Make Room For Ophiuchus

By now most of you have heard that you are not the Zodiac sign you always thought you were, and have made appropriate adjustments. Unbeknownst to anybody but the ancient Babylonians, there is a thirteenth constellation in the solar ecliptic, and it's jammed right in there between Scorpio and Sagittarius. Moreover, those thirteen constellations have been changing around over the years since the Zodiac was first thunk up, due to the wobble in the earth's axis, which it could totally get under control if it cut down on snacks.

The Babylonians left out the thirteenth constellation probably because twelve seemed so much tidier. Thirteen is a terrible number, representing the death of your childhood and your entry into a lifelong state of pimples and anxiety. Sadly for Sagittarians, it is now the thirteenth star sign, with the new old boy Ophiuchus horning in there in twelfth place. I was the one who had to break it to Dave that he is now Ophiuchus, and he didn't take it well, although he admitted he had been feeling a little gassy lately. The constellation Ophiuchus is represented as a man holding a snake between his legs, so maybe "gassy" isn't really the attribute we're looking for.

In the new celestial order, I am no longer a Libra. As a Libra, I am fine with the news. We are the Scales: we weigh things. We  see one side, and then, on the other hand, we see the other side. We're good with anything. We do not have the courage of our convictions. We don't even have convictions. So if I'm now a Virgo, I can take it in stride.

Except, as a Virgo, I'm offended. There's a place for everything, and everything in its place. If something as large as a constellation can't even stay put for a few thousand years, what hope do we  have that anyone will  hang up their coat where it belongs? Honestly.

One aspect of the whole Zodiac thing that always troubled me, from my former position on the cusp where I could have toppled either way, is that a whole set of traits and fates depended on where the stars were when I busted out into the light, rather than when sperm met egg. (The sperm-and-egg thing troubles me too, because of what it implies about my mom and dad.) I was, in fact, born two weeks prematurely, because my aged parents, in a moment of prescience and clarity, were interested in getting me out of the house at the very earliest opportunity, and my due date would have held me out of first grade an extra year. I was pharmaceutically induced. My birthday is printed on a medical-appointment card I still possess. If mom had gone in one day earlier, maybe I would have been moved to keep my room clean.

Anyway, there have apparently been thirteen constellations all along. Which means the gods have been up there all this time snickering over us and our horoscopes. "Watch this," they are saying, "Murr thinks this is an auspicious time to buy real estate. Cue the floods!" Which kind of casts doubt, for the first time, on the whole serious business of astrology. The gods are laughing their gigantic fannies off.

Pinned Down

 I'm sitting on the cusp of Libra and Virgo, which puts me at risk of an astrological wedgie. But really I'm a Libra through and through. I hold the balances; I see both sides of an issue. I don't like to get pinned down. In spite of that, I just went in for my annual mammogram.

In the interest of my health, I have my annual mammogram every fifteen months or so. Fifteen-month years do wonders for your longevity. This time, after taking the required four pictures, they asked for a do-over. They said I moved. What moving? There's no moving. If the fire alarm goes off, I'm screwed. Nothing pins a girl down like a mammogram.

The woman in charge (let's call her Adolph) carefully stuffs your breast onto the bottom plate, hauling in a little extra from the belly, armpit and the lowermost of chins, and then takes the top plate and smashes you to a thickness that she can read through. The instructions are on the bottom plate.

This used to be more painful, but as one obtains maturity, as here defined by a marked decrease in sexual attractiveness, one's breasts begin to lose all their internal architecture, replacing it with a sort of apathetic goo. In the context of a mammogram, the procedure now involves less stuffing and cramming than merely peeling the tissue off the torso like a piecrust and rolling it out onto the plate. The top plate is now superfluous.

One year I got a letter afterwards suggesting I should come back in for a recheck. There was an "anomaly," and a date available in two weeks. I'm not the sort of person who can survive two weeks in a state of panic, so I badgered them until they admitted they weren't really doing anything just then, just sitting around eating pancakes and pita bread and playing with their food, and I raced in. The technician brought out my x-ray and hung it up on the wall for reference.

What these pictures used to look like, pre-menopause, with all the architecture intact, was something you might see from the Hubble telescope: millions of little stars and thready gases and nebulae, in which trained personnel can detect suspicious planets. I'd seen one of mine before. This one was deep space, all darkness, no nebulae at all, with the Star of Bethlehem blazing away right in the middle. I could see it from across the room. "Is that thing in the middle the anomaly we're looking at?" I whimpered, visualizing a tiny tumor glowing in a manger. The technician nodded. She used a more focused x-ray machine and zeroed in on my supernova. Then she left the room with the x-ray to show the doctor,  leaving me with an inadequately distracting group of women's magazines. At times like these, one is no longer interested in how to keep pounds off during the holidays, or five new recipes for fried chocolate.

Adolph isn't allowed to tell you anything about your x-rays, even though you suspect she knows as much as the doctors do. She came back in and apologized that she needed to take a few more shots. Fifteen minutes later she came back and said she needed to escort me to stage two, Ultrasound.

By the time we'd reached the Ultrasound room, I had run through a number of items that needed changing in my will, and while she was consulting the doctor about the new results, I'd begun a preliminary list of music I thought would be nice for my funeral. She returned to accompany me and my breasts to stage three, a stern interrogation. The doctor had my old x-ray, the one with the big star, hung up next to a series of new ones, which were entirely blank. "As you can see," he said, using the pointer, "we can't find the anomaly anymore. We probably got a little pleat in there the first time. You don't seem to have anything in your breasts at all. You're good to go."

Nothing in them at all. I gave them an affectionate little pat, without taking my hands from my lap.