Anyone else feeling that holiday funk?

At first I thought it was just me, but a friend on Facebook posted a link that shed some light on the situation.

I blame Mercury.

Professor Trelawney would agree.

Mercury is in retrograde right now (trust me, I'm sure). In a nutshell, Mercury is the planet of communications, the Roman god of whimsy and michief (the Roman counterpart to the Greek Hermes). When it goes into retrograde (a planetary illusion of moving backwards through space), it throws communications-related things into a frenzy. I'm a Gemini. Our planet? Mercury. When Mercury goes retrograde, my astrological self has a small breakdown. Apparently, everything starts going haywire just a few days before the planet actually goes retrograde, during its shadow period, and can last longer past the retrograde until it reaches full release.

At first, I thought this was hooey. I dabble in astrology in that I understand my sign quite well and am a pretty textbook Gemini. But then I took at look at the three other times Mercury has been retrograde this year, and I took a look at what was going on in my life. The periods below include both Mercury Shadow through Full Release:

Dec. 9, 2009 - Feb. 4, 2010 (Retro Dec. 26 - Jan 15): Thyroid woes. Also? Forgot my husband's birthday entirely last year (yeah, I left that little tidbit out of my blogging that year). Started getting super worried about Larry's unemployment at the time. I felt pretty awful about my job at the time and I started having weird stuff with my ovary. I even mentioned in that post that I was "in a weird funk lately."

Apr. 4 - May 28 (Retro Apr. 18 - May 11): NIAW 2010 and an unusual burst of creativity; after my video I was inundated with hundreds of emails and comments, like a communications overload. I spent a good amount of time waxing existential right smack in the middle of this retrograde. According to the Gemini chart for 2010, both creativity and spiritual reflection are the highlights of this particular retrograde. And there was lots of confusion about my job and future job title at work.

Aug. 1 - Sep. 27 (Retro Aug. 20 - Sep. 12): Work ate my soul. The clusterfuck that was trying to buy our house. Moving into said house and feeling very unsettled during the relocation process. Oh? And the house fire just 9 days after we moved in.

Nov. 22 - Jan. 18, 2011 (Retro Dec 10 - 30): Thanksgiving plans weren't really solidified until Wednesday afternoon. Vacay was awesome, but I'll admit, I was nagged the whole trip by this weird feeling I can't really describe. Maybe it's  that Larry and I just aren't "relaxing vacation" people, but I felt slightly restless the whole time. Also? Two car accidents, bookending our time off (long story, not getting into it here, we're fine, Larry's car is finally fine, mine's still in the shop). Oh, and then I got strep randomly.

I realize this looks like I might be reading into things, but when I look at all the non-retrograde parts of the year, that's when all the really awesome, good, even-keeled stuff is happening. So I guess I'm just SOL until January 18th :-/

. . .

But seriously... I've been in a weird holiday season funk, more so this year than usual. I don't celebrate Christmas, but having grown up with it, I feel really nostalgic this year. The infertility thing has hit me hard again... I tweeted the other day about nearly crying in the BJ's this week. I made the mistake of checking out the sale books and of course wanted to see what children's books they had (btw, Obama's "A Letter to My Daughters" is probably one of the most empowering children's books I've ever read). Yeah, that was a mistake. I got so bitter and sad and resentful it nearly overwhelmed me, right between the bulk soda and bath product aisle. I ended up crying in my car for a few minutes before returning to work (because of course, I was there on a work related shopping run). Like, what the hell? I've normally got this shit together, man!

I just feel all out of sorts. Anyone else out there feeling Mercury's mischief?

Also, randomly: we're going to see Weezer tonight. Pretty stoked.