Decision Day!

Today was a very special day. At least that is what Mr Guy and The Lady told me. I am not sure I understand it all, but I do understand that what happened today is good. In a place called Washington D.C., a group of people called the Supreme Court made a decision, one that has taken them a very long time to make. That decision was to give all people the right to get married,  Some people think that only boys and girls should love each other and that it is wrong for two boys or two girls to fall in love with each other.  That is the part I do not quite understand. Why would someone not want two people to fall in love, get married, and be happy? Mr Guy and The Lady are happy. Everybody should be happy and not lonely. At least that is what this blue and orange furry monster thinks. 

One of the first t-shirts I got was this one. The Lady and Mr Guy told me that some people really hate the idea that some boys love boys and some girls love girls.  I love everybody!  I like my shirt. I don’t hate anything! I like the idea that love conquers hate. The Lady had to explain the word conquer to me when I got the shirt, so now I understand it. It means "to put away." Putting away hate is one of the best ideas that I have ever heard!

And I found out Washington D.C. is sort of near Delaware where I came from!!!

2/100 My 100 People Project

This morning Mr. Guy and The Lady went to see where one of their friends works.  It is a shop that does powder coating.  I did not go out into the work area because it was not the best place for a blue and orange furry monster; I stayed in the office where there was a comfy chair and a computer.  The office belonged to Mr. Jim.  I hope that I did not mess up too many of his papers while he was showing my people around.

A Big Surprise!

Yesterday I shared about how I helped to make Mr. Guy's birthday cake.  Today when I woke up The Lady and Mr. Guy told me that today was a special day; it is my birthday!  Well, sort of...

The Lady said that birthdays are the day that you come into the world.  I don't know the exact day that I came into the world; neither do The Lady and Mr. Guy.  So we are celebrating the day that I came into their world.  It was one year ago today that Mr. Guy and The Lady walked into Kid's Ketch toy store in Lewes, Delaware and decided that they wanted me to become part of their family.  That made me one very happy blue and orange furry monster!  I have been a lot of places and learned many things over the last year.

The Lady likes to take pictures so that she can remember her adventures.  I like to collect T-shirts from all the places that I visit.  They are kind of like pictures to me, but I can wear them.  Every time I put one on it reminds me of special place, or person, or both.

For my birthday, Mr. Guy gave me these funny white things that look like triangles with a crooked horn.  I said, "Thank you." but I had no idea what I was supposed to do with them.  He told me that they are called "hangers."  They are used to hold clothes so that they stay neat and you can easily find the ones that you want.  Before I got the hangers, all my shirts were in a basket that I had to dig through to find the one I wanted; then they all got unfolded.  That was not good because my monster paws don't fold clothes very well.  Now that I know what they are for, I am very happy with my new hangers!  And, I have some unused ones so I guess Mr. Guy thinks I will get some new shirts this year!  I am doing a happy monster dance!

Speaking of new shirts, I also got one of those for my birthday.

 It says "THE BEST IS YET TO COME!"  That is exciting!

Even though I was adopted in Delaware, I actually live in Texas.  During the past year I have made several trips back and forth between Texas and Delaware because we were visiting The Captain, The Lady's father.  He was sick during that time and died back in October.  Though I am usually a happy monster, that was a sad time.  I am glad that I got to go see The Captain several times.  We liked to watch baseball games together.  The Captain always cheered for the Philadelphia Phillies.  I have a Phillies T-shirt that reminds me of The Captain.

On our trips to Delaware, I also got to meet some of The Lady's picture taking friends, Ms. Michele and Ms. Peggy.  I got to go some neat places with them while they took pictures.  Ms. Michele sent me my very first package in the mail, a University of Delaware T-shirt!  Every time I wear it I think about Ms. Michele, Delaware, mail, and, most importantly, friends.  Ms. Michele also gave me another shirt on one of our visits.  It is my "dirt shirt."  It makes me think about Ms. Michele, playing outside, and chocolate.  Dirt and chocolate are the same color.

In between our trips to Delaware, I also visited San Diego, California; Phoenix and Tuscon, Arizona; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  That is a lot of traveling for such a young monster!  I have been on lots and lots of airplanes.  Sometimes the other people on the airplanes look at me funny.  Well actually, I think they are looking at Mister Guy and the Lady funny because they are flying with a furry blue and orange monster.  It doesn't seem to bother them, though.  Mr. Guy always carries me and holds me and keeps me safe.  I am called a "lap monster" on the airplanes so I don't get my own seat; I have to sit in Mr. Guy's lap when we fly.

My people said that we will adventures on airplanes this year too, but that we won't go back to Delaware any time soon.  That makes me kind of sad because I have friends there, but I am excited to visit some new places too.

After I opened my birthday presents this morning (the shirt and hangers), we went out for lunch at Taco Cabana.

I had chips and queso something new, street tacos.

I liked them because they were little and easy for me to hold.  The people there were really nice!  They wished me a happy birthday.  One of them was so nice that he got me thinking...I thought about this the whole time I was eating my tacos and decided "yep," this is a good idea.  I told The Lady about me idea and she thought it might be fun, too.  So here it is.  I am going to try to have my picture taken with 100 new friends this year.  We'll see how it goes.

Travis at Taco Cabana was #1.  When Mr. Guy ordered, Travis wanted to hear my story.  I told him that I was adopted one year ago today in Delaware and we were out celebrating my special day.  He smiled and said that his grandmother had lived in Delaware.  Like The Captain, his grandmother has passed away too.  After I ate my lunch and had thought about my idea, I went and asked Travis if would mind having his picture taken with me.  He smiled again and said, "Sure.  I would love to."

He joked around with me for a few minutes.  That was a nice birthday present.  The Lady was not comfortable taking a picture of a stranger so this is not her best.  Hopefully with 99 more to go, she will get better!

When we got home, I got to have a special treat too, something that the Lady called a "cupcake."  That sounded a little strange to me.  I thought I was going to have to drink my cake.  The lady said that that was not what "cupcake" meant.  She showed me that a cupcake was a cake that was the size of a cup, not a great big cake like the one I made for Mr. Guy.  Actually, my cupcake came from the grocery store.  I don't think The Lady has recovered from our adventure making Mr. Guy's cake yet.  That is OK.  It was a yummy cupcake.

Other than cake we didn't do anything else special for Mr. Guy's birthday.  For me, my people got things that they called decorations.  I had a funny hat that was shaped just like my horns so it fit on my head.

 They put this fire thing in my cupcake that kind of scared me.  I thought it might melt my fur so The Lady made the fire go away.  And, there were these big things that looked liked colored eggs that floated in the sky.  They were kind of fun.

The Mr. Guy doesn't like them.  He told me that they are fragile like the eggs but if they break, they make a loud scary noise.  The only loud scary noise when real eggs break is from The Lady.

After all this excitement, I thought that my birthday celebration was over, but The Lady said that there was one more surprise.  She told me that there is someone who wants to be my pen-pal.  I wasn't exactly sure what that meant.  I know that a pal is another name for friends and I like friends.  I know that a pen is something that you draw with, but only on paper.  (I learned that the hard way.)  But, I wasn't sure how those two things go together.

The Lady told me that she has a new picture taking friend who lives way far away in Scotland.  Way far away was explained as ten hours on an airplane.  I understand airplane time!  Anyway, this picture taking friend also adopted someone like me and they too share adventures together.  My pen-pal's name is "Stobbsie."  Like me, he has a blog where he writes about his adventures.  Now we can write to each other and talk about all the things we do, places we go, and people we meet!  I am super excited!  Friends, old and new, are my favorite thing...except for maybe T-shirts.  No, friends.  Well, maybe T-shirts...Friends...Oh, I am having a monster conundrum I am going to have to think about this!  Anyway, The Lady is going to show me all of the blog posts that my new friend, Stobbsie, has written and then I am going to write to him!  I am such a happy and lucky little blue and orange monster!

Cupcakes!
T-shirts!
The Lady and Mr. Guy!
Friends all over the world!

What more could a monster want?

Thank you all who have made my first year so special.  I am looking forward to "THE BEST IS YET TO COME!"

Blueper B. and the Birthday Boy's Cake

Hi!  It's me, Blueper B., and I'm back!!!

Finally The Lady and Mister Guy have finished their school year and we can do stuff together.  I miss them when they are teaching, but I know that they need to do that to make money so that they can take care of me, their furry blue and orange monster.

We started off our summer vacation together by celebrating Mister Guy's birthday.  I learned that on your birthday people make you special treats.  You can have anything you want.  Mister Guy wanted a Citrus Angel Food Cake.  The Lady said that she would make it for him.  I asked if I could help because I have never made a cake before and I was ready to learn something new.  I'm not sure that The Lady really wanted my help, but I made her feel guilty when I said that she had spent the last nine months teaching her students at school new stuff and I had waited patiently.  Now it was my turn for her to teach me.  It worked! :-)  I got to help make the cake.  It was a lot of work!!!

The Lady said that some people make their cakes by buying a box of mixed up stuff at the grocery store and then all they have to do is add one or two things and they had a cake.  We didn't make ours that way.  She said we were going to make it from scratch.  Scratch?   I thought scratch was what you did when something made your fur feel funny.  The Lady explained to me that making a cake from scratch means that you don't buy a box of mix from the store; you collect all of your ingredients yourself.  I asked her how you knew what ingredients you need and she showed me a piece of paper called a receipt...no, a recipe.  It tells you all of the ingredients that you need and then exactly what you are supposed to do with them.  The cake that Mister Guy wanted had a lot of ingredients, more than I could count on my orange fingers.  The Lady said that we had to get all of our ingredients out and measured and ready to go because this cake was kind of temperamental...whatever that means.  I didn't ask because I was more interested in learning how to make a cake than learning new words that day.  Some day I'll find out what temperamental means.

The Lady said that we would start by zesting an orange.  I didn't know what "zesting" meant either.  This time I asked because it had something to do with making the cake.  The Lady showed me how to use a special tool, a "zester."  

A zester is used to scrape the the outer skin from the orange into tiny little pieces.  I don't know why you want to take off the pretty bright orange skin, but I am a good monster and I followed The Lady's instructions.

She told me that the the zest would eventually go into the cake and make it taste "orangy." 

 I was surprised that we did not use the inside of the orange.  I ate it.  This monster needed a little nourishment to get him through this adventure.

Next we had to juice a lemon.  

Just kidding.  This is not how it's done.  Juicing a lemon took a special tool too...a juicer.  Haha.

Juicing the lemon was easy.  Again, we did not use the inside of the lemon.

Next we had to separate the eggs.  I asked if there was a special cooking tool for that too.  The Lady said that there was, but that she did not have one so we would separate our eggs without one.  The Lady said that the eggs are the most important part if this angel food cake that Mister Guy wants.  She said that eggs are fragile and that I was going to have to be very careful if I was going to help with this part.  

(I know what fragile means.  The Lady taught me that word early because she was worried that I would break something in the stores when we go shopping.  Sometimes I am not aware of how big my monster hands and horns are and I don't control them very well.)  

The Lady explained that we had to crack the eggs and put the white part in one bowl and the yellow part in another bowl.  I wasn't so sure that I could do that all by myself so I asked Mister Guy to help me. 

 Bad idea!  Either he can't tell the difference between white and yellow or his hands are less controllable than my monster hands.  He kept dropping the yellow part in the white bowl.  Finally we got twelve eggs cracked and separated.  We only needed the white bowl for the cake.

We were finally ready to start mixing all of the ingredients together.  Here came another kitchen tool. This one was great big!  It was blue and had weird pieces attached to it and it had to be plugged in.  

I thought that we would just use a big spoon and stir everything in a big bowl.  I was such a wrong blue and orange furry monster!  First we had to whip the eggs in this big blue machine.  

The Lady talked about foam and soft peaks and stiff peaks.  I wasn't really interested in all of that.  This was taking a long time.  Little by little we got all of the ingredients in the bowl and finally it was time to put the cake in the pan and bake it.  The Lady asked me to get the pan for her.

This is the strangest looking pan I have ever seen!  First of all, it fell apart when I picked it up.  I thought it would make better armor for a monster in case he had to do battle with that big blue kitchen machine. 

I felt sort of like Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street except that I'm a happy monster, not a grouchy one!

 The Lady was not amused.  She suggested that perhaps this was taking so long because I was not giving my full attention to the task at hand.  Possibly, but I was bored with the cake by this point.

We got the cake in the pan and in the oven.  Woohoo!  Playtime!  Again I was wrong.  The Lady told me that now we had to clean up all the mess that we had made in the kitchen.  This cake making thing is a whole lot less fun than I thought it would be.  Because I am a good monster, I helped The Lady wash all the stuff that we got dirty making this cake. 

 The only good part of this cleaning up part was that I got to lick the the bowl.  

The uncooked batter tasted good so I figured the cake would too!

When the cake came out of the oven, we had to let it cool.  Then The Lady took the pan apart and there was the cake...with a hole in the middle.  That is how it was supposed to be.  It looked light and fluffy.  Mister Guy said is really good.  When I saw how much he liked it, I was glad that The Lady and I had gone to the trouble to make the special cake that he wanted.

I makes me happy when I can make other people happy!

If you want to know exactly how The Lady and I made Mister Guy's birthday cake, The Lady wrote more about it here.