here we go again

i should have known that mercury was in retrograde again. all signs pointed to yes, so i looked it up, and it is. so there you have it; it can't just be in my brain, the chaos can't just be from my anticipation and looking extra hard for things going wrong.

i finally investigated it after our computer system at work crashed twice, my coworker told her she felt like everyone was annoyed at her and just couldn't communicate clearly, our bags are on backorder, and we had to redo 428 wine kits because of a misprint in the literature. yup, til september 29.

i've been acting strangely, too. doing things i've never done. i got my hair cut on sunday (not that you can tell). at a real place. when i went running yesterday i put one sock and one shoe on, and then the other sock and the other shoe.

mercury in retrograde and the cocorosie show i went to last week. that's why everything is weird.

goodall strudel

i met jane goodall yesterday! and by "met," i mean she came into the theo tour hopper yesterday morning, the room in which i lecture 25 bourgie entitled customers daily on why they should care about fair trade. about ten of us were lined up like the von trapp family, wearing matching t-shirts, drinking coffee from matching mugs, dumb grins on our faces. it was so surreal. it was supposed to be our time to ask her questions and "chat" with her about her life. i had nothing to say. what the hell would i say to jane goodall?? "excuse me, dr. goodall. how does it feel to be such a badass, important, amazing person?" part of me wanted to tell her i dressed up as her for halloween last year. the better part of me talked that part of me out of it. so i just stood there and grinned stupidly.

then i was allowed to help serve her private 12-person brunch. eeeeeee!!!* she had to go upstairs and rest before brunch was over, so they took her chocolate strudel up to her resting room. today i went upstairs to fill up water and it's still sitting there, half eaten. jane goodall germs on a half-eaten day-old strudel! who wants it? who wants it?

*in chimp language, that means "holy shit, becca! sometimes you have an awesome life!!!"

108

i'm getting ready to shed an old layer and expose a new one. neither of those layers are quite ready yet, but the anticipation of transition leaves me feeling the same way i do every time before i move. i'm sad to leave an era behind, but always excited enough to have my belongings packed in boxes weeks before the move, with one foot out the door before i'm finished. my relationships become either more intense or more distant.

and it's all starting to happen now.

last night i was eating foraged huckleberry coconut ice cream over glazed white peaches with liz. and i suddenly remembered that i believe you have to know where you came from before you can understand where you're going. and where you are, presently, for that matter. i don't mean to sound cliche or woowoo. i know i do. i know it sounds like kitschy inspirational blah blah blah, and normally i would have a healthily cynical reaction towards it, but this was one of those moments when you're eating ice cream and it just resonates and it's true.

i remembered (and i'm always a little surprised at this) how i'm not so different now from who i've ever been. different skins, same becca-spirit.

i think this was all instigated by a conversation with my mother about my birth. i mean, holy geez, i know i'm a cancer sun, leo ascending, sagittarius moon, but i don't even know what it was like when i entered the universe under those stars.

totally natural birth, short labor, pushed out in a semi-sitting position, immediate skin-to-skin contact. i popped out about six hours after contractions first started on a sunday morning when we all should have been at church. i was the messiest of her three births. they had cleaned my older sister off a bit and wrapped her in a blanket before my mom held her, so when they plopped me straight onto her belly she just thought, "whoa, this feels weird."

during her most intense contractions, the only thing she could focus on was this tiny tear in one of the curtains. that was all she could look at.