gently up into the sky

Juanita wanted to go Hot Air Ballooning for her birthday (she likes to do something special every year!) & my Mum loves being up high, so they got some tickets for a dawn flight with friends. Hot Air Ballooning requires good weather... Our first scheduled flightdate, near Juanitas birthday, was cancelled because of rain. Our second flightdate would have been near Richards birthday, but it rained. A new date near Michael & Mums birthday... rain. Commander Mom got a ticket, too, but it even passed her birthday in winter and we couldn't find a date that we could all be together and fly in nice weather! It took a whole year, but finally, after Juanita & Richards birthdays and before Mike, Mum & Commander Moms birthdays, we found a nice morning!! The day dawned lovely, and we got our call to fly!

First, the balloon was brought out and a huge fan blew air into it while Juanita & Commander Mom held the edges. Mum & I could actually walk right inside the balloon as it was filling! The air was heated and the balloon started rising. We all climbed into the basket. It was tiny, and there were a lot of us. There was the pilot, two nice ladies we didn't know also having birthday flights & us - me, Juanita, Mum, Commander Mom, Michael, Richard, Sam, Monkey & my good friends Lumpy & Donkey. Up we floated, gently into the sky.

Sam, Monkey & Lumpy must have been afraid of heights, because they stayed low in the bottom of the basket the whole time, but Donkey proved to be a bit of a daredevil! It was a beautiful and cool and fun to watch the cars and houses grow tiny, listening to the traffic sounds, and watching folks get ready for work. The sun rose hazily, and the most amazing thing was watching the world curve away under us. Way high on the horizon, from where we were in Kitchener-Waterloo, we could see Toronto and the CN Tower as a tiny silluette on the very edge of the world. It was pretty spectacular!

our guest departs

Juanita hasn't stayed very long... She's going to stay with her family for a while now. They're very far away in Alberta, so I won't get to see her! I shall be very sad! I will have to write her letters, & I'm not very good at writing! Perhaps I will just draw her pictures, & she can visit my blogthing sometimes, I hope. Juanita is a very nice person; I hope her new adventure is going to be wonderful!

My Mum has to work tonight making more Sock Monkeys (actually, she's mostly making Sock Bunnies, even though she's supposed to be making Sock Monkeys) so she can't help me write this blog for much longer, but for my next blogposting, I plan to write about my Hot Air Balloon Adventure with Juanita, and I have some very neat pictures!

a guest!

Big news at the homeplace! One of my favourite people, Juanita, has come to stay with us! She was staying with some bad people who weren't good to her, so now she is going to stay with us for a little while and we must be extra good to her! Juanita is a fun person who is almost always smiling and I get to hang out with her sometimes - We've had some very cool Adventures (which I will chronicle soon) and hopefully we will have some fun before she finds her own homeplace... Right now Mum has made a tiny little room for her in the studio, so her bed is surrounded by big boxes of socks! Juanita is extra-excellent because she brought cookies!!

monkey

This is me! This picture was taken some time ago, but it's me in a tree in Autumn. Ah, the trees in Autumn! I love to climb, and the more colourful, the better! It's important to see the world from as many branches as possible...

Finally I have gotten a picture up! There I am, and as you can see, I am indeed short and mostly grey. My paws are navy and my tail is very skinny. I wish it were longer so I could grab bigger things. (But isn't that just a metaphor for existance!)

not an easy thing!

This blogging stuff isn't easy! From the date of my last post until now, I have been desperately trying to enter a new post (hey, I'm a sock monkey, I have a lot of time on my paws) and has it ever been impossible! This blogthing is tricky! But it seems to be working now... I hope...

I have wanted to write about my new shoes (they're blue!) but they don't feel that new anymore. I shall have to go out somewhere special and wear them, but I don't know where.

Here in the homeplace, we've been listening to records. Mum and The Subhuman went out and brought back a big bunch of old records. I've been hanging out in the livingroom , so I've been getting to listen to them all. There's a George Carlin one, and a Sesame Street one, and a pile of different musicals, but the best two are a folk one with different people, including Mason Williams, and Bill McNeil's "Voice of the Pioneer".

Mason Williams is very funny. We already have a record of him, and he does nice music too, but I like the funny stuff. On this new record, he has a song called "Them Toad Suckers" which is completely silly!

On the Voice of the Pioneer record there are some amazing stories told by old people remembering when they were young, and in many cases poor. What amazing people they were! Some of the stories were very funny, and some very moving. It is wonderful to hear these stories, and it's an old record, so the stories on it took place a very, very long time ago!

Records are pretty neat. I think they are exactly the right sort of thing for a sock monkey to listen to.

first blog...

My name is Monty and I am a Sock Monkey. I am not very old. I am very short and I am mostly grey. Sometimes I wear sneakers and hats. Sometimes I get to go on Adventures, so I am making a blogthing to show some of my pictures. (My Mum is a photographer and she is helping me with the typing.) It's going to take me a while, I think, to learn how to use this blogthing, but I will try to tell good stories and show some of the fun places I have been and will go to...

I have many friends, and I will get their help with this blogthing, too. I will introduce them properly in later blogs. Hopefully, I will learn how to put up pictures soon.