Author: Kris Baker

I am glad to be back and taking pictures with The Lady, but sometimes this little monster has no idea what to do to help.

Today I asked what we were going to take pictures of and The Lady said that we had to find fibbing gnocchi numbers.  I thought to myself: Are there really that many gnocchi out there telling lies that someone keeps track of the numbers showing how many fibs they tell?  I thought people only did that for Mr. Trump.  Is he a gnocchi?  No he can’t be a gnocchi.  Gnocchi are Italian dumplings.  He’s not Italian or a dumpling.  So, what do gnocchi fib about?  Whether they are made from potato or semolina flour?  Whether they have breadcrumbs or cornmeal?  More importantly, where are we going to find any gnocchi, fibbing or otherwise, today?

I expressed my serious misgivings about today’s project to The Lady.

She said, “Fibonacci numbers, not fibbing gnocchi numbers!”

Well, that certainly cleared things up for me.  No really.

The Lady tried to explain.

She said that Fibonacci numbers are a sequence of numbers, such that each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, starting with 0 and 1.

0+1=1, 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8

Hmmm…That’s not too hard, I thought.  We just have to take pictures of zeros, ones, twos, threes, fives, and eights.  The Lady said it was more complicated than that.  She explained that there were lots more Fibonacci numbers than these six.  Oh.  I couldn’t figure out any more because I only have eight claws to help me count. She then said it isn’t so much about the actual numbers but the ratio between the numbers.

I really didn’t want to hear about all of this stuff.  I am just a little furry blue and orange monster with eight claws and who that likes to collect t-shirts, not one who wants to hear about strange Italian numbers.  And I don’t want a t-shirt with these fibbing gnocchi numbers on it!

The Lady went on talking about her ratios, and lines, and geometry, and Mr. Pizza who discovered the numbers even though they were named after Fibbing Gnocchi Mr.  Fibinacci, and fee-fi-fo-fum.  I was completely lost and still had no idea what we were supposed to take a picture of.

The Lady finally realized that I was a very confused little monster and explained that a ratio is a spwecial number that shows a relationship between two things.  In the case of these numbers she was looking for, that relationship was easier to see than to understand by just talking about the numbers.  She showed the ratio to me on a shell and on a tree and in lots of different kinds of flowers.  Now things were more interesting.  Mr. Guy showed me how easy it was to see in the petals of a rose.  In the middle, the petals were close together and as they moved away from the center, they got further and further apart.  She said that if we measured, the ratios between adjacent petals would all be the same.  I now sort of understood.

The Lady also said that Mr. Guy’s index finger has Fibinacci numbers.  Each of the digits in his finger, all the way down to his wrist, is made up of the fee-fi-fo-fum number.  That was kind of interesting.  I don’t have fee-fi-fo-fum fingers.  Actually I don’t have any fingers; I have claws and they don’t have any digits so they can’t have Fibonacci ratio digits.  That’s OK.  Because Mr. Guy showed me with the flower and then his finger, I think I now understand, a little, about all of these confusing Italian numbers!

I think I’d rather know about pizza and gnocchi!

Today I went to school…or is it work or is it schoolwork…with The Lady.  I spent some time in her office.  She has lots of stacks of paper and lots of books in there.  I tried to read them, but her papers and books make no sense to this little blue and orange furry monster.  Her books don’t have letters and words and sentences in them.  All they have are dots and lines and squiggles, lots of dots and lines, and squiggles…and her books don’t have any fun pictures!  The Lady said that her books have music in them.  That makes no sense to me!  Music is something that I listen to, not something that I look at in a book.  The Lady explained that that was true, but the people who play the music for me to listen to have to know what sounds to play.  That is what her books of dots and squiggles tell them.  Hmmm…those dots and lines and squiggles are sounds?  I am even more confused now.  Reading music, The Lady says, is like learning to read another language.  To me, it is like reading a language that looks like what happens when my pen explodes and makes a mess all over my paper while I’m trying to write real letters and real words!

After we worked in her office, well, after she worked, The Lady took me to one of her classes.  I was excited about getting to meet new people and maybe listening to some music.  Nope.  The Lady and her class just looked at those dots and lines and squiggles on the paper and said things like, “That’s a G.” and “That’s a 5.”  I was so confused!!!  I saw no “g’s” or “5’s” or “a’s” or “b’s” or “c’s” for that matter.  Those students must be secret agents or something because they knew that all of those dots and lines and squiggles meant letters and numbers.  I think maybe this little monster needs to stick to reading things that use real “abc’s” and not secret code “abc’s.” I don’t think I should go to school to be a secret agent.

Even though I didn’t understand anything that The Lady’s class was talking about, they were very nice to me and didn’t laugh at me for not knowing how to read their secret language; and, they even let me be in their class picture.  

I can pretend that I know something about being a music theory secret agent because I am in the picture with all the people who are real secret agents because they know how to read the secret code!

I hope I get to meet The Lady’s secret agents students again.  Maybe they will teach me a little bit of their language so that I can sing a song with them!

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children (and little blue and orange furry monsters) to be always and forever explaining things to them.”     – Antoine de Saint-Exupery  The Little Prince

Today is Sink of the Mayo, a day for lots of parties here in Texas.  Mr. Guy said that the parties are to celebrate the Mexican army de-feeting the French army at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.  Why do we celebrate the Mexican army taking away the feet of the French people in the first place.  And in the second place, why do we celebrate with sinks full of mayonnaise?  I’ve never been to one of these parties and I don’t think I ever want to go.  What if they tried to de-feet me?  And mayonnaise is kind of gross.  I wonder what they do with those sinks full of mayonnaise?  Maybe they now celebrate with potato salad and coleslaw instead of French feet.

I think I’m glad that my family did not celebrate Sink of the Mayo Day today.  Mr. Guy went to the library and then took a nap. The Lady and I baked cookies.  I wanted to make a cake because I didn’t get my cake yesterday, but The Lady had to make cookies for her other blog so that’s what we did.  I had fun, even though I got cookie dough in my fur when I tried to stick my orange claw in the bowl and scoop some of the dough for a taste test.  I’m not sure The Lady had fun because she had to give this little blue and orange furry monster a bath to clean my fur right in the middle of cookie baking.  After that, she showed me how to use her special cookie dough ball making gadget.

Our cookies are really good.  The Lady and her baking friend, Ms. Tracey, will write about the cookies and share the recipe on their blog, Sifted Together, tomorrow.  But, I still want some cake.

Mr. Guy said that since I didn’t get any cake, maybe we could reconsider and go to a Sink of the Mayo celebration a get a special kind of Mexican dessert.  He said it is called a sofa pillow.  I want cake, not a sofa pillow!  I think Mr. Guy is spending too much time with the canine who likes to eat that white fluffy stuff in the sofa pillows.  Maybe those two should go out and celebrate together.  I’ll stayhome and eat The Lady’s cookies.

I kept hearing people say that today, May the 4th, was space fighting day and that some guy walked through the sky saying to everyone, “May the Forks be with you.”  

Why is there fighting in space?  Isn’t there enough fighting here on earth?  What is there to fight about in space anyway?  There are no countries to fight with each other.  There are no playground bullies because there are no playgrounds.  I don’t think there are politicians in space.  And there are plenty of stars, enough for everyone to have their own.  So why do we have a special day about space fighting?

And why do they, whoever they are, fight with forks?  

Oh!  I bet I know!  

This all has something to do with that cow that jumped over the moon. Maybe that cow is fighting with that dog that laughed at him because he looked funny as he leaped through the stars.  And now the cow needs forks to defend himself because the dish ran away with all of the spoons.  It is probably a good thing that the cow and the dog didn’t have any knives.  I guess they had to go through TSA screening before they could fly into space.  I wonder if the fiddling cat now has all of the knives.

This little blue and orange monster doesn’t like fighting of any kind so I/m not celebrating space fighting day.  I do have lots of forks, but I am not going to fight with them; I’m going to use them to eat cake.  I want you to have forks too so that I can share my cake with you.

I’ll be happy when it is May the 5th!

Because today was Friday, The Lady did not have to go to school.  I was excited about that.  Then The Lady told me that she had met all the dead lions this week so we could spend the whole day together having fun together, The Lady, me, and Mr. Guy.

I am not sure why The Lady met dead lions this week and I’m really not sure why that means we get to spend the day together having fun.  First of all, I didn’t even know that there were any lions, dead or alive, here in Texas.  I’ve never seen a lion except in books.  I know there are lions in Africa and sometimes mean people kill the lions.  I sure hope that Mr. Guy and The Lady are not mean people who made the lions dead.  I know that I don’t want to meet any dead lions.

The Lady seemed happy about all of the dead lions she met.  She said that was a good thing because it meant that she did not have to worry about anything today except having fun with me and Mr. Guy.  I decided it was best for me to forget about The Lady and her dead lions and just have fun.  And that’s what I did!

Every May, because I get my picture taken a lot, Mr. Guy and The Lady take me shopping for new shirts.  Since I haven’t been on any trips lately, I haven’t gotten any new shirts in a long time.  We usually go to the red store with the white circles to buy my shirts.  

The red store with the white circles has the best shirts for  little blue and orange furry monsters.  And since The Lady is still taking pictures of red stuff, I thought this was a good place for us to go.

Usually when we go places, Mr. Guy carries me, but at the red store, I ride in the go cart and Mr. Guy pushes me.  It is fun!  Sometimes people look at me strangely, or maybe they are looking at Mr. Guy and The Lady strangely, but we just smile and keep going.  

Mr. Guy told me that they had to shop for some stuff for them before we looked for my shirts.

I felt like I was in a fort of toilet paper.  I’m glad it was all new!

Finally it was time to shop for me.  Yay!

Look at all of those shirts!  Orange ones and blue ones!  And lots of other colors too!  There were so many to choose from.  Mr. Guy helped me look at them all and we picked some out.  He found them in the right size for this little monster.  I wear a size 3T T-shirt.  Why is that the letter “T” so important in everything?

Mr. Guy bought me four new shirts!  

After we finished at the red store with the white circles, we went to a dirt store.  I don’t know why we had to buy dirt in bags when we have a whole yard full of dirt on the ground.  Mr. Guy said we needed the special dirt from the dirt store for some of his plants.  He said that when we got home, we were going to put some new plants in pots and they needed the dirt store dirt.  I like to play in the dirt, any kind of dirt, so it didn’t matter to me if we had ground dirt or dirt store dirt.

When we got home and before putting the plants in their pots, I changed into one of my very first shirts, my “dirt shirt.”  Ms. Michele,, one of The Lady’s picture taking friends who lives in Delaware, which is where I came from, gave me this shirt when she and Ms. Peggy visited with us after The Captain was sick.  It is still one of my favorite shirts.  And it was perfect for playing in the dirt store dirt because it doesn’t get dirty!

After all of the plants were in their pots of dirt, we had to put water on them.  I don’t have a special water shirt.  That’s OK because I don’t like getting wet.  Getting wet makes my fur feel very funny!

We still had lots of time left this afternoon, so The Lady said we should play with some of her toys.  She has these toys that are a bunch of little pieces that she says you can put them together and make stuff.  Today she wanted to work on making a bus.  That sounded like fun even though I don’t know how to make a bus out of lots of little pieces.  The Lady said that I just had to look at the pictures in the directions and match the pieces in the pictures with our pieces and we would eventually make a bus.  That didn’t seem too hard.  I’m a smart little monster.

Then The Lady got out the pieces, lots and lots and lots of pieces!  None of them, except for the wheels, looked like they had anything to do with a bus, but I trusted The Lady and tried to match the pictures to our pieces.

The first piece that I picked up said Leg Zero on it.  No wonder none of these pieces look like bus pieces.  Buses don’t have legs!  And even if they did, LegO doesn’t make any sense.  Shouldn’t it say Leg1 or Leg2?  I decided that maybe making buses with legs from lots of little pieces is not something I want to do.  Mr. Guy doesn’t like playing with The Lady’s toys either.  He and I had some guy bonding time on the couch napping while The Lady played with her toys.  I think that was OK with her.  

I hope tomorrow is as fun as today was…and that I don’t meet any dead lions!

Wow!  I have forgotten how much work it is to help The Lady with her picture taking!  Now I know why Mr. Guy is glad that it is May and I have to be in the pictures instead of him!

Since I knew that The Lady has to take pictures of red stuff this week, I found a red shirt this morning so I would be ready for pictures when she got home from school.  I am trying to be a helpful little monster.  I asked what kind of red stuff she had to find today.  She said, “Red puppies.”  I thought to myself for a minute.  Red puppies are going to be hard.  All of the puppies at our house are brown and black and white.   Then I remembered seeing a book at the store about a red puppy.  His name was Clifford.  I was so excited that I had thought of a red puppy for The Lady to take a picture of. 
In my proud little monster voice I said to The Lady, “I think that you should take a picture of Clifford!”  

The Lady looked at me strangely.  “Clifford?” she asked.

“Yes!  Clifford!  He is a red puppy, or maybe he is a dog but that is close enough, and you need a picture of a red puppy.”

The Lady smiled and said, “Not a red PUPPY, a red POPPY!”

This little furry blue and orange monster had no idea what a POPPY was.  The Lady told me that it is a kind of flower.  I asked if we had any red POPPIES and she said, “No.  We’ll have to find some other kind of red flower.”

Like me, The Lady likes blue and orange so I wasn’t sure we had any red flowers in our garden.

She told me that she had impatients.  Impatients?!  That hurt my little monster feelings.  I have been trying to be helpful and she told me that I am giving her impatients.  I said that I was sorry for giving her impatients.

This time she laughed harder than before and gave me a great big hug and told me that I was not giving her impatients.  “We have I-M-P-A-T-I-E-N-S without a “T”.  They are a kind of flower!”

Those two words sure do sound the same to me!  But OK.  So we went outside and she showed me the Impatiens without a “t”!

I don’t like this picture of me with these flowers without a “t.”  The flowers look good, but I am blurry.  The Lady said that she did this on purpose because her picture was supposed to be of the red flowers.  She also said that I was blurry because of something specific she did with her camera.  She used a big word that I’m pretty sure had the “t” in it that the flowers didn’t use, but I have no idea what that word was.  All I knew is that, whatever she did, I didn’t like being blurry.  I asked if we could take another picture of me.

The Lady suggested we try some photos with high biscuits.  I guess she gave up on flowers.  I know what biscuits are, but I wasn’t sure about “high” biscuits.  The I remembered that I was wearing my shirt from Scotland that Ms. Rene gave me when we met her in England.  It has a special monster from Scotland on it.  

The Lady must have been thinking about  England and how they have high tea in the afternoon.  And how in England they call cookies biscuits.  The English eat the biscuits at high tea.  Now I understood why The Lady thought about high biscuits. But, I have never seen any kind of red biscuits, high or otherwise.   I do know that in England sometimes they put jam on their biscuits and jam can be red.  Maybe biscuits with red jam are “high” biscuits.   It was all starting to make sense until The Lady said that we had to go to the greenhouse, which is white, to find the high biscuits.  I followed along.

We got to the greenhouse and The Lady pointed and said that the high biscuits had a little red on them.  They would do.  I didn’t see any biscuits.  The Lady pointed again and asked me to stand by the high biscuits and she would take a picture in which I was not blurry.  All I saw was a big flower with red in the middle.  I asked her where the biscuits were.

Now the Lady looked confused.  “Biscuits?” she said.

“Yes.  You said that we were going to take pictures with high biscuits!”

Now she understood.

“Not high biscuits.  HIBISCUS.  They are flowers.  Those flowers right there.“

I stood by the HIBISCUS and The Lady took my picture.

Now I want biscuits with red jam!  

Hi!  Remember me?  Probably not.  Well, I’m Blueper B and I’m back.

I used to write a lot of stories with the help of The Lady, but she has been so busy that we have not written together in a long time.  That made me a super sad little monster, but I didn’t want to hurt The Lady’s feelings so I never said anything to her about feeling sad.  Then a couple weeks ago, she and I were talking and The Lady told me that she too was sad because we had not written our stories together in a very long time.  We made a packed, or is it packed an agreement, whatever it is, we made one and promised each other that we would get back to writing together often.

For the last couple of years every single day during the month of May, The Lady has taken a picture of me and I, with her help, write a story about my day and her picture.  This makes May my favorite month!  We decided that the first day of May would be a good day for us to get back on track.  Since that is today, here we are!  I am so excited!

I never even posted my pictures from my trip to I’ll Ask Her Alaska from last summer.  I have them and I tried to write some by myself, but I need The Lady’s help.  Sometimes my words don’t work right and my stories sound funny.  She said that we will work on those old stories along with some new ones.  I was afraid that I would forget all the things that happened in Alaska, but I had such a good time that I don’t think that I will never forget that trip!

The Lady has to take pictures of red stuff this week because that is what her picture taking people say she has to do.  I am not red, but she said she would take my picture anyway.  The Lady said that furry little blue and orange monsters can always be in her pictures even if the picture taking people want the pictures to be red.

I did find one of my favorite t-shirts for today’s picture.  It has some red on it.  I like what this shirt says, especially the red part.  I try to be a good little monster.  I try to make people and other little monsters happy.  I know I make Mr. Guy and The Lady happy.  But sometimes, it is hard for me to believe that the whole world is a good and happy place.  There are lots of people who seem sad, more sad than The Lady and me about not writing.  There are also people who seem mad for reasons that I don’t know.  And there are also people who are mean.  Mr; Guy and The Lady try to keep me away from mean people.  I am thankful that I have met lots of super nice people in all of my travels and not any really mean people.  That is why I can still wear this shirt!

When I look around outside, I see that the flowers and the trees and the bushes and the butterflies are good too!  Since The Lady needed lots of red in her picture today, we went for a walk in our yard looking for red things.  I spied the pretty red maple tree.  It had just rained so there were lots of little rain dots on the leaves.  I think I look pretty good with the leaves and their dots.  Do you think that our colors crash together?  I hope that this little red tree and and this little blue and orange furry monster will BE THE GOOD IN THE WORLD!

Thank you for reading today’s story.  I hope you will come back and visit my blog again.  Maybe I can make you smile just a little extra!

Monster hugs,
Blueper B.