Since Jonny started his new job, I find I have about 50% less time than I used to. I didn’t realize just how much he did around the house… most of the grocery shopping, half of the cooking, keeping the cats occupied, paying bills. I’ve taken back those chores, along with my usuals (laundry, cleaning, cooking) – plus I now drive him back and forth to catch a shuttle bus to work, to the tune of about 45 total minutes each weekday. And it’s not as though my workload has lessened, either. So I’m constantly either missing deadlines or worrying that I will – and that’s not my style.
These eclipses in Virgo and Pisces have been shaking up my fourth and tenth houses, demanding that I find a way to bring life and work back into balance. It’s a universal constant, I suppose, that chores expand to fill the available space in your life, much like that nasty foam insulation in a can that you can buy to fill in the gaps around your wall air conditioner. I feel like I’m living in one of those dreams in which you’re running and running and not getting anyplace. (What is the astrological symbol for stickiness? that awful quicksand-beneath-your-feet feeling? I guess it’s that insufferable, interminable Saturn/Neptune opposition.)
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Transiting Uranus is conjunct my natal IC again, and so far we’re not planning to move anywhere. Various women in my life are playing it out for me, though; a Pisces friend who is moving out of the country, my cousin with the Pisces moon who is moving to a new state. And my sister, with the recent lunar eclipse in aspect to her Moon, is moving today into a gorgeous house she and her husband have been building for about ten months. She was sounding kind of overwhelmed when we spoke by phone on Sunday, so I zipped out there on Monday to help her do some last-minute packing… five hours driving roundtrip, but it was so worth it; we got tons done, and I left her looking small but happy, dwarfed by towers of cardboard boxes. Go, sis!
Ten years ago today, we shared a different kind of eclipse/IC experience: our mother died. She suffered a heart attack on the day of a Solar Eclipse in Pisces and died a week later. It still kind of hurts to think about it, as I always do on this date; but it helped a lot, getting together with sis, because in between packing boxes we of course remembered mom, complete with funny stories and plenty of laughter.
Eclipses close to your IC or Moon aren’t always going to take out your mom, of course, or carry you away to a new city or a new house; but reliably, you’ll be forced to examine the ground you stand upon, and to shift around a bit to find some bedrock on which to plant your feet – and some empty boxes to carry the important stuff with you to a new location.
Anyway – today, I’m busy and a little frazzled but I’m not complaining; our household is busy, and we haven’t completely settled into a schedule that works, but we’re happy. And maybe, sometimes, living in a state of flux is a healthy state of affairs, because it means you’re coming unstuck – and getting ready to move on to something new.
