Short answer: No.

Long answer: Pffft! No.

Maybe today. Unless something better comes along.

In the meantime, Mojo has come up with a new experience that has been the most painful, EVER. Sunday night I was loading the stove for the evening when I stepped on a live coal that had tumbled out during the process. (We have a huge honkin' hearth I installed when we put in the stove, so no worries there). If you've ever seen the cartoon with Yosemite Sam screaming "AAAH!!! Mah biscuits are burnin'!" as he zooms up in the air like a rocket and then dances around, well, you can maybe enjoy the picture of Mojo doing a similar thing with her foot. It all happened so fast I was holding onto a stick of firewood trying to put it in the stove, and I did this full backward Aikido roll (I haven't done one of those in a few years!) and hopped up after its completion still holding the log.

And STILL with the coal hanging onto my foot, so I commenced bashing at it with the firewood. Sparks flew everywhere out of my foot. Finally it came off and got ground into dust, and I sat there hyperventilating like a gorilla for a while. Then the burn pain started, so I smeared the area with bacitracin and Band-Aids and went to bed all muttering and grumpy.

The result today is a lovely rectangular blister on the ball of my foot, right where I step. It's under the callus, too, so I can look forward to the point where everything will fall off my foot. (I remember that day quite vividly from my Carnival of Smiles. It was rather horrific in a fascinating sort of way, or fascinating in a horrific sort of way, but either way I couldn't see because I couldn't see my injury then. My poor squeamish Favorite Husband had THAT fun job.)

But wait! That's not the painful part I was talking about! If you REALLY want to know pain, wait several days after stepping on a live coal, when you are hobbling around with this nasty painful blister on the bottom of your foot. Then you will want to get yourself a largish dog who likes nothing better than tracking leaves and vines and small pieces of gravel into the house through the dog door. Get yourself up at, oh, say, four thirty in the morning, come downstairs for your morning coffee, glance casually at the still-glowing coals in the arch-framed window of the stove.... and step on a sharp piece of gravel--say, the size of a pea or a pencil eraser--left on the floor by the dog door. Step on it right smack dab in the middle of your burn blister. Remember to put your full weight on it, for added effect.

Guaranteed HOURS of fun. So long as it's not you.

Mojo