IN WHICH Mojo Begs Your Indulgence

Okay, so you can just SEE how kind and indulgent Mojo's Favorite Husband is by the following. On Saturday we were entertained by Mojo's Favorite Father, who was a quilt widower since my Favorite Mother was off gallivanting somewhere doing one of her quilt thingies. He fed us WAY too much food, incidentally. Including chocolate cake, since he figured his Favorite Middle-Aged Daughter Mojo would like it. (She did.)

They say, using the tired old cliché, that you end up marrying your father. I don't know how true that actually is, particularly if a woman happens to be gay, but in Mojo's case there *are* some odd coincidences that sometimes makes her go "hmmmm". Both Favorite Father and Favorite Husband are engineers--although, to be honest, so is Favorite Older Sister. And Favorite Mother is a quilter, which is pretty much an engineery-type thing, although quilters will deny this and maintain they can't be engineers because they're "bad at math". All the while designing geometric quilts and figuring out selvages and embiggening patterns and whatnot. But I digress.

So anyway. Both Favorite Father and Favorite Husband are engineers. Both are exceedingly kind people. Both are very smart and very funny. And when you get the two together, they both love to gang up on poor beleaguered Mojo like there's no tomorrow and make cruel jokes at her expense. All in good fun, of course. And all of this is somewhat mollified by their tendency, also, to be indulgent and pretty much do whatever Mojo asks.

Of course Mojo, being Exceptional Wife and Daughter of the Year, is careful not to push her very great luck. She knows these two menfolk are indulgent and will do whatever she asks (okay, so my Favorite Brother would, too, but he wasn't there, so nyeah), but it is important not to wear out one's welcome and demand things every waking moment of the day. A gal's gotta pace herself, and occasionally bow to the whim of other people. Pick Yer Battles, as Mojo likes to say.

So Mojo and her menfolk are sitting around debating how they will entertain themselves, and Mojo suggests the movies. Because Mojo, it must be said, had an Ulterior Motive. And that motive was ... should I say it? I will just say it.

You see, Mojo is a closet Julia Child fan. I adore her. There, I said it. I like everything about her. I like her enthusiasm, I like her awkwardness, I like her lilty voice. And if you know anything about her personal life--and Julia Child is one of the few celebrities I do indeed know a little bit about--you know she (much like Mojo) was seriously involved in a long term stupidly ga-ga love affair of a marriage with her husband, Paul Child, who supported her and indulged her in just about every single whimsical fancy that crossed her mind. Which I gotta say, is always a Very Nice Thing.

So as much as I usually don't care for the genre, I rather wanted to see the latest chick flick out there, Julie and Julia, even though I didn't have a clue who this Julie is, nor did I particularly care. (After seeing the movie, I REALLY don't care, since I have a tendency to not really care that much for Dysfunctional Needy People. I *did* like her poor, long-suffering husband, however. I felt bad for him. But again I digress.) I wanted to see Julia, and Meryl Streep AS Julia. And the reviews were not bad--not GREAT, but not bad.

Problem is, it was a chick flick, and as much as I knew they would take me if I asked them, the two of them together would probably play off each other's testosterone and put up more of a fuss to NOT go. Just to look more manly in front of the other. And while I suggested it--and it really, truly was the only movie worth seeing last weekend--they both sort of twisted their faces and in the end I didn't make them go. I COULD have, but why make your indulgent loved ones miserable? It might just make their indulgency dry up, and THEN where would Mojo be? NOT GETTING HER WAY, that's what'll happen!

Instead we went to the video store and rented a movie to watch. (It was called Defiance, with Daniel Craig, about the partisan uprisings in Russian-occupied Poland. Very not-Julia-Child; more like innocent people getting mowed down by gunfire. It was okay. A little draggy, but Mojo Learned Things. Granted, at my last real job I must have seen Partisans of Vilna and Warsaw Ghetto at least a dozen times each--seeing educational documentaries was one of the perks of the job--but this was my first exposure to this specific faction of the resistance.)

Anyway, a decent time was had by all, and while Mojo did not get her way a seed was planted. So the next day, Sunday, was all rainy and gross, and without my prompting, no not one little bit, my indulgent Favorite Husband said, "Maybe we can go see that chick flick you wanted to see." And we did. I think we were the youngest people in there. And, yes, everyone was there to see Julia and not a whiny twenty-something who didn't always get her way. Indeed, the contrast between her and her relationships with the Childs and THEIR relationship was really quite unfair to the poor thing. To say nothing of any young actress who gets pitted against Ms. Streep. You might as well PHONE it in, you poor dear, because that's how it's gonna look.

As an added bonus, both my Favorite Husband and I happen to be fans of the character actress Jane "I did things the other girls didn't" Lynch (the line comes from her character in A Mighty Wind, if you're curious), and Ms. Lynch had a perfectly delicious scene with Meryl Streep playing Julia's equally ebullient sister. The two of them together was just hysterical.

So Mojo got her way once again. And the Favorite Husband thought the movie was "pretty good". Which was a MUCH better review than what he gave Transformers 2. And he too fell in love with Julia and Paul Child, although to be honest he probably wouldn't quite phrase it that way. I think he said something more along the lines of "It was nice to see a couple who actually got along and supported each other instead of bicker."

Another convert! Hah!

Mojo