Kim, Robyn, Tina and Clifford the Big Red Dog...

A couple weeks ago, I ran over to the Say What convention that was being held in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love to meet Kim from Living With Questions, Robyn from The Ambling Rambler and Tina Childress, an audiologist with Advanced Bionics and a bilateral cochlear implant recipient. Kim and I were texting the day before we were going to meet and the last text before I fell asleep was that she wanted to go get another apple dumping. As I shuffled my feet towards the bedroom, I was staring at the screen of my blackberry, wondering the hell was an apple dumping. I made an executive decision to sleep on it.

The next morning, I was still just as puzzled about the apple dumping. I decided to ask my mom who is popular in the family for being a sponge of useless knowledge. I figure if anyone would know it would be she. Much to my surprise, she had no idea. With very limited knowledge of apple dumping, I forged ahead to Philadelphia.

Once I arrived at the hotel, I sent a text to Kim to let her know that I was standing guard at the door. :) A few moments later, Kim came out with open arms and a beautiful smile. We gave each other a big bone crushing hug. Her personality and cherubic giggle endeared her to me. We chatted back and forth until Robyn materialized next to us. The fair skinned Robyn came all the way from New Zealand for a month long vacation or holiday as she calls it. Since she came from abroad, she came with an accent, one that I never encountered before. I wasn't too worried, but I was surprised at how soft spoken she was but what really threw me for a loop was the lack of the enunciation of the R's. Apparently, New Zealanders does not pronounce their R's as we do here. Here is a sample conversation that we had.

Robyn: "....I'll meet you at the bah."
Kim : "The what?"
I thought she said back?
Robyn: "The baaah."
Kim and I focused on her lips.
Robyn: "The baaaaahr."

Ah hah, we figured it out. She said bar. :) Amazing how the subtle nuances of a language can present a wee bit of a challenge. :)

And off to the bar we went, which was more like a casual dining establishment. You didn't really think that we were going to throw a few back at eleven in the morning, did ya? We sat and chit chatted for a bit. Robyn joined us with moments to spare since she had brought tickets to go on a tour in the Museum of Art that was leaving shortly. I wasn't going to let her get away without posing for a couple pictures that was shot beautifully by Kim's friend, Lorne. Before she left, we made plans to meet up later on in the evening to spend a little more time together.

Shortly after Robyn left, Tina had arrived at once! We decided that lunch was a matter of utter importance. That is when Kim brought up the infamous apple dumping. This was my opening to make an inquiry to clarify the apple dumping. Kim enunciated her lips as she said, apple DUMPLING. I started to laugh as I told Tina and Kim that this entire time, I read her text as apple dumping. Tina started cracking up and made the most fitting comment, "Not only are you hearing impaired, you are visually impaired (brief pause) cognitively impaired." I was inclined to agree with everything she said! I whipped my blackberry out of my pocket and hunted down the text that Kim left to reread it and sure enough, it said apple dumpling.

However, I was right back to where I started, clueless. I asked Kim what was an apple dumpling. With signs of exuberance in her eyes, she told me that it was an apple baked in a pastry crust, drizzled with a cinnamon sugar sauce and it was served with ice cream or cream. After I gained five pounds just listening to her, I decided that we better get a move on to find the purple trolley otherwise known as the Phlash to go over to Reading Terminal Market. Armed with my handheld GPS (I have an innate fear of getting lost.)

We had no problem getting on the Phlash trolley. By the time, we got off the trolley I had visions of a cheesesteaks from Rick's Philly Steak, dancing in my head. I manage to get the cheesesteaks dancing in Tina's head. We had a bit of trouble finding Reading Terminal Market but my GPS got us there. Unbeknownst to us, it was the Ice Cream Festival that weekend there. It was a shame but my GPS couldn't find Rick's because we were nearly to slip into a diabetic coma if we didn't get a cheesesteak stat. We sacrificed by running to the first cheesesteak booth we saw. We managed to find a nice table in the back, away from most of the noise, which was very helpful for the lot of us.

After a wonderful lunch with the gals, we headed over to this little Amish booth to test drive an apple dumpling.. It was oh-so-delish. After the dumpling went down the hatch, Kim and I decided to head towards the loo for some bladder relief. Tina decided to gather some sweet stuff from the candy store. Right before I walked into the bathroom, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glance of this fuzzy red dog as big as a house playing with some kids.



I couldn't remember the name of the dog, I thought it was Spot but I was wrong. I thought how cool would it be if we all got a picture with the big red dog. Sooooo, while I was standing in line waiting for the next available stall, I sent a text to Tina, obviously not even thinking on how peculiar it must have sounded to her.

At the most, four minutes have elapsed since I saw the six-foot fuzzy red dog. Once we finished doing our lady things, we started walking out and I'm talking about this big red dog and Tina and Kim are looking at me as if my magnet were on too tight. Tina asked me whether I read her reply to my text, which I didn't. I'm trying to dig my blackberry from the deep depths of the rabbit hole otherwise known as my purse while I was leading the pack out of the bathroom in search of the big red dog, but there was no big red dog in sight.

I glanced over my shoulder at Tina and Kim and their face said it all, I was obviously elected as the queen of the monkey people. Mind you, I am dead serious about seeing this six-foot fuzzy red dog. Without missing a beat, I stop some woman walking by and ask her point blank, "Have you seen a big red dog in here?" As Tina started laughing out loud, the woman clutched her purse to her side, took a couple steps back and exhibited some signs of uncomfortableness as she said, "No." I could clearly see that I weirded her out. I thanked her for her time and went to the spot where I last saw the dog, hoping to see some red fuzz from the costume to prove that there was a six-foot fuzzy red dog standing there. Much to my dismay, there was no red fuzz anywhere. I had the nerve to stand there and think to myself how strange that was because dogs always shed. :)

I finally pulled my blackberry out of my purse but I just clutched it in my hands because I had important matters to attend to, like track down a six-foot fuzzy red dog. Tina asked me whether I saw any pink elephants flying around too. Now I am just finding this whole situation just plain funny because this is such a classic situation that I get myself into, I see something that no one else does and as usual, I end up looking like the leader of the village idiots. However, it became a matter of principle that I had to find this six-foot fuzzy red dog. I decided to ask a man this time. I scouted the area for a man that looked as though he was hanging around in the area for the past five minutes and I found one, right by the loo with his arms crossed. It looked to me that he might be waiting for his wife. So, I walked right up to him and asked if he saw the big red dog anywhere and he said nope. Things were not looking good if I had to go to court and prove that I was sane.

I finally open up Tina's reply to my text and it said, "Wtf?" My thoughts exactly, wtf is this dog!? I thought the reply was appropriate and I'm glad I didn't open it up earlier because it wouldn't have packed quite the same punch. The gals appeased my insane curiosity by looking up and down the aisles for this dog but no avail, there was no six-foot fuzzy red dog anywhere. Did it run away to the nearest fire hydrant or something? The six-foot fuzzy red dog didn't have a name until Tina mentioned the name Clifford the big red dog. She's a mom; it’s her job to know the name of popular children books. :) What do I know? I'm pushing 30 here, the last time I was a kid was... and lets not get into that.

Anyhoo, I didn't know what else to do, pass out flyers for a missing six-foot fuzzy red dog or walking around shouting CLIFFORD hoping he would come when he was called. We started walking towards the exit of the market when I had to ask one more person. It was just a matter of principle. I asked a woman that was a spitting image of Aunt Jemima if SHE had seen the six-foot fuzzy red dog. She said that she has in fact seen Clifford the big red dog and pointed towards the back, right where I spotted the damn dog in the first place! I lunged with such excitement at the girls and let out a "Ah hah! Did you hear that?! Aunt Jemima over there said Clifford the big red dog was here! Ah hah, told you!" However, I gathered that neither one of them felt that Aunt Jemima was a credible witness.

It wasn't until a week later when I got a comment on Facebook from Tina, with a link to a news article about the ice cream festival at Reading Terminal Market featuring...

Clifford the Big Red Dog. :)

I was telling them I'm not nuts :) but I am good for entertainment.

After the whole red dog ordeal, we did a little retail therapy and headed back to the convention by the way of the Phlash which took a little longer than we anticipated. Kim and Tina went to their rooms to get ready for their dinner and I jumped at the chance to spend some more time with Robyn. I'm so glad that I got a chance to spend some more time with her because she is just simply a delight to be around. When the dinner was about to start, it was time for me to bid adieu. It was sad to have to say goodbye since being around all of them was like a breath of fresh air.