Monkey hasn’t written in so long.  She looked at the date of her last entry and realized that she’s no longer even in the same month of February!!  Oh no, not even in the same month as her partner in monkey crime’s birthday, no longer in the same month of valentine hearts and chocolate kisses.   No longer in the same  month as the monkey adventures that she had last month.

So where to begin?  Hmmmm….

Well, there was a birthday macaroni and cheese….

Skiing down the snow slopes of the Big Scary Bear Mountain….

Just look at the Blue Monkey’s boots!  He’s so handsome, thinks Pink Monkey

Valentine kisses and pop rock chocolate bars…

Pink Monkey’s partner in monkey crime wasn’t too keen the chocolate that popped in your mouth like tiny bug explosions, but Pink Monkey thought it was sparkalicious.

Pink and Blue Monkey put a bid on a condo!  They offered monkey dollars to buy a place to live in that they can call their own!  It didn’t matter that it wasn’t their monkey dollars, but rather the bank’s monkey dollars, but one day, 30 years from now, it might be all theirs!

It’s a day for driving around to empty homes to see if they want to spend all their monkey dollars to live there!

Pink Monkey and her partner in monkey crime finally heard back from their broker who told them how much money the big businesses will give them to have their first monkey abode.  They’re both very excited.  While the loan dollars are probably just pocket change for Mr. Buffett, to Pink and Blue Monkey, it’s the start of a place to call their own.   They look forward to using it and then repaying it for the next 3 to 4 decades of their monkey lives.

Pink Monkey’s partner in monkey crime is such a handy monkey that even if they get a home with lots of holes and broken floors, he can fix it up in no time with his handy monkey paws.  Look at the amazing wooden stairs that he made!

Amazing wooden stairs!

They’ve been talking to their fellow monkey friends about their home-hunt excursions.  On Friday, they had dinner with friends at an italian place that was so sardine-packed busy inside that they had to eat out on the patio in the windy cold rain.  The owner was very nice and gave the girl monkeys’ blankets to wrap around their legs.  Pink Monkey’s was a plaid blanket that made her think of scottish people and the skirts the men wear and the one boy who wore his to school one day when Monkey was a teenager and all the other boys in the school beat him up after classes were over.  He never wore his plaid skirt again.  

Anyways, they all shared a cheese ball for an appetizer and then Monkey had ravioli with a pink shrimp sauce.  Monkey likes pink.  It makes her feel happy inside.  Then they went to play Apples to Apples which is a game that has nothing to do with apples or apples but rather nouns that go with verbs like touchy-feely is to Helen Keller like awesome is to Monkey’s microwave.  

Then yesterday Monkey’s partner in monkey crime made her another delicious breakfast with perfect eggs that sat in cups just waiting to be eaten.

For such a strong manly monkey, he sure makes delectable dishes.

Then last night they went to dinner at a friend’s house who live in a nice neighborhood in a cozy home with a yard and trees and rooms for their three kids and lots of light and laughter and it made Pink and Blue Monkey think that that would be a wonderful thing to look forward to for their home where they can have all their monkey friends over for food, warmth and fun and she can make make them barbeque or chili or pizza like the one she made the other night.

But the best surprise of all was when they came home last night.  In a big dumpster right by their condo was a brand-new friend waiting to be friends with Pink Monkey!  So Monkey rescued her brand-new friend from the garbage and now he has a new home with Monkey and her partner in monkey crime.  He’s a little dirty and smelly right now, but he’s going to take a bath soon.  His name is Eeyore.

Me and my brand-new friend I found in the garbage. His name is Eeyore.

Today is one of those rainy days where Monkey had a hot mug of morning tea, a black milky tea she makes from a bag just like her three-in-one coffee.  Now it’s the afternoon and Pink Monkey wants another tea to warm her up while all the rain drip-drops on the balcony outside.  

This is what Monkey drinks.  It’s hard to read, but on the tea bag it says: Make a Healthy Beautifully Wish.  Monkey is going to do just that.  She likes to make healthy beautifully wishes.  Maybe it’s an asian thing.

This morning Monkey had her cello lesson where she learned one of the most important lessons of her life.  She was playing a Schroeder exercise for her teacher.  After she was done, he said, “Your notes are right, the dynamics are right,but….there’s not much emotion in it.”

That’s when Monkey realized that she was so concerned about playing the correct notes, getting the technical parts exact and following the musical instructions to a Tee, that she totally forgot to actually PLAY THE MUSIC!  Sometimes this happens in Monkey’s life.  She’s so worried about doing the right thing, she forgets to just live and be.

Me and my cello metronome. It helps me keep rhythm when I practice. This often makes me nervous and focus on getting it right instead of just enjoying the music.

Monkey’s also been on the computer a lot these days, tic-tac-ing on keys, uploading files, moving folders, creating portfolios, PDFs, JPGs, DOCs, PSDs, MOVs, ABCs and 123s.  It’s like a click click clacking dance that all happens in the screen on her lap.  Sometimes her eyes hurt after awhile.  

I'm working on the computer

Don’t tell anyone, but Pink Monkey wears glasses.  She wishes she didn’t have to, likes to pretend she doesn’t, but in fact, she’s a four-eyed monkey.

Dinner update!  The other night Pink Monkey and her partner in monkey crime made shrimp and cheesy grits with asparagus.  This took Monkey back to her southern belle roots.  Of course when she was a young southern belle, she hated grits, abhorred vegetables, disliked seafood, and only really wanted to eat chocolate for every meal.  

Anyways, Blue Monkey grilled the shrimp to crispy perfection and Pink Monkey enjoyed herself very much.  There was even enough shrimp left over to make shrimp po’boys with coleslaw for next day’s dinner.  Pink Monkey sighs because this reminds her of good ol’ southern Virginny and the Carolinas. 

Oh boy, Po' Boys!

Monkey is still working hard on her picture-taking.  She wants everyone to enjoy the visual images with their eyeballs oh so much.  Maybe she’s trying too hard like her cello-playing.  Maybe she should enjoy the pictures just the way they are.

Monkey also feels like this post is rather discursive.  She wishes she could be more poetic.  Like the Tao Te Ching which she just read but still has a long way to go to actually absorb its meaning.  Words that resound more than its letters.  Sentences that serenade like Tosca does for Scarpio before she stabs him in the chest.  Really good poetic-ness like that.

Whoa.  Sunday was a whirlwind of balloons, bananas, superBowl, biking, brainfreeze and burgers.  Needless to say, Monkey had a blast yesterday.

First, her partner in monkey crime made another delectable breakfast.  French toast with amaretto-lemon banana sauce, poached eggs with lemon hollandaise on a slice of manchego cheese.  And to top it off, almond-stuffed olives drizzled with honey.  What’s a monkey to do?  Eat it all of course.

Then she got her monkey behind on Jumbo Hauler, and she and her monkey partner biked over to the Great Orange Balloon that takes you high up into the sky to gaze at all the surrounding land for free!  Yes, for free.  Next to buy-one-get-one-free coupons, free balloon rides are on the top of Monkey’s favorites list.

Pink Monkey’s paws tingled and her tummy tickled with butterflies, but she still peered over the edge to look out at the horizon.  And she took more pictures!  She’s been working hard on her picture-taking because sometimes her pictures are fuzzy and she’s not sure if it’s because her brain has fuzzy pictures or the world has fuzzy pictures, but her camera pictures are fuzzy and she’s just going to focus on working on that for now.  

Not-too-fuzzy picture!

Look at the yellow umbrellas

When they landed back on earth, they biked their behinds over to the gelato shop to buy and eat gelato.  Pink Monkey likes gelato.  It makes her think of Europe and Italy and all the crazy monkey adventures she had long ago.  But she digresses.  She and Blue Monkey got side-by-side cups of lemon and watermelon gelato.  Tart and sweet.  White and pink.  Like two peas in a gelato pod.  Pink Monkey ate all her gelato and licked her spoon so hard it cracked in the middle.  This is a true story.

Sunday was also the day to celebrate the bowl of superness.  This means hotdogs, burgers, grills, nachos, fries, beers, chips, wings, but not live-bird wings or plane wings or even insect wings, but hot chicken wings that are food and you eat with ranch sauce.  Anyways, it’s also a day of watching very expensive commercials, listening to famous people sing, and also to watch the game called football.   Monkey and her monkey partner watched the last half of the game while eating homemade burgers, avocado coleslaw and Blue Monkey’s delicious nachos.  

Delicious nachos

Monkey doesn’t really know anything about football, but it was fun to watch her partner in monkey crime get excited about football and tell her to watch the replays to see the exciting stuff. Pink Monkey would Oooo and Ahhh, but she really didn’t know what was happening on the television screen but she thought it wouldn’t hurt to pretend.  But the burgers were very good and afterwards she did the crossword puzzle because that’s another thing on her favorite list because she gets to learn words like puerile which means childish and that Jason’s ship is the Argo and that a set of standards could mean ethics but sometimes it means code and all this is very helpful for making Monkey’s brain just a little bit less fuzzy.

How lucky Monkey feels that she can have a pretty Saturday like today.  It could have been a lonely pretty Saturday, since her partner in monkey crime was off at the family ranch chopping trees and climbing up to mountain springs.  But Pink Monkey decided that today was a not-lonely pretty Saturday but just a pretty Saturday.

First, she slept in to get her monkey snoozes, then she went swimming in the warm water pool.  There were other people swimming, even one woman who had a noodle under her arms so all she did was paddle her feet all morning long.    

After breakfast, Monkey practiced her cello scales and Schroeder exercises.  Then she cleaned lots of clothes in the washing machine because monkey clothes get stinky just like everyone else’s.  What fun.  But it feels good to have things spic-and-span.

Then Pink Monkey got to read and have her thoughts float in different places without trying too hard to think and not think.  And she got to reminisce about all the wonderful meals she and her partner in monkey crime got to eat this past week.  It was fun to cook things like chicken in cherry-olive sauce with polenta, steak surprise with fried rice and chopped brussel sprouts, and especially the yummy carnitas.

Her partner in monkey crime also made refried beans to go with the carnitas.  The beans were delicious and creamy like chocolate pudding except made with beans, not chocolate.  After dinner, when he wasn’t looking, Pink Monkey licked the bowl and spoon of the refried beans.  It was like licking a bowl of brownie batter.  A bowl of refried bean brownie batter.  Beans.  Brownies.  Mmmm.

Monkey’s excited because tonight is date night.  When Blue Monkey comes home from being a ranchhand cowboy monkey, he’s taking her out to paint the town red, and also pink, because Monkey thinks pink is very beautiful too.

So Monkey’s probably going to put on a pretty monkey dress, fix up her new hair cut and maybe pretend she’s a famous person because that’s how lucky she feels.  She can’t wait!

Posted Thursday, January 29, 2009

Pink Monkey feels a little bad about not visiting her new blog in so long.  Of course she doesn’t have many visitors, but she likes to pretend she does and she never wants to keep visitors waiting.  It’s always important to be a good host.

So much to tell!  Last Sunday, Pink Monkey and her partner in monkey crime went to visit his monkey family at the big Queen Mary boat in Long Beach.  Monkey wonders if this beach is really longer than other beaches, and if so, how much longer.

They all ate at the champagne brunch buffet in a huge room that made her think of the Titanic movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.  Pink Monkey thinks Kate Winslet is so pretty that she sometimes wonders what would it be like to be her very best friend so she could look at her all the time.  

In the large Titanic buffet room, Monkey filled her plate with food and ate it.  It was pretty good for being made for so many people and her monkey friends.

Monkey ate lots of bacon and mozzarella cheese.  Monkey likes cheese.  So does her monkey partner in crime.  There were also cheese blintzes that she dripped blueberry sauce on.  She shared some with Blue Monkey.  Cheese is an expression of love.

Then they went around the big Queen-Mary-like-Titanic boat where there were lots of other people walking around.  Babies, kid people, adult people, old people and some that needed wheels to get around.  It was very exciting.  Monkey’s favorite part was the spooky propellor.  

Spooky propellor

The rest of the week has been very good.  On Monday, Monkey baked mac n’ cheese for her partner in monkey crime.  She made it with manchego cheese which comes from sheep milk and that’s why she thinks it tastes so baa-ram-good.  She also went to class on Monday and rode her bike to the school.

Me and my bike. Her name is Jumbo Hauler.

This is Monkey’s bike.  Her name is Jumbo Hauler.  She hauls jumbo things.  Monkey likes Jumbo Hauler very much because she has a bell that she rings to get people the BELL out of the way. 

Monkey is a very good rider, although riding on the street sometimes makes her nervous.  But she’s careful and wears her helmet. She always puts safety first.

I put safety first.

That night she and Blue Monkey ate her cheesy mac with sauteed leeks.  Monkey also made a salad with apples, candied pecans, parmesan, arugula and prosciutto. 

Cheese baked in a bowl.

I ate this and more.

The other night, Monkey and her partner in crime watched a movie called Bigger, Stronger, Faster.  Monkey wishes she could be all those things, except only bigger in some places.  There were many famous people in the movie: Rocky, Rambo, Conan, Hulk Hogan, a guy who looks like the governor of the western state called California, and another guy who looks like Mr. Obama’s vice-president man.  Monkey didn’t understand what steroids really were before watching, but now she has to think twice before judging people for taking them.  It was a good lesson to learn.  

The rest of the week has been full of eating, sleeping, class, work, cello-playing, thinking, trying-not-to-think thinking, watching movies, and eating again.  Monkey is very excited because on the food-eating schedule for tonight, Blue Monkey is making carnitas.  Pink Monkey like carnitas.  She likes putting them in warm tortillas and then putting them in her mouth.  If Monkey weren’t a monkey, she would be a piggy because piggies are delicious.

Pink Monkey and Blue Monkey had a whirlwind morning this morning.  Blue Monkey is Pink Monkey’s partner in monkey crime.  They’ve been thinking about getting their own place, their own house and monkey abode!  But dreams are sometimes bigger than the size of their monkey pockets and they’ve been learning that a happy monkey’s home is where their monkey hearts can play together without all that monster weight on their little heads.  The monster weight is made up of those pieces of paper that say IOU and is also called debt, or mortgage, or you’re-living-here-but-it’s-not-really-your-house-until-30-years-from-now-when-you’re-hopefully-lucky-to-have-paid-it-off.  Monkey doesn’t like that monster weight hanging around.  They’re like big hard boogers in her nose that she can’t seem to get out.  It makes her unhappy and no one really likes to hang around when you got big boogers in your nose.   

So Pink and Blue Monkey have been realizing that dreams are pretend and homes are for real.  And they want a real home.  And that takes work and patience.  That way Pink and Blue Monkey can be happy.

Today was a rainy day.  Monkey likes rainy days where she can sit and stare at all the rain falling from the sky.  

Rainy days are thoughtful.  Pink Monkey’s mind is full of thoughts and feelings about everything and nothing.  She likes to stare at her mandarin orange tree.  Monkey loves fruit trees.  You would think that Monkey would like banana trees the best, but actually her favorite is mango.  She could eat mangos all day long and all night long as well.   But she also loves her orange tree very much.

I love my orange tree very much.

Rain means cello-playing and drinking warm liquids in big white mugs.  Pink Monkey drank a delicious drink that came out of a plastic bag called three-in-one coffee.  

Monkey didn’t think a liquid out of a plastic bag could be so tasty, but she was wrong.  She also got to use her monkey hand towel that her partner in monkey crime gave to her.

Look at all the Monkeys!

Today Pink Monkey also got her hair cut.  She doesn’t get it as short as she wants because her partner in monkey crime likes it long.

I like my new haircut.

Pink Monkey forgot to update on her Mr. Obama-celebrating chili!  She was quite proud of herself because she didn’t look at any recipe.  She just dumped a bunch of food together.  She figured that food was yummy so this should be yummy too.

And it was even better the next day warmed up in the awesome microwave and then with sour cream and little pieces of cheese swirled in it.  It was like a sundae, except with chili instead of ice cream, sour cream instead of whipped cream, and cheese instead of sprinkles.  So not really like a sundae after all, but it was fun to pretend.

Tonight, Pink Monkey’s best friend and partner in monkey crime requested fish for dinner.  Specifically, fish with an orange-flavored asian sauce.  More specifically, fish with an orange-flavored asian sauce with orange rind in it.  

Pink Monkey was happy to oblige because she loves her partner in monkey crime very much.  You ask Pink Monkey, you get what you ask for!

Look, I made sausage too!

Pink Monkey also made sausage.  Her partner in monkey crime likes sausage.   He ate a lot of the sausage.  Monkey also made brussel sprouts.  With bacon.  She ate a lot of the brussel sprouts.  Mmmm.  Bacon.  

Now they’re very full for food and happiness.  They’re going to go to bed and watch TV.  Pink Monkey has to watch The Unit tonight, because last time she got to watch Indochine.

Pink Monkey had an exciting morning watching Mr. Obama become the president-man of the United States!  

Monkey is proud to be a member of the states that are united under America.  Monkey got goose pimples listening to Mr. Obama.  It’s weird when Monkey gets goose pimples, she starts staring at them for a long time.

Me and Mr. Obama saying Hi!

Me and Mrs. Obama. I think she's pretty.

Monkey heard from her sister who got to walk the long mall at the city of Washington D.C. and be there for all the festivities.  Monkey was jealous but happy.  It was okay because Monkey made Mr. Obama-celebrating chili in her slow cooker and she gets to eat that.