Category: Friends

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A Month of Me: Day 20 – Lens Friends Photowalk

I just went to bed, rolled over once, and then it was time to get up again.  My fur didn’t even have a chance to get messy.  That’s a good thing.  I didn’t have to use that brush thing that The Lady made me bring along.  The only good thing about having to be up and dressed before 6am is that The Lady and Mr. Guy had a surprise for me.  They ordered one of the cool t-shirts that we brought for the picture taking people for me!  It was a special monster-sized one and it was orange!  The Lady’s was pink, but Mr. Guy and I, well all of the guys, got orange ones!  How perfect is that?!  It made me feel like part of the group even though I didn’t have one of those picture taking things around my neck.

 Just like the picture of Mr. Guy and me at the falls, we look alike here, too!  And its not just because of the orange shirts.  It must be our handsomeness!

We went to Meadowlark Gardens at 6:30 in the morning.  The picture taking people wanted to take pictures of flowers and other stuff that grows outside.  All the bright colors of the flowers woke me up.  Mr. Guy did not have enough coffee before we left the hotel so I’m not sure that he was completely awake.

I did not see any blue flowers on our walk through the garden, but I did see these pretty purple ones that looked like a great big ball.


They are called alliums.  I told Mr. Guy and The Lady that we need to grow some of these in our garden at home.

Then I saw pretty orange flowers.  The remind me of my horns.  I’m not sure what these are called.


It think it may be something like echo rojo.   Maybe this is why The Lady was using Spanish, sort of, yesterday!  Echo rojo means red hot poker, I think.

The gardens also had a jangseung.  Jangseung is a Korean word meaning a totem.  In Korean villages, these poles were placed at the edges of villages to scare off demons.


If Mr. Guy was wearing his fancy black hat, he would look sort of like the man on the jangseung.  Mr. Guy only looks frightening enough to scare off demons before he has had his coffee in the morning!


Saturday was a special day at the garden.  They were celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Korean Bell Garden so there were speakers, and microphones, and a podium set up for the people who were going to talk.  We did not stay at Meadowlark Gardens long enough to hear the presentation.  I did take a minute to see what it would feel like to stand at the podium and pretend like I was talking to a whole crowd of people.  Maybe someday, I will become a politician.  If I do, I will be an honest one who does good things for all people…and monsters, even the monsters who have different colors of fur than I do.

We were all hungry when we left the gardens.  We headed to downtown Leesburg, Virginia, which is where the picture taking people were going to spend a big part of their day.  Though before they started taking pictures, we got some doughnuts!


 Mr. Guy picked me up so that I could see all of the different kinds.  Yummy!

And then it was time to walk around the town.  There was so much to look at.


The Lady took lots of pictures in downtown Leesburg, but I was not in very many of them.  I do like this one she took of Ms. Sherri as a photobomber!  Ms. Sherri is one of the first of The Lady’s picture taking friends that I ever met.



Some of the other picture taking people took photos of me.  Maybe they will share them with Mr. Guy and The Lady.

 Mr. Guy carried me around all day and pointed out things that he thought might interest me.


We went to a cemetery and looked at headstones.  Mr. Guy explained that these are markers that show where people who have died are buried.  We looked at the names of the people and their birth and death dates.  Some of them lived and died over two hundred years ago!  Though I didn’t know any of the people who were buried here, it made me happy to think about them and say a prayer for them and let them know that they are not forgotten.

After we had walked around Leesburg a little more, we were tired and getting hungry again. 


Once all of the picture taking people were also tired and hungry, we went to lunch.  

After lunch we went to this place where there were lots of tents and lots of people.  Some of the people were selling weird stuff like old furniture and car parts and signs.  Mr. Guy said it was called a flea market.  I’m glad that we were already there before he told me what it was called.  I sure wouldn’t want to think that we were going to go someplace where all you can do is buy and sell fleas!  I don’t even want to go someplace where they give you fleas for free!  Fleas would be a disaster in my fur.  And I wouldn’t want to share them with the canines and feline when I got home.


Again, after spending the afternoon wandering around and looking at all of the unusual stuff at the market, we were hungry again.  Ms. Kay, one of the picture taking people invited all of us to her house for dinner.  We had pizza and salad and wings and a fancy cake with ice cream on top.  

And, she took a picture of all of the picture taking people and all of their friends and significant others.  They let me be in the picture too!  I think I kind of hid Mr. Guy.  Oops!


It made me a very happy little blue and orange furry monster that everyone was so nice to me.  I thought they might think that I was too silly to come along on their photowalk.  Nope!  They made me feel like one of them…but with just a shirt and no picture taking machine. 

By the time we got back to our hotel.  I was very, very sleepy.  This was a long, but super fun, day for this little monster.


And in the morning, we planned to meet our friends for breakfast at 8:00, before everyone was ready to head home.  After getting up at 4:30 on Friday and 5:30 on Saturday, 7:15 on Sunday felt like sleeping in!

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A Month of Me: Day 19 – In the Air Again

Friday seems like a long time ago now!  I could not post from The Lady’s iPad while we were gone to Virginia so I had to try and remember for three days everything that I wanted to write!  That is hard for a little monster with limited storage space!

We got up early, but not too early, to go to the airport.  The Lady told me that we were flying to a new place in Virginia called Dull as.  

Dull as…?  Dull as what, I asked.  

The Lady looked confused.  What do you mean dull as what?, she asked.

She said we were going someplace dull as…  Maybe this was some kind of game and I was supposed to fill in the blank, kind of like a Knock-Knock joke.  Dull as ice cream with no chocolate sauce?  Dull as a story with no pictures?  Dull as blue without orange?  

She said, “No!  No!!  No!!!  Dull is!

Oh!   Dull is…  Dull is a pencil with no lead.  Dull is people who take themselves too seriously.  Dull is watching golf on TV.

“Dull es…D-U-L-L-E-S,” she said in a rather frustrated way.  

Why are we using Spanish verbs?, I asked.  Is, es…what’s the deal?

Sometimes The Lady loses her patience with me when it comes to conversations like this.  When that happens, she sends me to Mr. Guy to straighten me out.  He told me that Dulles is one word, not two,  and it is the name of a place.  Finally it all made sense.  I was happy to hear that we were not going to a dull as or dull is kind of place!

We had a nice uneventful flight, nothing like our last flight to Virginia!

When we landed at DULLES, we went to our hotel.  We had a few hours before we were supposed to meet the picture taking people.  Mr. Guy and I continued the nap that we had started on the plane and The Lady did some work.

Then it was time to go on our first adventure.  We met just a few of the picture taking people and went to Great Falls Park.  I didn’t know there was such a thing as great falls.  I always thought falls were bad things because when people and monsters fall, they break bones, and scrape elbows, and get stitches.  Mr. Guy explained that falls is also a word that describes water flowing over a precipice.  I had no idea what he was saying, but I did get that we were talking about water and not people or monsters so I figured it would be OK.


The falls looked pretty and I liked the sound of the water.

Mr. Guy and I sat and listened while The Lady took pictures.


Except for the no hair and blue fur part, we kind of look a like, don’t you think?  Oh, and Mr. Guy hides his horns a little better than I do.

It was very hot while we were watching the water fall.  And then it started to rain.  We did what everyone does in less than ideal circumstances; we went to Starbucks.  Then we went to dinner with a few more of the picture taking people.  And finally we went back to the hotel and went to bed because the picture taking people wanted to start taking pictures at 6:30 in the morning!  I was going to have to be awake and dressed very early for a second day in a row!  I wasn’t sure that this was a good thing.

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A Month of Me: Day 10 – Back On Track!

 

Today was a great day for this little blue and orange furry monster!  I got to go work…or is it school…or maybe it’s both…with The Lady.  She has gone to this school almost every day for a long time and I have never gotten to go with her.  I’m glad that she said that I could go today because I am curious about what she does at school/work that keeps her so busy all the time.

She was giving final exams at school today.  That sounds so serious.  While her class was taking their test, I sat in The Lady’s office and played games on her computer.  There wasn’t much else for to do in there.  I couldn’t read any of her books because none of them had words.  They just had dots and lines and more dots and more lines.  And they were all black and white.  They must have been in some foreign language.  None of these books even had any pretty pictures to look at.  Bejewelled on the computer was much more interesting, and colorful, to me!

After her class finished their test, I got to meet them.  They were all very nice to me.  Now I understand why The Lady likes her job.  She gets to spend her days teaching nice people like Mr. Eric, Mr. Carlos, and Mr. Sovanarith.  They even let The Lady take their picture with me!  I like these guys!  

Then I remembered my 100 People Project.  Almost two years ago, I said that I was going to try to have my picture taken with 100 different people in a year.  Well…that didn’t happen.  We would get busy.  And then we’d forget.  And then we’d get busy again…I was kind of sad that i didn’t finish my project like I had hoped.  I only made it to #25.  Today, because the people that The Lady teaches were so nice to me, I decided that maybe it was time to start again where I left off…with #26.  I have learned that I just have to keep trying.  Mr. Guy and The Lady told me that if I work hard and keep going, I will eventually make it to 100 people in my 100 People Project.  I asked The Lady’s students if they would take pictures with me.  They all said yes!

So here are #26, #27, and #28!




Look at all these smiles!  I thought these guys were smiling because they got to meet me and we had our pictures taken together, but maybe they were smiling was because they were all done with their tests.

I also got to meet another person that The Lady works with, Ms. Sarah.  She works in the office and helps the students and the teachers all day long.  I think that she is way busier than The Lady!  I have heard about absent-minded professors like The Lady!  Ms. Sarah and The Lady are good friends.  They spend a lot of time sharing stories about their canine furry monsters.  

Ms. Sarah agreed to have her picture taken with me too!  #29! Now  I think that I can accomplish my 100 people project maybe before I turn 100 years old!

It makes me happy to know that if The Lady can’t spend her days at home with me and Mr. Guy, at least she gets to be at school/work with lots of super nice people!

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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!
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Me and Ms. Joni

Last week I went on another trip.  Mr. Guy, The Lady and I went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the 2016 NOAH conference.  NOAH stands for National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation.  It is a gathering for people who, like The Lady, have white fur and trouble seeing.  I met a few of The Lady’s NOAH friends last year in Philadelphia.  (I wonder why they always go to Pennsylvania?).  I met Ms. Joni then.  She has white fur like The Lady.  Ms. Joni was very nice to me while we were in Philadelphia and when I got back to Texas, she messaged me on Facebook and always seems interested in what I was doing.  I was very excited when I found out that I was going to get to see her in Pittsburgh!  Ms. Joni told The Lady that she was bringing me a present.  That made me even more excited!  

As soon as we got to our hotel, I found Ms. Joni.  I gave her a great big hug.  Or, maybe she gave me a great big hug.  We shared a great big hug!  It was good to see her again.  


The next morning, she gave me my present.  It was wrapped in pretty blue paper.  


You know that you have good friends when they pay attention to the things that make you happy.  I like blue and Ms. Joni remembered that!  Ms. Joni held me while Mr. Guy helped me unwrap my present.  

As usual, The Lady was taking the pictures.  As I started to tear the paper, I saw orange.  Blue and orange!!!!  Yep.  Ms. Joni knows me very well!  I thought my present might be a new t-shirt, but it didn’t feel like a t-shirt.  Now I was a little puzzled.  


I pulled the rest of the tape off of the paper so that I could see my whole present.  It sort of looked like a t-shirt except that it was heavy and the sleeves were long.  It was the opposite of my vest and my tank top, which have no sleeves. 


The Lady told me that it was called a sweater.  Hmm…I wondered if a sweater was something that was supposed to make you sweat, kind of like a portable sauna, maybe?

This is a super special sweater.  Ms. Joni made it especially for me with her very own sticks and orange string!   The Lady knew all along what my present was because Ms. Joni sent her a letter asking what size monster shirts I wear.  Ms. Joni made my sleeves exactly as long as my arms and made sure that my claws had just the right amount of room at the ends.  I tried my new sweater on right then!  I must say that I am a pretty dapper looking monster in my new orange sweater.


Then I started to sweat.  I wanted to keep my sweater on because it made me smile, but it was too hot in Pittsburgh for a sweater.  My fur was getting all soggy because I was sweating.  Ms. Joni is from Wisconsin, where it is cold and snows a lot in the winter.  Up north people wear sweaters to keep warm, but not to sweat.  It will be a few months before I can wear mine in Texas.  Maybe Mr. Guy and The Lady will take me somewhere cold so that I can wear it sooner!  My new orange sweater is soft and cuddly and I want to wear it now!

Ms. Joni told me that in Wisconsin, the hunters wear orange so that they are safe.  I am not a hunter, but I want to be safe too.

While The Lady and Ms. Joni were doing all of the official NOAH stuff, I caught up on sleep and HGTX in the hotel room.  When they weren’t doing official conference stuff, we had lots of adventures.  

We were in Pittsburgh for six days, but it felt like about two.  It seemed that one minute I was unwrapping my awesome new sweater and the very next minute I was having to say goodbye to Ms. Joni.  That made me very sad because I don’t get to see her very often.

Ms. Joni and The Lady told me that we will all see each other again next September in Denver when the adults with white fur get together like they did in Philadelphia.  That is a whole year away!  I don’t want to wait that long to see Ms. Joni again!  But, she is my friend on Facebook so at least I get to talk to her through messages.

Thank you so much for my awesome orange sweater, Ms. Joni!  Every time I wear it, I will think of all the hugs that you gave me!


I wonder if it will be cold enough in Denver to wear my sweater???



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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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A Month of Me – Day 28

Tonight was another night that Mr. Guy and The lady weren’t home.  They went to hear some sinfully music.  That didn’t sound like a good idea to me.  Why would they want to listen to that kind of music?  I was a little worried about them, but I know that they will go to church tomorrow so they can repent for their evening of listening to sinfully music.

I stayed home and watched HGTV and ate patriotic candy that our friend Mr. Jim brought us from his trip to Philadelphia.  I’ve been to Philadelphia, but I didn’t get and red, white, and blue candy when I was there.  I was not watching sinfully TV or eating sinfully candy.  I was being a very good blue and orange furry monster!  I even kept The Lady and Mr. Guy’s spot on the bed warm while they were gone.

When The Lady and Mr. Guy got home, they seemed all happy.  They didn’t seem ashamed at all to have spent their evening corrupting their ears with sinfully music.  I asked them if they weren’t just a little bit remorseful (I learned that word in the dictionary the other day.) for how they had spent their evening.  They looked at me strangely, like all of the sudden I had turned pink and had no horns.  The Lady asked me what I was talking about.  I told her that I thought she should be sorry for leaving me at home with the other furry monsters at home all night and going out to listen to sinfully music.  She started laughing at me and said, “Symphony!  Not sinfully.”  

Oh!  I was so relieved!   I will sleep much better tonight.

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A Month of Me – Day 14

Saturdays are usually chore day at our house because its the only day that Mr. Guy and The Lady have to clean and do laundry and buy groceries.  Today was different.  Since The Lady is all done with school, she can do all of those things on Monday.  So, today wasn’t chore day; it was adventure day!  That made me happy so I decided to wear my “happy” shirt.  And it is yellow!!!  In all of my wondering this week about how my blue and orange fur would look with the color yellow, I forgot that I already had something yellow!  I don’t think it crashes clashes.  Yellow is a happy color just like my shirt says.  It makes me happy and going on adventures with The Lady and Mr. Guy makes me happy!  Today I am a happy little monster!


Lots of times when we go on adventures that require flying on an airplane, we have to get up very early.  No airplanes today.  We weren’t going too far from our house so we went in the car and we didn’t have to get up until eight o’clock!  This little monster got lots of sleep last night!  We were going to a place called Heritage Homestead to meet some special friends of The Lady and Mr. Guy.  It took us about an hour and a half to drive there.  

The first thing we did was eat lunch.  The restaurant was super busy so we had to eat sort of quickly.  The Lady did not take time to take any pictures at lunch, but Mr. Guy and I did share a piece of orange cake.  I think it was made of carrots.  After lunch, we went to see all of the fun stuff.  Heritage Homestead is a craft village where people make all kinds of things.  
The first thing we saw was a blacksmith.

It was kind of scary watching the blacksmith.  He put pieces of metal into a big fire.  The metal got so hot that it turned bright orange.  That may be one kind of orange that I don’t like!  The blacksmith guy liked it though.  While the metal was orange, the blacksmith guy used his tools to twist and turn and fold the hot metal into hooks and all kinds of neat things.  I liked watching him, but I don’t think I would want to work with the metal and the fire.  I would be scared that my fur would catch on fire, and I don’t think it would turn more orange if it did.
Next we went to the gristmill.  I didn’t know anything about gristmills, but there were people working there who explained what a gristmill is.  They take grains and grind them to make flour.  
I liked this place because it was about making food.  I like food!  I like to make it and I like to eat it.
We bought some oats for our breakfasts.
The next place we went was to the fiber building.  That was a place where they had lots of sticks and string.  The people there twisted the sticks and string just like the blacksmith did except they did not use any fire.  The Lady knows how to twist string with sticks.  This place had string in lots of colors.  
Hey look!  They have string that has blue and orange and yellow all at the same time!  It matches me!
I have an idea!  The Lady can get some of this string and use her sticks to make me a hat!  I bet she can make a hat with some air holes for my horns!  I bet our friend Ms. Joni would like this place.  She is one of The Lady’s friends who likes to play with sticks and string.  I think you should come visit us in Texas, Ms. Joni.  Or, maybe we can find a string store when we see you this summer in Pittsburgh. If The Lady won’t make me a hat with air holes for my horns, will you?
I learned that some of the string comes from plants and some of it comes from animals like these.
I think that they should be called string monsters, but they are called sheep.  That doesn’t make any sense.  They were fuzzy, but they didn’t have any colorful sheep like make the string at the string shop.  I want to see a fuzzy rainbow sheep!
This place did have lots of flowers in all the colors of the rainbow.
Look!  More yellow with lots of orange!  I think that I am beginning to like yellow too!  Not as much as blue and orange, though.
And they had great big shade trees.
Since I don’t have a hat, I sat in the shade of the tree so that my head didn’t get baked.  Mr. Guy was wearing his hat so his head didn’t get baked.  That was OK because I don’t think that hat is the right hat for me. 
The last place we went was to a house where people take mud and make dishes with it.  They put it on a merry-go-round and instead of getting dizzy it becomes a bowl, or a vase, or a cup.  A cup!  They had made lots of cups.  Maybe the Dallas Stars should come here where they could each get their own cup since they didn’t win the big cup.  If they really, really, really, just want one great big cup, they can get one of those here too.
After we saw all of this neat stuff, it was time to say goodbye to our friends and head home.
I had a super fun adventure day!  I saw lots of things that I have never seen before.  I am looking forward to more adventures and more new people on our summer adventures!

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A Quick Trip to Philadelphia

Hi, everyone!  Life has been quite busy around our house.  Mr. Guy and The Lady are both back at work and the animals and I have been at home during the day.  I thought things were going to be calm and quiet for us, but we have been having lots of landscaping done at our house.  The dogs have spent the days watching intently and barking a little, the cat has slept through it all, and I have been trying to stay out of the way.  despite all of this busy-ness, we got to take a short weekend trip to Philadelphia last weekend.

The Lady is part of a group called NOAH, National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation.  Every other year the adults of NOAH get together for a weekend of fun.  NOAH is for people with albinism.  One of the things that that means is most of them have white fur.  Even though I have blue fur and Mr. Guy has no gray fur, they let us go too.  People with albinism also have difficulty seeing so Mr. Guy and I were able to help them find things in this unfamiliar city.

We got to the airport early, but not as early as when we were flying to Salisbury all those times, on Friday morning, September 11.  We sat down to eat a quick breakfast in the airport.


As we were finishing our meal, there was an announcement about a service of remembrance in the airport chapel.  Mr. Guy and The Lady explained to me that fourteen years ago at exactly that time, a terrible thing happened in our country and  lots of people lost their lives.  As I was listening to what had happened, I got very sad.  Mr. Guy held me tightly and we all said a prayer for all the lives lost and changed forever on September 11, 2001.

So that I wouldn’t be quite so sad, Mr. Guy took me to the candy store and bought me a treat to have on the airplane.  I got grapefruit, watermelon, and peach gummy chews.  Yum!


I must have fallen asleep as soon as we got on the airplane, because I don’t remember the flight at all.  I didn’t even eat any of my candy!  When we got to Philadelphia, we met some of The Lady’s NOAH friends in the airport and then we all rode to the hotel together.  While we were in the car, I realized that it has been quite a long time since I have added any new photos to my 100 People Project.  I hoped that while I was in Philadelphia that maybe I would meet a few people who would be willing to support my project.

As usually, Mr. Guy was carrying me when we walked into the hotel.  Several people called out, “Look!  It’s Blueper B!”  I wasn’t sure who any of these people were or how they knew me.  Mr. Guy said that he bet that they read my blog and that’s how they knew who I was.  I felt kind of like a monster star.  I got to talk to people, shake hands with them, and have my picture taken with them!  The first one is with Joni.  She and The Lady are good friends.  They have lots of things in common like this thing they do where they tie string together with two sticks.  Somehow they make the string turn into objects like hats and socks. They call it knitting.  I think it’s some kind of magic trick.  Maybe they could knit me a magic T-shirt.


The NOAH people said that people are fascinated with their white hair and that sometimes people ask if they can touch it…and sometimes they don’t even ask; they just do it.  I don’t think that that is very polite.  Another friend of Mr. Guy and The lady asked if she could give my fur a new style.  Ms. Cindy worked hard to give me a Mohawk.



What do you think of my new fur-do???


I think Mr. Guy might be a little jealous that he can’t have a cool Mohawk like mine.  

Since I let Ms. Cindy practice her hairstyling skills on my fur, she agreed to have her picture taken with me.


Ms Cindy and I had some interesting conversations.  She lives in Canada and invited us to come visit her some time.  That would be fun; I have never been to another country before.  

On Saturday, we went on a walking tour to see some of the historic buildings in Philadelphia.  Well, I went on a carrying tour; everyone else walked.  We had to take a short ride on a train to get to the starting point of the tour.

We saw lots of old buildings that are important to the history of our country.  Since I don’t go to school, I don’t know very much about history, American or an other kind.  We had an entertaining tour guide whose name was Mr. Jim.  He knew lots of things about all of the historical places in Philadelphia.  Though there is much more that I need to learn, he gave me a good start on learning a few things about my country.

We saw Carpenters’ Hall where the First Continental Congress met.


Independence Hall where the U. S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated.

The U. S. Mint.


We saw the Liberty Bell, but only through a window.  The lines to get into all of these buildings were long.  Mr. Guy and The Lady said that we will go back sometime when we can spend longer looking around.

We saw this interesting sculpture.  The Lady was taking pictures of it when Mr. Guy said that she should take a picture of the reflection so that all of us would be in the picture.  I don’t have many pictures with The Lady because she is always behind the camera.  


I am grateful that Mr. Jim was willing to show us his city.  And, that he was willing to be photographed with me!

Even though it was a quick weekend trip, I had lots of fun in Philadelphia.  Mr. Guy and The Lady have some great friends in NOAH.  One of them in particular made me laugh all the time.  Her name is Becca.  She is very silly and lots of fun!  Becca and I ate donuts together and we had our very first Slurpees together.   I think that will make us friends for life! And her blue eyes make my blue fur really stand out! We also had a Philly Cheesesteak together in the airport.  She said that she might come visit us in Texas sometime.  I hope so! 

Thank you everyone for letting me share in the NOAH weekend even though I have blue and orange fur instead of white fur!  You all are lots of fun!!  The Lady just told me that I will get to see you all again next summer in Pittsburgh.  Yay!


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My 100 People Project – #16


Yesterday The Lady and Mr. Guy met one of The Lady’s picture taking friends, Ms. Sherry.  She is part of Capture Your 365, just like Ms. Peggy and Ms. Michele.  There sure are a lot of these people with cameras all over the place!  Ms. Sherry had to drive three hours just to see us.  That was very nice of her.  We all walked around Biltmore Village for a little while and then we had lunch at a Mexican restaurant  I guess Mr. Guy and The Lady have been away from Texas for too long and had to have some “home cooking.”

Ms. Sherry and The Lady talked about camera stuff and taking pictures.  They were saying things like aperture and zoom and f-stop and ISO and cropping and white balance.  I had no idea what they were talking about!  It is a good thing that I am a handsome little monster, more suited for in front of the camera than behind it!  Ms. Sherry was nice enough to be in front of the camera with me!  Thank you!

Oh, and by the way, she is another one of those teacher people.  Is everyone either a teacher person or a picture taker or both???