It’s not just you! I admit I can be a little absent-minded. But absent-mindedness doesn’t explain the confusion I experience under Mercury retrograde. We’re in it again from September 18 to October 9, 2015. Here are some recent incidents:

An agency sent me a PDF attachment to print and sign. I did not receive it. They tried three times, and it was not in the usual Spam folder they expected. Lost somewhere in cyberspace! They finally faxed it to me, and it looked so bad I needed to retype the whole form. Neither of us knew what happened. Re-try and re-do are Mercury retrograde keywords, but it’s always a little annoying.

I’d written to the U.S. Immigration Service for my grandmother’s records: I requested a search, they found her file and told me the number. I then paid for the records they’d found. I finally received a form letter from them saying there were no records! A typical Mercury retrograde mix-up. I followed-up with an e-mail and actually got a phone call in return, which I missed. The woman had left me a voice message with her phone number, but her name was garbled. I called back and left a message but have not heard from her since. A woman from the National Archives who’d recently been helpful confirmed that the file did exist and suggested I write a manager.

My e-mail said it was temporarily not recognized by my sister’s server. I sent the note to another address but she got both of them anyway.

On the plus side: I put a $10 bill into the machine to pump up my library card account. It read it as $20! In this Pluto in Capricorn world, dealing with all the bureaucracy has become extremely complicated. I would’ve tried to correct it, but it’s just too much trouble. Not under Mercury retrograde.

I just heard an NPR article on the science of mis-communication! Wonderful timing. Their answer is that we all make unwarranted assumptions. But obviously Mercury retrograde has something to do with it. Be forewarned!