Grandma | The Pleasantries of Princess Pricklepants

After a long drive and a civil rights crisis at various visitor centers we made it over the hills and through the woods to Grandmother’s House.

Here’s Princess and Grandma Linda.

And, of course, people held her like they always do.

And she was adorable. And there was more holding.

And she met my sister Suz. who was very fond of our happy fun ball.

Unfortunately Suz had made a grilled cheese sandwich earlier and smelled delicious. Very, very delicious.

So delicious that Princess, against her better manners had to taste her finger just a little. Fortunately we had the camera out so we were able to get a photo.

Suz., Sophie, and Princess P. P. also surfed the web together for a while and spent time reading blog posts about pet hedgehogs and other important things.

While there, for various reasons we went to Hobby Lobby and bought props to take hedgehog photos. And so the following happened.

It all began when Princess Pricklepants was wandering through the woods and found a wishing well. Since she hadn’t seen the new Hobbit movie, she wished that she could visit the Shire.

And so it came to pass that she arrived there.

It smelled fantastic.

And it almost tasted as good as grilled cheese sandwich remnants.

Then, for various reasons involving the plot Princess found a treasure chest!

The End. Or is it? Hmm, that treasure chest might come in handy in certain future pirate adventures…

Impromptu Hedgehog Fairy Tales might need a little more plot development eventually.

If you look carefully in that treasure chest you’ll see a Latvian 1 lat coin with a hedgehog on it that Suz gave us as an awesome present.

Many other things also happened since we went on a few outings with Fancy, but we already have a lot of photos and a lot of text in here so we’re going to stop adding on to it.

Previously Part 1, Part 2.

Now begins part 3 of our travelogue, heading on the final stretch, over the river and through the woods to Grandmothers’s house. It was a long drive, so Fancy made good use of the time rehearsing for his role in Annoying Private Ryan:

Still nailing it!

Alabama has a welcome center too, we are sensing a pattern. The first thing we find is a phone booth, a strange relic from the lost past of telephony. Maybe it is a time machine! Princess attempted to communicate with it, but found it strangly unresponsive. Fancy tried to help, but also found it unresponsive. Princess wanted to change into a superhero costume in the phone booth, but we didn’t bring any superhero costumes with us, so Princess and Fancy just played in the booth for a while instead.

Next to the booth was a large concrete monolith with an inspirational saying on it. Fancy thought it must have been placed there by a fellow pet’s rights activist – the persecution of pet’s rights and the sinister signage of institutionalized pet prejudice is an injustice Fancy hopes to overcome some day. He has a dream. Fancy is sure that concrete block is meant to inspire pets everywhere to fight the peculiar and perversely pernicious idea of defending the idea that it’s a “right” to keep pets from visiting visitor centers. Fight the power, hedgehogs, you have nothing to lose but your leashes!

Princess bristled at Marxist undertones of Fancy’s proclamations. As a member of the aristocracy she feels torn. Fancy thought it best to change the topic, since it was a bit of a prickly subject.

“Cousin Phil?”

There were some lovely holly bushes, so we posed Princess in front of them and got this super lucky photo of Princess waving! Whoah!

Once again we met our old nemesis. Rather than explaining with complicated words and sentences why this is bad, we didn’t.

Princess and Fancy were both appalled.

Fancy can be quite the activist…

Is this what happens when a puppet has nothing left to lose? Pushed to the edge, will Fancy, once a mild-mannered and law abiding puppet, become a rule-breaker?

Clearly.

Fancy even turned to handing out brochures he wasn’t authorized to dispense!

And engaged in doing whatever it is that’s happening here.

The breakdown into anarchy continued. Princess turned from her mild mannered rigid authoritarianism to anarchy to the point that *she went past the NO PETS ALLOWED sign*! At this point things were careening off. Princess even tried to climb into that little buttoned down spot on my collar that there was no way she’d ever fit into.