Today’s Fortune: You will witness a special ceremony.

My fortune cookiesa are right again! Today is the official day for the “Boxing ValenTina” ceremony. Today is the day we pack her up for the trip to California.  She will be traveling by Priority mail.  I found out a while back that Priority means “very important.”  Even though she is difficult, I am glad she will get Priority treatment.

I was very sweet to her today. After all, she is my sister, and it will be quite a while before we see her again. We gathered all of her things together, and I tried to pat her on the shoulder and told her not to be afraid of getting in the box, but she didn’t want to have much to do with me.

I even let her sit in my Adirondack chair.   I told her she could play with my John Deere tractor, and I even offered to get the sheep out for her, but she was not in the mood for playing Farm.   She just sat there with her stuff and pouted like she always does.

I got a very good thank you card to send with her.  I also wrote a nice letter apologizing to the sock monkey foster moms who will have to put up with her.  And I am sending chocolates, too.  Maybe that will make her new caretaker feel a little better.

ValenTina has some things she is taking with her.   There is a purple bag with a gold string on it that says “Crown Royal” in pretty gold letters.  She says that is for her “loot”.   (That is a fancy name for stuff.)   She is hoping to collect some souvenirs while she is on her trip around the country.  She wants some things called “swizzle sticks”, and some “shot glasses”, and some matchbooks.  I told her she can only have the matchbook covers, because it is a rule that you can’t put matches in the mail.  We do not break rules since the Hello Kitty incident.

She also wants some wigs, fancy sun glasses, sparkaly clothes and a Komodo Dragon.   She watched a show about those the other night.  Her favorite part was where they ate a goat.  Mom said we are definitely not getting a Komodo Dragon.  Or a goat.

Some of the other monkeys are traveling with a journal to record their adventures.  ValenTina refused to get a nice normal journal.  She insisted on a spiral notebook.  It says, “Buy me stuff and I’ll be nicer.”  It would be good if that was true, but I doubt it.

Me and Mom taped up ValenTina’s shipping carton, and made sure it was nice and sturdy.  It was a very good box.  But she did not go gentle into that good box.  In fact, she raged and raged against the closing of the flaps.   I mashed on her head, but she just kept trying to get out.

She put up such a fight, Mom finally had to help me.  She put ValenTina in a nice big plastic bag with a drawstring at the top.  It helped keep her arms and legs and feathers all tidy, but still let her be able to breathe.

Then all we had to do was wait for the mailman to bring her a thing called a “passport”.   That is what you need when you travel.  You have to get it stamped everywhere you go.  Sister Mary Monkeypants’ mom ordered passports for all of the traveling monkeys.  We got ValenTina’s this afternoon.  Thank goodness!  We were afraid to send her without one, because we didn’t want her to get sent back for not having her papers in order.

She lost a few feathers during the struggle to get her in the box, but she is packed up and ready to go.  We will take her to the Post Office in the morning.  I am exhausted.

I am glad that is over with.  I am looking forward to the peace and quiet, and I am very glad that Dharma will be here next week.  I hope ValenTina has a good time on her nationwide tour.

I think I will even miss her a little.

Maybe.

Today’s Vocabulary Words: Crown Royal, loot, swizzle sticks, shot glasses, passport