Forecast for 03.31.10

03-31-10
Forecast and Faery Finder
By Janice Scott-Reeder and the Bitwit


According to Llewellyn’s Magical Almanac, today’s color is yellow and the incense is honeysuckle. Today is the Ethiopian Borrowed Days.
Tuesday was a perfect day in paradise: cool, sunny and a gentle breeze.

FORECASTS:

Astrologically, the Moon enters Scorpio at 8:41 EM EDT. Venus enters Taurus at 1:35 PM EDT.
For the next week, budget is really important at social events. For a couple of days psychic communications are swift so make sure you are paying attention to your intuition. Blink and it is over.
The morning starts with the solution to problems that may have arrived in a dream. You are more interesting in spending time on that than social events and invitations. Good things come your way around noon but if you aren’t humble, arguments will simmer and boil over an hour later. Evening brings change,

Deck: Navigators Tarot of the Mystic Sea.

Today’s Tarot Card is the Star: revelation. Meditation in a tranquil place bring enlightenment and the answers you have sought.

Deck: Healing with the Fairies.
The Faeries say:
Your inner child needs to behave itself. There is work to be done.
.
Today’s Cat Comfort Card is:
Catalog: “Treat yourself to some retail therapy.”

Deck: The Fairies’ Oracle by Brian Froud & Jessica MacBeth
Today’s Faery Finder is on the lookout for:
The Piper arrives today. His music seduces and speaks to our hearts and soul through nature.

Today’s Lo Shu Number is 5 and the Element is Metal. The Dog finds conflict but the Ox and Tiger have ease. Today is not an auspicious day for haircuts, medical procedures, signing contracts, gambling, starting construction or births.

Today’s Message from the Universe is: “I am now ready to take all the risks necessary to completely express my Soul’s qualities. I dare now.” Annie Marquier creating a world of peace one thought at a time.

COMMENTARIES BY JANICE SCOTT-REEDER

I have no internet at the house and limited time at the shop, so all I am managing to do is upload the forecast. I am not even getting my email.
On top of that, my slightly over a year old TV blew up. George says the processor is fried and it has my DVD in it! Bad TV, bad! Give me that DVD back!
I do not believe it was so cold last night I had to turn the heater on in Vanwitch. It is the end of March! This is Florida. I am not complaining. Usually we are sweating this time of year. We will start Tuesday in the 50’s. My lettuce doesn’t know whether to head or bolt. It is doing both. It bolts about an inch and settles down and tries to head then bolts another inch. Doesn’t matter. I’m eating it tonight anyway.
Last night I tried to remember when I became the Old Folks Home for Stray Cats. Much more than that, I tries to figure out when they started expecting me to serve them breakfast, lunch and dinner in bed. I faintly remember buying a stack of these cheap little plastic bowls at Target for a dollar because I thought they would be great for putting recipe ingredients into when cooking. Then, Ebony, a.k.a. Gremlin the abandoned, was fed in one and discovered her head made the perfect stopper for the bowl. Anything bigger and Fiona can slip her nose in and vacuum the food right out of her mouth. Anything smaller and she goes all paranoid on me and won’t eat. Now these little bowls are all filled with each cat’s prescribed amount of food and distributed to their conveniently located sleeping locations. Those locations are defined as being within in three feet of a kitty pan and water bowl, easily defended and no desired by other cats. Heck, my own bed isn’t that conveniently located! Are they spoiled? You think?
I am totally convinced that no one who ever leaves you a message to call back has ever tangled with their own voice mail or for that matter, ever listens to their own menu options. I have the person’s extension number to call back. The only problem is there is no way to access or enter an extension number in their voice mail system. You have to say the person’s first and last name which they are not going to give you as it is probably a really bad idea for anyone working for a company to do that. So, I did what I bet everyone does, I took the first person whose extension would come up and left a message for the person. I bet that poor person wonders all day why they get all these messages for everyone else.
George gave me his TV last night while I wait for one to come on sale at BJ’s in the middle of the month. That’s given me enough budgetary leeway to finish the front area under the front window. I wonder what it is like to be financially independent and not have to budget little everything thing. I am fortunate in that I worked for many years as a bookkeeper, so I can keep the figures in my head without constantly consulting the bank or anyone else.
Due to the cat upchucking problem, which I am convinced has nothing to do with anything except being on their to do list each day, I have no rugs or carpet in the house. What I have are throw rugs not for decoration or my benefit. They are portable cat sleeping devices. Thus, they have only one requirement. They must be easily washed. That eliminates a nonskid backing which is unneeded anyway because I have the perfect nonskid device anyway: a cat body. I was just trying to convince Josephina that you can smooth out a rug on the floor much better if a cat ass isn’t under it! I did not succeed. One end has a large Josephina bump in it. I have concluded that nothing in the Universe looks more content than a cat having a sun bath/nap.
Thanks to week two of the flu, I am now half way down tissue box number 4 and on roll of toilet paper number 6. I do not have happy ends. I have also finished one case of chicken noodle soup and bought the second in addition to making homemade. My homemade seems to have a really short life expectancy. I decided to have a bowl for dinner last night as George was working late and could not find the jar in the fridge and I just cleaned that fridge! Finally George admitted he ate it. So, I am off to BJ’s to buy chickens. I wonder if I can get enough leaves off the little Bok Choy
During the cleanup this weekend, we discovered that almost 30 years after raiding the bait store for worms and freeing them in the yard…..warning I will shoot at fishermen trying to dig in my yard….the armadillo is enough of a digger…I undoubtedly have the richest soil in South Florida. It is no wonder everything grows like mad in this yard. It is not sand. It is dark, crumbly organic soil with …..oh dear….I should not admit this….tons of worms in every shovel full. My grandmother would be so proud of me.
That brings me to offering an apology for the entire state of West Virginia. What that Hades happened to you? I’m sorry, but I started watching that cooking program based in Huntington WV. When I was a tot, Huntington was the big city we used to visit from Buckhannon and Elkins. I spent the whole show with my eyes bugged out and my mouth open. I know those streets. Where did the kitchen gardens and the root cellars go that every house had? Those kids didn’t know the names of vegetables!!!!! In my day they would have known the names, raised them from seed and learned to cook them by school age. By their age I not only knew how to use a knife an fork, but which fork to use and my grandmother only had a grade school education! Spoons were something you ate soup with, your first course most every night except in summer when you had salad, and for feeding babies. Feed me pizza for breakfast and you would have dealt with Ma and man, that was nothing you wanted to ever do. Keep in mind, no one in my family except my mother had anything other than a grade school education. I was the first of my generation to attend college and graduate. We were dirt poor farmers, miners and truckers. We knew what a balanced diet was and we ate it. I do not ever remember there not being 3 fresh meals a day cooked, put on the table and you sat down and ate them. If I had ever reached onto my plate and grabbed anything but the occasional piece of fried chicken with my hands, I would be typing one handed right now. I am not kidding. The only thing I even remember ever being fried was chicken, bacon, eggs, sausage and the occasional pork chop which we avoided like the plague because you could bounce it off the wall providing it didn‘t make a hole in the wall and get stuck, an act you prayed for to happen so you didn‘t have to eat it. I don’t think anyone in the family even knew how to deep fry anything. The first time I saw a deep fryer and all that grease, I became physically sick and threw up. That is one reason I almost starved to death in Cuba: grease.
There is no way you can get a piece of animal fat in my mouth. Today I was watching a Checkers commercial on TV. I know everyone sees a hot and juicy hamburger on that screen but I see a cheap piece of meat dripping grease and it is revolting. I wasn’t even able to eat breakfast after that commercial.
Back to the question; What happened? I do not know, but I am certain of one thing. Big business is poisoning a huge portion of the country. They have no need to worry about retirement benefits. No one living that long. They have a nice docile work force because those people couldn’t revolt if they wanted to. They can barely move off the sofa! By this point, those kids are permanently mentally stunted by poor nutrition so they don’t have to worry about anyone thinking too much. Geez…perfect little Republicans. All they can do is run their already over stuffed mouths.
I just returned from shopping and it was eye opening. My first stop was the big W because they usually have Sweet 100 tomato plants. I got stuck in a huge line with my plant so I began to peruse the other people’s shopping carts in this conservative Redneck bastion. The people in front of me had 7 kinds of bagged “chip” things including something called pork rinds. Pork does not have a rind. Now I know what chitins are and there is no way I am eating something that once held pork crap I don’t care if you dress it up in satin with a bow on it. The woman across from me had two beautiful little girls and I had hope as she put a bag of apples, oranges and a hand of bananas on the counter followed by 4 boxes of ding dong things, two containers of cool whip, two package of purple apple sauce (there are no purple apples) and then came the chips. At least the dog is eating Beneful and is probably the only member of the family getting a balanced diet. None of those items is a vegetable. The rest of the carts held little or no hope for any child’s brain actually developing properly. My next stop was BJ’s, the more liberal strong hold and all I saw leaving the store was fresh vegetables, bags of fruit (the organic Gala apples are delish) and fresh meat. If this doesn’t tell you something, nothing ever will.
Please keep in mind the last time I was in Huntington, I was 16. That was 43 years ago. You would have had a hard time finding a fat, not obese, person on the street and definitely not one under 50. I only ever saw one obese woman growing up and she had a glandular problem. These were friendly, tolerant, nice people who were known for letting everyone have their say, politely. Those people were innovative, clever and hard working. That talk show host would have been tarred and feathered, literally, and run out of town on the rail and they have one. How many generations is that? They have effected this change in two generations at the most. This is what Corporate America has turned most of America into and you can tell where just by looking at the Red States. Someone please change the inscription on the Statue of Liberty to: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Oh, and don‘t eat the food. The water is fine.” After all, we do have truth in advertising.
Do you have any idea how much money you are wasting on this crap? I bought two whole all natural chickens for $8.50, 89 cents a pound no additives, antibiotics or hormones. Down the aisle by the same brand is a box of precooked seasoned chicken strips, about 9 - 10 ounces for $9.99. Do you know that cut into strips it takes about seven minutes to cook that chicken breast and sprinkle it with a bag of Italian dressing mix and you have the same thing? Seriously people, a box of cake mix will make twenty four cup cakes and you add fresh eggs and oil to it and it costs under 3.00. How much does box of preservative and chemical laden whatever those things were cost? Have you read what is in a tube of cookie dough? The raccoons won’t eat the stuff and they eat out of garbage cans. Do you have any idea how easy cookies are to make? I was making them from start to finish by the time I was 8. My mother never had a cook book in her life and she made cookies, cakes, bread and pancakes for us from scratch…no mixes. It’s not rocket science. You can do this. I just cut up one chicken: $4.30. The breast meat is about the same amount as in the 9.99 box. I just used about a nickel’s worth of seasonings. The two legs and wings are in the pot becoming chicken soup. The cats assured me they were there for me as they got the extra meat and the skin. They await the back, neck and wings as soon as they cook. There is nothing from China in there!