"Again?"

The 8th house is filled with stuff you don't talk about in mixed company: sex, death, and other people's money. If you want to figure out whether something is an 8th house matter, think about whether you'd be comfortable talking to a random stranger (or a judgmental acquaintance) about it. If the answer's no, begin to suspect the 8th house.

Gossipy teenagers love 8th house stuff because gossipy teenagers tend not to have to deal with insurance companies or retirement plans (investments in things like stocks are 8th house because you're dealing with stuff that doesn't primarily belong to you). So the 8th house is a more fun place when you're younger, then you age and you start hearing "so and so died" or "did you hear that his wife was cheating the whole time?" and you just feel awful instead of intrigued. Similar to the feeling you get when you read an obituary and they don't give a cause of death, which is self-explanatory at this point: that's extremely 8th house.

I have several 8th house-themed transits going: one of them is years-long and another is a few months long. I wrote the email about Pluto retrograding back into Capricorn and how I didn't want it to be there, felt slightly too overdramatic ("it can't be that bad") and then, the next day, went on my merry way to work...only, when I walked to my car, I realized it looked weird. It had a big, fresh dent in it: a victim of a hit-and-run. As badly as I wanted to just go to work and not deal with it, I had to wait an hour for the police so I could get a report number so I could file an insurance claim. Because 8th house is insurance. My inner gossipy teenager was inconsolable at how boring this was. (I experienced Pluto transiting my 8th house when I was an actual teenager, and it was as high drama as it gets and did not involve much in the way of insurance or mutual funds, so when I have to do 8th house stuff and it's boring, well, that sucks.) The rest of me was furious at the upcoming cost and inconvenience. A sliver of me knew that this was some 8th house shit, so was this really that much of a surprise?

Some of you may remember that my parked car getting hit has occurred before: 3 years ago, my previous car was totaled when it was hit by a drunk driver and pushed half a block into an intersection by said drunk driver (it looked like I had caused the accident and the police had a brief manhunt for yours truly before figuring out that the other guy was drunk. Meanwhile, I was home, and very surprised at what my car had gotten up to and very unwilling to take a call from the police department at 6:30 AM... until my doorbell started ringing and I had to go find out what they wanted in person. Also, the police called my parents, so my dad was texting me "the police are looking for you." At my big age, sheesh.) This was during peak COVID when new or used cars were hard to come by, so dealing with insurance and new wheels was a many weeks-long saga. So when I told people what happened this time, everyone's reaction was "...again?" My car was not parked in the same place this time. I have been taking care to park it in "safe," low-traffic places. Not safe enough, apparently. But every professional who looked at the dent remarked that it was strange because it looked like something square hit it. The most likely culprit was a lawn truck that backed into my car while turning around. Oh well. But to be clear: while this time felt like a re-run of the previous incident, the energy causing both incidents was the same, by which I mean it was Pluto.

In addition to 8th house influences, I have stuff transiting my 3rd house, which is travel around your immediate area and communications. Combine them, though, and you get "bad news." Several people in my vicinity are dealing with death, and I am either keeping secrets or talking to the other people who know the secrets about how to support the people who are dealing with death. Again, my inner teenager is despairing because this is so lame and sad, but the adult version of me knows that gossipy shit is painful for most of the people involved (read: the adult version of me learned empathy along the way).

I have also had several in-town adventures involving the auto body shop, which turned out to be an insane place filled with characters, which was more of just a 3rd house "discover a mystical wonderland you didn't know existed." I would go hang out there and eat popcorn if I could get away with it, because their lot is too small for their inventory, so no one can figure out where to park cars, they mix up the paperwork, and they don't know whose car key is whose, but the actual finished product is amazing and they replaced the outer shell of my car door in one day, and it's like new.

Scores:

• Auto body shop: 11/10 (extra point for being highly amusing, plus the main guy who helped me was cute)

• Insurance company: 3/10 (did not send paperwork where it needed to go, causing me to call and yell)

• Death: 0/10 (STOP IT)