Ushering in autumn

Last night my friend Tricia came over for dinner. Afterwards, she gave me a tarot card reading.

I've known Tricia for about a year or so, ever since she started working at the bookstore. She's the type of person I am consistently drawn to: warm, funny, creative, smart, unpretentious, and very grounded and calm at the center. (I adore a number of people who don't fit all of those descriptors . . . but if you do, watch out, because you will have a hanger-on for life.) I'm not as sure why she wants to spend time with me, since I think "flaky" best describes my outside-of-work behavior with her, but I welcome her friendship.

Tricia and I are the same age but have had very different lives. She grew up in a well-to-do family in Massachusetts but somehow ended up in the foster care system, which mercifully did not destroy her, and is pretty much estranged from her siblings. Her now ex-husband, whom I've never met but have a rather low opinion of, left her for some high school sweetheart he became reacquainted with on Facebook. Unfathomable. At least he left her the widescreen TV! Besides toiling at the bookstore, Tricia also works part-time for a guy who manufactures some sort of specialty sports accoutrement (from the way she described it, it's basically a doormat that basketball players rub their shoes on before they take the court), as well as doing freelance photography and writing. She has a new puppy named Noah.

We had so much fun talking before and during dinner that it was nearly nine o'clock before she broke out the tarot cards.

Tricia learned how to read tarot cards when she was a teenager. She was painfully shy, which is hard to imagine now, and her foster mother taught her how in hopes that it could be an ice breaker for Tricia at parties Turns out, Tricia has a real knack for it: last night I learned that, before she moved to L.A., she worked for a time in another state as a professional psychic, giving tarot readings for a living. She told me a few stories about some of the funny, weird, and often desperate people who became her clients. I assured her that I was not looking for her to answer all my deepest, most burning questions, that I was just hoping for a fun reading, and she seemed pleased by that.

She owns a number of decks, and last night she brought one called the Spiral Tarot, a darkly beautiful modern deck. (The image above shows three of the cards.) She had me select 10 cards at random and then she laid them out in a pattern called the Celtic Cross and launched right into my reading. She noted that I had four Major Arcana cards in the spread, meaning that the events she was going to foretell had a strong likelihood of occurring, and then startled me right off the bat by saying someone close to me, probably a family member, would announce her pregnancy in the next 6 to 9 months. All the females in my family are either too old or WAY too young to be having kids, so this is quite a mystery. Tricia said the news would first be met with shock and ill feelings, but that it will ultimately turn out to be a good thing.

A lot of my reading had to do with my career. Tricia predicted that I will experience an unexpected job change in the next 3 to 4 months but that I won't be leaving the bookstore -- rather, new responsibilities and authority will be thrust upon me, and that I will rise to the challenge. (She also said it would mean making more money, which I know for a fact won't be happening.) She said I need to work harder to draw more attention to myself and take credit for my accomplishments, which may be more a simple observation than a revelation in the cards. She also predicted that in the next year I will experience a big personal change that is related to writing. (All the swords in the Nine of Swords and Justice cards told her that.) The end result will be overwhelmingly positive, but it means working hard in the meantime on a variety of writing projects -- she specifically mentioned this blog, as well as movie reviews and a cookbook. She definitely sensed a connection between food and my writing. She said I will achieve well-deserved recognition for my writing, which is mildly embarrassing even for me to type.

Other tidbits from the reading: a male member of the family may move east, even as far as the East Coast, because of a great job offer; two of my sisters will start dating in the next year, and one of those new relationships will become serious; there will be some surprising and interesting genealogical revelations for my family; and within the next 2 to 3 years Sean's job will change again into something more profitable and noteworthy, doing something he loves and is very good at, perhaps in the film industry. If any of these things come to pass, I'll let you know.

Tricia concluded by saying that the cards told her I'm too hard on myself and am my own worst critic, and that I need to cut myself some slack. "You wouldn't think that to look at you," she said, "but that's what it says here."

For dinner we had Three-Onion Quiche (recipe here) and a green salad. Today the whole house smells of grilled onions.