Once in a Blue Moon

I am so excited that tonight on my evening walk, I'll get to see A BLUE MOON. Wheeeeee...a blue moon!!! I am a true stargazer living a half life in a city that drowns out most of the coolest of astronomical events.  But the moon is, like, right there.  And I'll get to see this one without an app or anything.  I'm a moon kid in a night sky candy store today.

I am. a lunatic. (Although I'd like to believe I'm more the shake-your-head-she's-nuts kind of enjoyable lunatic and less the bipolar mentally ill version originally intended by use of the term in early law).

A picture of the last blue moon, in August 2013, rising over the isle of Elba,
notable for blue moons rising and Napoleon's exile.  

As this helpful video from the fine folks at NASA explains, the idea of a Blue Moon being an astronomical event is fairly new, dating back to just the mid-20th century and has something to do with the differences between a lunar month and calendar month blah blah, sciencey blah.  But the idea of it representing something absurd, rare, or bizarre goes back well into the 16th Century.  As Nasa people can be, the video gets a little science nerdy awfully fast and makes clear that the blue moon has *nothing* to do with color...unless there's been a massive volcano that has just exploded in your view path...I watched it no less than four times.

In this little life of mine, this blue moon definitely seems to fall right in line with the other list of events that are very rare, unexpected, and totally absurd to me.  I've been walking around for days just muttering "How did this happen?" in tones running the gamut from hysterical and terrified to the luckiest girl, Mary-Tyler-Mooreing my sassy beret up in the fresh air of opportunity.

It's just been a weird time.  Allow me to pay it homage by nominating, Oscar-style, the most absurd moments of my most recent history:

And in the category for most surreal life events:
1. Sleeping nine hours a night for the past 14 days. 
It was impossible to know how much energy I didn't have before this started actually happening.
2. Applying to Whole Foods for a job.
This is not only weird unto itself (and the opposite end of the Receiving my Doctorate) but the application process is intense.  I had to answer a battery of questions that dug into the deepest recesses of my soul.  And then wait to hear if I got an interview.  But listen, a girl's gotta eat...so she might as well feed organically off the 20% employee discount and benefits.  If I get the job...
3. Baking, cooking, and cleaning...and loving it. 
It's amazing how these can happen when you have unlimited hours.  You really can have everything.  Except a job.
4. Driving on one tank of gas for well over a month.
Absurd.
5. Realizing I have forgotten details of almost everything for the past two years. 
I can't remember names (very weird) and sometimes faces (this literally never happens) and people tell me stories about places I've been with them and I have zero recollection.  It's really something.  Also wonderfully coincidental
6. Just randomly running into people I haven't seen in years.
It's been a game of This is Your Life around here.  People that I haven't seen in six, seven, ten years just appearing in front of me as I walk down the sidewalk or...in Whole Foods.

I could keep going but the point is that I'm very aware of a fundamental transition taking place.  These six things have just happened recently but if I back it out months, this has been a bizarre and unsettling time.  There is some kind of unconventional turmoil happening that's not comfortable, necessarily, but very interesting.  As an admitted voyeur sometimes of my own life, I've been rapt by it.

I wonder what will happen.

But then, even with the rarest events--blue moons included--they fall on a predicable schedule.  We know the next one will happen in 2018.  So I'm guessing, everything will work itself out.  So for now, I'm just riding the wave and seeing where it takes me.