Mabel discovers her inner New Age girl (turns out she's a Butterick pattern)

When witchyfriend Mae was over last week I was giving her le tour of le apartment, and when we reached my office corner I had to explain something to her.

First there was Le School
I graduated from my MA in 2008, the goal of which was to teach Cegep. (In Quebec you finish high school one year earlier, go to a sort of community college for two years called Cegep, and then only do three years to get your BA. Or you do a 3 year technical program.) I've been applying for jobs, but nothing yet.  <-- Mae knew all that already.

But when I graduated I'd just done both an MA and BA, so 5 years of political science reading, and I was tired of nonfiction books. (I already had an earlier BA in English Lit.) In the intervening years I've kept up with what's going on in the world, but in terms of thicky-books I dove back into fiction. I also write fiction, so that side of me was really starved. AND I worked in a book store, so it was part of my job.

Mae knew all that too.

Then there were Le Books
What I pointed out to her was the sorry state of my school book shelves, which house the kinds of materials I would want to eventually teach. Mind you, at Cegep you don't assign material at this level; but I would need to refer to these books to plan lessons, to review my own knowledge, and so forth.

I said to Mae: "I'm generally not a New Agey sort of gal, though I don't look down on these beliefs because I do, after all, believe in God. But overall the sciencee part of my brain tends to fight against most of it, and some elements--like extreme "law of attraction" I find downright distasteful.

"BUT. But. There is a teensy, tiny, wee mystical voice in my head... that says I will not get a teaching job until I clean up these book shelves."

And Mae just gave me a pitying look that said: Well, um, YES. But out loud she said gave it some sort of rational patina to make me feel better. I confess I don't remember what she said, because I already felt better just admitting it. I felt ready to embrace my inner mystic.

Then there was La Powder Puff
Later Mae--she of the scenty things--was showing me some special perfumes coming soon to her online store, and we found that my skin tended to turn perfumes to a powdery-flower smell, like something from my childhood.

So I figure she's this 1970s Butterick pattern that I'm pretty sure my mother made me a costume from  when I was a kid. I remember the gold rope belt.

Practical uses of La Butterick
So far my Butterick Mystic is doing a good job. Today I wanted to move one lamp, and ended up cleaning up the entire mess of cables that connects our TV, internet etc. to make it all cleaner and nice. Then learned in Julieland that Mercury is in retrograde which screws with communications and machines. (Her husband accidentally kicked off the surge protector while she was writing about it, and she lost her whole post.)

I'm not surprised BM was in tune on that one. Mercury in Retrograde reminds me of Swiss Girl, who first read the term in her Young Miss horoscope when we were 13, and thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. She brings it up to this day and we're 37. So I have fond, friendship feelings about Mercury in Retrograde.

I'm ready for the new New Age me. :-)

___
PS - Remind me to tell you sometime about The Idiots Guide to Astrology. Most hilarious and accurate astrology book.