Author: Kris Baker

Boy has it been a hard, sad, crazy few weeks at our house.  I have learned that even when I have the best intentions, like wanting to write every day, sometimes life happens and we just can’t do all of the things that we hope to do.

Last week we had to say good-bye to our canine, Harley.  Harley lived with Mr. Guy and The Lady a lot longer than I have.  We were all sad, but Harley was very old and her body was not strong anymore.  We all worked hard to keep her happy and comfortable as long as we could.  She was kind of furry like me except that her fur was gold not blue and orange.  She didn’t have horns like mine, but her ears stuck up and kind of looked like my horns.

The Lady told me that Harley crossed The Rainbow Bridge and met her big brother, Adidas.  We miss her, but I know she is happy and feels much better now.

Then The Lady and I went and spent several days with Offspring #2 and her babies.  We thought we might have some fun taking pictures with those little guys, but that didn’t happen.  Those little people don’t stay still long enough for pictures!  They are busy all the time.  This furry little blue and orange monster got tired just watching them play!  The Lady and I decided that it was more important for her to help Offspring #2 take care of the boys than it was for us to take pictures and write.  I hid in our room and napped and watched HGTV on The Lady’s ipad.  I kind of enjoyed my monster alone time.

Then a most terrible thing happened.  There was a school shooting here in Texas and nineteen children and two teachers were killed.  We all got very sad again.  I wrote about guns four years ago.  It seems not good that guns are still killing too many people all these years later.  The students who were shot are just a little bit older than me.  That is awful.  I am still little.  I want to grow up to be a big monster, to learn more things, to go more places, to get new t-shirts, to make new friends, to maybe someday have my own little monsters like Offspring #2.  None of those children will ever get to do those things.  I cried a lot for their families.

When Mr. Guy and The Lady were still going to school every day and teaching, I used to think it would be fun to go with them.  Now I am glad that none of us has to go to school.  I think that schools are scary places.  I hope that Mr. Guy or The Lady can teach me all the things that I want to learn at home.

Even though I am not a very happy monster, I am trying not to be so sad all of the time.  

We’ll see how that goes.

I hope you all can find something to chase away some of the clouds in your world.

Oh, and hug everyone you love as often as you can.  You never know when they won’t be there to hug anymore. 🙁

Enough said for today…

Whew!  It’s been a hectic few days.  Well, not really for me, but for The Lady.  She spent the weekend helping Offspring No. 2 with her little people.  Those little people were very busy!  That made The Lady and Offspring No. 2 very busy too.  Because of all that busy-ness, The Lady didn’t have time to help me write.  That’s OK.  I had a relaxing weekend even if she didn’t.  

Yesterday, The Lady wanted to rest.  That seemed fair to me since she had been busy for two days I had rested rested for two days.  Mr. Guy and I did guy things while she was gone, like napping, and reading, and watching HGTV.  I missed The Lady, but I also like it when just Mr. Guy and I have time together.

Anyway, yesterday The Lady needed a picture with bubbles, but we couldn’t find our bubble blowing stuff.  (I bet Offspring No. 2’s little people had bubble blowing stuff they would have shared with me.)  I told The Lady I would  take a picture for her.

I thought the hard part would be figuring out how to make bubbles without any bubble blowing stuff.  That was the easy part!  The Internet told me that I could make a different kind of bubbles by mixing oil and water.  I knew we would have both of those things so off to the kitchen I went.  I had to ask Mr. Guy for a little help getting a big pan out of the pantry in which to mix the oil and water.  

Then the really hard part came!  How was I going to take a picture of me and the bubbles without spilling my oily bubble stuff all over me?!

I got The Lady’s camera and played for a little while.  This was WAY harder than I thought it would be.  Have you ever noticed how some things look easy and are really hard and how other things look really hard and are actually easy?  I wonder why that is.  Maybe it’s that some people make easy things look hard and others make hard things look easy.   I asked Mr. Guy and The Lady about this.

They said that everyone has different skills and different talents.  That’s what makes us all unique.  They also said that I was right that something could be easy for someone and difficult for someone else, and that is OK.  The world needs everyone’s skills.   I had a hard time taking a picture of me and my weird bubble stuff, but usually I have an easy time making people smile.  Mr. Guy said that making people smile is my talent and it is an important one.  Making people smile makes the world a better place.  That made me smile!  

Speaking of smiles, I didn’t get my smile in my picture I took for The Lady.  All I got was my belly fur.  The Lady said it looks like abstract art.  I wondered if that was a good thing.  I went back to the Internet and looked up abstract art.

art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures.

I don’t really know what all of that means, but I do see shapes and colors in my picture.  And, this furry little blue and orange monster fur has kind of a cool texture.  I’ll  just trust that The Lady understands what this definition of abstract art means and that she thinks that abstract art is a good thing.

Happy Monday, everyone!  I hope your day brings you some smiles.

Every Wednesday, we get a big pink box of food delivered on our front porch.  The box says, “Imperfect Foods.”  I thought I knew what imperfect meant, but I asked Mr. Guy just to be sure.  He explained that imperfect usually means that something has flaws.  I thought about that for a minute.  I wondered how we know if our food has flaws.  The Lady has found some food in our refrigerator that she says is a “science experiment” and we cannot eat it.  But, she never called any of it flawed or imperfect.  We always eat the food that comes in the pink box.

Maybe the food in the box is imperfect imperfect food.  That makes it not flawed, right?  I asked Mr. Guy about this.  He said this was not the case, that the food is indeed somehow flawed.  Of course my next question was “how is it flawed?”  Mr. Guy explained that some of it is considered flawed because someone made too much of that food and so that it did not go to waste, Imperfect Foods got it to give people who would use it.  Then there also are foods that have gotten a new package, but the food already in the old package is still good.  Mr. Guy showed me that most of what we get is fruit and vegetables whose shape, size, or color are “somehow flawed.”  This concerned me.  Who determines if something’s…or someone’s…shape, size, or color is imperfect?  And, if there are things that are imperfect, there must also be things that are perfect.  I looked up a definition for perfect: “having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.”

Who decides what is perfect?

I’m pretty sure that Mr. Guy and The Lady think that I am perfect.  They adopted me so I must be desireable.  I don’t know what elements, qualities or characteristics are required of a furry little blue and orange monster, but I think I have at least some of them…but perhaps not all of them.

Maybe I am imperfect.  My size, shape, and certainly my colors are not the same as other monsters that I’ve met, which is not many, but still… Who can tell me if I’m imperfect?

Should I even worry about being imperfect?  Or perfect?

I looked at the oranges and apples in our Imperfect Foods box.  They looked fine to me.  Maybe because they were a little smaller than some of the ones that we have gotten at the market.  To me the Imperfect Foods apples and oranges were perfect because they fit into my little monster mitts.  But, someone else thought that they were imperfect.

The blueberries were also small.  Again, to me this is a good thing.  When The Lady made blueberry muffins, it seemed like there was more blueberry flavor in each muffin.  The little blueberries seemed to swom around and fill up the muffin cups better..  It is kind of like the difference between  making cookies with chocolate chips or a whole chocolate bar.  In my opinion, there were no flaws in my blueberry muffins!  The little blueberries seemed perfect to me.

We also got some flowers in our imperfect pink box.  The Lady let me put them in the vase.  My flower arranging skills may be flawed, but I thought the flowers were pretty perfect.  They made me and The Lady smile.

I looked at the flowers carefully.  Some were small.  Some were not all the way open or were missing a few petals.  Some had broken stems.  But I thought they were all beautiful.

Mr. Guy explained that different people have different ideas about what, or who, is perfect and what, or who, is flawed.  It is one thing when you are talking about apples, oranges, and blueberries, but it is another thing when you are talking about people and monsters.  He said that maybe imperfect and imperfect are not the best words for us to use to describe people or things.

I’ll have to think more about that, but right now I think he may be flawlessly correct.

Maybe the people delivering the pink boxes of food should consider changing their name.

The Lady and I were talking about our claws today.  She has to take special care of her claws so that she can play her guitar.  Sometimes she goes to a place where they stick fake claws on her fingers.  She says that fake claws sort of help her play the guitar better, but she really doesn’t like them.  So, she does all this stuff to make her real claws more like the fake claws.  It all seems like a lot of work to me.  My claws grow with no problem.  They stay clean and don’t break and are always a pretty orange…except for the time I asked The Lady to put that drippy shiny stuff on them.

That drippy shiny stuff was kind of was fun…once…I don’t think I’ll do that again.  I think that I prefer my natural orange claws just like The Lady prefers her natural pink (much shorter than mine) claws.

The Lady eats these gummy things every day to help her hair and nails grow strong. I don’t think I need those.  Look at my fur!  It grows just fine.  And, look at my claws.  They grow fine too.  I did try one of her gummy things, though, and it tasted really good.  I wonder how long my fur and hair would get if I ate them every day like The Lady does.  It’s funny – she also has to sand her claws and she also puts this stuff for horse feet on her fingers.  I don’t undertand why she eats stuff to make her claws grow and be strong and then she cuts them shorter and puts the horse feet stuff on them to make them softer.

It is much easier to take care of furry little blue and orange monster fur and claws than it is to take care of guitar playing lady claws!

 

It has been a busy weekend for my people.  Yesterday was Offspring #2″s Little Offspring #1’s birthday.  We had a fun time celebrating.  And today is Mother’s Day.  It makes me happy that I have The Lady to mother me.

Mr. Guy and I worked together to get The Lady a special gift for Mother’s Day.  He knew that a lot of mothers like flowers and chocolate and maybe to go out to eat to celebrate Mother’s Day, but The Lady is not like most mothers.  (I don’t mean that in a bad way!)  She likes Lego.  Mr. Guy told me that the construction at our house is because she needs a big room so that The Lady has a place for all of her Lego stuff.  Some Lego stuff is big and some is small.  Since our new room is not done yet and we don’t have any space for big Lego, we decided to get her some Lego minifigures.  I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but Mr. Guy knew that The Lady would like them a lot.  He told me that there was a new series of minifigures called The Muppets.  They were just released so Mr. Guy knew that The Lady didn’t have any of them and that she would want them.

I didn’t know who The Muppets were so I looked them up on the computer.  The Muppets look kind of like me!  Lots, of furry little monsters.  There is also one that looks like Mr. Guy; his name is Statler.  Statler has a friend named Waldorf.  (That sounds like a salad but he doesn’t look like a salad.)  Then there is a frog, a dog, a prawn, a rat, a chicken, and a pig.  I may have forgotten some of them.  These Muppets have been on television and in movies.  They are kind of famous.  I would like to meet the real Muppets some day.  Maybe I can be on TV or in a movie with them.  That would be exciting!

Mr. Guy was right.  The Lady loved the Lego Muppet minifigures that we got for her.  I learned there are twelve Muppet characters in the series..  Mr. Guy bought eighteen packages.  That seemed strange to me.  He explained that he bought extras because you can’t see in the packages so you don’t know which Muppets you are buying.  He thought he’d have a better chance of getting the whole series for The Lady if he bought the extras.  That didn’t seem right to me, but he knows more about Lego than I do.  Mr. Guy knew what he was doing!  He got all twelve of the Muppet characters in the series.  And The Lady also has a few extras to share.  I think Mother’s Day was good day at our house!

The Lady’s picture taking group was supposed to photograph something pink today.  I suggested that we take a picture of with one of her new Muppet minifigures, Miss Piggy, because she is pink.

I read more about Miss Piggy on the Internet.  I’m not sure I really understand her, but I liked this quotes of hers:

I plan to write more books whenever I can find the appropriate writing attire and color-coordinated pen.

I plan to write more!  And I like to find t-shirts appropriate for everything that I do!  Of course I would like to have a blue and orange pen!  Maybe I understand her more than I thought.

I asked if we can watch these Muppets on TV one day soon.  Mr. Guy said that he would watch them with me.  That makes this furry little blue and orange monster happy.

Speaking of happy, Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers and mother figures out there.  I’m sending each of you a big monster hug.

Together, we make a beautiful family!

This furry little blue and orange monster loves his family!

Mr. Guy was busy with construction stuff today and The Lady went to school to do some work today.  I understand about Mr. Guy and the construction, but I thought The Lady got tired retired and stopped going to school.  Now she is going again.  I guess this makes her unretired.  When she got home, though, she said she was just tired.  Mr. Guy suggested that we go out for dinner since The Lady was tired.  She decided that she wanted to go to the loo bees.  Mr. Guy thought that sounded good to him and he told me that he thought that I would like it too.

Loo bees?  I have been to England so I know about loos.  And, I have been to lots of gardens so I also know about bees.  I don’t want to do anything at a loo where there are bees and I especially don’t want to eat bees in a loo.  The Lady must be very tired to suggest this for our dinner!  This was the best we could do for my first meal out in two years?

I didn’t say anything.  I kept my little monster mouth closed and hoped for something better than this sounded right then.

We hopped in the car and headed for the loo bees.

When Mr. Guy parked the car and said we were there, I didn’t see anything that looked like the loos that I remembered from England…or any bees flying around.  Things were looking up.

Mr. Guy carried me in the front door.  Still no bees.  Just a long line of people.  He explained that I had never been here before and that this is a different kind of place to eat called a cafeteria.  That is a funny sounding word…it sort of sounds like bacteria, which reminds of the loo because The Lady always told me to wash my monster mitts very well after visiting the loo so I wouldnt get germs.  It also sounds like wisteria, a plant that I’ve seen while visiting gardens, one that attracts bees.  Maybe this is all starting to make sense.  

We joined the line and walked  until we saw this sign that explained how we would get our food.  Oh, and I saw another sign that said Luby’s instead of loo bees.  I felt a whole lot better then.

But, still unsure how this all was going to work.  Mr. Guy explained that we would keep walking through the line and I could see all of the food choices.  I would just tell the servers what I wanted to eat and they would dish it up for me.

There was SO much food!  So much food that it looked like a grocery store where they had already recycled all of the packaging before you even bought the food!

I thought I would have a hard time figuring out what I would eat, but since orange food is my favorite, and there weren’t many orange choices, it wasn’t too hard to choose my dinner.

I ordered sweet potatoes!

They are one of my favorite orange foods…second maybe only to Cheetos.

I wasn’t sure tonight’s adventure was going to be a good one, but in the end, this furry little blue and orange monster ended up with a full belly and a happy heart!

Mr. Guy took me shopping for new shirts.  Yay!  We went to the store where I always go, the red store with the white circles everywhere.   We walked back to the section where the have little monster sized clothes.   Usually there are so many shirts in my size that I have a hard time choosing which one to get.  Today they didn’t have many at all.   In fact, there was only one that I liked.  But you know what?  if you only have one choice and that choice is peace, things aren’t so bad!  Even better when peace comes on an orange and blue shirt for this furry little blue and orange monster!

It was a good day!

I started today with the words that The Lady told me to think about yesterday buncing around in my little head…

Without water drops, there can be no oceans; without steps, there can be no stairs; without little things, there can be no big things! – Mehmet Murat Ildan.

When I woke up, I was still sad  about all of my shirts being packed in a box while the new part of my house is being destructed.

Then I thought that is such a small thing.  I am getting a new room.  Soon all of my shirts will be neatly hung in my new room.  And, Mr. Guy, The Lady, and I will have lots more space to play and have fun.  

The Lady told me that when the destruction is done, our good friend Ms. Joni will come visit us and we can all play together and make stuff in our new craft room.  All of the sudden, what I felt was a big thing began to feel smaller and smaller.  Then I wasn’t sad anymore!

There were people working at our house early this morning.  Mr. Guy said that they were putting stuff in the walls and the ceiling so that we would stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

The same thing is going to keep us both warm and cool?  I guess that is like the something seeming like big deal at one time and then small at another.  

When the workers left, I asked if I could go see what they did today.

The first thing I saw was a ladder.

I wanted to climb up.  I took the first step.

It felt like a big step, but then I looked up and realized it was a long way to the top.  I kept taking one step at a time until I made it all the way up that ladder!

…without steps, there can be no stairs…

I guess I was still thinking about yesterday.

Then I saw Mr. Paul.  He is our most important worker.  He knows everything about making new rooms.  I asked him if he would show me his tools of destruction.  He looked at me funny and said, “Tools of Destruction?! Don’t you mean tools of Construction ?”

Hmmm…I don’t know.  Do I?

Mr. Paul explained that construction means that you are putting things together, that you are making things.  Destruction means that you are taking them apart or tearing them down.   The Lady gave me an easy way to remember which word was the right word to use.   She pointed out that something had to be built before it could be torn down.  So construction has to happen before destruction. She then told me to think about the alphabet.  I started singing “A B C D…”  She stopped me right there.  “C comes before D just like construction comes before destruction.”

Well that’s handy, I thought to myself.  

“Oh!  I get it!  Like clean comes before dirty and chicken comes before dumplings.  Does it also mean that cookies come before dinner?”

The Lady told me that remembering the difference between construction and destruction by thinking about the alphabet was just one step…that did not lead to an entire staircase.  I think I understand what she was saying.

Mr. Paul knew that I was sort of confused by this whole conversation so he stepped in, more than one step but not a whole flight of stairs, and showed me some of his construction tools.

First, a hammer and a tape measure.  Mr. Paul said that a hammer could be used for both construction and destruction.  Right now he was only using it for construction.  His tape measure has lots of lines and numbers.  I think it is used for con-fusion rather than construction.

Then Mr. Paul showed me the tool that he uses to cut wood.  It was big, loud, and kind of scary with all of those sharp pointy parts.

Ah!  You cut the wood to destruct it! C before D.

The Lady explained that cutting the wood did not “destruct” or destroy it.  She went on to say that if I had not been confused by the measuring tape I would know that sometimes you have to cut wood so that it is the right size to be used for construction.

Now it’s D before C…Divide and then Conquer.  This furry little blue and orange monster is never going to be able to keep all of these rules straight!

Once Mr. Paul divides and conquers the wood, he uses a fancy nail gun to make walls and doors and ceilings.

Oh wait.  C before D.  Maybe the ceilings come before the doors.

However it works, I had fun learning about all of the tools Mr. Paul is using to construct the new part of our house.  But all the C and D rules exhausted me.

C before D.  Curiosity before Drained.