I dropped my bluetooth wireless headset on the ground and it spent all night laying in water.  After failed attempts to revive it I set out to see if I could buy a similarly priced headset of the same brand locally before resorting to amazon.  Mom and I went to three stores on our errand. 

At the third store something happened that almost never happens.  I looked at the man behind the counter and began to smile broadly and I felt my cheeks get a little warm.  He asked me what I was looking for and we chatted briefly about headsets.  I leaned on the high counter as he searched the online inventory and admired him in detail.  The longish messily parted dark hair, the side burns, the friendly brown eyes with long lashes, the smart looking glasses, the long fingers with bitten off nails, scraped knuckles and his handsome profile.  I could feel Mom's eyes drilling into me as my eyes rested on him.  In the back of my mind was a small impulse, a very very faint suggestion that I should introduce myself and ask his name, maybe even extend my hand and take his confidently and firmly in mine...and then I was thanking him and thanking him again just to stay a moment longer and then I walked out.  Mom looked over at me. 'Make you feel like a dinosaur, eh?' Was it so obvious?  I almost never meet men I find immediately attractive and I was flustered.  She insisted I should go back, that he had been interested too.  She insisted that she would have gone back.  That I should go back there immediately and ask him out...but I didn't have the nerve.  The hounding continued with the implication that I would not actually do it later if I waited.  That stung...but was probably true. I felt too dowdy and clumsy and awkward after leaving.

An hour later I couldn't enjoy the steak she made for dinner because my stomach was in knots thinking about what I could have done but didn't.  The flush of joy I felt at looking at an attractive man and imagining he would find me attractive was gone and in its place was a cold knot of misgivings about myself and my life.  The same ugly old thoughts trotted gleefully out of the back of my mind where I often forget about them.  Am I thin enough?  Am I pretty?  Would someone so handsome ever want to be with me?  My reflection in the mirror looked flat, pale and tired, my hair looked unruly and the more I thought about how I failed to grasp my chance the more I hated myself.  The about face of feeling was disturbing in itself.  In the middle of my misery is always the resolve to find a solution.  I thought of ways I could go back when I felt more poised and present an invitation.  Would that be strange, coming from a stranger?  What if he has a girl friend?  What if he says yes but our schedules never match up?  I thought bitterly for many hours at work about the many men I don't care for crop up regularly vying for my attention.  One young man brought me dinner at work on several occasions and courted me more seriously the more often I indicated my disinterest.  Now the one man I could see myself kissing was an intimidating and distant stranger.  Damn my lack of self confidence!  I puzzled over how to go back...under what pretense?  They didn't have what I was looking for the first time...not headsets anyway.  How do you tell someone you're interested without looking like a total creeper?  The guys at work assured me that they would love to have a woman make the first move and also implied that my chances were good if I would just return to the scene.  How?  The questions and the doubts pile up.  The things we all must think.  What if he looks disgusted? What if he's never there again? What if he's only 20 years old?  Ugh.

I don't know what to do at all.  The whole thing brings into stark relief how easy it is to be alone, and how free from trouble solitude can be.  But being alone is only nice when there's no one you can see yourself with.  Now I just have to figure out what to do.

I am not superstitious. 

I used to think I was, but with time I find that my beliefs and habits are based on experience rather than fear of the unknown.  I don't give astrology much weight, I generally just enjoy reading the horoscopes on The Onion.  

I also like looking at any astrology as a vestigial limb of ancient faiths and as something interesting in a cultural, literary and historical way.  I find it fascinating both the way the information is presented and the way that individuals interpret that information ("Wow, that is just like me!").  I sometimes wonder how such a seemingly orderly system of traits was developed and what source material is used to create new books.  Accuracy and reality aside, the popularity of astrology and its cousins certainly says a lot about the modern world, though what it says is old news.  To me it says that people long for certainty, for some advance knowledge either about the world or especially about themselves that will prepare them for what's coming. In the end they only see what they want anyway. I take a certain pride in my objective approach to my world, but I am going to admit here and now that when I saw the giant colorful cover of The Secret Language of Birthdays I inwardly squealed with glee and turned to my birthday to see what the stars had to say.

And indeed, I said "That is just like me" because the title resonated very strongly with how I've felt, pretty much forever.  For September 6th the page read in bold at the top "The Day of Unpredictable Fate".  The introductory paragraph expounded; Even when you plan for everything, when you think you have a back up for the back up and everything is going as expected everything will suddenly go completely awry and all you particular planning will mean nothing.  I don't really attribute this trend (or at least my feeling that its a trend) to some kind of invisible hand of fate monkey-wrenching the hell out of my life.  I do attribute it to my own nature of living in the moment, having specific ideas of what will happen to me in any given situation that may not actually match reality, and sort of letting things go as they will.  And really, what fate is predictable anyway?  All any of us can do is sort of forecast according to what's already happened.  A flawed system at best.  This doesn't stop me from enjoying the quackery of the book though, and affectionately embracing the idea of "The Day of Unpredictable Fate" as my own.

Sometimes I wonder if God isn't just sort of enjoying sending me messages through channels others would find inappropriate (to some that's superstitious for sure).  I look at it this way, if you believe that your fate is unpredicatable and you are a slave to chance then you have two options: Live in despair and know that nothing you do will work as you planned and that you will not get what you want or live in joy and excitement knowing that what you planned may not happen...but something better than you didn't imagine may happen as well.

I've spent many years cultivating a zen attitude.  What I think I want may not be what I really want.  I ask instead for the right thing, and so an unpredictable fate is fine with me.  Its certainly more exciting than what I would plan for myself.

"Then I defy you, stars!"