Leo

It's my birth month now. Not that I was born over a thirty one day period (for which my mother must be very grateful). No, I was born in the middle of the sunny and lazy month of August, a delightful time of year to have your birthday. August in Seattle is one of the most beautiful times and places to be alive: warm without being hot, occasionally a bit of brief rain to freshen things up, skies so blue they make you ache, and the nights are still avoiding being chilly after blissfully long days. When I was a kid we used to go to water parks or have barbeques, that sort of thing, for my birthday. My older brother, who was born in January, got nothing so festive.

Normally I wouldn't make much note of it being August. Even as a child, I don't think I got too giddy just at being in my birth month. But my husband loves to celebrate things, and he dotes on ideas like "birthday months". It makes it more exciting, I'll give him that, to have someone constantly building up an event. This morning when I got up, there was a little bag on the coffee table; nothing to do with it being my birthday month, but a lingering Christmas gift, which is a star chart calendar thing. Every month I stare bleary eyed at a lovely blue card with a calender for April or August, whatever it might be, at the bottom, and a pattern of stars connected by dotted lines above. I struggle to thread a needle with embroidery floss, which is the devil's thread in that it separates into strands immediately on touching it so that threading it will take between fifteen seconds (hurray!) and fifteen minutes (boo!!!!). And then I poke a bunch of holes and sew up the stars. Of course, the astrological signs don't match up with the months, but more or less they do, and no one would buy a calendar that split up months, so Leo sits on August, even if part of the lion is actually draped over July, too. The thread supposedly glows in the dark, but we've never noticed it doing so. It doesn't matter: at 25 bucks for the thing, it's a really great gift that keeps on giving.

All the constellations are nonsense, of course. One wonders how the ancients looked up and made out a lion from among the heavens. Humans will see relevance and form in anything, I guess. Because Leo looks to me very much like a Sphinx, which would be a cool creature to have as my Zodiac animal.

It's scarcely more than a week until my birthday now. It's not one of the big ones, and in the normal course of affairs I'd probably just have a few people out for drinks and call it a day. Which is still happening, but Adam also has some mysterious journey planned. Just a weekend outing, actually, my birthday being on a weekend this year, which, it already coming in August, seems a bit much. Let some other people have some fortune for their natal occasions. I've had plenty.