Kung Hey Fat Choy

Which means Happy New Year!  It’s the first day of the lunar new year according to the Chinese calendar and initially I was excited.  It’s the year of the ox and I am an ox.  We work hard.  We plod on towards our goals despite obstacles that might be thrown in our way.  We are reliable.  We are trustworthy.  We do it.  We get there.  And so I thought this was going to be a great year for me.  This morning the baby woke up early.  I was motivated to get some yoga in, and then my mom called me around 8.  “Call your sister.  She says she can’t get through to you when she dials for some reason”, she tells me.  OK, I think, my sister wants to talk.  Unsuspectingly I call her up and receive a bombshell of information.  Nothing harmful.  Nothing scary.  No one died and everyone is relatively OK, but it made me unbelievably sad.  I also have serious sirens going off in my head; huge red flags screaming “SOMETHING IS SOOOO NOT RIGHT HERE”!!!  But I have no way to contact.  I am far away.  There is nothing I can do but watch a bad situation spiral horrifically out of control.  And sadly, that makes me even more sad.

Which is why, obviously, I decided to check out what my Chinese horoscope for the year was going to be.  Because, OF COURSE that’s what you do when you get crap news.  Doesn’t everybody?  Well, I found out this is going to be a crap year for the ox.  Unlucky stars everywhere.  I will not gain money.  I will be distracted.  Challenges and hardships will continuously crop up over the year.  I will fight with my spouse more, and my health is in jeopardy mainly due to my distractions, and so I need to be extra careful while driving.

Great, all I need is to be hit by another car.

So far no good.  I don’t want to continue.  I have been through enough, I feel.  I feel totally screwed by the karmic God’s that arranged this, and yet due to my ox nature I am already thinking about how I can get through the year.  Maybe it won’t be so bad, but I tell ya, in my experience the Chinese have been right about a thing or two in the past, so I better drive very, very carefully.