Category: coffee

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My Trip to Virginia!

Friday was the day!  Mr. Guy is not tired anymore.  He is officially retired!  To celebrate, we went on a trip Norfolk, Virginia to meet some of The Lady’s picture taking friends.  Well, I’m not sure that Mr. Guy thought of it that way, but I was excited to get to go on a trip and I think that Mr. Guy had fun once we got there.  He met The Lady’s picture taking friends and their Guys.  

When we fly on trips, we usually leave very early in the morning.  This time, because Mr. Guy had to go to school one more time, we left at night.  When we got to the airport, they were glad to see me. The computer told me that!


This is where we got our tickets.  There was one for Mr. Guy and one for The Lady.  They called me a lap baby so I didn’t get my own ticket.  I guess they know that I prefer to sit in Mr. Guy’s lap when I’m on the airplane.

Everything went smoothly until it didn’t!  Our plane was delayed because there was lots of rain.


We waited.  


And then we waited some more.  Then they changed our gate so we moved.  Then we waited some more.  


I’m glad that Mr. Guy always carries me in the airport.  There are lots of things with wheels in the airport and they don’t always watch out for people, let alone little blue and orange furry monsters.   It is kind of scary.  People pull and push and roll boxes with their clothes in them and they don’t watch where they are going.  Then there are these wagons that drive inside, right down the middle of the sidewalk; there isn’t a street.  They make lots of noise.  “Beep,  Beep,  BEEP.  BEEP!!!’  They always seem to be in a hurry but they are full of only empty seats.  They never seem to stop to let poeple on.  They just beep their way through the airport nearly running over people and their boxes of clothes!

I was getting to be a hungry and tired little monster.  The good thing about the new gate was that it was right next to a pretzel store.  The Lady went and got me a cinnamon sugar pretzel, but just as she got back with it, they called us to board the plane.  FINALLY!  But then I had to wait to eat my pretzel.


Just as we were about to step on the plane, we had to wait again because something spilled on the airplane and they had to bring a special truck and a special person to come suck it up.  While we waited, I got more hungry and more tired.

Then finally we got on the plane!


And I ate my (cold) pretzel.

The good thing about being an hour late leaving Dallas was that the storms all passed and it was time for sunset.  Sunset above the clouds is so pretty!!!  The Lady let me borrow her phone so that I could take some pictures.


Look at all that beautiful blue and orange!!!  My monster belly was full and my monster eyes were full of pretty sky.  In the end, everything was good!  Then I went to sleep and slept through the rest of our flight.

We got to our hotel very late and all of us went to bed because The Lady told me we had a very exciting day the next day.  Well actually, it was that day because it was 1:30 in the morning!!!

We met The Lady’s picture taking friends at the Norfolk Botanical Garden.  I remebered The Lady telling me last week that I was going to have a chance to see lots more pretty flowers. I could tell exactly who the picture taking ladies were because they all had cameras around their necks and carried boxes of stuff, but not like the boxes with wheels that people pulled around in the airport.  They carried them on their shoulders.

The Picture Taking Ladies were full of smiles and laughter and headed off together to take pictures.  Fortunately, one of The Picture Taking Ladies, Ms. Sherri, brought her Mr. Guy with her.  So, my Mr. Guy, Ms. Sherri’s Mr. Guy, and I spent a lot of time sitting on benches talking and watching The Picture Taking Ladies run around pointing their cameras at anything and everything…including us!  At least they didn’t forget we were there!



The Lady thought the flower was prettier than us, but there we are in that blurred background!


We were happy on our bench talking to Mr. Ray  Well, really we sat on lots of benches; this is just one of them.

We also walked around and saw lots of green stuff.

The Picture Taking Ladies saw lots of things.  The Mr. Guys and I sat on our benches and enjoyed fresh air, the fragrant flowers, and conversation with each other.


I did see a funny looking water monster!


We had lunch under a tree.  We got our lunch from a truck.  The food guy piled a bunch of ingredients on a long paddle and stuck it in a big box on wheels.  This box on wheels was much bigger than the boxes on wheels that people had in the airport.  It would not fit in the airplane’s overhead bin and it wasn’t full of peoples’ dirty clothes.  It was a magic box!  


The food guy put the pile of ingredients in it and when he pulled it out, it was pizza!!  He cut his pizza into nice even pieces.  I liked that.

After we ate our magically made pizza, we went to look at the roses.  These are the flowers like we have in the gardens in our town.  The Norfolk Botanical Garden had rose rows of rowses roses.  That was hard to write!  I don’t like all of these phonehomes or homephones or whatever these words are called!  


I saw pretty colors that weren’t roses, too!


And I found this funny dead flower.

Mr. Guy said it was a pine comb.  A pine comb??  I asked Mr. Guy how I was supposed to use this to comb my fur.  It didn’t look to me like it would work very well.  

“Pine CONE!”, he said, “Not comb.”

I was so glad that I didn’t have to use it to brush my fur, but I still didn’t know what it was for.

The Lady told me that is the female, or seed bearing part, of a pine tree and…

I told her to stop.  This seemed like more information that I really needed.  The most important thing is that I don’t have to use this female seed thing to comb my blue boy fur!

I had a super fun day at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens and I think all of The Picture Taking Ladies did too!

Ms. Sherri, the lady that goes with the guy, Mr. Ray, asked to have her picture taken with me.  That reminded me that I have not done well with my 100 People Project.  Almost a year ago, on my “birthday” I decided that I would try to have my picture taken with one hundred people before my next birthday, which is next week.  That isn’t going to happen.  I got sad and disappointed about that.  Mr. Guy and The Lady said that it was okay and reminded me about our conversation about disappoinment a few months ago.  They said that we could just continue from where we are and eventually we will get to a hundred people.  That made me smile!

So, Ms. Sherri is #24 in my 100 People Project and I am on a roll again!  Thank you Ms. Sherri for helping me get back on track!


Sunday morning while we were at the hotel, someone knoecked on our door and gave us food, already cooked!  It was another magic food moment.  


I wish the mailman in Dallas would bring our food to the door already cooked!  Then The Lady would not have to make meals when she is tired.  Oh wait…Mr. Guy is not tired anymore so he can fix the meals and the mailman doesn’t have to bring them.  

Another thing that was not a disappointment on this trip was that Starbucks in the Norfolk airport is open 24 hours, unlike the one in the Dallas airport.  When we got to the airport at 4:40 in the morning to come home, Mr. Guy got us all a cup of coffee!


Oh, and if you want to see more of The Lady’s photos from her visit to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, check out her blog!  Give her a day or two, though.  She has been busy sorting through her photos and she is not retired and had to go back to work this week.


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The Big D

It has been a long time since I have written a post.  I feel like a bear, a blue and orange bear, who went into hibernation for the winter.   Now that it springtime, I am venturing back into the world.  I think Mr. Guy and The Lady have been hibernating at school!  They always seem to be busy.

Last weekend, The Lady had to be in Chicago for a meeting.  Mr. Guy went along and he said that I could go too.  Yay!  It has been a long time since I have been on a trip.  When The Captain was sick, we went on trips a lot.  Now we don’t go as much.  Sometimes I miss it and sometimes I don’t.  Anyway, I was excited to get to go this time.  I thought Mr. Guy and I would have a great time doing stuff while The Lady was stuck in her meeting.  The weekend didn’t go quite as I had hoped.  I learned another one of those “life lessons” as Mr. Guy calls them.  I learned about disappointment.

Big D is not for Dallas, where we live.  It is for Big Disappointment.

Out flight was very early.  We got up at 2:30 am to be at the airport at 4.  Well, Mr. Guy and The Lady got up.  Not me.  They just scooped me out of my bed half awake to leavet.  I didn’t really wake up until it was time to go through security and Mr. Guy had to send me, all by myself, through that dark tunnel where those TSA guys take pictures of my insides.  I have had to do that lots of times, but it is still scary for a little blue and orange monster!  They saw that my insides were empty!  I had had no breakfast.  Mr. Guy said that we would have breakfast on the plane but he would get us some coffee to share while we waited in the airport.

Disappointment #1
At 4am, nothing is open in the Dallas airport.  Not even Starbucks!!  


Mr. Guy and I had to wait until we got on the plane for our coffee.  This made for two grouchy monsters!  Mr. Guy and I grumbled together in our chair until it was time to get on the airplane.  The Lady ignored us both.  She knows that is the best thing to do when we have been awake, well sort of awake, for over an hour and have not had any coffee.  Fortunately, we were not in gym class with the coaches on this flight, we were in the first grade class.  In first grade, you get coffee before the airplane leaves the ground.  Phew!  Mr. Guy and I were happy about that.


I was so not awake when we left my house, that I forgot to put a shirt on.  I was a little embarrassed, but Mr. Guy held me tight so no one would stare at my orange belly fur and he told me that we had some time when we landed in Chicago before we had to head to our hotel; we would find a Chicago shirt for me in the airport.

Disappointment #2
Mr. Guy and The Lady walked all over the terminal, into every store they saw, trying to find a new shirt for me.  There were no shirts sized for little blue and orange monsters anywhere.  This seemed strange to me.  I have gotten lots of my shirts in airport shops.  Oh well, we still had Saturday to find a new shirt somewhere.

Disappointment #3
As it turned out, we did not get to see anything the whole time that we were in Chicago except our hotel.  


The Lady was busy with her meeting, and Mr. Guy found out that he was being given a whole bunch of extra work at school so he had to stay in the hotel room and work, work, work all day long!!  I was sad that I wouldn’t get to see any new places, but I was happy to get to spend the whole day with Mr. Guy.  We got to have breakfast and lunch together and I got to help him make some videos for his monsters at school.  


The day could have been better, but it also could have been worse.  Mr. Guy explained to me that there are times when things don’t go like you want or hope they will.  He told me I just had to look for something positive.  He said that if you look for stuff to make you unhappy, you can always find it.  But, if you look for something to make you happy, you can always find that too.  


I was happy that I got to go with The Lady and Mr. Guy.  I was happy that Mr. Guy and I shared lots of coffee and breakfast and lunch.  And, I was happy that Mr. Guy and The Lady told me that when we went back to the airport to fly home, we could try again to find a new shirt for me.  Oh, and I was happy that I got to nap and watch HGTV while Mr. Guy worked!  


At least I got to look at pictures of Chicago in a book.


Disappointment #4
Still no shirt to be found at the airport.

While we tried again to fins a shirt for me, Mr. Guy found a coloring book for himself and The Lady got a bracelet.  It made me smile that we found something for them. They also got a nice blue bag that I got to ride in.  

I learned that I am just as happy when I help to find a nice surprise for other people as I am when they find them for me!  


While we were waiting for our flight, I saw this strange toy hanging on the wall.  I asked The Lady if we could go play with it.  She said that it was not a toy; it was a pay phone.  


Hmmm…it didn’t look like any phone I had ever seen.  Why did someone hang their phone on the wall?  Silly question.  Because that phone was too big to put in their pocket.  And, it had too many cords and buttons and couldn’t even take pictures!  It looked like some kind of science fiction thing to me!  That was the newest thing, at least to me, that I saw all weekend!!

Then it was time to get on the plane and come home.


Even though I tried to smile and be a big blue and orange furry monster, The Lady knew that I was disappointed.  To make me feel better, she told me that during the month of May, she would include me in all of her daily photos.  That means that we will get to do something fun every single day!    The Lady said that we can post her photos to my blog every day too.  Now I am one happy and excited little monster!  I will have to spend all month brushing my fur so that I look my very best.  Oh, and she said that maybe there will be a new shirt somewhere along the way!