or write until he went to prison. He couldn't understand the words so he asked for a dictionary. He started writing down the dictionary starting with the letter A. He became a great speaker and writer of several books. He became famous. The fact he couln't read or write brought him down to being a criminal early in life, and then became his greatest asset later in life. It's a great thing, Chiron. Since Chiron orbits between cosmic Uranus and down-to-earth Saturn it is thought that Chiron is a bridge between spiritual gifts and the realities of life threatening to crush our spirits. Some astrologers think we have an advantage over those who lived without Chiron, the discovery of something is linked to it's usefullness and our awareness of it. So even if Chiron and Pluto existed before, they were not making an impression on people's birth charts. Chiron and Pluto say we can transform ourselves and live a better life on a more spiritual plane. The emphasis seems to be on self improvement. We don't know ourselves very well, as Malcom X could have told you. He had no idea until he went to prison the great thoughts that he could think once he had the leisure time and inclination to think them. I think for many of us, we have hidden potential and astrology can be a clue to opening up that treasure box.

Patients Like Me

If you have fibromyalgia as I have, it can be very confusing. There are many mysterious symptoms and even one's thinking can be affected. (They call this "fibro fog". It is also called "cognitive function")
Wouldn't it be nice if you could get together with people who had the same thing and compare notes? Do you ever wonder what other treatments are out there?
Now you can find out on this site. There is even a search thing on it so you can find out which ones are in your state for example, or who has the same disease or syndrome (fibro is sometimes called a syndrome, don't know why) as you do.
I've felt like I've been lied to for instance. When I first was diagnosed by my doctor, he told me fibromyalgia is not "progressive". What this means is that it doesn't get any worse. (It also doesn't get any better.) My fibromyalgia has in fact gotten a great deal worse. I was curious if other people were experiencing such a great increase in pain and I found this site.
It is said that some doctors report a whooping 10 % of patients they see have fibromyalgia. Often they are not believed to suffer any pain at all by loved ones or even by their own doctors. There is no test for fibromyalgia, it's just a bunch of symptoms with no discernible cause. It's maddening to hear people tell me it's all in my mind. If only people could be me for a minute, they'd feel some pain alright. Fibromyalgia has become a sort of "blanket" diagnosis for anyone who comes in with aches & pains and no known cause. It's easy to write it off as such and prescribe anti-depressants because often depression causes aches and pains just like fibromyalgia.
Recent research suggests that fibromyalgia and depression are not related after all, and they've found people not depressed who have it. However I think it likely that someone who suffers such pain might very well become depressed.
I remember when I got it. I lay on the bed and every joint in my body was pounding with a painful rhythm. In those early days I didn't get headaches like I do now, I merely thought it was the onset of arthritis.
There is a funny story I have to tell. I was amused to read that striped clothing or anything with stripes make many fibromyalgia patients seasick. It causes the eyes to sort of mess up and it was one of the things I noticed. I told my hubby that and he laughed and laughed at me, but I was dead serious. There is a long list of fibro symptoms that can mess with your head and make you think your brain is rotting away up there. The hair loss I found hard, as I was very vain about my hair. Still I would go bald is that is what it took to get rid of the pain. Pain is a terrible tyrant, taking away humor and any enjoyment and making one quite stupid and irritable. Irritability and a short temper are what I have, so I turn to silence. Saying nothing insures I will not say something I am sorry for later.
Pain is my mistress and I have to dance to her tune. She rules my life. One day maybe research will find a cure. I hope so.

Mediums on HBO

My take on the show was that some of the mediums were the real thing and some of them were not. They take your hand and tell you about your loved ones who have passed on and you can communicate with them. However amazing some of the things are they pick up, I wonder if they plucked it from the minds of those sitting in front of them rather than the dead.
Telepathy, says those in the know has been proven again and again. However talking to those who have passed on has not.
My best friend and I had the habit of calling each other at the same time and getting a "busy" signal. We did that so much we laughed about it for years. I thought I could tell by the ringing of the phone that it was her. We were so well-suited to one another and so in synch, that I am amazed now to think that I didn't think a thing of it. I've never met a friend who liked everything I liked and enjoyed hearing me talk on and on and on.....So it's telepathy I find easy to believe in.
People who've never lived in a haunted house find it difficult to believe in ghosts, so I guess we have to experience things before we believe. I get it, but I find it tougher to think how horrible it is if it is not true what these mediums do.
So how do people under hypnosis speak in other languages? Well I see it and believe something is happening, I just don't know what. How does it work?
I think perhaps that is our internal cockiness, that we know we do not die deep inside, that is our arrogance and true faith. That is what mediums offer, confirmation that we go on and live, just in another place.

Midlist and Holly Lisle

Midlist is supposed to mean those books and authors who are not at the top and not at the bottom but in the middle and it's dying I hear. These are the quirky books off the beaten path and I didn't know they were dying, I just know that books nowadays seem like they are all the same. Still we do have books like Watership Down and we have Kurt Vonnegut of course but the idea is we should have more, for readers like me who read about 80 books a year or more finding a good book is much harder than the occasional reader can imagine. So what can we do about it? Nothing of course except buy as best we can but if you Google Holly Lisle she says she is trying to do something about it. I can't find one of her books where I live but she appears to write a lot of fantasy and has a sort of help struggling writers classes.
The way she writes as if she is talking to you is refreshing to me, this lady was a nurse at one time before she was a writer and she confides in you the mistakes that she made. Her no nonsense and matter of fact approach is like a balm to my nerves and I must concede I think her truthful for I read much of the same on other writing sites.
For once you have been swept away by a mere book then you know how special this may be and how we want more, for though we may be average I'm pretty sure our dreams are not.

Other Blogs

I like "Once Written, Twice Shy" and I thought the advice strange that if you are embarrassed at the idea of reading what you have written out loud then, well, you shouldn't write it. I find this impossible. I am embarassed to say I need to go to the little girl's room so I can't possibly write anything at all except maybe "See Dick, See Jane, See Dick Run."
Scarlett Parrish is blogging about her writing on her blog and how many words she gets a day is often in her blog and some nice pix of beautiful men.
So many blogs, so little time.
I found a blog by a Dorchester Media author who lives in Jersey and scurries all over New York City who posted pix of her dog, her boyfriend, her clothing, her friends, restaurants and took pix of her food before she ate it. I found it a strange experience and read a lot of it at one time. To immerse oneself in someone else's life seemed odd, but at the end I decided it was too Second Hand Rose for me. I wish I could remember this author's name, but I can't. If there was a plot to it, I swear it would be a novel. The only thing is, nothing much happens and I am at the end a tad jealous of someone who gets chocolate delivered by jet from Europe that must be eaten in 3 days because there are no preservatives in it. I want to eat that chocolate, darn it, and not just admire it in pictures.
I think that is the thing about novels and about any of us, we must identify with the character. I myself who have lived from upper class to middle class to lower middle class to below the radar that I kind of identify with everyone. Still, it is your poorest moment in life I think you identify with more. I see homeless people with a kind of sadness because given the right amount of circumstances it could be anyone. We say this but we don't believe it. The intelligent ones are truly below the radar and can't be seen.
I think you are made from your past like clay in a sculptor's hands, and you cannot be heard when you say you want to be this or that. The past comes back constantly the older you become it seems to me. The ability to forget the bad parts is a sort of talent I wish I had, I've a friend like this. When pressured and questioned closely, she still doesn't remember some bad stuff. I am convinced she has the talent of selective amnesia. I think there is a sort of concreteness to memory that cannot be manipulated, not only that, experts say the more times we remember the more we beat a path to that memory in our brains and strengthen those synapses. I think that is what Jackson Browne meant when he said.
though the future is there for anyone to change, don't you know it seems
it would be easier sometimes to change the past
The blog "The Newbie Guide to Publishing" has a lot of good advice I am told, although I haven't read it that much myself.
Anyway, what I mean about memory is that you can learn to forget, I have. It's easier to forget than it is to become a different person and change your future. I think that is what he meant.
Blogging though is used perhaps too much for promotion I guess but that's the way it is. I am old enough to remember when we were being told that television would be a great way for artists to show their work. Hmmm. I don't think that ever happened. We didn't have a television when I was a kid until I was about 10 yrs. old. I remember playing marbles laying down in the dirt, hanging ropes on trees so we could swing like Tarzan, and making paper jewelry. I didn't miss television at all.

Be Anything You Want To Be

My friend Sherry called me one day to tell me she had had a dream. She talked on and on about it.
She was standing at the top of a red velvet staircase. The air was tense and she knew an important decision was going to be decided by her, which was whether to go down this staircase or turn away from it.
She just knew this dream was very important. What did the universe or whoever want?
I think I know now.
Trembling on the edge of sixteen, she had to decide whether she would cling to the values of her grandparents who had raised her or strike out on her own and be unconventional. (She chose to be unconventional, eventually.) What was odd was her striking innocence when it came to knowing that the person she was befriending or agreeing to date was a bad person, she was abused again and again by people. Her first husband beat her, wanted an open marriage, and turned out to be gay in the end.
Sherry often told me that that was all you could expect from people.
Her assumption was that all people were bad, this is the way it is.
Poverty itself will bring you in contact with a great many bad people and she was sent out into the world without even a dollar to call her own, nearly starved to death before she finally found that waitressing paid well. The waitressing she did became the death of her because everyone went out drinking after work, blowing all the money they had just spend the evening making. She found living with her abusive husband easier to bear when she drank and she became an alcoholic. She was so proud the day she called me and told me she had managed to beat him up instead. She was working hard and he was not so she was able to beat him up, his muscles had turned to jelly on a steady diet of beer and Cheetos. She was happy. Then she divorced him, got the car and kept it in his name and then didn't make a single payment so to ruin his credit.
When her grandparents adopted her, they told the judge they would take care of her. What they did was make her into a household slave who cooked all the meals and cleaned the house and picked up their poodle's poop and then telling her that her mother was a slut and she had bad blood, just like her.
All of this is so sad that sometimes I feel like if I cried about it I would never stop, like some crazy looney and then pull all of my hair out. She was my friend, in fact the only person who would be my friend in elementary school. I was one of those girls nobody talked to, an outcast who they would pretend smelled bad. (In fact, I bathed twice a day, convinced that I did in fact, smell)
If I could go back in time I would tell her that never mind the red velvet staircase and never mind those people who tell you who you are.
You can be anyone you want to be.

Book in progress

Knock on wood, I've written a book. It isn't finished but it's done, I mean I know what I'm going to do with it and have actual words to go with it and an ending and a beginning and a middle.
Now what?
It would be easy except there are all kinds of obstacles like no computer and that's like no way Jose, I mean I have a pc just no internet but I do have a warranty but no way to travel the one hundred miles to the store and have it repaired. So I feel like holding a sign up at any intersection begging for money to have my pc repaired as this book is singing in my brain and I've always wanted to do this, by God, and there should be a way, the Red Sea shall part, money will fall from heaven or heaven help me I can find a job. No one in the family understands nor will they lend money while they buy bigger & more impressive phones, that this is a burning lifetime desire and nor do they understand that while in the past I have been sort of talking about & never doing anything about writing now I have, really, really done it because when I talk about my writing their eyes glaze over or they act like they smell an unmentionable smell and manners too good to mention it.
Holly Lisle says on her site to never expect any help or support from family. It's true. Unbelievable but true. Writing is never thought much of until it brings in actual cash and until it does it's a pipe dream, a fantasy of crazy people like you. You're nuts.
Polite society acts like you've seen UFO's and been abducted many times, people think you're trying to act like you're better than they are and by God, you put your pants on one leg at a time just like they do, (My Dad said this koan constantly, like it was impressive and I felt that my intelligent father talking about pants and pant's leg meant something else entirely and I was too stupid to get it because talking about how people put their pants on and whether they do it like you do is incredibly stupid) and why don't you do something you're actually capable of doing like working at the EZ Mart because you are ordinary just like them, you grew up right in their neighborhood by God and writer's are people who went to college.
In fact, I believed that writers were like experts and authorities and what they wrote was the absolute truth just because someone printed it on paper and put in between cardboard covers with a title and everything. I remember when I discovered that the author of "Flowers for Algernon" wasn't a shrink and was in fact in therapy himself. Some of that stuff he just made up. Stephen King says people typically believe that fiction is real and that non-fiction is false. I believe everything I read while I'm reading it, which is just me I guess.
In fact some of us have to do something when people say we can't do it, stubbornly and stupidly. Like me. I wrote a book, sort of. Just need a few more polishes 'till it shines.

Jennifer Weiner

The book is "Goodnight Nobody"
She is a wife with 3 kids who sets out to find out who murdered a woman in her neighborhood that she barely knew, just because she needs something intelligent to do and she used to be a reporter for a tabloid who reported on celebrities and their latest rehab visits and affairs, but a journalist anyway! She lives in Connecticut in the wealthy neighborhood, she feels stupid talking about whether the milk at the store is really organic or not and feeds the children McDonald's food which would cause a scandal so she hides the evidence and wipes off the ketchup before going somewhere. She married someone she didn't love, but merely liked and when an almost lover from her youth appears she starts to wonder if she didn't make a mistake and if she did, how can she fix it now with 3 small children? She has not made a single friend in the Martha Stewart clone crowd and nor is she happy paying 2 thousand a month for the exclusive nursery school her kids go to because all they do is watch the kids finger paint.
Yes, she mocks the rich even as she is one of them. She feels out of place. Then she finds out her best friend who is an intelligent Paris Hilton had her almost lover almost deported out of the country.
So who killed this woman who had ghostwritten a column called "The Perfect Mother" who really did seem to be a perfect mother who is found laying on her kitchen floor with a knife in her back?
This is the same author who wrote "In Her Shoes" and if you didn't read the book then you probably saw the movie.
I have not finished this book yet, because I am so enjoying the journey of reading it.
As for what the title is about, all of you with children know the famous book "Good Nite Moon" for wee ones in which the author says goodnite socks, goodnite clock, goodnite nobody and in the book the child Sophie asks "Who is Nobody" and she says she doesn't know but she thinks that Nobody is her. Her husband is seldom there and she has no friends and her children seem to be always wailing or crying or spilling something on her constantly, as any mother knows. This book talks of motherhood as it really is, though she loves them. She is so easy to identify with and writes so clearly one could laugh out loud with her and feel like she is a friend.
She certainly seems like she would be a great friend and she has written a very good book.

NCIS

What can I say about this T.V. show? It's not the stories, which are like cop shows you've seen before, it's the characters.
Abbey, who sleeps in a coffin and wears mostly black?
DeNoso, who knows old movies and asks, couldn't it be like this movie, what these criminals are doing?
Gibbs, whose steely stare makes his underlings stutter and stammer? Why does he hit his people on the back of the head, is it loving or just shaming or just abusing?
Kate, was she too beautiful and so replaced with an Isralei terroist who can't drive and whose mistakes with the English language make some of the best lines on television?
Is Denoso really the most beautiful man you've ever seen, or is it that he knows he is beautiful that makes it so funny when the women he works with cut him down to size?
Is Abbey a genius?
Isn't Gibbs proof that a much older man can be sexy?
Can't we let Ducky keep talking and rambling on like some academic history professor?
Is De Noso imitating Carey Grant? I think so.
Is there a better show than NCIS? Naw......

Jackson Browne

One of the benefits of getting old is getting those great recordings at a bargain price. I recently picked up some Jackson Browne and found him as great and sweetly sad as ever. What could ever compare to "Fountain of Sorrow" or "Jamacia, Say You Will".
I really love piano, and somehow songwriters who play the piano seem to write the songs I love the most. Screaming guitars I never liked, though a good rock'n'roll song I love. Us women from the sixties know quite well that rock sometimes reflects badly on women, we just never cared. I'm thinking now of the Rolling Stones. From "Stupid Girl" to "She's Under my Thumb" to "Bitch" to "Stray Cat', you're talking songs to make a feminist take up arms. It's rock tradition, sort of. I like the Stones. As Jagger sings in Wild Horses,
I know I've dreamed you
A sin and a lie
Anyway, Browne is one of those who respects women, which makes it easier for me to like him. He expresses himself as a sensitive man who is simply aware, not feminine himself. I heard a new song recently, (New to me)
I'm not sure what you think you see, I'm hoping you'll still know that it's me
Oh, if I'd only known
What your heart costs
Call it a loan
or a debt that I owed, or a bet that I lost

Cooking

I was taught how to cook by my husband after we were married. He showed me and then I was supposed to do all the cooking. I found this unfair. Why was this my job? He, after all, was fully able to cook. Anyway women are more likely to mop the floor and cook than men and I'm not sure I really want things to change and every man wearing an apron but I feel faintly abused. Anyway, my mom was Southern but couldn't make biscuits. Biscuits are a necessary part of meals, especially breakfast in the South and my mother's lack was due to 8 sisters. This made it difficult for her to even get into her mom's tiny kitchen and even watch her mom and sisters cook anything. I found biscuits to be made by my husband in an unconventional way. I failed many times at making biscuits, I made odd rocks and strange textures and flat little pancakes before using this method. I thought to share it with you.
Take self-rising flour and throw away your baking powder or save it for that banana nut bread. Add whole milk and stir until it is between thin and thick, anything between. Add one big blob of Crisco shortening, about 4 tablespoons. (Hmm....flour is about 2 cups I think) As you can see, I hate to measure anything. I don't know why, it seems so complicated and too much trouble. Melt shortening in a cast iron skillet, (why cast iron? It's traditional I guess) Pour lard into flour and milk mixture.
My biscuits were very bitter before, baking powder lends a bitterness for me otherwise. I know this is not how you are supposed to make biscuits.
However, if I do it the proper way, by slicing pieces of shortening with 2 knives into the flour until crumbly textured, I can make pie crust very prettily, (even if it is 2 inches thick) Cobbler however is easier and everything taste better soaked in berry juice or peach juice. Very forgiving.
Well, that is my cooking tip for today.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention. Sometimes, by complete accident because I never make biscuits that taste the same twice, I get this light and fluffy and delicious pastry that is ridiculously wonderful. I remember how my Aunt Lena Mae made wonderful creations out of flour, buttermilk and vegetable shortening. Her biscuits were so amazing she made them on huge cookie sheets and still had no leftovers. A well-made biscuit is better than baklava, better than chocolate eclairs, better with a homey goodness that tastes like childhood.
I think it is when I get the milk exactly right and when I stir very little. It's like a suprise to open up my oven.
I never know what I'm going to get.

Nancy Makin to appear on Oprah

Nancy Makin 51, once weighed 703 pounds. She is 51 years old and from Michigan. She lost a whopping 530 pounds and wore pants at 103 inches around the waistline. I find her unexpected.
For one thing, she is a very attractive lady. She talks well and is not anxious about being on camera and feels she has something to say. She makes her living now cleaning houses and presumably, appearing on television.
She didn't go out because people stared at her and were not friendly she says. Her sister gave her a pc and she said it gave her a chance to talk to people without them knowing what she looked like. She doesn't have anything to push and doesn't have a load of weight loss advice. She was lonely and she ate, once connected to the internet the weight just came off.
It is wonderful how supportive the online community can be, and how our worlds might be a bit larger now if we chose. I found her strangely fascinating.
Also, Betty White will be on Saturday Night Live this weekend! Hooray! She is in her eighties and as funny and bright as she ever was. I am looking forward to watching the show.

Lunar Return Charts

It is interesting that you can go to astro.com and have them do a lunar return chart for free. This horoscope only lasts one month. With Venus in the 2nd house, my money problems are going away one can be sure. However what most people want to know about is their love life. This calls for a Venus return.
I searched for Ephermis and found one online for free. Venus returns to my degree of Scorpio on January 7, 2011. I now have a Venus return.
Venus is in the 12th house of secrets and behind the scenes action. This suggests a secret love affair or doing something you love in solitude. This suggests that a person might be lying low for awhile, and since Venus also represents our attractiveness, perhaps a time when people don't see or appreciate my talents or gifts.
The 12th house is secrets, things you do alone. This could be the novel I am working on. It is secret as no one will see it until it is completed. Venus represents art of all kinds, a book, a painting, a thing of beauty or beautifying. I might get plastic surgery!
Synastry, or how your chart shows your relationship is a breeze at astro.com. Enter birth times and away you go.
Interestingly, my Sun is the same as my Hubby's North Node.
It means we are to help each other achieve.
The science of Synastry is one that everyone seems to be interested in.
Horary questions are a science of asking a specific question and hopefully the planets will show you the answer.
People have asked if there is life on other planets and also where did I leave my car keys?
In some way, I am to be like the person who explains our life. I am full of words and hubby has trouble expressing himself. I put things he feels into words for him. This I understand. The North Node being what he is trying to achieve is what I have already achieved with my Sun there. Weird, uh?
Astrology weekly is a site I recommend. Lots of answers there by people who all seem to live in Europe strangely enough.
May you all shine on.

Astrologers

I wonder if I could be an astrologer. I'm itching to get my hands on some poor guinea pig and talk their ears off. I thought it was interesting to learn about reality from Astrology.

For every point on your birthchart there is an Egyptian bound ruler and the ruler tells "the reality of that point". The trigon ruler tells you the spiritual expectations of that point. So, if you know your Ascendant degree you can see the lies you've told to yourself and how things really turned out if you know your planets.

For me, the Moon is my spiritual ruler. This is how, in theory, I think things ought to be. This is my ideal. The Moon is all about emotions and family and I want a loving family more than anything else in this world. I tried very hard to get my family to love me in fact.

Saturn is my Egyptian Bound Ruler. So, Saturn is the reality of the point that is my Ascendant. Saturn is all about rules and regulations and limitations. I wasn't able to spend time with my family because they seemed to always want to spend time with someone else! Saturn is contraction, coldness, and crystallization of emotions. I could say I've grown a cold cold heart when it comes to my old family, but for my own children I had high pie in the sky hopes. Once again, I had to work a lot and didn't get to spend as much time with my kids as I wanted to. There are constant money problems, vehicles that need to be fixed we can't afford to fix. I blog at my library because I can't afford internet. It is Saturn's way to place obstacles in your path. It isn't that you can't do something, it's that the something becomes very difficult to do. I have very strong Moon ties to my family, but we have problems. Money problems often accompany Saturn also. Saturn isn't always the bad guy, Saturn represents that you'll have to put in hard work to achieve anything. That is just the way it is for everyone has Saturn in their chart somewhere doing something. But then hard work is often good for us, as my father constantly told me growing up.

Another way to use this is for your Sun if you were born in the daytime and the Moon if you were born at night.

The moon is Bound to it's ruler Mars. This is the reality of this point. I sometimes feel like I am negotiating a minefield because people are always, constantly hurting my feelings. I want to be myself (and I'm a little wacky I suppose) but being myself constantly puts me where I'm angry. My Moon is emotions and with Mars that emotion is often anger. (Mars is also about drive and energy, not always anger) The Trigon Ruler of 5 degrees Cancer is Venus.

Trigon Ruler = Theory

Bound Ruler =Experience

My ideal would be that everyone would love me, easy to see that with Venus as a ruler

What I read says that if the bound ruler and the trigon ruler have good aspects between each other then all is well.

Mine too, but I suppose all that means is that I live well with ambiguity. We all live with it. We all wish things were different. I live with my angry Moon by being quiet and keeping my radical thoughts to myself. I try to agree with others, even when I don't. I try to be sympathetic, emphatic and helpful. I guess that's what they mean by harmonious aspects. I've sort of worked it out.

I found this interesting and I hope other people will too. We have seen our dreams fall by the wayside and tried to live with what we had. Most of us try to be better people, I believe that. Some of us have aspects that make us wonder why we have to have hard lives, and we don't know any answers. It is interesting that astrology at least knows what our questions are.

Friends With Your Readers

It has been said that everything we write is like a letter to someone we know. It doesn't matter if that person is alive or not. Stephen King that his constant reader is his wife. It is she that he wants to make life, it is she he wants to say that his story is good. I think that good writing implies this sort of innocence. Sometimes when I read rude things that people say on my blog I feel very much like never blogging again, but then I think that I must write with the idea that the reader is my friend, that this is necessary and inescapable. I saw Julie and Julia and I thought it wonderful. This woman had a blog and there was much gnashing of teeth among authors because the movie made successful writing appear easy. I read many blogs far better than mine, but we are who we are I suppose. You strike a chord for some and not for others, some people abhor James Patterson and some love him. I think his books read like an outline for a book not yet written, like maybe he is asking people to use their imaginations.

Putting it that way, his writing doesn't seem so bad.

I try to see things from differest views. I often visit a site called Absolute Write. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to be a writer. These are real people. I was so jealous when there was a writing convention and a bunch of them got to meet one another. I live in an area where no one would hold a convention or a concert, the town is so small you could drive through it in less than 60 seconds tops.

Anyway I had blogged that writers are thieves as a title then totally forgot what I was going to say. Here is the quote, "Borrow from one and it is stealing, borrow from many and it is talent." I had thought I had to write something totally original but from reading books I've discovered writers copy other writers all the time. The similarities are so strong I wonder if a little plagerism isn't involved. I don't have to be original to write, only serve up a recipie from many. I know that sound terrible but I think it also happens to be true. Many are not original, after all. I was watching Lethal Weapon one night and thought of something else that is true. People want the familiar, here we have a couple of guys playing cops and that is so old it's moldy. The twist is the suicidal Mel Gibson, a thing abandoned in the later movies. Is there a writer out there crying night after night over the loss of his vision because superstar don't like that part of the script? I imagine so. He probably wrote a novel instead where you can be your own boss. I missed that part. I think writers should be the boss of their creations, but it is one messy world instead, and movies get made, mostly bad movies. I read books instead, but cinema has it's own pull and magic, and sometimes that is compelling. Sometimes magic happens.

Anyway I think this is the recipie: Overall something familiar, then a twist. People want to feel like they could slip into the shoes of the hero or heroine. I think that simple also is best. I can't stand to try and figure out who a dozen characters are and seldom care about them. I think they should be exaggerated cartoonish and twisted. Now that's fun, like the nosy neighbor or the kindhearted boss who acts mean and always about to fire somebody. Then a dozen of those wacky people is alright.

Writing is best of all to me because there are no rules or recipies.

Poor Me

When I was in school we had a young girl named Karen who was treated as if very special. She had the disease known as "failure to thrive". I was quite jealous of her. I had a lot of problems of my own in fact but they were secret problems, not the kind of thing you advertise. One day while at work I was regaled by a woman telling all about a rape to a rapt audience who were saying all sorts of positive things to her and it made me feel a little sick. If I did happen to be raped, I don't think I would talk about it at all. All this has made me think about how America is the land of the underdog. I was watching a movie about a girl who never got any attention and didn't get anything from her stepmother, this modern Cinderella who was in fact the star of the show acting shy and unnoticed and desperate for attention. Of course she is very talented and the truth comes out at the talent show and she gets the guy and all the attention. I don't think it is right to always give everything to those with a tragedy in their life, I think maybe there are many with secret tragedies who somehow manage to overcome as I have. There was a girl who had lost her son at my last job; she liked to talk and not work and that was okay. Everyone liked her, I did too, but I was forced to do jobs that were very difficult. I would see her happily chatting wiping the sweat out of my eyes and yes, be a little jealous. I think maybe it is wrong to be so instantly sorry and accomodating to those who suffer these public sorrows, maybe being treated just like anyone else could be a good idea.

Writers are Thieves

For writer's advice I consider great, please visit HollyLisle.com. You might recognize her as a fantasy author but she has also written some romance. She was formerly a R.N. and had a bumpy road to writing success and wishes us to know that it shall always be bumpy if you choose a writing career. She is frank and to the point and not wordy, something I find refreshing. It is something of a paradox as to why a writer would help for free so many struggling to write, there are some who say that writers do not compete with one another. I don't remember the origin of the quote, but a famous writer said that truly Norah Robert's sales will not hurt for instance Stephen King's because people follow that genre and who read King's stuff wouldn't read Ms. Roberts books anyway. It seems, if you just surf the Web, that everyone wants to be a writer these days. I think that people believe that it is easy, but once attempted, one will never think that again. Some I think just want to be a struggling writing and not do any writing at all, inspiration is skittish and our lives are busy and demanding. I am reminded that creativity often takes time. I am impressed at how often writers say that they start by doing nothing, idly taking long walks or working in a garden, or any activity that doesn't use a lot of brain power. Then, at odd moments, inspiration comes to you they say, when least expected.

(I find that I never get an idea when I have a pen in hand and blank paper in front of me and start commanding myself to think of something. It kills the process it seems, at least for me.)

I know that I have these wild and wicked dreams, to live off imagination seems as far away as dragons, or clouds. There is a great deal of work involved also, book writing is like ballet you know. Ballet is said to be "Making the difficult seem effortless." I think writing is the same.

I think "Know Your Ending" before you write good advice, tho' not written in stone by any means. Stephen King, that great writer who has earned millions, does not write this way. However the Harry Potter books were thought up at least, from the ending to the beginning, backwards. Reading how she created Harry Potter was one of the most fascinating things, she literally tells every detail of how she worked her books out. Amazing.

I hope that computers and great generous people like Ms. Lisle will create even more writers, because there is nothing I like better than to read. There can never be too many books in the world.

I am a great borrower of books and recently I read a post at Absolute Write that says that when you spend money on books you help the publishing industry. This is so obvious it shouldn't need to be said but I never thought about it that way. I spend as little on books as I can, wait for the paperback to come out on new books or for friends to loan me theirs, I am quite wicked. Now I buy more and I hope you will too. Let's support the bringers of dreams.

Where is my Manuscript?

The time it takes for a publisher to get back to you can drive some people bananas. There is an online magazine named "Clarksworld" which I hear accepts a manuscript in a mere 3 days. There is a lot of great fiction on the site and a request for donations and you can buy the fiction in book form. It seems a sci-fi magazine but it has good writing. Most publishers recommend you enclose a postcard so they can let you know that they've recieved your manuscript. Good Idea. There is even a site called The Black Hole which keeps statistics on how long it takes publishers to get back to you, which is a sci-fi, horror, fantasy site it appears also. There is a lot of help online for those of sci-fi persuasion. Cobblestone Press has a community you can join with workshops to help aspiring writers. It's all helpful, especially if you're wondering if your manuscript you are waiting to hear about so desperately isn't, really, lining someone's birdcage and catching poo.

Can You Judge A Book by it's Cover?

I think we do judge books by their covers, it's like a promise made to us of what is inside. I remember seeing "An Accidental Tourist" by Anne Tyler and I just had to read it. I was wondering about the title. For me it is the title that makes me pick up a book, and not the cover. They say men are more moved by photos and women more by the written word, so it may be that since I am female it is the title that draws me. I know a title drew me in and before I knew it I had devoured over five Anne Tyler books. Tyler is married to a phsychiatrist, which seems to contribute some to her style of writing since there is always a psychological reason for what the characters too. None of them seem to suffer from out there abuse or poverty and that is just so, just 'cause the author has been in this sort of sheltered life where the biggest problems seem to be in just finding one's way and identity.

Andre Norton, who took a man's name because she wrote man like books and who would read them done by a woman?, has passed away. Mercedes Lackey seem to fill that void very well with stunning language in the Norton tradition. Andre Norton refered to herself as a "staid teller of old-fashioned stories". The Norton title that first drew me in was "Moon of Three Rings" and in it were people who changed to animals and back again on a world where the Moon had 3 rings. This world of villages where people live in the Middle Ages is one we come to again and again, as if this is the home we best understand.

I remember seeing the "Sword of Shanana" and I had to read it this book in the Tolkein tradition.

I guess I will keep on judging books by the title and for the most part, this seems to work in helping me find a good book, very well.

Americans Don't Care

I was watching the news during the gasoline crisis when prices kept going up and it seemed there was no end in sight and some commentator on there said that Americans didn't care about the environment or higher gas prices because we kept buying SUVs. Then the other day it was said that Americans don't care about the new health care plan. I'll tell you what I think, I think it doesn't matter what we think. Sure, we have opinions but there is no one who cares about those opinions, and someone who talks about politics at our break is wasting our time and they get strident and sometimes start yelling, I guess because they are powerless and the whole thing is pointless anyway. I think if there was a place we could go and be heard we would go there but there is not. What is going to happen is going to happen by the powers that exist today and Rosie from Poonatkee doesn't matter. Pulic opinion polls do show that people think they are being lied to, imagine that!

The Path to Fortune

Mr. Garth has written the "Five Pillars of Fate" about 2nd century astrology and the Arabic lots. This means that the lot of fortune in your birth chart is also an Ascendant and there is another second house. The second house is what you do for a living and my birth chart has a second house of Capricorn but my fortune chart has a second house of Gemini. Gemini rules writing, teachers, wordplay, communications and twins. Capricorn is an earth sign ruling government, banks, time honored institutions, things from the earth such as gold or minerals, and older people especially men. The first house of your fortune chart rules you, your physical body and what type of person you are as well as your birth chart does. The ruler of both of my charts are in the fourth and the second house repectively, I mean the Ascendants. I am a person who loves books and words and also being at home. I took my last 2 vacations at home actually.

Still there is one more thing representing our life force and that is the lot of Spirit. Valens says to us from the second century "The Spirit and it's ruler govern matters concerning the soul, intellect and actions thourgh discourse and through giving and receiving." Here we are in all our glory or messed up condition as it may be. Mine is Gemini.

Fortune is our portion given to us, it is walking across the street and being hit by a bus because it is something that happens to you. You don't have any control over it. Spirit is ourselves deciding to cross the street. Our Sun Signs are us too more in the matter of personality. Our spirit is our style of doing things. Garth has his fingers on the astrology of Valens in an easy to understand book. The ninth house is the house of higher thought, of kings and queens, of where you are noble yourself, the ninth from the lot of fortune may tell you where you outdo yourself in royal style. I have Aquarius and Leo respectively. Dramatic and quirky. The tenth house of career will tell you public reputation and what you do and is along with the first one of the most powerful houses. The 10th house from the Lot of fortune and any houses in it have a lot to do with your success (or failure). I have Mercury in the second house as the tenth in my fortune chart and indeed Mercury rules my Lot of Exaltation. So it is how I see that this planet, more than any other, is what will power any success I will have in life. Astro.com will calculate the lot of fortune for you and then make a new chart with whole signs with the sign the lot of fortune is in as the first house. This new fortune chart is very enlightening. It is thought that if you were born at night then this lot is actually the Lot of Spirit as most reverse the formula for night births. Night people you count the degrees from the Moon to the Sun counter-clockwise and then count the same degrees from the Ascendant in the same counter-clockwise direction. I found this very difficult and actually mixed them up for many months. The ancients counted one two three and so can we, we can do it exactly as they did the Lots.

In some unclear way Neptune is tied up with your fortune, I don't understand it but cannot deny it is so. Jupiter is very important of course but Saturn figures karmically as signalling when we recieve what we are due.

We cannot decide our fortune but we can take the portion given to us and do with it what we can. Our fortune, like our talents, are given to us at birth.

The Anaretic Degree or Extremes in Motion or Pink Floyd's Roger Barrett

The 29th degree of Leo is the Ascendant of Pink Floyd's guitarist Roger Barrett. His use of LSD in the 60's has been talked about and it's been said he was a victim of the times he was born in, for drug use among muscians at that time was at an all time high. What is interesting is that this 29th degree means "being at the end of one's rope" and for Barrett it was issues about identity or "who am I?" Your entire life is supposed to be focused on that point as well as bringing out the extremes of that point. Leo is all about self-expression so his whole life was about expressing himself and doing so vividly, (Leo rules show business).
It is called the degree of fate for it's karmic implications.
He also had Pluto in the 12th house even as Kurt Cobain did which implies living on the edge of an abyss, ever in danger of catastrophe, always with things hidden deep within the self.
Since houses always work in pairs then 2 houses come into play. For me, it is the second and the eighth houses. I thought this amusing if rather sad that these are the money houses in one's chart, for lack of money dogs me like cigarette smoking or a black cloud that follows only me. A smoker must have their cigarettes and chosing between cigarettes and food I've always chosen the former as any smoker knows. These houses also stand for things we value, including ourselves. Self-esteem issues dog me, for I don't want to think of such things; I don't want to think about money at all. Other sources say the 29th degree is one of wisdom and of the fullest expression of that sign, others say it is a place of indecision, of not knowing what to do. Astrologically speaking, things are uncertain and not well understood. Certainly we know some things, for me the important real world house called the second falls on the 29th degree of Sagittarius and the rest of the house is in Capricorn. Now Capricorn in the second house is considered very good, Capricorns are quite good with money and get value for their dollar. However I am not good with money at all. The second house also represents assets, this is the plus side of the equation, this is how we make our money. It is called the house of survival. Here I have Mercury. I don't have a Mercurian job I have a job ruled by Saturn as I work in a poultry plant. Saturn rules Capricorn. Small animals are ruled by the 6th house, the house of work. What does it all mean?
I think it means that in a sense I have failed. If there was a test I missed it, I was absent that day.
According to some astrologers the planet ruling the house is more important than any planets actually in the house, and so free-wheeling Sagittarius who can't hold on to a buck or anything but their own heads is the sign on the cusp. Sagittarians are ruled by generous Jupiter because God takes care of drunks and children and this sign needs all the help it can get. Luck comes into play for this sign and being saved at the last minute. Now a Jupiter ruled house can't be all bad, can it?
These 2 opposites of poverty and wealth are in my second house, Jupiter and Saturn. I see this in my life. I see unexpected good luck but a steady never-ending river of bad luck to swim in. I feel that I must, absolutely must get in control of my financial life or face ruin of dynamic proportions. I am literally on my own, there is no help for me from family or inheritance, or retirement I mean nothing. That sounds like Saturn to me.
In the end I think it is Saturn that influences the second house and not Jupiter and so the 29th degree does not seem to be doing it's karma for me, though money issues are extremely a problem for me. So to study this in the realm of personal experience I say Sagittarius doesn't rule my second house, Saturn does so the idea of cusp rulers is a bunch of crap. The Ascendant is the most important personal point in the chart so in Barrett's chart it might be a different story. The second house is interesting to me because survival is the first and most important thing after all, and it isn't hard to understand the second. I don't know a great many things but I know who signs my paycheck.

The Tarot

I was given a deck of tarot cards at a young age and I have an opinion about these cards. You can also use a regular deck of cards to forsee the future, if you've a mind to do so. I think that time stands still in front of us sometimes for if the future was not already written then how could anyone see it? I just got a tarot reading online that was spot on, which shows me you don't have to have the actual cards in your hand for it to work. The cards "knew" what question I had asked, and that it was about work, but it's not the cards that know things. Who does? Why yourself of course.

I had a friend who told me that she had noticed that after you "cast" the cards over and over again that the cards ceased working, well your mind does get tired. Your subconcious seems to put the cards in their correct positions, telling you things you already know, just not consciously sometimes. You "find out" things you already sort of knew but were not acknowleding in this symbolic and lovely form. The cards aren't evil any more than it was true that witches can give you the evil eye as was believed for a century or more. People believed that someone could curse you just by looking at you. In a way, people's belief in the magic value of the tarot has me somewhat frustrated. It is magic in the sense that we all carry magic within ourselves. They don't make life better or worse, for much of life is just boring. I see a lot of hard work ahead for me, and I didn't need tarot cards to know that.