Author: Kris Baker

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A Month of Me: Day 7 – A New Word, Or Two

I learned a new word today.  Well, actually I learned two new words, but I only meant to learn one.  

Mr. Guy and The Lady made me use that big fat book of words called a dictionary to look up what the word texture means.

Texture – the visual and especially tactile quality of a surface

Tactile???  

Sometimes that dictionary book is not very helpful.  It uses more words that I don’t know to try to explain to me what the word that I didn’t know the meaning of in the first place means.

Tactile sounds like what you walk on when you spill the thumbtacks from The Lady and Mr. Guy’s bulletin board all over the floor.  So, Texture – the visual and especially painful feeling of a walking on a surface covered in thumbtacks.  Hmm…I don’t think that is right.  At least texture and  tactile both start with “t” so I only have to go back a few pages in this dictionary book to find out what tactile really means.

Tactile – pertaining to or affecting the sense of touch

Let me see if I understand this…Texture – the visual and especially the quality affecting the sense of touch of a surface.   Maybe I get it.  Walking on thumbtacks on the floor would definitely have a texture that affects my sense of the quality of touch on my monster feet.  I wonder if all texture is painful.  I had to ask The Lady about that.

The Lady told me that not all textures are painful.  She said that texture is just a general word used to group all the different words used to describe the way things feel.  Smooth, rough, prickly, scratchy, are all words that can be used to describe texture.  I asked her if thumbtacky was a texture word.  She and Mr. Guy said that maybe it could be if that was the best way to describe how something felt to me.

We went on a scavenger hunt for different kinds of textures.

My fur is soft.  My claws and my horns are hard.  Mr. Guy’s bald head is smooth but his face fur is prickly.  The sidewalk is rough.  The floor where I was playing is lego-y.

We went outside and looked at the bark on the trees in our yard.  My favorite one is the river birch tree.  It’s bark is shaggy.  In case you don’t know what shaggy means,  it means having long, thick, unkempt hair or fur.  Sometimes The Lady tells Mr. Guy and me that our fur looks shaggy.  When that happens, Mr. Guy gets his trimmed.  I tell The Lady that my shaggy fur is part of my character and I don’t want it to get trimmed.  I don’t even really want it to get brushed!   So far, that has worked!  I think that now I understand this whole idea of texture a little better.

I do have one more question, though.  How can we have a river birch tree in our front yard when we don’t have a river?  I want to know the answer to this question, but I’m afraid that if I ask, Mr. Guy will make me go get another big book with lots of words that I don’t know.  The brain of this little blue and orange furry monster is too full to hold anything else new today.  The answer to this question will have to wait until another day.

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A Month of Me: Day 6 – What Not To Wear

Mr. Guy asked me to go outside with him this morning so that he could show me his zoo-kini.  I wasn’t sure that I wanted to see that, especially first thing this morning!  First of all, Mr. Guy doesn’t really like to go to zoos because it makes him sad to see all of the animals in captivity.  And secondly, Mr. Guy doesn’t seem like a bikini kind of guy, at least I hope he isn’t a bikini kind of guy.  So why would he want to show me a special outfit, that I don’t think that he would like. to wear to a place that I know he doesn’t like?  Maybe his brain is more re-tired than I thought!

When I asked him about his zoo-kini, he said that he most definitely was not putting on a bikini and that we most definitely were not going to the zoo!  Oh, thank goodness!

Okay then…so what was Mr. Guy talking about?

He has a zoo, well maybe its a garden not a zoo, full of zucchini in the backyard.  He has big zucchini that we picked, little zucchini that are still growing that we can pick in a few days, and lots of yellow flowers that will turn into more zucchini soon.  It is a good thing that everyone at my house likes zucchini because it may be all that we eat all summer long!  The Lady told me that there are many  different ways to cook the zucchini.  We can sauté it or grill it.  We can make pancakes with it.  We can even make bread with it.  Sometimes The Lady lets me help her cook.  Maybe she will let me make something with all of our zucchini.

I am so happy that Mr. Guy has the eating kind of zucchini and not wearing zoo-kini!!!

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A Month of Me: May 5 – Give Me Five

The Lady’s picture taking word for today was “five.”  Since she is taking a picture of me every single day this month because it A Month of Me…Me, Blueper B, I tried to help her think of something fun we could do together today.  I discovered that five is a very hard number for little blue and orange furry monsters.  I have one head and one mouth and one tongue and one  orange belly, I have two eyes and two horns and two teeths and two arms.  I have four claws on each of my two arms. 

I have one Mr. Guy and one The Lady.  I have one Offspring One and one Offspring Two. Well, technically, they are The Lady’s offsprings. Anyway, that makes Two Offsprings.  I live with two canine furry monsters and one feline furry monster 

 I don’t have five of anything!

The Lady and I thought some more.

The Lady got excited when she remembered a game called Yahtzee.  She said it would be perfect for today’s picture taking because it has lots of fives.  I asked her what kind of fives.  She told me that it is a game that is played with five dies.

FIVE DIES!!!!

This sounded worse than the wreck center to me.  I got very upset and told The Lady that I did not want to play her game!  She seemed surprised since I usually like to play games with her.  She asked me why I did not want to learn to play a new game.  She said that it was a game that she loved to play when she was very young and she thought that I would like it too.  I told her that she was wrong!  I did not want to play any game that meant that five humans or monsters would have to die.  The Lady starting laughing at me.  That made me mad and sad at the same time.  She said, “Not five dies, five dice.  D-I-C-E, not D-I-E-S!”   Well, I’m glad she didn’t mean five dies, but I had no idea what d-i-c-e were.

The Lady found the box with the game and showed me the things called dice.  To me, they looked kind of like square ladybugs without any antennas.  These dice things had black dots all over them.  The lady showed me that each one had six sides.  Each of the six sides had a different number of dots from one to six.  I bet that is so you can tell how old each square ladybug is.  Hmmm…I thought we were looking for fives.  Oh wait, there are five dice.  

The Lady explained that playing Yahtzee would help me to learn to count and to add and to multiply because I would have to count all of those dots of the ladybugs dies dice.  We went over the rules and then started to play the game.  The Lady said that we would stop and take a picture when I dumped the dice out of the cup and we could see lots of dice with five dots.

I think that I like this game especially because I get to play with The Lady.  Mr. Guy doesn’t;t like to play games, so Yahtzee will be something special that The Lady and I can do together.  Mr. Guy will keep reading stories to me.  I don’t have to count the letters or words or pages in the books when we read together, but he does make me read the words sometimes.

I had fun and I learned new things today.  It makes me happy to  be able to help The Lady with her projects!

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A Month of Me: May 3 – Life Is Good

Every now and then Mr. Guy and I get lucky.  Today was one of those days.  A few days ago Mr. Guy and I were looking at stuff on the computer.  We saw this t-shirt that we thought that The Lady would She enjoys making stuff with stuff with sticks and string.  She says it makes her happy and helps her relax.  T-shirts make me happy and giving a present of a t-shirt to someone else makes me really happy!  Mr. Guy told me the secret code for his plastic money and we ordered her one as a surprise.  We knew that The Lady would like the picture of sticks and string on the shirt and Mr. Guy and I like the words…Life is Good.  Most of the time I think life is really good.  Only when I have to spend time walking for an hour going nowhere on dread treadmill, or when we lose someone that we love, am I not sure life is that good.  Mr. Guy and The Lady try to remind me that even when I am sad, there are still lots of good things to be happy about if I just open my eyes and my heart.

Mr. Guy and I were happy that the shirt that we ordered for The Lady came in the mail today because today especially, The Lady needed to be reminded that life is good.  

The Lady is a professor at a college.  She likes her job teaching people about music, but lately she says that being at her school is not as safe as it used to be.  In Texas, people can have guns on college campuses.  That is scary to me!  I don’t even want to think about that!  Today, at a school just like the one where The Lady teaches, but thankfully not hers, someone brought a gun inside the school and killed someone and then killed himself.  I just don’t understand this.  Mr. Guy and The Lady can’t help me to understand because they don’t understand it either.  All I know is that I don’t want something like this to happen at The Lady’s school.  Mr. Guy says that maybe she should retire, like he did, and then he and I wouldn’t have to worry about her when she goes to work.  I don’t think she will do that, but I wish she would!

Mr. Guy and I hope that the new t-shirt that we got will make The Lady think about how happy playing with her sticks and string makes her.  Then maybe she won’t worry about guns and school.  She can think about what color string she can twist into knots to make a hat for me for next winter.  

Like The Lady and Mr. Guy remind me, life is good even when I think its not.

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A Month of Me: May 2 – The Treadmill

Remember yesterday when I said that I was looking forward to new adventures with Mr. Guy and The Lady this month?  I might have to change my mind and it is only the second day of May!  The Lady told me that we were going to the wreck center today.  I don’t know why we would want to go someplace that was all about wrecks.   Then Lady explained that wreck was short for wreck creation. That made it sound even worse!  We were going someplace to create wrecks?  This sounded very scary to this little blue and orange furry monster!  When I told The Lady that I did not want to go, she explained to me that it was not wreck, but rec, which was short for recreation.  She told me that a recreation center is a place where people go to play games and exercise.  Things were now sounding a little better now!  I like to play games.

And then we got there…we weren’t going to play games; we were going to exercise.  The Lady got on this funny machine called a treadmill.  To me, treadmill sounds like someplace where they make tires.  Or, maybe its where they take the old tires from the wreck center.  Whatever it is, it did not look like it was going to be a fun thing to me.  

We stepped on this thing. The Lady pushed a bunch of buttons and all of the sudden the floor started moving.  She told me to walk.  I have short little monster legs and they had to move very fast so I didn’t fall down.  Once I could walk without wobbling, I asked The Lady where we were going.  Usually when we walk, we go someplace where we see pretty things and she takes pictures of them.  I should have known that this was not going to be a fun walk because The Lady did not have her camera.  The Lady told me that we weren’t going anywhere.  We would stay in this one place and walk for an hour.  An hour?!? And we weren’t going anywhere?  What a crazy thing to do!

I had to ask why we were doing this.  The Lady explained that walking on the treadmill keeps your body healthy and burns calories.  I think my body is healthy and I don’t even know what calories are; but, if we have to burn them, I would much rather burn them over the fire pit in our backyard where we can have snores when we’re done!  The Lady explained that calories are energy that we get from food.  We need to make sure that our bodies use more calories than we eat so that our bodies don’t get too big.  She said her body was bigger than she wants it to be so she would be coming to the wreck rec center a lot to burn her calories.  This treadmill thing is one of the craziest things that The Lady and I have ever done together!  After about thirty minutes on this, I felt like one of those tiny brown furry monsters at the pet store; I think they are called hamsters.  I have watched the hamsters spin on wheels.  They run and run and run…and go nowhere.  I finally figured out that this treadmill machine is like a hamster wheel for people!  I don’t like it.  I wonder if the hamsters do.

Mr. Guy came to the rec center too, but he did not get on this people wheel thing called a treadmill.  He got on some other machine that was called a lip tickler, or something like that.  I don’t know why he needs a machine to tickle his lips.  I think his beard and mustache can do that…at home!  My fur sometimes tickles my lips.

I spent a whole hour on the treadmill with The Lady.  They had TVs to watch while you were walking to get nowhere.  It was kind of fun to watch the Food Network and decide what kind of calories I wanted to eat today so that I would have something to burn tomorrow when we come back to the rec center.

I think that I need some snores…even if I can’t burn my calories at home.  I was a very tired monster when this adventure was over.  In fact, I was a wreck!  Maybe that place really is a wreck center!

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A Month of Me: May 1 – It’s Me!

Wow!  It has been a long time since I have shared any of my adventures with my friends.  Well, the truth is, I haven’t had many adventures lately.  The Lady and Mr. Guy have been very busy with things and we have not  traveled anywhere near or far.  The Lady has been working hard at school and Mr. Guy spent most of the spring taking care of one of the other furry monsters at our house.  One of our dog monsters was old and sick.  Mr. Guy spent all day every day making sure that he was safe and comfortable.  Then it was sad at our house because the big black furry monster crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  Mr. Guy and The Lady told me that even though we were all very sad, that losing furry monster family members and people that we love is a real part of life.  I asked if it was like when we lost The Captain.  Yep.  It was exactly like that.

Even though I haven’t been writing much, I have been thinking a lot, about all kinds of things.  I have used my crayons and written monster words on little pieces of paper so that I wouldn’t forget all of the things that I have been thinking about.  Since The Lady only has one more week of school, she promised me that we would get all of my thoughts out of my furry blue and orange head and off of all my little pieces of paper and make them into real words and sentences so that I can share them here on my blog.  I am excited about that!  I like thinking and writing, especially when Mr. Guy and The Lady help me!

You all know that The Lady likes to take pictures.  This month, she promised me that I will be in her pictures every single day!!  That is exciting!  I may need to get a new shirt or two if I am going to have my picture taken that many times.  And certainly if The Lady is going to take thirty-one pictures of me, I will get to go on some adventures somewhere!

I don’t know if any of you have missed me, but I can say with all of my monster heart that I have missed all of my friends.  I hope that you will follow me during my My Month of Me!


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Nose Job

Just when I was about to call (LBAOFMPS (Little Blue An Orange Furry Monster Protective Services) because Mr. Guy and The Lady haven’t taken me to do anything fun in a long time, they woke me up early this morning and told me that we were going on an adventure this weekend.  I was a little irritated because I had no time to figure out which t-shirts I wanted to wear for our adventure.  The Lady said that where we were going, it was cold and that a t-shirt, even with all of my fur, would not keep me warm.  She told me that the weather was perfect for me to wear my new orange sweater that Ms. Joni made for me over the summer.  That made me smile!  I have not had an opportunity to wear it yet.

We got to the airport very early.  The clock had threes and zeros in the time and it was very dark outside.  It sure seemed like nighttime to me, but there were lots of people at the airport.  We stood in line for a long time before Mr. Guy put me in the bin and the guys in the blue shirts took pictures of my insides.  That took so long that we didn’t have to wait at all before it was time to get on the plane.

We found our seats and got settled.

And then we sat and sat.  Mr. Guy told me that we were supposed to leave at 5:05am(no wonder it felt like night time), but that didn’t happen.  I fell asleep for a little while.  When I woke up, we were still on the ground.  A guy in a not so pretty green vest was talking to the pilot.  Ive seen these guys outside the plane before, but never inside.  I wasn’t sure seeing him inside was a good thing.

About the time I decided things were OK, the pilot announced that we had too much fuel on the plane and they were going to take some off.  I don’t know anything about flying planes, but I’m pretty sure that they need fuel to fly and I think that too much is better than too little.  The airplane people didn’t agree with me.  We stayed on the ground for an extra hour while they drained some fuel.

We finally took off and I went back to sleep.

I was awaken by hearing the pilot talking to us again.  This time he was saying that the airplane’s nose had a problem.  I thought that maybe the airplane might have a cold, but Mr. Guy said it was more serious than that.  He said that an airplane’s nose has a wheel and we need that wheel to land on the ground.  Our airplane’s nose was broken.  That sounded even more serious than there being too much fuel on the plane or the airplane having a cold.

The pilot flew us around and around in circles to burn even more fuel.  He told us that we were going to try to land and don’t be alarmed by all of the fire trucks and rescue vehicles on the runway. I wasn’t alarmed;  I was worried!  I have been on lots of airplanes and we have never landed with fire trucks on the runway.  Mr. Guy told me that since they had taken the extra fuel off of the plane there shouldn’t be too much that could catch on fire if we landed wrong.  That did not make me feel any better.  I was a kind of scared little blue and orange furry monster.

Happily, we landed OK.  We bumped a little and then stopped on the runway.  The fire trucks all watched us.  And, I watched them.

Then we waited for a tow truck to pull us to the gate so that we could get off the plane.  In the end everything was OK, but this was more adventure than this little monster wanted!

In all of the plane excitement, I never even asked Mr. Guy and The Lady where we were going.  I remembered to do that when we got off of the plane.  They told me that we were flying to Newport News, Virginia and then driving to meet some picture taking people in Colonial Williamsburg.  I was not too excited about getting on another plane today, but I was a brave monster. The Lady told me that we were meeting the same people that I met back in June at The Norfolk Botanical Gardens.  Finally, something happy in my day!  I liked the day that I spent with these picture taking ladies over the summer.

I stayed awake on this second flight.  I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what was going on at all times!  This flight was much shorter and much less eventful.  The most exciting thing about it was that I got popcorn in an orange bag!

When we finally got to our hotel, I was a sleepy little monster.  Mr. Guy and The Lady went to dinner with a few of the picture taking people and their significant others.  I stayed at the hotel and slept.  I may have watched a little bit of HGTV, but mostly I slept.  I want to be all rested for tomorrow when I get to visit Colonial Williamsburg with my friends.

While I was writing this, The Lady told me that she got a message from Ms. Sherri, one of The Lady’s picture taking friends and one of my Hundred People friends. She is meeting us tomorrow and told The Lady that she has a surprise for me!  I like surprises.  Well, some surprises.  I like the ones that nice people make for me.  I don’t think I like the kind of surprises that airplanes make!

Good night!

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Seeing Seattle

It is trip time again!  I never even finished sharing all of my adventures from our trip to England and now I have another adventure to write about!  We just got home at 10 o’clock tonight, but The Lady said we should stay up and write about our trip to Seattle now.  She said something about it really doesn’t seem so late since we are still on Seattle time and that is different from Dallas time.  I don’t quite know how that works.  All I know is that I am a sleepy blue and orange monster. but I want to tell you all about our trip, so here goes…

We left on Thursday after The Lady taught her classes.  Mr. Guy helped me pack my things while she was at school.  He told me that we were going to Seattle so that The Lady could learn new stuff about picture taking.  I thought she knew about picture taking, but apparently there is lots more stuff that she needs to learn.  Mr. Guy and I picked The Lady up at school and we went to the airport.  After we got checked in, we had some lunch.


We don’t eat the “M” meals very often.  It is special airport food.  I sure do like those french fries!  While we were eating our lunch, Mr. Guy got a message saying that they had changed the gate for our airplane.  We had to go to a whole different terminal.  I was afraid that we would have to walk, but Mr. Guy said that there was a thing called SkyLink that would take us.  He said it was kind of like a train.  A train at an airport seemed a little strange to me, but as long as I didn’t have to walk, I was okay with strange.


We didn’t have to wait too long for the train.


I was happy to see Seattle on the sign when we got to our new gate.  I didn’t want to have to move again.  Really, I didn’t have to walk at all.  Mr. Guy is always a good sport and carries me.  Oh!  I got a new shirt for this trip!


It’s perfect, don’t you think?

When we finally got on the plane, I put my little monster head down and went to sleep.  I don’t remember any of the trip.  I didn’t even have a snack.  I guess all of that moving from terminal to terminal tired me out!  Next thing I knew we were picking up our luggage and getting in a fancy black car to go to our hotel in Seattle.  I went right back to sleep.  The Lady said that it wasn’t as late in Seattle as it was in Dallas because we gained two hours.  Here’s that time thing again!  I just wanted to go to bed.  So, I did!

I was nice and rested when I woke up on Friday.  Friday was the day that The Lady’s picture taking classes started.  The event was called Click Away.  I like that name.  It makes sense to me since I always hear The Lady’s camera go click, click, click when Mr. Guy and I are around.


Mr. Guy and I looked around while The Lady was in her morning class.  When she was done, I asked what her class was about.  She said, “Boudoir photography.”  I said, “Boo what?”  She explained that it was a special kind of picture taking where ladies wear the kind of clothes that people don’t see them in most of the time.  I asked her if she meant pajamas.  She told me that that wasn’t it.  I must have looked confused because she finally explained that the ladies wore fancy underwear.  I don’t know why anyone would want their picture taken in their underwear!  The Lady explained that this kind of picture taking helps ladies feel pretty and helps them to accept how they look even if they may not always feel pretty.  I thought about that and wondered if anyone wanted to take a picture of a blue and orange furry monster in his underwear.  Then I changed my mind.  I think I’ll stick to just letting The Lady take pictures of me in my t-shirts!

The Lady also took some classes in taking wedding pictures.  I guess I won’t be in any of those pictures either.  I am too young to get married.  But even when I’m older, I don’t want to get married.  I don’t think that there is a girl monster out there who would love me as much or take care of me as well as Mr. Guy and The Lady.  I think that I will live with them forever.  Besides, the closet with all of my t-shirts is at their house.  

This was The Lady’s favorite place at the conference.


The Lady got a new camera there.  I asked her if you had to have a special camera to take pictures of people in their underwear and wedding people.  She said, “No.”  She told me that she could use her new camera to take pictures of me and Mr. Guy too.  So far, she hasn’t taken any pictures with it yet.  She said that she wanted it to stay packed in its box so it could travel home safely.  I bet she will take some pictures of me this week…I will be wearing a t-shirt, not just my underwear!

On Saturday night, Mr. Guy, The Lady, and I went to The Seattle Space Needle.  We had to walk almost a mile from our hotel to get there.  That wasn’t so bad, but it was raining.  The Lady said that it rains a lot in Seattle and that she likes the rainy weather.  I don’t mind the rain, but I sure wish I had had a raincoat!  Mr. Guy did his best to keep my warm and dry.


When we got to the Space Needle to buy our tickets, they said it would be two hours before we could ride up the elevator.  That is how you get up high so you can see the city.  While we waited, Mr. Guy and The Lady took me to the Chihuly Gardens.  I asked them what  grew in the Chihuly garden.  The Lady said it was a glass garden.  They grow glass?, I thought.  That sounded a little strange to me.   The Lady told me that it is a glass sculpture garden.  Dale Chihuly, the glass artist, makes all kinds of beautiful shapes with colored glass.  I was a little nervous to go to a place where everything is glass.  I am a careful monster, but I was still worried that I might break something.  Mr. Guy said that it would be fine as long as I didn’t touch anything. He held me very close so that I wouldn’t trip and fall and break something accidentally.


Some of the glass looked like Christmas trees.  They were brightly colored and had lights shining through them  They were beautiful!

The light bouncing all around through the glass was really neat looking.  I liked the place where the glass was on the ceiling.  I knew that I could not break anything if the sculptures were up high!


While we were looking at the glass on the ceiling, I met a really nice girl named Lindsay.  She was from California and she wanted to be my friend.  Though I have done a terrible job with my Hundred People Project, Lindsay made me want to get back to it because she asked to have her picture taken with me.  That made me a happy little monster.  Her mister friend took a picture of us and The Lady took one too.  Now I have twenty-five people!  I will make it to a hundred.  I will.

After I had my picture taken with Lindsay, I saw something that looked like a big glass bowl.  Mr. Guy said that they should put Chex Mix in it.  I don’t think that is what it was for!


It was a very pretty blue bowl!  I liked Mr. Chihuly’s glass because he used a lot of blue and orange, the best colors for almost anything!  I was nervous being this close to Mr. Chihuly’s big blue bowl.  I didn’t want to stay in this spot for very long!

Next we saw more glass sculptures up on the ceiling. More orange glass!


This part was in a great big glass building, but it was just plain building glass not the cool kind of glass used for the sculptures. 

There were also lots more glass sculptures outside.  I don’t understand how they don’t get broken.


Mr. Guy got mad at The Lady because she let me sit on the wet rain covered bench.  I didn’t mind, but  my monster underwear did get a little wet.  That was OK because nobody was going to take pictures of my underwear!   I do definitely need a raincoat before we again visit any place with lots of rain.

After we finished touring the garden, we still had an hour before our elevator time.  We went and had a snack, fried cheese curds.


The words “curds” is kind of an ugly sounding word.  I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to eat anything called “curds.”  Mr. Guy said that they were good and that I should try them.  I did and they were, but the word curds still does not sound appetizing!

Finally it was time to get in the elevator line to ride to the top of the Space Needle.  The Space Needle is 605 feet tall.  That is like 600 hundred of me standing on top of each other!


I was a little scared, but not too much so.  We got in line with lots of other people.

The elevator ride to the top was super quick!  It took us longer to ride the hotel elevator to the twelfth floor where our room was than it did to ride all the way to the top of the Space Needle.  When we got off of the elevator, I felt like I was in a giant spaceship.
We then went outside to walk around the outside of the spaceship Space Needle.  It was rainy and cold and SO WINDY!  I was a frigid little monster.  Not only did I need that raincoat, I also needed my orange sweater that Ms. Joni made for me. 
I didn’t even think about bringing my sweater because when I was packing in Dallas, it was almost too hot for a t-shirt, forget a sweater!  If I had my own cellphone with all of those fancy app things, I could have checked the weather in Seattle while I was packing.  I mentioned this to Mr. Guy.  He said no phone for me.
Back inside, there was a great big map that showed all of the places where people have traveled from that have visited the Space Needle.
Mr. Guy added our names to the map.
One of those yellow dots is me!

After Mr. Guy signed our names, we walked back to our hotel.  It was still raining, but it was not nearly as cold and windy on the ground as it was 605 feet up in the air!  We needed to get back and pack.  The Lady got lots of new picture taking stuff and Mr. Guy was not sure where it was all going to go.  I got a new t-shirt and the Space Needle, but it did not take up much room in our suitcase.

When we got up on Sunday morning, it wasn’t raining anymore.  We took a short walk around our hotel.  There were lots of pretty orange flowers, and the leaves on the trees were also turning orange.  The trees in Texas do not have orange leaves.

We took a few pictures and then it was time to leave for the airport and our trip home.

When we got to the airport, I was hungry.  Mr. Guy bought me a sandwich on funny a bread.  It had a hole in the middle of it.  That seemed strange.  I was worried that Mr. Guy got defective bread.  He told me that it was supposed to be that way.  The bread was called a beagle, or a bugle, or something like that.  


It tasted good, but I still don’t know why all of the sandwich insides didn’t fall out of the hole in the middle of my bread.  I like un-holy bread better.  Is that right?  Well, you know what I mean.

When we finally got on the airplane, I fell asleep in Mr. Guy’s lap.  I didn’t wake up until we were almost back in Dallas and the flight attendant starting talking to me.  

She wanted to know my name and where I had been.  I got excited because I thought that maybe I could have my picture taken with her and I would be up to person #26, but nope.  She said that she was not allowed to have her picture taken while in her working clothes, something about 7-eleven, or costing nine dollars and eleven cents, or something.  I didn’t want to get her in trouble, so I will have to find another person #26.

Finally we were back in Dallas.  We waited for our suitcase to come around the racetrack.


Once we had our bag, we headed home and I started writing.  And that is my story about Seattle.

THE END!



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Me in Ely and Cambridge

Here it is Saturday. I think I am starting to catch up with the days. Even though it is already Saturday, I’m writing about Friday.

Today we had breakfast in the hotel. The Lady said that breakfast was served every morning in the hotel!  I thought it was nice of them to give us breakfast everyday. Blue and Orange monsters need to start their day with a good breakfast. 
After breakfast, it was back on the bus. The people in Britain call it a “coach”.  I thought a coach was someone who taught game players how to beat up other game players.  That is not what it means here.  Mr. Martin was there waiting for us. He is the coach driver, not the coach.  Mr. Martin drove us to a place called Ely. There is a big church there called a Cathedral. The Lady and the singing people were going to sing a concert there. 

We had to park a hundred miles away and walk to the cathedral. Well, it was not 100 miles really, but it seemed like it. Mr Guy carried me all the way from the coach (see I’m learning to speak British!) to the cathedral.  When we got there, I was surprised. The only churches I had seen were small ones like the one in Delaware next to store where The Lady and Mr. Guy adopted me. Ely Cathedral is GREAT BIG. It is all stone and colored glass windows. As we walked it seemed to get bigger. It was almost a scary place. 


Some nice folks there gave us a tour. That made it seem less scary. Ely is very old. Because it is so big and made of stone, things echo everywhere. All the voices sounded louder.  We learned a lot about the history of the cathedral. I did not get it all. I think there are things I needed to know before I got there about Norman (whoever he is) and some other guy named Henry D8. Maybe he is related to R2D2.  Even though I was confused, Mr. Guy really seemed interested. So I guess it was all good. 

In the afternoon the singing people did their concert. It was really good. I had never heard them sing before. I was a little worried that they would not let blue and orange monsters in to the concert. The cathedral people were very nice.  A couple of them asked Mr Guy all about me. He told them how I go places and have this blog. They thought that was great! So I got to go.  When we got to the chapel where the singing people were going to do their concert, there was some blue there.  The Chapel was called The Lady Chapel and the blue lady was The Virgin Mary.



If you want to hear what the singing people sounded like, here is a link to one of the songs that they sang in The Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral.



When the singing was over, we got back on the coach and Mr Martin took us back to Cambridge. We had the whole afternoon to look around there. Cambridge has a big and old college. It is bigger and older than the college where The Lady teaches or either of the colleges where Mr. Guy and The Lady went to school.  The Lady got me a new shirt just so I don’t forget about Cambridge!! YAY!!! 


I’m not really going to go to Cambridge for college. I would have to leave The Lady and Mr. Guy. I don’t want to do that.  And, I am not really good at school things.  I like it when The Lady and Mr. Guy teach me what I need to know. 

One thing that Mr. Guy taught me about while we were in Cambridge was telephone booths.  I thought booths were someplace that you sat with your friends at a restaurant, a place where you were supposed to eat and talk to your friends who are right there with you.  Telephone booths are places where you do talk to your friends, but you have to pay money to talk to them on a piece of plastic that is attached to the wall of the telephone booth with a big thick piece of wire.  This all seemed very strange.  Mr. Guy’s telephone booth is much smaller.  He can carry it in his pocket wherever he goes.  He does not have to stay attached to a big red box on the street corner to talk to his friends.


While we were in Cambridge, we also did something called punting.  I thought punting was something that those coach people did to help their team beat up the other team.  Apparently in Britain, punting means something else too.  We rode on a funny boat where a guy stood on the end and pushed us along the river.  



It was fun and we got to see more of Cambridge.  It was a little like bumper cars though because not all of the boat drivers were good and boats kept running in to eat other.  It was not scary, though.

Neither was this dinosaur.


We had a snack with Mr. Mickey and Ms. Robin.  They liked me and were not embarrassed to walk around with me.


After our fun afternoon and evening, we went back to the hotel. We were going to leave Cambridge in the morning and we needed a good night’s sleep. 


So that is what Friday was like. I will tell you about Saturday (which is really today) tomorrow!

I know…the time and days are all confused because I wrote this on time but did not post it on time and now it is several weeks later.  After I wrote this post, I realized that it was going to be hard to get this done while we were in England.  I will tell you all about the rest of my trip, but I will write about it from where I am now, back in Texas!