Image via Purple Moon (How can you not love a site that sells "fairy stickers"?)

My mind feels like it has just been swabbed with novacaine. Dull and focus-less. I used to get this way once a week--usually on a thursday--but now I find I come to this point of incapacity much less frequently, maybe once a month. So when I do arrive at this juncture where I feel I can't think about food choices much less word choices, editing, writing or the like, I like to consider why I've reached this brain-dead place. Have I been working too hard? Is it physical (there is a tickle in my throat)? As a last resort, occasionally I turn to my horoscope.

Longtime readers will know that I was raised by the Astrology-minded. By which I do not mean dabblers, but those who speak the language of the planets fluently, and turn to their astrologer before their therapist, doctor or other practitioner. As an adult I've come and gone from astrology. I've got a couple sources from which the horoscope is always surprisingly accurate, and others that are about as accurate as the messages inside fortune cookies.

Yet as I sit here with a brain that feels like it's doing a fox-trot through melted fimo dough just to write this blog entry, and I encounter the fact that Mercury has gone retrograde today, well, I can't help but wonder.

Mercury rules the mind, communications, details and thought. My sign of Virgo is ruled by the planet Mercury (I don't know what that all really means, mind you). Therefore, we Virgos are supposed to be more affected than other signs when Mercury goes retrograde (and no I don't really know what a retrograde is, but it sounds bad, doesn't it?). Merc retrograde is a time of communication breakdowns (and mechanical ones), and is supposed to be the worst possible time to sign contracts, make commitments, life changes and the like. And yet as we speak that's exactly what's going to take place this month. Life changes, contracts signed, commitments made. Yet the astrologers all say "don't do it!"

So despite that I can FEEL this retrograde on my very brain cells, despite that communications have already started to go awry I am going to pretend that Astrology is a crock, or that there is a higher order at work that wants us to make changes, commitments and sign contracts and that it will all be for the best.

Right?