Today’s Fortune: Avoid focusing on the negative aspects of the past.

That is pretty good advice. I have been seriously rethinking my decision for us to make sisters for me to play with, but I guess now that they are finished, it is too late to do anything about it, so I should just look on the bright side. After all, they are very……..um………entertaining?

Early last week, we went Target to shop for sister socks.  They had a very nice selection, and I got to hang from one of those plastic things that they put socks on.  (I thought it might make me remember what it felt like when I was just a pair of socks, but it didn’t.  It was fun, anyway.)

I had a great time shopping for sister socks, and I picked out good ones, so they would both be very pretty, because I know that is important to girls.  I decided to name them Cissy Longstocking and ValenTina, because girls like to have pretty names, too.

Me and Mom worked on them for almost a week.  Neither one of them turned out quite the way I expected.  Cissy Longstocking is the tallest and skinniest monkey I have ever seen.  She has bright pink hair, and it was very messy and thick before Mom fixed it in braids.

I thought she looked a lot like Mom.  Mom has what she calls “bad hair days” sometimes, and they look the same as Cissy’s, except Mom has yellow hair instead of pink.  You can judge for yourself.  Maybe Mom should wear hers in braids, too.

Cissy is very nice, but she is awfully big, and she takes up a lot of real estate.  Mom says she is “rambunctious.”   This means she does lots of flips and stuff like you see in the circus.  We made her an outfit with a flippy skirt and matching bloomers.  I’m glad she has bloomers, because she spends an awful lot of time upside down.

She also does something she calls “Yoga”.  I thought that might be sort of like yogurt, which I am not particularly fond of anyway, but it isn’t.  It is much worse.  It is where she sits like a pretzel for a while (which is kind of fun and really wouldn’t be so bad),  but she says I have to be very quiet while she does this.  Apparently, I disrupt her concentration while she is yoga-ing.

She is also very outdoorsy.  We went outside and climbed trees together.  It is very easy for her to climb trees, because she is over 3 1/2 feet tall when she stretches out all the way from her fingertips to her toes.

She likes to hang from things a lot.   Mom keeps telling her to go play outside, even when it is cold.  I think Mom is worried that Cissy is going to break things if she keeps doing acrobatic stuff in the house.

Cissy is annoying sometimes, but she is at least harmless.  ValenTina, on the other hand, is downright scary.  She is very cranky and demanding.  She did not turn out at all like I had hoped.  When she was just a pair of colorful socks, she spent a whole evening listening to The Pink Floyd Story on VH1 Classic, because Dad fell asleep in the recliner with the television on.

Ever since then, she has insisted that her real name is Pink Floyd, and that ValenTina is her stage name.  She even extended her stage name a couple of days ago, and now she demands to be called by her full name, which is currently “Miss Pink Floyd / ValenTina Turner”.    We have all finally come to the conclusion that she really is a drag queen.  (I’m sure Dad didn’t mean for this to happen, but it is still kind of his fault – they are very impressionable when they are still just socks.)

I have really tried to make her happy.  I made sure she got the sparkaly eyeshadow she wanted, and picked out a nice purple feather boa for her.  She keeps demanding that we make her something called a “peignoir set” out of purple crushed velvet, and she wants a matching sequined purple robe.  We bought all the stuff to do it, but Mom says she is tired of listening to her complain, and won’t get the sewing stuff back out. She is really scary close up.

She doesn’t like to do anything fun.  I tried to get her to climb trees with me and Cissy, but that just made her even madder.

She stomped off and stole my adirondack chair, and went out front to sulk.  She grabbed one of Dad’s beers out of the fridge on her way.  It says “Old Peculiar” on it.  I asked Mom what that meant, and she said it means “strange or odd.”  I thought that was pretty appropriate.

Luckily, Mom has some friends that have a sock monkey exchange student program.  It is called “TSM.”  That stands for Traveling Sock Monkeys.  We will be sending ValenTina on this excursion.  She will go to six other houses, and can stay for up to a month at each one.   She will get to see a lot of good stuff, just like I do, and the best part is, she will not be here.

Another positive thing is that Dharma Marmalade is also in our  TSM group, and she will be coming to our house first!  I am so excited to show her all of the cool stuff there is to see in Oklahoma City.  Our friends SassylePoof! and Sister Mary Monkeypants will be here sometime in the next few months, too.  I think they will be a lot of fun to do stuff with.  Much better than ValenTina, for sure.

Hopefully ValenTina will change her attitude while she is away.  If not, maybe she will get lost in the mail.

“Avoid focusing on the negative aspects of the past.”  I guess that means I should just ignore all of the bad behavior from ValenTina. I do wish I would get a fortune that says something about her being nicer until we can get rid of her, though.

Today’s Vocabulary Words: Bad hair day, rambunctious,  yoga, peignoir set, peculiar