A: She's busy. Can't you leave her alone for two seconds? She has a new kitty, she's working hard on stuff, fall is arriving and she has yet to get any firewood, and now poor Rosie has officially become Ugly Lumpy-Nose, due to a histiocytoma that suddenly erupted on her nose. Vet says it will go away on its own in a month or two, but in the meantime, on top of her many other concerns and responsibilites, Mojo is further burdened with One Ugly Dog!

So Mojo's been remiss regarding her blog. Because life has become quite busy, lately. First because we spent a week or so vacationing up in Maine, where poor Rosie was subjected to the cruelty of sea water for the first time. And then we came back to find the house--sans feline since Ratty's demise--a little too mouse-ridden for even Mojo's decidedly laid-back taste.

So Mojo started the Serious Campaign for a New Cat. Which wasn't all that hard, mind you, since the Favorite Husband, despite his insistence that he is indeed a macho cat-disliker, privately and secretly LIKES CATS, as indeed he (like Mojo) pretty much likes anything that doesn't try to actively draw blood from him. So he was okay with the idea of a cat, so long as Mojo got one who was "exactly like Ratty". Minus the yowling, of course, although the Favorite Husband has remarked more than once about how he misses the yowling.

And Rosie, for her vote, desperately wanted a cat. It would give her something new to chew on. Rosie LOVES cats, but in true cat-bewildering fashion she loves them and attempts to play dog games with them. Like "duck down suddenly and attempt to break your opponent's leg". She would attempt to play this game with Ratty, who didn't have a clue what the game entailed. She would suddenly duck down, lunge forward and grab one of the cat's forepaws. (Very gently.) And hold it. And Ratty, who was a very laid back cat who liked the dog right back, would stand there with his held paw up above his head in the dog's Jaws-o-Death and patiently await the release of his appendage. Sometimes they would stand there for a good five minutes, awaiting some resolution to this, uh, "game".  MORE Mojo! »

So I will only mention that tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of the Big Ice Storm that knocked out our power for more than a week. Here's a picture of the lieberry taken the day after:

The library on Saturday, Dec 13, 2008, as viewed from the porch of the store across the street.

If you are at all interested in Mojo's realtime whining during that time, I offer you the following sequence:  MORE Mojo! »

Like most people, Mojo has a butt, and unlike most people's Mojo's butt has been prominently displayed on YouTube in a little number Mojo has called the Beaver Lodge Series, particularly Part the First. And in a feeble attempt to crowbar the average Craptacular reader's mind out of the gutter, yes indeed I am referring to an ACTUAL abandoned beaver lodge that we young crazy types once crawled up into, with my Favorite Older Sister womanning the camera. And, since said Favorite Older Sister felt the need to narrate as she taped, and since much of her view was, shall we say, ECLIPSED by the posterior of Yours Truly, THAT became the, uh, butt of her commentary for a while.

Granted, Mojo is more used to referring to her own exterior using more complimentary additives such as "fierce" and "that won't quit", but she defers to her elderly and perhaps dementia-ridden sibling in not only letting her commentary go on the video unadulterated or edited, but also in choosing the above, a perhaps less-than-gainly profile picture for her oh-so-important YouTube Branding Presence. Which is indeed one step down from my usual profile picture, which likewise features a butt, just not my own. I detect the subtlest of trends here. But once again I digress.

Anyway, this is not so much about MY butt, magnificent though it surely remains, but instead other people's impressions of said attribute.  MORE Mojo! »

So I do part time work for a particular nonprofit organization that shall otherwise go unnamed. And on top of everything else, the building and grounds are very nice. The building was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, so it's very 1960-ish, with lots of floor-to-ceiling glass. And this has been my view the past week or so, with these Japanese maples just about at their peak (even a little beyond, because Mojo takes forever to get from "Gee, that's pretty--I should take a picture" to the actual picture).

And then I come back Monday to this.

Bye bye, autumn....time for winter!

Mojo

So I was up at three yesterday, doin' Important Stuff, and when I got back home in the early afternoon instead of taking a nap--which is what Mojo felt like doing, quite desperately--I instead decided to take a quick hike to my spot, since it looked and felt like one of the best last days of autumn. The lake gets REALLY COLD and windy once it freezes over, and the snow gets knee- and waist-deep, and a casual hike turns into some sort of endurance death march instead of a lazy stroll. And when you reach the lake, instead of "ahhh, here I am at the lake" you are instead sliced to ribbons by this freezing, freezing biting wind coming off the ice. So I tend to only hike down there in the winter when my Favorite Husband FORCES ME TO.

But for your continuing envy and edification, I took my cell phone with me, so in addition to fielding a call from my Favorite Older Sister I was able to document autumn's last gasp in Mojo's neck of the woods.  MORE Mojo! »

In honor of what is quickly becoming Mojo's Lazy Friday, I offer something I first wrote about on misc.writing back in 2000 or so, around this time of year. Hound had asked us how we celebrated autumn, and I blathered on and on about one of Mojo’s Horsey Days. Now with the beauty of "teh Innertubes" I have expanded the text a hair and added pictures I took on that day, from waaaayyyy back in the Stone Age of Kodachrome slides. Enjoy!

Last week I took a day off from work for the first time in about a billion years. A friend owned a pair of Belgian draft horses, named Ginger and Lacey. We called them The Girls. I helped groom them, bridle them and harness them. We hitched them up to a small hay wagon and spend most of the day giving hay rides to the foliage tourists up for Columbus Day weekend. Four dollars for adults, two dollars for kids, for a fifteen minute circuit through the Berkshire countryside.  MORE Mojo! »