Mercury takes about 88 days to go around the Sun. It take us about 365 days to accomplish the same orbit. What this means, is that a few times a year, Mercury looks like it is traveling backwards in relation to the rest of the stars in the night sky. What does it mean astrologically? Well, the easiest thing to do, astrologically, is to get under the bed and not come out for a few weeks. Since that's not a practical idea, a vacation is also a good idea. Oh yeah, and those dates for the little planet?

Mercury begins its backwards tumble on April 15 and rights itself on May 8. Going to be an interesting time for all. Since it's tax season,perhaps we should talk a little about compound interest. Or compounding an uncomfortable situation. Mars turns direct April 28, so this is going to add to the mayhem of what is happening.

A nice and very specific example of what happens when Mercury goes retrograde is communications get fouled up. So does thinking. Like my mother never forgetting that I told the story about the car being in park (or not being in park, depending who is telling the tale).

During the last Mercury Retrograde period, I heroically and stoically (and singlehandedly) loaded a massive Yule log into the family fireplace. Since I'm good at picking stuff to burn (Male Fire Sign), this one log started up in a hurry. Now, Mercury was retrograde, so what happened? Some innocent (and nosy, in my humble opinion) passerby noticed that there was huge volume of smoke issuing from the chimney, and that passerby called the fire department. When the guys got there, they found me in a slightly smoky living room, casually and quizzically watching a fire.

The problem? The flue wasn't fully open. It was Christmas time, so after dosing the log with some water, the firemen got some cookies from Ma Wetzel. One fellow was heartbroken because there wasn't a bigger fire. And they didn't get to use all their equipment, either. My family might never forgive me, either, but we did burn that log later, AFTER opening the flue.

So, open the flue, and check to make sure the car is in park. Maybe double check some things while all this is going on, you can never be too safe.