Has life seemed especially screwed up lately? Have you missed trains, ordered the wrong shoes online, accidentally sent offensive emails? Well, there may be a good reason for that: Mercury is in retrograde.

I beg your Mercury what?!?

The planet Mercury -- it's in retrograde. Have you heard your friends mentioning this? I'm about to get super flaky on you here and start talking astrology. Why? Because it's fun -- and because the stars don't lie! Seriously, though, Mercury is in retrograde from February 24 through March 17, and it's supposed to wreak havoc in your life, especially in the communications department. Here's the scoop on this wild ride.

Christie O'Sullivan of Average Moms Wear Capes is smart, down-to-earth, and completely irreverent. She is the kind of blogger you read and then think: I wish she were my best friend.

She shares her wise life observations with The Stir (lucky us!) as part of our "12 Days of Gratitude" series for the holidays. See her post below:

I can start this post with so many quips about how things can change in an instant and how you have to appreciate living, but when you put it that way, it seems so trite and so trivial. So overused. Anything can happen. There’s no guarantee for tomorrow. Carpe diem. 

Past Life Regression is based on the idea that our past experiences affect our current lives. I went to a well-known therapist in the field, Norton Berkowitz Ph.D., to find out more about my own past lives in the hopes of healing from various physical and emotional pains. What you are about to read is the story of a life I once led.

(This is the second post in the series. For more info on past life regression and the hypnosis process, check out the first installment, "She Never Came Back.")

I was standing on what seemed to be a dirt path.

What kind of shoes was I wearing? Dr. Berkowitz asked.

My shoes were soft leather ... they felt like slippers, I explained. My hair was chin length, maybe a bit longer, and strawberry blonde ... I was wearing what felt like tights or stockings, but thicker. More like leggings.

Was I male or female? Dr. Berkowitz wanted to know.

Male, I said.

My husband was driving me home from chemo last week and made the comment, looking at the sky, "Now we just need a good hard rain."

Within a couple of minutes, the blue skies turned dark and we could see rain falling ahead. Soon we were in the midst of an old-fashioned rainstorm. A good, hard rain. 

I said to him, "Your wish is obviously the universe's command."

His response was, "If my wish was the universe's command, you wouldn't have cancer."

I thought about this for a minute and replied, "I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to have cancer."

Obviously if I die from this cancer, the following statement may prove not to be true. But right now I'm feeling like cancer might be the best thing that ever happened to me. 

Leave it to Oprah: Transcendental Meditation has been around for decades, attracting such famous followers as The Beatles and David Lynch, but now that Winfrey practices TM ... well, people are really paying attention.

Hey, after hearing Winfrey talk about her own experience with TM on last night's episode of Oprah's Next Chapter -- she even visited a town in Iowa where an estimated third of the population practices -- I'm paying attention, too. Transcendental Meditation has been known to reduce anxiety and even blood-pressure (which makes sense, considering the link between stress and cardiovascular disease), promote feelings of well-being, and improve self-image.

None of this is news. But now that Oprah says it's true ... well, I'm sold. (Come on, how often is the woman wrong?)

Here are the basics of Transcendental Meditation ...

It makes sense that most of us mistakenly believe that it's younger women who are more likely to die from breast cancer than any other group: They're not screened as aggressively as women in later stages of life and, therefore, aren't diagnosed until their cancer is in a later stage, which lowers their rate for survival. But actually that thinking has it backwards.

According to a new study, it's older women who are more likely to die from breast cancer. Specifically, it showed that women over 75 years old were 63 percent more likely to die of the cancer than women younger than 65. And the reasons for this disparity are more than a little alarming.

What you are about to read is totally REAL and creepier than a Hollywood horror movie. Welcome to Scary Story Week on The Stir ...

Sometimes I think other people boasting about their extrasensory perception, or ESP, is as laughable as when Karen Smith calls her "ESPN" a "fifth sense" in Mean Girls. Psychics, crystal balls, reading random creases on your palm, fortune tellers, fortune cookies ... it's all got to be one big joke, right?

But there have been a couple times in my life when I've had to take a step back and ask myself: "Wow, do I have ESP?"

Random things, like seeing flashes of something I'll happen to see out and about or on TV later, or something to that effect, I've usually copped to random neurons flying around in my brain and sheer coincidence. But twice now, I'm convinced that my mind "sensed" when tragedy was going to strike.

Hi. If you are very religious and/or easily offended, you should skip this post. Unless you get off on being offended and righteously indignant about ridiculous things. Then, you should totally stick around. Welcome. You totally owe me.

Today we’re going to talk about kids and religion. Personally, I’m not that into organized religion, but I do believe in letting your children find spirituality themselves. That’s why in our house we talk about Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster objectively, so that our 6-year-old can one day make a decision for herself.