Pilot's Log

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of July 11, 2013

Breakthrough will probably not arrive wrapped in sweetness and a warm glow, nor is it likely to be catalyzed by a handsome prince or pretty princess. No, Sagittarius. When the breakthrough barges into your life, it may be a bit dingy and dank, and it may be triggered by questionable decisions or weird karma. So in other words, the breakthrough may have resemblances to a breakdown, at least in the beginning. This would actually be a good omen -- a sign that your deliverance is nothing like you imagined it would be, and probably much more interesting.

I'm looking at a busy weekend, between Bazaar at HobbyTown on Saturday and a baseball game quasi-family reunion in Asheville on Sunday. How dingy and dank can July get in this hemisphere?

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Travel. Road trips. The occasional reunion at somebody else's place.

To That End...Your Help, Please?

The problem with trying to tell this is the fact that some of it is TMI, and some of it is personal to other people, and some of it is just plain downer, and I don't know how you'll receive it. And we have to start in the middle.

My sister visited us Saturday afternoon. At that time, Mum had found, in an old school text of hers, a favorite Keats poem. She had come back to it because of her own anxiety about the possibility of losing her creativity and creative energy over the course of chemotherapy later this fall. The rest of us (myself, my sister, my father/her husband) understood this and vowed that we would back whatever decision she made about her treatment. We agreed that robbing her of what made life worth living to her, just to keep her alive, wasn't what she wanted and we would do what we could to keep her quality of life and functionality as high as possible.

But what made me uneasy was when my sister also vowed to help me through my own troubles and get me going towards what I want out of life.

I'm grateful for her.

But I've been "this way" so long it's as if I've given up on wanting anything out of life. The next day I'd listened to the radio and heard a program talking about a situation in which the parties involved had deliberately set low hopes on the outcome of their efforts, because "anything better than nothing is still positive progress". I surrendered all my career ambitions when my parents decided to move here and I couldn't afford to stay in Florida or go anyplace else to find meaningful employment in my field. That was in 1996. My world was wiped blank for the duration, and my lack of career success since then has added nothing to it.

Conventional thinking might indicate that my going back to school will get me back towards where I've wanted to go all along. The problem is that the goal posts have moved so far I'm not sure if they're still in the stadium. They're stealing the freakin' mountains and all I can do is watch.

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Not my job. My sister is the designated turkey wrangler in the clan.

I've just returned from my sister's #2 wedding today. Evidently, as her actual official marriage was an elopement and as the Friends (Quakers) do not necessarily hold to the usual formality of a sacremental service, it was more of a spiritual confessional session, with many in the congregation (myself included) expressing memories, wishes, and hopes for the new couple, before Sis and new Hubby gave each other their vows and we all signed their marriage certificate.

There were no hymns, no liturgical text readings, no direct calls for prayer, no elaborate costumes or roles for the wedding party beyond the actual betrothed.

But I'm also told that their ceremony was unusual even for Friends, at the manner of honesty and sentiment shown by everybody.

"Unusual" is pervasive in my clan. Anybody who marries into it should be at thorough peace and comfort with this fact.

FP

The USF Bulls won; Dale jr. lost. And lots of other stuff happened.

Meanwhile, we had sis, nephew and bro-in-law #2 over tonight for dinner. Menu included mafalda, pasta salad and monkey bread.

We had beef mafalda for dinner overnight. And it was good.

The picnic here has been moved to Sunday.

FP

I'm decompressing now after our family Christmas gathering/banquet/gift exchange. At the last minute I changed my mind about buying a gift for my nephew and got him a NewRay Sopwith Camel toy from the Red Roofs KayBee. I gave my niece a Parrothead t-shirt...it's so too big for her she may recycle it as part of a skirt, which I guess would be clever.

I still owe people gifts, but I'm a firm believer of the notion that Christmas isn't over till the last gifts are given and received. Over the years, I've given gifts weeks before Dec 25th, and weeks after, and often months before or after. It's the sentiment that counts, not the timeliness.

So we watched a lot of football and ate spaghetti & meatballs, and (family friend/"adopted brother") Kiyo folded a pair of Dollar bills into a cat and an elephant (numismatic origami is a long-standing hobby among the Asheville side of our set). Nephew Egan showed off his Lego robot.

We didn't sing carols. If Grace was said, it wasn't said at my table. (Nine people; two tables.) Our collective formality was rather informal. I guess nobody felt any need to invest much sentiment into the event.

Still, it was nice. Hope if you have a family gathering tomorrow, you enjoy it as much as we have ours.

FP

I just had an awful dream. And I define "awful" as "I genuinely felt like I wanted to kill myself".

The premise was that my parents invited a dozen relatives, all of whom I had never met, to live with us. They didn't tell me they were coming--I come back from an errand and four beds and a crib had been moved into my bedroom. And these total strangers just come and take over my life. When I ask Mother why all these people have to live with us, she says, "It's still snowing in Pennsylvania."

I realize that I'm running low on things to live for. But I'm wary of pro psychology (with good reason, due to my experiences in childhood and high school) and more wary of drugs (do I need a reason?) and can't afford to be treated now anyway. (Can you imagine a man applying for a job, and telling his interviewer, in response to the question of why the man wants the job, "I realize I'm contracting mental illness and need the medical insurance to cover my treatments"? What's the likelihood of the man getting hired after that?)

When relatives (even my closest ones like my sister's folks) visit I invariably feel awkward as I have nothing happy to contribute to conversations and don't want to bring anybody down or make them feel I'm fishing for sympathy. My siblings are both actors and know when I try to fake being happy, so there's no point in that ploy. And people wonder why I don't smile when they pose me for photographs. (Well, add to the depression the fact that I have bad teeth that I also can't afford to get fixed...and thus am ashamed of.)

All my life my parents have told me how important it is for me to get what I want out of life, and now I'm staring down age 40 and nothing has gone all that well. I don't have a career. I've never had a love life. I'll probably never have a home or a family of my own. I feel I've let everybody down for failing to properly exist.

This is not an April Fool's gag. I hate that I have to emphasize this fact.

FP