Poisonous Procrastination
Week of November 23rd to November 29th, 2021.
Your problem solving skills will be put to the test this week, Virgo—and I apologize for upsetting the traditional arc of storytelling here, but you will catastrophically fail.
Though you embody all of the classic list-making, busy-body traits of a traditional Virgo, you lack the follow through required to actually implement any of that knowledge and be of any use in problem solving arenas. Sure, you can identify the steps that could be taken to absolving an issue, but that’s where the effort usually ends.
Often the best you can do to meet the moment is sweep whatever problem you encounter under the rug. Unless the problem scares you, in which case even a broom length distance is too close for comfort, and you won’t even muster up the courage for your negligent sweeping.
Your husband has been out of town for a couple weeks, which is the moment your apartment has apparently been waiting for to turn its back on you completely. The first few acts of household duplicitousness are small, small enough that you imagine you can delay solving them for a little while. Oh how cataclysmically wrong you’ll be, Virgo.
Unfortunately, these tiny domiciliary issues are just the beginning. Merely a few small notes that plan on building to a symphony of domestic treachery. It will begin with the radiators, as is tradition. Usually a frothy deluge emerges from the radiator’s spout, a reliable tragedy. This year you’ll be prepared, you’ll keep a glass poised and ready beside both of your radiators, so that whenever they begin their tantrums, you’ll be safe.
This year the radiators will try a new leak on for size, and seep water from truly anywhere and everywhere onto the floor below. You keep a bath towel at the ready beside each radiator, which can contain some of the sporadic flooding, but you still must tend to the pond beneath each of your radiators at least eight times a day.
After a while the constant radiator clean up kills your spirit, so you radically pivot to deciding the problem does not exist. This is a colossal mistake. The water will pool on the ground on either side of your home. These tranquil waters will begin doing what they do best, attracting vermin. You will encounter one such vermin (cockroach) in your bedroom, jauntily making his way to the watering hole your neglect has facilitated. You’ll scream, he’ll freeze.
You’ll run to the kitchen to get your trusty bottle of Raid. You’ll accidentally spray the Raid all over the sink due to nerves, and your confusion regarding the little plastic straw attached to the spout (what’s the advantage to that?). You see that radiator water has made a pool in the kitchen too, but first things first!
You race back to the bedroom armed with your precious Raid. Miraculously the cockroach is still within sight and you’ll hose him down whilst shrieking. He barely reacts to the poison, and buries himself between your floorboards (to die, you tell yourself, hoping the answer isn’t actually, to roost).
Once the cockroach burrows fully out of sight, you will scoot your bedroom rug over to cover the affected area. Half literally sweeping your problems under the rug. As you tend to the rest of the tragedy caused by your abandonment, you consider how this could have gone differently.
As you mop the creek running through your kitchen, you admit to yourself that part of you did believe that if you did not look at them, these problems may vanish on their own.
As you boil water to pour all over the sink (because you’re just kind of operating under the assumption that poison has the same rules as germs) you acknowledge your procrastination for problem solving actually might be leading to more problems that need solving.
As you open windows to let out the suffocating stench of Raid, you feel a sense of calm, the peaceful confidence of a finished job. When the open window subsequently results in you being violently woken from your slumber by drunk people and cement trucks, you vow to never pretend your problems don’t exist ever again.
I hate to spoil this for you Virgo, but this will not be the last time you learn this lesson. This is not even the second to last time you must learn this lesson, or the three hundred and thirty ninth to last time either. I do applaud your recognition (however brief) of your participation in your own demise. My hope is that you begin to meet problems as they arise, instead of waiting for them to fester and attract unkillable vermin. Take your beloved to-do lists and start to actually do!
The Skies Insist:
You listen to NYX’s song Fire Leap. This spooky song can make even the most troublesome home tasks feel cinematic. If you’re sick of dissociating while you clean up the deluge emerging from your radiator, and instead wish to feel like you are a fascinating piece of an important narrative arc, then this is the song for you.