Mars will meet your ruler Neptune ...

The next 12 months are going to be exceptionally good for me, I told my wife, reading from my horoscope in the newspaper.

“It has all been planned by the stars, right up to December of 2015, and they are going to work for me, so I will see you later,” I told her, hoping to have a few happy hours of me-time at the club.

“What does my horoscope say?” she asked. “Umm, what’s your sign?” I asked, scanning the pages and immediately regretted asking, since I should have known such an important piece of information about my spouse.

I quickly looked up S Notes on my smartphone, found her date of birth, went on Google and found out her astrological sign and started reading: “Mars will meet your ruler Neptune in March, so be prepared for the beginning of a powerful new cycle. Wow, It sounds better than mine, like Gandalf prophesying good times for Middle Earth,” I said.

I do not remember my wife ever asking me what my birth sign was before we got married, but it was a big thing during my college days. “Let me guess what your sign is”, a classmate would say. “I know it is Gemini. You are such a two-faced talker. Yak, yak, yak, all the time. You know what a good pet would be for your sign? A Parrot!” she would scream and laugh. When you are a cusp between two signs like me, then life becomes a lot harder as the stars and the Moon and Jupiter and the Sun, all want to control your life, creating havoc.

Because of this awkward mixing up of my signs, my daily horoscope reads something like this: “It is going to be a wonderful morning as you drive to work, but expect some thunderclouds by the afternoon, expect an accident, but it will not be serious. Watch your diet as your health is delicate until lunchtime. Evening, there will be some strained words with your partner, but you will make up after she orders take-away. ”

“Waaat?” I screamed to myself. “Who makes up these things? How can I have an accident when I do not drive to work anymore? I work from home now. And how can an accident not be serious unless it has a police rating on the daily accidents that describes each of them as, “Mildly serious”, “Extremely mind-blowing” or simply, “Stupid dude drove too fast”.

I decided that I could do a better job of writing horoscopes and went to an online site and it invited me to download a questionnaire and asked me to fill out my details. “Be sure to give the information correctly,” it said. “What is the correct time of your birth? Make sure to put am or pm after the time,” it said.

“Hello, do I have a birth certificate?” I asked my wife. “Look in the accordion file under the heading, Expenses,” she said. (Just in case you are wondering, my wife and I have endearing terms for each other. I call her ‘Hello’ and she calls me, ‘Look Here’. Like in, “Look Here, we are going grocery shopping at 8.”)

I could not find my birth certificate. In those days, there would be a lot of children-swapping in hospitals and the nurses and midwives would be the masters of your destiny: “Let’s give this girl to that couple and that boy to this couple.” So I am not really sure whether I am really me.

Anyway, I find solace in today’s horoscope that says: “To improve your financial status, get more money. Use words today to communicate your thoughts. Let your limitations guide you. Take an aspirin at the end of the day.”

Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@mahmood_saberi