Festival 30 Kick-Off

Although initially fraught with frustration and delays, the trip to Mystic Hot Springs ended up being a wonderful adventure. Soaking in warm water, celebrating Vernal Equinox, and seeing Kan'Nal in an intimate venue with eighty people was the perfect way to start the celebration week for my 30th and K's 27th birthdays.

J, O, and B drove down and soaked with us Sunday, Equinox-eve.

The Mysterious B ("When I was in Colorado I was George") is taking this photo.

Vernal Equinox Morn.


Aries grrl before the show, age 29.99178 .

The next morning, age 29.99452.

Rub dub dub.

Pre-Equinox Nostalgia

The planned travel to Mystic for our 4th annual Aries celebration has been delayed. Now we can't leave until tomorrow morning. Illness, old and new injuries, exhaustion, major vehicle frustration. This has been a weird trip from the beginning. We bumped it up a week to coincide with Kan'Nal's show Monday night. Usually we go after the 23rd and 24th, after K and I get to celebrate our actual birthdays. Lots of the regulars at these Aries gathering won't be there this year. Cycles. Inevitable change.

The goats played a big role that first year, in 2003. B and R, getting rather facial with the cloven footed creatures, S playing her guitar and singing to them. The goats have been relocated to another part of the property. And S is in Belize for spring break.

And I'm leaving for the odd beginning of my birthday-week-festival tomorrow morning. Instead of hours ago, as planned.

Thirty is visible. Less than a week away.

Tectonics & A Papier Mâché Piñata

Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Volcanoes. The tectonic plates of my world are shifting and groaning. The ground is shaking. I am readjusting, releasing old, slowly accumulated pressures.

That's one way to see it.

It's also like a big easter egg, a piñata, a papier mâché prison I've built around myself in patterns repeated for at a dozen years. Ultimately my prettily and painstakingly constructed egg became too oppressive and I'm bursting through, busting the chicken wire and the glue and the hardened paper. Breathing new air. Crawling out of the small space to stretch my legs and arms and back, and start moving. Growing. Expanding.

Whether it's tectonic shifts or the lovely thought of me being the prize in the piñata, change is afoot.

What's prompting such descriptions of Moss's inner realm? That strangely prophetically applicable sun sign horoscope I get in my email applies. I accept its implicit challenge.

Are you really prepared to travel further afield to ensure your expansion and growth? Or, on the grounds of familiarity, are you going to stick with the same-old, same-old, despite what you said about sticking with that choice?

P & P

Two P words that describe me (listed alphabetically since neither is more applicable than the other):

Perfectionist
Procrastinator

These two traits are terrifically unfortunate when they exert such an influence over my behavior simultaneously. (Which is why I find myself facing an all-nighter to meet a 9:00 am deadline.)

Oh, and just because the most recent sun-sign-general-good-advice made me smile, here's today's horoscope:

Don’t exit the stage quite yet. If you can just keep your options open until the Sun moves into your sign on the 20th, you stand an excellent chance of conjuring a delightful rabbit out of your hat.

We'll see about that whole rabbit business. And now I'm ruminating on what options I should keep open.

41

At first the rumormill said it was a massive heart attack. But that was an exaggeration. He was awake when they gave him the local anisthetic in his groin, cut him open, and snaked a shunt to his heart to open the blockage. Now he owes $20k. I told him his life is worth it. He is 41.

Who's Been Peeping In My Headspace?

Usually I just find sun-sign horoscopes funny. They are so generic they can apply to anyone. Basically just good advice, right? Right.

And I still think that.

And this new horoscope I've been getting is hitting the nail on the head lately. Hitting it pretty damn square. Pretty damn hard.

Should you be involved in arrangements that limit your self-expression, you probably have excellent, defensible reasons for hanging in there. However, your chafe marks are becoming increasingly obvious and pretty soon they’ll probably need some salve.

Now the concept of salve will be ever-present on my mind.

Note to Mister Shower: Don't worry. It won't be the greasy lavender body butter kind of salve.

Am I delirious?

Pesky Wisdom

Somehow these things are related.

My horoscope for today:

Whether you’ve been attempting to declare your position or playing your cards close to your vest, this is your moment. Make a case for your future plans, including the list of who is (and isn’t) welcome to accompany you.

and

“Expectation is the root of all heartache.” – William Shakespeare

Evolve

Beauties of being a pedestrian & user of public transport:
1. I have no idea how much gas costs.
2. I watch the weather.

Going to Term(ination)

Okay, I admit it. I've become complacent in recent years about my pro-choice activism. But South Dakota's attack on the constitutionally-protected right to choose has the tiniest of tiny silver linings. NARAL: Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood are each getting a ridiculous pittance from my dwindling-too-soon-in-the-semester checking account. I'm clinging to the adage that every dollar helps.

This Denver Post article describing the extreme difficulty women already faced in South Dakota prior to the new sweeping criminal ban reminded me of my own state. According to the oh-so-pleasant American Death Camps website, Utah has three abortion clinics. (I had only been aware of two. Thanks for the good news, abortion foes!) All three clinics are within Salt Lake County. Meaning 96% of the counties in this state do not have an abortion clinic. [According to the site, there are five states with only one abortion provider: Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.]

Terminating a pregnancy in Utah is tough. Five years ago, a woman I know better than anyone else (yet somehow never well enough) went through the challenging and frustrating process of getting an abortion here. Although I can't find statutory explanation for this circumstance (and perhaps I'm forgetting the explanatory facts), she had to wait for several weeks after learning she was pregnant and had a very brief window of time during which she could submit to the procedure. The hassle was tremendous, but would have been much worse had she lived in any one of the 28 less fortunate Utah counties.

After getting an appointment, she had to take another day off work to go to the clinic two days before the planned abortion to receive the mandated "informed consent" (aka state-articulated you-are-killing-a-baby) lecture from an underenthused women's health worker complying with a law she despised, pick up the manipulative and expensive color glossy thirty-page printout with details of fetal development, and be given the state-produced try-to-convince-you-adoption-is-the-answer video. On the day of her termination, she thanked the doctor and nurses profusely for being willing to stand up for the rights of women. Given the difficulty she had in scraping together money to pay for the termination, she couldn't have afforded to go to a friendlier state as an alternative.

FOR ANYONE READING THIS WHO IS ANTI-CHOICE (a longshot, given the scant and known readership of this waste of my homework and sleeping time), would you be less upset about this abortion if you knew she was addicted to methamphetamine at the time?

This decision was wrenching for her. She had previously described herself as pro-choice. Yet she found the biological drive and the intensely positive feelings the pregnancy hormones induced may have clouded her judgment and affected her decision had she not been addicted to speed. She has often said that it was a blessing that her Unintended Pregnancy Lesson and her Drug Addiction Lesson coincided. Otherwise, she may have given birth and not experienced the Getting an Abortion in Utah Lesson. [Another day maybe I'll post the story of a close friend whose Drug Addiction, Abortion Attempt, and Unsuccessful Open Adoption Lessons converged.]

The irony? At the time of these intersecting lessons, her state-employee health insurance wouldn't pay for oral contraceptives. But two weeks after the bleeding stopped and her reproductive system started to re-boot, she received a check from her insurance companying covering 80% of her $380 abortion.
. . .

Is it just coincidence that those who criminalize abortion are overwhelming fat white men?

Rep. Roger Hunt, a sponsor of the [South Dakota]
bill, said momentum is building for a change in national policy on abortion.
(By Doug Dreyer -- Associated Press)