Giddy-yup

Hello again.

It has recently come to my attention that 2014 will be the Year of the Horse.  As in the Chinese and Japanese Zodiac.

I am rather fond of Horse years, largely because I was born in 1966, which was also a Horse year.    This equine connection pleases me and puts me in the mind-set of upcoming good luck.  I'm not saying this has worked for me in the past, but hey, there is a first time for everything.

It should be noted here that my idealistic belief in good luck solely based on zodiac horses runs directly contrary to  tales in a number of Asian countries (Japan included)  of the usual fates of people, and most notably women born  in 1966.

In the Chinese zodiac (upon which leans the Japanese zodiac beliefs), in addition to the 12 cute animals dashing around the calendar, there are also elements (fire, wood, earth, water and metal).  Combined with the 12 animals, this means that each combination of element and animal repeats itself every 60 years.

And 1966 was the year of the Fire Horse.  Element, Fire.  Animal, Horse. In Japanese, this is called  hinoeuma.

Which especially  for a woman, evidently, is not a good thing.  In fact, I have perused a number of population graphs detailing births in 1966....and on each chart there is a sharp downward spike centered on 1966.

It seems that people just were a  wee bit afraid of having a Fire Horse child, and especially wary of that child being a daughter who would grow into a Fire Horse woman.

And considering the beliefs surrounding Fire Horse women, I can rather understand the hesitancy.  We Fire Horse women are supposed to be serious bad luck, capable of destroying finances, being utterly terrible mothers and driving the men in our lives to ruin and early deaths.

Before writing this, I spent quite a bit of time searching the Internet, skipping from site to site,  reading newspaper articles, astrology websites and blogs, looking at population graphs and a wide variety of graphics.  Predictably I found varying levels of belief in the terrors of Fire Horse folks.  

In the end, all I can really rely upon I suppose is how I live my own life.  And I am pleased to say that while we are not rich, our lack of millionaire status is not utterly my doing.  Likewise, Patrick and Aya are healthy, happy teenagers (well, as happy as teenagers can be I suppose).  As for the bad luck prediction, I'm not going to make any judgements on that for fear of jinxing myself.  However the evidence points to our periodic bouts of normal bad luck being less the fault of me being a Fire Horse, and more due to the ebb and flow of life itself.

So as I sit here in our icy kitchen, huddled in layers in front of a tiny space heater, I only have one lingering question about being a Fire Horse.....

if I'm a FIRE  Horse, why am I so darn cold?!  

Sheesh.

Until next time....