So now that it's approaching the end of the woodburning season--especially since we will probably run out of wood this week, and what we have left to burn is still under a foot and a half of snow, so it's not going to burn too good--Mojo has, since Friday, been suffering from the occasional bane of the firewood hauler--the Phantom Splinter in her finger.

I can feel it. I know it's there. But darned if I can find the blasted thing. Believe me, every spare moment the past few days I have spent staring at my finger like an idiot. I have studied it about as closely as one can when one does not have easy access to an electron microscope. I can't see ANYTHING. No entry wound, no discoloration, no tiny pinpricks of blood, nothing foreign lurking under the skin. Yet it's there. Driving me nuts.

Mojo

So Mojo is one of those poor misinformed people who has never had the opportunity to see certain movie classics. Like Taxi Driver. Sure, I've seen enough clips and parodies you'd SWEAR I've seen it all the way through, but I haven't. (Ditto The Godfather until I was somewhere in my thirties.)

No, this isn't about seeing Taxi Driver, although that's on my to-do list. This is about another movie I've heard so much about most of my life, and I finally got the chance to see it. Midnight Express, the Turkish prison "horror" movie that pretty much everyone my age saw when it first came out and were traumatized for life by it, and then didn't have to have things Explained To Them when scenes were parodied in other movies or TV shows.

Anyway, after twenty years or so of people TALKING INCESSANTLY about it, I finally saw it this weekend.  MORE Mojo! »

Okay, this has been preying on my mind. So I have to come clean.

Back when I lived with my parents once in a while--I'm guessing around college? Yeah, somewhere around there--my Favorite Mother bought these painted four wooden letters that she hung up in the kitchen to spell LOVE. Very sweet. It's the sort of gal she is.

And Mojo, being the sort of gal SHE is--meaning the neglected and forgotten Middle Child, so one who is always seeking attention no matter HOW petty or childish her intentions--would occasionally rearrange the letters on the wall so that instead they spelled out "VOLE".  MORE Mojo! »

But Mojo DESERVES to be extra-lazy, since she spent the extra-long weekend stacking firewood. Lots 'n' lots of firewood. She is almost happy with her stash. I have a woodshed that fits about five rows of stacked wood, and we historically go through about four rows a season. Each row is a foot shy of a full cord. I now have three and a half rows stacked and out of the rain, with a purty big pile of maybe another cord cut and split still out in the yard ready for stacking. (If you have nothing better to do....)  MORE Mojo! »

Yes, Mojo KNOWS "frailties" is mispelled in the headline. She did it on PERPUSS.

She WAS going to blog about the Infamous Hooters Story, I'll have you know. So many people have requested it I fear it will be a total let-down once I get around to it. Which was GOING to be today, if I may be redundant and repeat myself. But now it's not.

We all know how Mojo gets distracted by shiny things. This morning it was the local news, which--as Mojo has admitted many times--she has on in the background as she surfs the web every morning, so that she might not appear to be QUITE the ignoramus should something earth-shaking transpire as she sleeps. Why, she doesn't quite know, since Mojo has grown to hate the news she once loved, and especially the local news. Which, in addition to the usual screwups that makes the local news so charmingly homespun when compared to national productions, Mojo's local news has the Added Bonus of some sort of illiterate jamoke running the Chyron. So Mojo can always count on at least ONE dreadful, dreadful speling errer par braodcast.  MORE Mojo! »

So the other day I'm driving along a local highway, and the median grass strip contained a good-sized flock of robins. I've reported before that the robins tend to arrive in late February and early March around here. They start off in these big flocks for a few weeks until they get territorial. Also, right after they arrive we have lots of snow, and I have the vague worry that they're all going to starve to death with the food buried.

But I guess robins have been around slightly longer than Mojo, so perhaps her worrying is in vain. Oh, well. It gives Mojo something to do.  MORE Mojo! »

So I went to the doctor's again on Friday. Doing VERY WELL, thanks mostly to my Favorite Husband's obsessively thorough care. My arm hardly leaks goo at all anymore, except for one little spot. I suspect that will clear up in a week or two.

My back still has a few healing spots on it. According to my research you can't tell the extent of scarring after a bad burn for about two years. A small spot on my back where it was burned the worst--about the size of a deck of playing cards--looks like it's getting a bit puckery and might look vaguely scarrish. My arm, too, will have a most magnificent scar running down the back of it. But just how "bad" it will look won't be known for a few years.  MORE Mojo! »

I happened to glance out an upstairs window just in time to catch the little stinker doing this. We have this old dilapidated shed on the property and Ratty has never before given it much notice. Until today. He balances on the edge of the trailer, jumps up to the little overhang above the window, and then up to the roof.

Ratty is very proud of himself and came in the house yowling with pride. And then yowled me outside so he could show off in person. It drives the dog nuts because she cannot follow.  MORE Mojo! »

My husband and I agree that Seinfeld was at its finest illustrating how parents can drive their adult children nuts. In fact we use a Seinfeld reference whenever one of our parents gets a little too obsessive in trying to help us. I think Jerry Seinfeld decided he needed to go on a diet and his parents gave him advice on what they did. His mother had this whole laundry list of their daily routine, and then his father piped in with "...and every day I eat a plum." Eventually the conversation degenerated and Jerry had to get off the phone and the last thing his father screamed was "EAT A PLUM!" as he hung up the phone. So whenever one of our parents gets on one of those kicks at one point we'll turn to the other and say, "Eat a plum!" which is our code for "my parents are driving me up the wall."  MORE Mojo! »