Welcome to Mojo's Tiny, Tiny World

So Mojo is finally back from her jet-settin' free-wheelin' vacation out west. We went to the Grand Tetons and then Yellowstone with my Favorite Parental Units, who footed the entire bill 'cuz they wuvs themselves some Mojo best of all the siblings. Or something to that effect. It's all a little fuzzy with the stress of traveling and all, but I do seem to recall at some point them telling me I was their favoritest child EVVAAR.

One of the perks of having cool parents instead of lame ones is, COOL parents take you on awesome trips such as this, whereas LAME ones merely beat you and lock you in a closet until you die of malnutrition. Or so I hear. The sad truth is, Mojo has long rubbed her idyllic childhood in your collective faces many, many times over the years, and now here she is rubbing her equally awesome adulthood in for good measure. If she weren't so gosh-darned charming and all, you'd just wanna punch her, huh?

It was all quite spectacular (that would be the Tetons) and fascinating (that would be the Yellowstone supervolcano, which Mojo suspected would go off ANY SECOND and vaporize her, but she figured it would be better to be instantaneously vaporized instead of attempting to survive the slow nuclear winter that would come swiftly on the heels of the explosion, but I digress). but Mojo is rather thankful to be back in her beloved New England, where you don't have to worry so much about water (I don't know how people or animals live out there) or Very Large Pieces of Wildlife That Do Not Run Like Sissies When You Encounter Them.

We have our occasional KIND OF large animals here--moose, of course, which can be quite dangerous when provoked, and black bears, and rumors of mountain lions--but we don't have scads and SCADS of elk and bison like they have out there. And I have discovered a decided preference for large wild animals that run away in fear when they see a human, and found the whole not-moving-and-glaring-back-at-you thing a tad unnerving. Of course those of you who have been assiduously tracking my every move know how Mojo was once driving a car that was GORED BY A BUFFALO, so Mojo has a deep appreciation of what those shaggy beasties can do to a very large object, let alone the delicate flower that is Mojo.

So anyways, Mojo and her Favorite Husband like to hike, and we took the opportunity in the Tetons (and elsewhere) to bop around a little. And my Favorite Parental Units got their first serious taste of Life With Mojo's Favorite Husband, who tends to run ahead like a dog just off the leash. Couple that with our tendency to wander off the trail and just go by the sun and/or landmarks and/or an occasional compass bearing, and you have the makings of Idiots Making the Evening News When They Get Lost in the Woods. Well, no, not us, really--we're the sort who just don't get lost, and besides, there's always the phone's GPS if you wanna cheat--but this whole off the trail thing along with the Favorite Husband's "I'm going to run ahead while you rest here" can be daunting to those unfamiliar with the terrain or the Favorite Husband.

Back home here in New England the Favorite Husband is somewhat limited to how far he can actually stray, for the terrain is very hilly and the plants are very lush and concealing. But there are places out west where you can sit on a hill and see for MILES AND MILES. And both Parental Units would occasionally express a vague kind of concern when they would look out at this humbling vista and see a tiny speck a half mile away that is apparently their son-in-law, determined to run away from their beloved daughter once and for all. And rather equally concerned when Mojo woud then shrug and say "Eh, he'll be back eventually. Ya wanna head back toward the car and wait for him?"

To which Mojo's Favorite Mother then would say something like, "Don't you worry about him?"

And it's like, yeah, kinda. But Mojo would have LONG gone completely INSANE WITH WORRY after coming up on THIRTY YEARS of such behavior. Mojo consoles herself as she waits by thinking he's a smart guy who won't do anything TOO stupid (although this vacation he DID end up once not paying close enough attention to his surroundings and blundered into a small herd of elk, and the bull in charge was NOT HAPPY WITH HIM, no, not one BIT, and Valuable Lessons Were Learned, or at least so we HOPE), and Mojo is just too darned lazy to run off after him, so she stays behind and basks in the sunshine and awaits his return. He's always turned up, like the proverbial bad penny. But Mojo does tend to worry, despite herself, and there is usually some point in her solitude, out somewhere off the trail in some nameless wilderness, when she wonders, in her artless Mojo fashion, when society might dictate that it is proper for her to stop hanging about and actually get around to finding the mangled remains. Because that's the sort of thing Emily Post never really covers.

When I spoke of that etiquette dilemma to my Favorite Mother--thinking SHE might know the span of wait time considered proper without looking like you're an unfeeling sociopath who totally did the guy in for the insurance money--I was immediately chastised for saying such terrible, terrible things. So it remains something of a conundrum for Mojo. Thus far the Favorite Husband has always returned before Mojo has felt the need to call out the St. Bernards, but there have been times he's come uncomfortably close.

Anyway, back here in New England it's not quite so vast, so Mojo can once again sit in her relative ignorance instead of watching the tiny little spousal speck disappear on the horizon. A change of perspective is always good, I suppose. So long as you're not gored by a buffalo...

Mojo