Hey guys!!

We have returned!! Moosehead Stew kind of got derailed early in the year, when I accepted a job offer that took me to Saskatchewan for several months. It was all I could do to keep Weregeek updated, so sadly, MHS had to go on hiatus until I had time to do more than work, work, work and catch whatever sleep I could manage. Then, once that contract was up, I went headfirst into convention season and spent the summer flying all across Canada and the US.

Now that Winter Is Coming, however, I finally have the time to catch up on my buffer for BOTH comics. And that means that MHS is finally, finally updating regularly again! YAAAAAY!

Clover is a wierdo.

I’m sure I’ve  said this before, but she keeps coming up with new and surprising ways of reiterating this to me. She is strangely obsessed with my hairbrush and bra straps. She loves elastics and bubble wrap, and will occasional forget she’s a hedgehog and run towards loud noises and bright lights. And, to top it all off, she is the only claustrophobic burrowing animal I’ve ever known.

She also occasionally decides to go on a rampage and trash everything in sight. If she was tiny, like Hazel, this would amount to a knocked over water dish or a slightly disheveled pile of toys. But Clover is built like a badger, and when she goes into hedgehog tank mode, she is capable of some serious destruction. Toys get mauled, her exercise wheel gets knocked over, and her pen looks like a tiny, furious whirlwind has just swept through it!

I still have no idea what triggers her rampages. Hazel’s pretty predictable – getting a bath or having her nails trimmed will cause her to rampage. But Clover? Maybe she heard a funny noise. Maybe her blankets got stuck on her quills and she got scared. Or maybe she just needs to trash things every once in a while.

Either way, she’s a strange one.

High heels and I are like oil and water. We don’t get along. Or rather, I can’t speak on behalf of the shoes, which are a) probably wholly indifferent to me and b) entirely inanimate, but I for one do not like them.

I have trouble with firm ground and a solid, sensible sole underfoot.  (It’s the invisible carpet potholes, I tell you!!) One can only imagine the chaos caused by suddenly strapping me to mini-stilts and forcing my center of gravity forward by several inches. (Curiously, I’ve tried actual stilts, and have very little trouble with them. Stilts and I get along nicely.)

By when I was offered the chance to try standing on what seemed to be an entire stack of high heels glues one atop the other, I couldn’t resist the challenge. It took two kind Ustream regulars, Rynchus and SigPig, to hold me upright as I stood in them, and even then it was a little dicey. But wow!! What a view!! For a few glorious seconds, I was a mighty 5’9″!!

Then, my friend came by with his towering 6 foot ridiculous and made me feel tiny again even in the Shoes of Doom. It was something of a relief to be helped down from my perch o’ shoes and back onto solid ground.

My little sister, who we’ve seen many times before, is sixteen. Holy crap. I have no words to describe how thoroughly this weirds me out.

I still think that it’s only been a few years since *I* learned to drive, which is, of course, wildly inaccurate. So to think that my baby sister, eleven years my junior, is now old enough to be routinely driving my mom around…. Well, that’s just crazy.

Not that I’m worried about her. She’s smart, responsible, and probably more nervous about driving than I was, since I had the luxury of driving around in a old (but small) car while she has to learn to parallel park in my Mom’s SUV. (Parallel parking that thing makes ME nervous!!) Anyway, I know she’ll be fine. Hell, the biggest thing she needs to worry about is having to play chauffeur on the frequent trips between Saskatoon and Regina while Mom takes business calls.

So, enjoy the freedom of the road, little sis. And never forget to crank Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream” whenever it comes on the radio – it’s the ultimate driving song!!

Ok, you. Get your mind out of the gutter – I wasn’t doing anything like that. I was randomly trying out a crazy yoga move, just to see if I could do it.

For the record – don’t do yoga within flailing distance of a bookshelf. Bookshelves are very pointy and bruise-making.

Alberta is known for sudden weather changes. The infamous Chinook, for example, brings us a few days of spring-like weather in the deep of winter. Whole snowbanks often melt overnight.

But this fall? This fall took the cake. It was sunshine and flip flops one day, and hot apple cider and mittens the next. On September 1st. Not October, not November. September.

That’s just crazy. It’s gonna be a looooooong winter….