Meet T.J.

OKay– so a week or so ago, Chicken was crocheting and I was writing a particularly, uhm, GRAPHIC scene for Becoming, the newest Jack & Teague adventure. Suddenly she comes rushing into the kitchen, with a burning question.

“Mom, mom! What does this look like to you?”

Well, first I choked on my tongue (and my immediate answer), and then I declined to comment. Suffice it to say, it did NOT look like a really big jalapeno pepper.

But eventually, with a little bit (lot of) work on Chicken’s part, that, uhm, pepper-shaped thing evolved into this:

Meet T.J.

Now T.J. is not just an extraordinarily lucky length of acrylic yardage and some quilt batting. He’s not even just a monkey. T.J. has a purpose. T.J. is a GAY PRIDE monkey.

Now Chicken didn’t start out to crochet a Gay Pride monkey– all she wanted was a little critter to love and to cherish and to prove her uniqueness to the world. (I think you can all agree that that last goal has been squarely met.) But as T.J. began to mature and emerge from the skeins under her skillful hand, we began to see signs.

Sign 1: The rainbow shirt was a big give away.
Sign 2: That thing that looked like a jalapeno? Yeah–that became his mouth.
Sign 3: What was supposed to be a mini-skirt ended up being a pair of high-cut bicycle shorts so tight, this stuffed monkey actually had a PACKAGE.
Sign 4: The sparkly red shoes.

See?

But that’s not the final sign that T.J. is a loud and proud emblem of mom’s new writing triumph. The final sign? Yeah–it was a complete accident, but what happened was this. Chicken wanted T.J. to smell good. She looked for some cinnamon/rose/ambergris oil to put on a cotton ball to use when stuffing T.J.’s head, but she couldn’t find it, got impatient, and used some vanilla instead.

The result?

Uhm, yeah.

Sign 5: T.J. smells like a cupcake. No shit.

So Chicken named him ‘T.J.’ after a character in the Kitty the Werewolf series who was openly gay. We are proud to welcome T.J. to the family–we think he’ll fit right in.

(Thanks everybody for the virtual (((hugs)))– much appreciated. We are still sick–in fact, I lost my voice completely when teaching today. Ah, well–it’s going to be a VERY short week.)