Saturday morning
2002-04-13 || 10:57 a.m.

I'm feeling less angry today. I've had a good night's sleep and I don't feel like ranting at all at the moment.

I'm just trying to stay calm and focus on what is important and forget about the crap. So basically I'm not going to think about Maria at all and if she snipes at me I'm going to take a deep breath and calmly point out what it is I don't like ... (as if!). But I will stay calm.

I've been a good mum so far today. I got up at 9.30am which is good for me on a Saturday because I do tend towards sluttiness and I've made Rebecca boiled eggs. Boiled for just the right amount of time so she could dip her soldiers in. Its funny being 13 I think. Caught between wanting to be grown up and wanting to hold onto your childhood. Your emotions are all over the place and you're either screaming like a banshee or wanting a hug.

I did have one horrible thought when I woke up this morning and that was that I suddenly remembered that when I was working out my money for the month I forgot about the Council Tax and as that has now gone up to �850.00 per annum that means I forgot to deduct �85.00. This is a bit of a bummer as when I did my money yesterday I had �100.00 left until the 25th when I get paid. But never mind. We can always have baked beans on toast for a week if necessary. This is actually not too bad nutritionally if you have no money. My friend Debbie ate it every day for six months so she could save enough money to go to New York. My friend Jon's brother bought a car with his grant (now just a historical memory) when he started university and with the remaining money he bought a sack of potatoes. After a few months he was so ill he had to be hospitalized and had to have the next year off!

Mind you I think the most disgusting story is the one about Ceri's friend who got really drunk at a beach party and fell asleep. Whilst he was asleep a seagull shat in his mouth and he was in hospital for 7 days. Nice.

I'm still having really strange dreams. Sort of archetypal rather than detailed. This worries me. Firstly I wonder whether we are all just archetypes anyway or do we have any individuality. Then I worry that having dreams with archetypal features means I'm being prepared for something. I have this very strong feeling that I will not collect a pension. Along with this my life line is not that long and is certainly not well defined. Actually my palms are quite interesting. Years ago when I was in the pub with my friends there was this guy there who claimed to be able to read palms. We all wanted it done and he read everyone's - saying the usual crap about tall, dark, handsome strangers. Then when it came to mine, I held it out and he just refused to read it. It was a bit disconcerting.

I went to a craft fair about ten years ago and had my palm read by this really old guy. First of all he asked me if I smoked and when I said I did he told me to stop or I would have heart problems. (I did stop a year later). (Mind you anyone could say that, couldn't they!). He also pointed out my head and heart lines and the way my head line instead of going across the palm in a sort of gentle arc, shoots off down towards my wrist. He said that this showed that I lived too much in my imagination and that it could lead to problems. He was also very accurate about what ages I had relationships at and said something about the future but I find that, as with horoscopes, they can be quite good retrospectively but wildly inaccurate re the future. Actually I can't see how this could be, if there was anything in it, because if all time is happening always, then the past and the future are no different.

So a few more things about palms. I can only speak about mine but lots of people have similarities. I'm never sure which of my palms is my dominant (now) palm and which is my possibility palm. Usually it goes by which hand you use but being awkward I'm ambidextrous. I write with my right hand, but I can equally write with my left hand but I do most other things with my left hand. Anyway, assuming my right hand is my dominant one I started out more emotionally balanced than I am now. If you cup your hand and look at your heart and head lines they should be equally deeply etched. Well on my right hand my heart line is well deeper than my head. If you have lots of fine lines radiating from your thumb to your lifeline this indicates problems and troubles during your life. However if you have a double life line like me (a finer line inside towards your thumb) then this means you will have the strength to handle these difficulties.

If you have like a web of fine lines all over your hand obscuring many of your lines then this means your probably a water sign and guided more by your emotions than by practicalities.

Anyway, that's enough about that. I did not intend to write about palms at all. Whenever I think about things like this I am just left with more questions than answers. Which brings me right back to the archetype thing. If, as it seems, horoscopes, palmistry, tarot etc are good at generalities but not good at specifics is this an indication that we are archetypes? Why are there twelve star signs and why are they split into 4 categories? What is the significance of the numbers 12 and 4? There were twelve disciples. Twelve months. Are there twelve Chinese signs? There were four humours. Four seasons.

I was thinking about the bit in the Bible that says we were made in God's image. I was thinking about what that means to me and the best I can come up with is that there is a life force in the universe present in everything - even stones and things that seem inanimate. This is what some give the name 'God'. If you think about a river then we are cups of water taken from the river. So we are the same in essence but have become something different, something that will exist somewhere else and that can have different things happen to it.

So ultimately we are all one and the same.