Missoula News

Column: Making It In Missoula

Ants In My Pants For Saturn’s Return

By Big Sis, 10-31-07

When I moved here I was young.  Carefree.  And completely uninterested in conversations where my older friends talked about things like recurring joint injuries, ticking biologic clocks, and “Saturn Returns.”

When these topics came up, I just drank another beer, hiked faster, and celebrated being 22 and fully in control of my planets. 

But now I’m 27, the tendons in my knees require lots of ice, and I’m not sure what the hell Saturn is doing.  In fact, it’s quite possible that my Pluto’s in full retrograde and Venus has fled to check out a new galaxy.  All I know for sure is (cosmologically speaking): I’ve got ants in my pants.

I can trace back to the exact minute the ants started biting my butt—late February 2007.  I was sitting in a salon chair, mid-way through my bi-annual hair trim.  Following tradition from the last 20 years, my hairdresser snipped off a scant inch or two, leaving me with the same weighty mane I’ve carted around for decades. 

And I started to squirm inside.  And outside.  Until I blurted out for her to just cut if off.

Sure, I know it’s just hair.  Or, as my neuro-toxicologist friend prefers calling it: “some silly vanity all wrapped up in a ball of dead cells that hang lifeless from our heads.” But I swear that when my ball of vanity dropped on the floor, this restlessness was released in full force.  In the past eight months, I’ve been on more dates than the past 27 years combined (which equals about six).  I changed jobs, traveled to the southern hemisphere, taken up several new hobbies, and am actually considering moving out of Missoula someday. 

Ants, I tell you.  Or, according to many hippie-groovy Missoula folks, maybe it’s my moons colliding or “Saturn Returns.”

Aside from the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m a Gemini, I know diddly-squat about astrology.  But because I’ve been curious about this restless feeling, I decided to research “Saturn Returns” for approximately 12 minutes online.  Here’s what I discovered: in tandem with its 29.5-year orbit around the sun, Saturn suddenly pops back into your life somewhere between your 27th and 30th year.  It whips back through for a second showing between years 58 and 60, with a final farewell finale around age 86-88. 

Busy planet, huh?  Here’s how Wikipedia defines what we have to look forward to when “Saturn Returns:” challenge, fear, doubt, confusion, difficulty, seriousness, heaviness, and hard lessons.  If that sounds less than fun, we also get by-products of structure, accomplishment, reflection, power, prestige, maturity, and order.  Basically, Saturn’s pesky first re-appearance signifies the true onset of adulthood (read: responsibility).

What with all this impending “heaviness” and “adulthood” coming into my orbit right now, it’s no wonder I have ants in my pants. 

One of my friends also at the brink of Saturn’s re-appearance, H-Factor, (check out her “You Made It” column here) seconded my feeling of restlessness at her recent bon-voyage gathering.  “I totally feel ya, Big Sis.  Most of my friends our age made big decisions this year…you know, having a baby or getting engaged.  Me, I decided to move to Macedonia.”

Indeed, the announcements of life-changing events are erupting now among my peers, and they usually run along the “white-picket fence” theme.  For instance, in the past four months alone, three of my girlfriends have gotten engaged to men named Matt. 

Meanwhile, I’m with H-Factor.  Moving to Macedonia is way more appealing than gathering more responsibilities—and all the good Matts are taken, anyway. 

Basically, the ants in my pants can be summed up astrologically as this: my Saturn is moving totally backwards.  It seems to be returning from the exact opposite direction as most of my friends’ planets.  I’m running far from any white-picket fences or adult-like big decisions, and heading deep into the wide open meadows of 20-something-freedom. 

These days, I can’t imagine committing to someone longer than dinner lasts.  My attention span at work and at home makes a gnat’s look impressive, and I’m constantly flitting between people and places. I’m even considering getting rid of my plants so that nothing living depends upon me—that way I can flee to Macedonia more easily.

Deep down, far below the current pair of ansty-pants I’m now happily sporting, I know I want my own white-picket fence one day.  But at this rate, I doubt it’ll surround me until Saturn’s second trip around my moons.

Read more about life and love in the Garden City at www.newwest.net/makingit

Drop Big Sis a line--or a story--at bigsis@newwest.net.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.