I don't know why I've been thinking about this lately, but I have. And as we all know, that's good enough for Mojo.

Years ago, I had a fun, cushy job in academia, in the AV department of a fairly prestigious college. My job was to order, schedule and show all the AV materials the profs needed for their classes. Back then the majority were in 16mm format (when dinosaurs ruled the earth), which, unlike any of today's formats, really needs to be babysat so the film wouldn't suddenly decide to skip a sprocket and self-destruct. Hence I have watched many, many documentary and feature films in a variety of disciplines--anthropology, foreign languages, sociology, art, psychology, first aid, you name it--as well as all the classic oldies like Akira Kurosawa, Sembène Ousmane, blah blah blah. I mention this not to be utterly pretentious but just as a reminiscence of a really great, swell, fun time in life, where I got paid to hang out with cool, intelligent people and watch movies. Many of them over and over again.  MORE Mojo! »

No foolin'! I submit to you a blog post dated May 7, 2009, in which I whine petulantly (okay, so THAT's a given; no stop-the-presses there) about my bank's insistence in marketing itself as something EXCITING.  MORE Mojo! »

Okay, so right now Mojo is not thinking too kindly of ANY industry involved in heating her house. And in the midst of Mojo's heartbreaking Stove Day Fiasco, she gets a postcard in the mail from the oil company saying they're going to come clean and maintain her furnace on such-and-such a day, like a week from now.

And Mojo, speaking from the pain of heartbreak, gets a terrible, terrible idea. Of course, as we all know Mojo has her boundless love for all of God's creatures. But here she is in a nadir, a twilight of the spirit, one of those pivotal times in life where a naive innocent might get seduced by the dark side.

In other words, the thought crossed my mind to not change the cat box for the whole week leading up to when the poor oil guy comes to work on the furnace.

The cat box is about five feet from the furnace. Ratty's a big cat. He also has a rather annoying tendency to not bury things after he's done. In short, if I keep thinking along these lines of cruelty, the poor furnace guy is in for a world of hurt. At least where his nose is concerned.

I won't do it. It's not the poor furnace guy's fault oil prices are where they are and Mojo is stoveless. But the thought DID cross my mind.

Mojo

That, for the uninitiated, is Mojo-speak for, "For some reason Mojo could not sleep last night. She didn't even attempt to go to bed until midnight, and then laid awake until two, whereupon she gave up the ghost and came downstairs and looked up stupid things on Wikipedia hoping that would bore her to sleepiness, and finally went back to bed around four, only to have her Favorite Husband get up at four-thirty, and the way he bops around the house Mojo might as well get up too, so here she is on maybe an hour's sleep and she'll be pulling a twelve hour shift at the lieberry today so she will be in Fine Fettle when she drags her sorry butt home tonight."

Or words to that effect. There is some loss in the translation.  MORE Mojo! »

A Day in the Life of Mojo