I don't know why I suddenly remembered this story. Maybe because it is spring, and in spring firewood is about the last thing I think of, yet today in my travels I saw someone getting a truckload of firewood delivered. This happened very early on, perhaps even before we were Officially Married, so we're talking WELL over twenty years ago.

Anyway, Back In the Day, Mojo and her Favorite Husband were this cooperative machine-like team when it came to firewood. (Well, we still are, only lately we've gotten lazy and have it delivered instead of wasting our spare time scrounging around for it. But I digress.) We were renting a house with a wood stove in the basement. The Favorite Husband's job was to cut and collect the firewood from somewhere on the property, throw it in the pickup, drive back to the house, back up to the cellar hatchway and fling the firewood down into the cellar. My job was to lurk in the cellar and stack the wood while avoiding getting beaned with the firewood my Favorite Husband was flinging down upon me. You can probably surmise where this story is going to go, knowing the way Mojo's luck generally runs, but THIS time the story will run COUNTER to your guess!  MORE Mojo! »

So Mojo is not entirely sure, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but either Tuesday was Teacher Appreciation Day, or this whole week was Teacher Appreciation Week. I've seen it both ways, along with exhortations that I should thank the dozens of patient people through the years who have attempted to crack the amazingly thick piece of concrete that is Mojo's awesome heavy brain. Perhaps it was just one of those made-up Facebook memes. Like I said, too lazy to look it up.

Mojo has always appreciated all who have bothered to teach her things, whether they were the underpaid and underappreciated victims of the public school system or utter strangers who have taken the time to ask "What the HELL is wrong with you?" and then proceeded to set me straight. It is an uphill battle of Sisyphus... Sisipheen... Sisy... Herculean proportions. Mojo tries, but, you know. THINGS HAPPEN.

As it turns out, while Mojo was unaware of any Teacher Appreciation Days or Weeks or Parades or Whatnot, she was nonetheless participating anyway, and can now pretend that it was all on PURPOSE. Because Tuesday I ended up seeing my junior high art teacher, a lovely, patient woman I shall call Mrs. B. Mrs. B is one of those teachers you just ADORE, and though it's been over thirty years since I saw her, I've frequently wondered how she was and all that stuff. Wonder no more, for she recently joined my Favorite Mother's Tai Chi class at the senior center, which led to them talking about me behind my back (despite the THOUSANDS of students she has had through her career, she actually DID remember me, and cited various pieces of art to prove it), and eventually led to this pleasant reunion at the senior center, which then moved to the local Panera's. Where the Favorite Father, it turns out, was lurking (I'm not sure if he's doing Sudoku as he claims or merely flirting with the wait staff, but he's there, like, ALL THE TIME), so the four of us had a lovely brunchy-lunchy catchup time.  MORE Mojo! »

So lately Mojo has been reading and enjoying rage comics. They tend to be somewhat polarizing; some people like them, and some just can't STAND them. I was inspired for a couple of reasons: first, while you can draw your own, there is a growing library of faces and props that make the whole process fairly quick and painless. These things are so POORLY drawn--kinda on purpose--that they are a main source of irritation for the people who do not like such comics.

On the other hand, getting real emotion out of stick figures is quite an accomplishment, and the faces that have survived the process have really evolved to the point where you don't really have to say anything, you just put the face in the panel and everyone knows what you mean.  MORE Mojo! »

So one of Mojo's historically favorite birds has been the glamorous and colorful wood duck. I can't say why, except as an impressionable wee lass I was taken in by the oily iridescence of the males, and never quite got over it. Plus they nest in holes in the trees, way high up, and of COURSE baby ducks are the CUTEST THINGS IMAGINABLE, and these baby ducks climb their way out the opening of their nest and just JUMP.

It's pretty common in nature shows to show these poor tiny things leap into the abyss. They are usually all right, we are told: they are just these tiny balls of fluff, see, and they float like fluff down to the ground. Still, I don't much care for it, but nobody consulted me.  MORE Mojo! »

So Mojo has a neighbor--her closest neighbor, as a matter of fact, who still lives about a quarter mile away--who has had a couple of years of bad health. In and out of the hospital sort of thing. To complicate matters, he owns a couple of German Shepherds. The dogs are fairly well behaved, although a few times a year they get loose and come up and visit us.

We can't even see his house unless we walk down the driveway to the road, and then we have a straight shot at his house, a quarter mile away. And a couple of times a year, coming back from a hike, I occasionally see this bullet come tearing up the hill--one of the dogs got out, and now is making a scary beeline right for me. I've always stood my ground and given the dog a glaring of a lifetime, and the dog always skids to a stop about five feet away and then turns tail.

Ordinarily I don't mind dogs, and I wouldn't mind these dogs, except the owner himself (our neighbor) has warned me that ONE of the two, he is afraid, might actually bite someone one of these days. I would still be okay with that if it were a Yorkie or a dachshund, but a German Shepherd is a slight cause for worry. Mojo does not care to be dogbit, but if she were she'd rather it was some little rat dog and not the sort that the government uses to kill bad guys. But I digress. But despite our neighbor's warning, neither dog--I can't tell them apart--has shown any inclination to actually bite, thank heavens. But it has always been in the back of my mind.  MORE Mojo! »

Yes, even a pathetic old fuddy-duddy like Mojo can express herself the way the kids on the internet do, thereby pretending she is hip when in reality she's a couple of years behind the pack. But thanks to Dan Awesome's RageMaker, even someone as clueless as Mojo can make a rage comic! Before long I expect my Favorite Mother to join the trend!

So Mojo's heard about this book. I won't say the title or even get into the specific topic of said book. I will be generic and say it's on, umm, "Creativity". The reviews have been so universally (and suspiciously) stellar I've been thinking about buying it, just to see what all the fuss is about.

And here we run into a slight problem. Mojo is usually not Spontaneous Girl. Mojo does not whimsically throw money at something, no matter how much she has on her. No, Mojo is something of a stick-in-the-mud who has to be talked into things. So when I saw this book has all these foaming, raving reviews instead of saying "That's IT! I'll TAKE it!" Mojo is the sort to say "Hmmm, this sounds like a possibility. Let's do more research." Yeah, unless you really enjoy trying to talk people into doing things, friendship with Mojo is a trying ordeal at best.

So the reviews of this book--again, on, ahem, "creativity"--convinced me to to more research. And luckily for me, right now the author is on this big publicity tour (apparently it was just published a few months ago), so I have plenty of opportunities to read interviews with said author as well as LISTEN to interviews via podcasts.  MORE Mojo! »

So once again a bored Mojo attempts to create meaning for her life by taking pictures of penguins and dressing them up in other bird's plumage. For the record, we don't ask why, anymore. We just smile and nod, grateful that she has decided to focus her genius on something relatively harmless, like this, instead of idly whipping up the passions of an unthinking mob for her amusement, or some other equally destructive hobby.

Even if you don't know your birds--Mojo does not understand why people don't know or care about birds, but like I said, just keep smiling and nodding--even the extreme dullards among you should get this one (well, really, ALL of them thus far. I mean, it's not like I'm quizzing you on sparrows or warblers or anything like that). Hint: it's a member of the thrush family. Hint: it has almost NOTHING AT ALL to do with its European namesake, except they both have red breasteses and they're both birds. Hint: its Latin name will make the immature among you giggle like an idiot. Hint: it makes a silly cameo in one of Mojo's favoritest movies of all time--silly because this is an AMERICAN bird and not its European namesake.

Give up? Boy, are you dense and/or completely oblivious to your surroundings and/or not American, you commie bastard you.  MORE Mojo! »

Okay, so Mojo lost track of her Netflix queue. Stopped paying attention to it. As a result, the last batch wound up being three--count 'em, THREE--foreign films. With subtitles. Lots of sadness and drama, and not an explosion or a car chase in the lot.

So Mojo finds herself ever-so-slightly in the doghouse. The Favorite Husband's doghouse is still a very nice, kind place, don't get me wrong; but what happens is, all weekend long, the Favorite Husband looks somewhat pointedly at the pile of Netflix envelopes on the table, then sighs a wee little bit, and then takes a good fifteen minutes perusing our library of videos before picking one we have not seen in a while. Clearly his life is a living hell, and it is ALL MY FAULT.

So this morning (okay, I forgot again) I had to rush to the Netflix site to make sure the next batch has at least ONE Favorite-Husband-Approved movie that Mojo will not be slitting her wrists over. (It happens to be Al Pacino's DOG DAY AFTERNOON, in case you're interested.) And a current ban on sad, subtitled foreign movies, until he gets over the mild betrayal and can once again be receptive to the idea of reading subtitles for two hours. (He's not insensitive, just somewhat dyslexic, and doesn't want to have to WORK too much watching movies.)

So while I'm on Netflix, I'm skootching things around to make the next few weeks more Favorite-Husband-Friendly, and on a whim I check the New Releases. And guess what. Be still my beating heart. I don't know how I could have missed the veritable public relations blitzkrieg, but the second volume of ATLAS SHRUGGED has been released on DVD.  MORE Mojo! »