Mercury in Retrograde is my favorite blanket excuse for whatever is going wrong. Your fruit-loving kid suddenly whining about every brown spot on their banana? Mercury Retrograde. Your mascara wand breaks? Mercury Retrograde. Dryer doesn’t finish drying the soccer uniform you needed about two minutes ago? Mercury Retrograde. When life’s most annoying crises stack up, you can either yell at your spouse and eat Nutella right out of the jar, or you can shrug and blame it on some mysterious planetary force. Sometimes I even whisper it to myself like a pep talk. Why stress when you know Mercury is in Retrograde and she’s going to screw things up for you no matter how hard you try?
Mercury has been in Retrograde since April 1, but it is now officially over today, April 25. But don’t let that lull you into a false sense of security — shit can still get weird and you can still feel off. You’re going to have to find something new to blame when the vibes are off.
So in honor of the planets aligning and acting the way they’re supposed to (at least for a few months), I’ve got a list of reasons to give when somebody asks you why you’re so grouchy. You can’t blame Mercury anymore, but you can sure blame these things.
See? There’s so much more to blame than the alignment of one planet. Lucky us.