Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!!! *hugs and kisses* You know what? Cupid may be pretty stupid (I have a few single friends who will confirm that this year) but he must have done SOMETHING incredibly right when he made my husband fall in love with me almost nine years ago! *dreamy sigh*

Today, Hunter and I woke Ethan up early this morning by giving him a big old POUNCE in bed, and showered him with hugs, kisses, and presents. Hunter gave him the most adorable “I Love Daddy” book. It’s about a Daddy Frog and a Little Guy Frog, and they go do father-and-son frog stuff together. It’s sooo sweet! And I got Ethan his first pair of cufflinks! Beautiful sterling silver tree frogs with some kind of unique Blue stone in them. He loved both of his gifts! Later on, The UPS guy came with Godiva Chocolates for each of us from my mom, and a delivery for me! Three dozen long-stemmed red roses in a beautiful red vase! Yay!!!!

Now about this B&B Business…

Well, this weekend is MegaCon, and everyone comes down for it. I went out yesterday and bought comforters, pillows, sheets, towels, and made spare keys. We’ve got people staying with us…people flying and driving in today, tomorrow, and Friday…and staying here Saturday and Sunday as well! It’s going to be a VERY full house, and if I don’t have a psychotic episode, I’ll certainly have a nervous breakdown, at the very least.

Oh, I guess this means a quick shout out to everyone! HI NOAH, UNCLE BOB, ANDIE, JACKIE, MOOSE, SEAN, and the rest of you!!!!

MegaCon is going to RAWK! I can’t wait!

If you happen to go, stop by Ethan’s table a buy a sketch from Noah Van Sciver as well. He does great Superhero Poultry! (Don’t ask, just come check it out.)

And from me to you, HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY EVERYBODY!!!

Ever taken a road trip to Hell? Well gather ’round, kiddies, Mama Rabbit’s gonna tell you a scary campfire tale…

So it goes like this: As you may or may not know, we’ve had some trouble with breeding the bunnies lately. Cinnabun miscarried, Tiger Lilly cannibalized her litter, and Thumper scattered hers. We did our best to raise the orphaned baby buns, but in the end, they didn’t make it. And then I found a breeder here in Central Florida.

And by “here,” I mean a 2 1/2 hour drive north of here. But the things we do for the love of our animals, eh?

So Saturday morning, I loaded up a sleepy Hunter and a horny Tiger Lilly into the old Bunmobile, and started heading north. I’d emailed with the breeder for a few weeks, and she gave me “directions” (NOTE THE CREATIVE USE OF QUOTATION MARKS THERE) to her “Farm.” She asked that I get there at 10am. So we left early, full tank fo gas in the car, and full McBreakfast in our bellies.

 

Now, HERE are the directions she gives me: “Take the ****ville exit. Off of 241, go east on 71. When it T-bones, vere right and our driveway is there.”  

I got to the stinkin’ exit at 10am. But it went North AND South, and she didn’t say which way to go! So I went North. 238…240…Watermelon Park…242…The Hills Have Eyes…cows…multiple graveyards…and then nothingness. 30 miles later, I went to a teeny little hole-in-the-wall place to ask directions to 241, and the girl looked at me with her fish-eyes and gaped in some weird, vacant, brainless stare.

Well, she had more hair, but less teeth. But this guy illustrates my point quite nicely. Finally, someone with a PULSE tells me I’m way out of my way, it was before Watermelon Park.So I go back South and notice that now, my CHECK ENGINE light is on!

Grrreat! I’m stuck running from braindead inbred hillbillies in the middle of nowhere, I SWEAR I can hear the banjos a-playin’, and my car is about to blow up! So what do I do? I drive back the way I came, desperately searching for the nonexistent 241. I’m back at the ****ville exit, and take each and every side dirt road, DESPERATELY searching for 241 or 71, or anything with less than 4 legs (or more than 2 teeth) but to no avail. Finally, I give up and drive back towards the Highway and start heading home.

But the check engine light mocks my every move. And it’s 2:30 pm, and Hunter is Hungry, I’m stressed out, and Horny Tiger Lilly in the back is screaming about getting serviced before the car!

I make it back to the highway, the haunting banjo music growing dimmer and dimmer the whole time (I thought I heard someone yell something about a “purty mouth” and I screamed and floored it! Check engine light be darned!)…and meanwhile I’m trying to get cell service and call the car people!

But of course, the only number I have is the number you call to make your automated monthly car payment. And there are NO human beings on the line on a Saturday afternoon! “Welcome to *****. We are tracing your number to properly look up your account. Does your last name begin with S-C-I-V-E?”

“No! It begins V-A-N! Get me a live human being on the phone!!!”

“Great! Now what whould you like to do today? If you’d like to take our customer survey, press or say 1 now…If you’d like to make a payment, press or say 2 now…If you’d like t–

“OPERATOR!”

“Thank you! You’ve selected make a payment. Payment will be taken from your bank account on file immediately. Thank you for calling —”

“No! Dammit! Don’t take my money! I just made the car payment last week! Get me an operator!”

Dial tone.

I call back and manage to get a human being. “Look! I’ve had a rough day, I’m being chased by hillbilliy inbred retards with a bad sense of direction! My check engine light is on, I’ve got a hungry kid and a horny rabbit in the car, I’m 2 hours from home, and doing 95 in a 65! GET ME THE NUMBER OF THE NEAREST DEALERSHIP!”

I was told to call Roadside assist and given the number.

Roadside assist says they can’t help me because I didn’t pay to belong to roadside assist! I tell them I don’t WANT a tow truck! I want the number of the closet dealership, so I can take the car in! They tell me they can’t help me without a VIN number! What the f— um, heck?!?!?! I tell them I’[m barreling along at 100 mph and can NOT read the VIN number at the moment, can they just look for a dealer in Gainesville and connect me or give me the number?”

So I get a hold of the dealership, and they tell me…no joke! They tell me “Ma’am, we’ve just had an extremely hyper customer come in here and get all…you know…ugh…we have to go take care of him…can we call you back?”

I tell them yes, and explain my situation, and that I just want to know if I can drive with my check-engine light on or not.

Meanwhile, I call my Dad, otherwise known as “Mr. Fix-it” to ask if I can drive home with the check-engine light on, or if I’ll explode in a speedy fireball on the interstate. But he won’t answer his cell! (Now, my Dad is going in for some surgery on Monday, and he’d said that he had to go in beforehand for preliminary bloodwork. I assumed he was just in the Hospital, getting blood drawn, and not able to answer the phone.) So I called my stepmom and asked if she knew where Dad was.

She sounded panicked, like “no, I haven’t been able to reach him all day!”

So I said “well isn’t he in the hospital?” and the phone cuts OUT!

Yeah, we cleared that one up at 8:00pm, WELL after I got home and set off DefCon 3 at their house! Turns out, dad was at work, on an important call, and forgotten that he’d silenced his cell phone hours earlier for another important call!

   
Just south of Gainesville, the service manager calls me back. She tells me that I’m at least 20 miles away, and they close in 19 minutes. She can’t help me. (Hunter’s saying his prayers in the back seat that we won’t blow up in the car, and we’ll get home to Daddy.) She tells me if I head back UP NORTH, I can go to a Mercedes dealership up there. They have a certified tech who can diagnose my car and work on it. My car’s like three years old! Maybe! So I start shaking and breaking out in a old sweat at the thought of going back up there, but it was only about a mile or two north of where I currently was, so I went up there.

$281, a tightened gas cap, a new battery, and 3 1/2 hours later, we were safely on our way home.

And all I can think of is…

*note to regulars on the Comic Bloc Forums: “Mastiff Monday” is in no way related to “no-flush Thursday” or “no-pants Friday”

** note to non-Bloccers: doesn’t the above kind of make you want to join the Bloc and be a regular?

So it’s Mastiff Monday today, and I am grinning like an idiot all day and going out of my mind with happiness!

What’s that all about? Well in October, I submitted our family’s information to be considered for English Mastiff Rescue. And after waiting…and waiting…and waiting some more, we got a call this weekend from the area coordinator! She wanted to come out today and do a home study, evaluate our family, evaluate our dog Blue, and bring an “Ambassador Mastiff” to meet us.

Say hello to the stunningly beautiful Miss Nola Belle!

She’s a petite little thing, weighing in at a mere 185 pounds. *wink* She’s simply a wonderful dog! SOOOO friendly and sweet! I don’t think Belle has ever met a stranger. Hunter was enamored, and honestly, so was I. Hopefully, right around June or so, the rescue organization will be able to match us with a big couch potato of our own! Blue adored Belle, and I think it will be great to finally have a big brother or sister for her this summer!We spent quite a while getting to know each other, and Ethan was a bit taken aback by just how big the English Mastiffs actually are. (I TOLD him to figure up to 200lbs for a girl, and closer to 300 for a boy!) But after Belle and her humans left, he decided that he coouldn’t wait to get one, either! YAY!!!!

After they had gone, Blue and I collapsed in true couch-potato fashion and decided a good, long rest was in order. After all, all that playing and sniffing and tail-wagging really wore us out!

Now, we just sit tight and wait to see if they approve us for June. Cross your paws, everybody!

Well 2006 was definitely a full year, with it’s ups and downs. Mostly ups though, and I am so grateful for my dear friends and family, for making it such a wonderful year!

2007 brings alot of promise, and new and exciting things to try. I was going to make a list of resolutions, but once it’s down in ink, I don’t know. It feels so heavy and official, you know? And then I get all anti-authority, and I’m all “Screw you, Resolution Fairy! I’m gonna eat this Mily Way bar and NOT do yoga today, so nyah nyah!” And then really, what’s the point?

So…here’s what I am looking forward to doing in 2007:

* I’m going to butcher a wild boar. By myself. Start to finish. Someone else will shoot it, but after that, it’s up to me. I’m anxious, but excited. And before you ask, they are “nuiscance animals” at the ranches and farms around here, and people trap and shoot them, same as raccoons. And since my beloved dog Blue eats a raw, whole-prey diet, (instead of nasty kibble)  I figure it’s a blessing.

* I’m excited about accompanying Ethan and Hunter to several ComiCons out of state, and even as far away as BRAZIL this year! Muito Bem!

* I’m eager to start volunteering as an official advocate at the Domestic Violence shelter. I’ve been able to follow the more senior Advocates, and see what the programs all involve, but now I get to actually do intake, assesments, and crisis calls!

* I can’t wait to see what the next Nerd Herd or two have in store! I think the herd is slowly gaining momentum,  and I’m hoping our little “gang” can include Ken and Rachel next time!

* I’m so stoked about meeting BRIAN BOLLAND at the NY Show, I think I might pass out!!!!

*I’m done with breeding bunnies. We’ve had one scattered litter that died, one cannibalized litter that died, and one litter that was miscarried about a week before their due date. Three does, three failures. I’m not willing to put any of them through a second pregnancy, nor am I willing to endure the heartbreak of dead baby bunnies. But the girls are all “back to normal,” happy and healthy, and no buck bunnies in sight! All is looking up

Oh, and yessss… I’ll try and work out more, eat better, take a bellydancing class, be nicer to my fellow man, donate more of my time and talents to helping others, blah blah blah.

Oh, and COMIC COOKING will be back — with a vengeance!!!

So…

We’ve lost all the baby bunnies.

The peanut died a few days in, and Wednesday, the last one died. The vet said there was nothing we could have done, and that out of 20 orphaned baby rabbits, only 1 MIGHT have a chance at survival, and even then, it would be plagued with health issues all its life. He was very impressed that we’d gotten most of them past the two week mark, most don’t make it past the first few days.

It still hurts. Terribly. I feel like the worst mother in the world. All my babies died. And there was nothing I could do. My best efforts weren’t good enough, and I’m having a really hard time accepting that. When I do things, I do them at 110%, and I’m not used to being unsuccessful. But the fact that this comes down to saving versus losing lives just breaks my heart into a million tiny pieces.

I’m shattered.

I know it’s Christmas, but there’s a tremendous feeling of gloom and loss I just can not shake this week. Ethan’s been a champ and a half, and he’s buried all but two in the yard, in the tall grasses by the trees. I buried the other two. We still have some video of them doing toddler-bunny-hops on the carpet. I can’t bear to watch.

Tiger Lilly and Cinnabun look pregnant again. It’s a bittersweet bit of news. I’m setting up two separate nurseries INSIDE the house on Christmas Eve, complete with litterboxes, nesting boxes, and baby gates to keep them in the nice, quiet rooms we’ve set aside for the new Moms. I want to be hopeful that this time we’re successful, but I’m afraid to get all attached and then lose more babies.

The vet’s told us that after this, to think about getting the girls spayed. What’s to think about? I’m totally in agrement with him. If nothing else, I can’t BEAR to go through this again. Ever.

Our new baby bunnies are here!!!!
On Friday, December 1st, we had two of our 3 does kindle. (They had babies!) Thumper, our Lavender Netherland Dwarf had 5 babies (but 1 was stillborn. Ethan gave it a proper burial and a nice memorial service that morning. The rest of the babies were live births, 2 large, one smaller, and one peanut). Tiger Lilly, our Harlequin Mini Rex, had 4 (live births). Truffles, our Havana male, fathered both litters.

Thumper

Tiger Lilly

Truffles

Unfortunately for us, the two first-time mamas rejected their litters and tried to kill the kits, even after several attempts to quiet them down and place the babies in a proper nest, with several breaks in between. Fortunately for the babies, Yours truly is well-versed in small animal rescue, especially orphaned newborns. I am now proud mama to many 4-legged babies!

Today, they are officially 10 days old, and so they may open their eyes at any time now. Yay! Here are pictures of my new children. (Sadly, the peanut and smaller Dwarf babies did not make it, but we still have 6 healthy boys and girls who are just absolutely precious!)

Meet the kits: (pictures coming Monday 12-11-06)
1) Piglet and 2) Cupid

Piglet will be going home with Aunt Liz right around Valentine’s Day.

Cupid will be staying here with us, as he/she seems to have completely stolen our hearts.

3) Van Gogh, 4) Batman, 5) Hal Jordan, and 6) Tazer

Van Gogh suffered through the brunt of his mother’s attempts to cannibalize him and his littermates just after their birth. He lost one ear entirely, and most of the other, but does not seem to have suffered any ill effects. He’s the biggest, strongest one of the six! And he’ll be going home with Aunt Jackie around the end of January.

Batman has expressed interest in becoming “Batscratch,” officially. He feels as though he’ll blend right in with the rest of the Scartch Family’s all-black animals. Plus he’s got a cool comics-related name! And he’s willing to hop 16 hours over to Mississippi to prove how badly he wants in to that family!

Hal Jordan is also marked by his crazy cannibal mother. He’s missing 1/2 of each ear, so he’ll look a little like a chipmunk rabbit, but we think that just makes him all the more adorable! Hal wants a family pretty desperately, and he’s willing to fly to New York or California if need be. He has almost racked up enough frequent hopper miles to get there for free. We’re thinking February for NY, and March for CA.

Tazer will be providing “Bunny Rabbit of Doom” security for Jasonleo’s convenience store. (Think evil bunny from Monty Python’s Holy Grail, only not nearly as nice. Awww Yeahhh!) He should be able to start work as soon as February.

If you are thinking about providing a home for any of these little guys (as you well know, adoptions don’t always work out at the last minute), they are FREE to a GOOD home, and may NOT be used as food. For anyone. A rabbit cage can run about $50 and up, depending on how deluxe you want to go. These guys will stay little, as their moms are minis, and their dad is a smallish Havana. Bunny chow is about 50 cents a pound at a feed store, though it usually goes for a lot less. If you buy it as a pet shop, it’s under $8 a bag. They can be litterbox trained, and make excellent indoor OR outdoor pets. They have been handraised underfoot with a 90-lb hunting dog, a cat, a child, and plenty of human contact, so they are extremely friendly and tame.

Also, Cinnabun is set to kindle soon. We’re not sure what she is, she’s a rescued mini-something.

Cinnabun

My email is: bunny_svs@yahoo.com

Yes, it’s that magical night before Thanksgiving, when we go out, seeking ripe little bottoms to paddle. Happy Spanksgiving, everybody! From the bottom of my, er…heart!

Enjoy all the turkey and trimmings tomorrow!

And don’t forget your paddle and Baby’s Bottom Butter for tonight!

Wow, with the exception of the “cleansing the city” blog, it’s been a while! So if anyone’s interested, here’s the latest chapter in the Life of Bunny:

The Good News: Squirrel rescue is alive and well. And by that, I mean that fortunately, there have been NO squirrels to rescue lately! What’s the saying? No gnus is good gnus. (Great Space Coaster’s “Gary Gnu.” You have to be at least 30 to get that joke.) So anyhow, apparently the little guys are thriving quite well and staying out of the way of cats and cars and other squirrely perils. Yay! Or, they’re getting wiser and more militant about the dangers out there. Again, “yay!”

The Meh News: Scouts is going. Just going. I’m a little frustrated because it seems like alot of the people involved don’t really take it as seriously as they should, or maybe they just have never been Scout Leaders before, but I kind of expected things to be a bit different, based on Ethan’s past Scouting experiences and my own. And the part that is really killing me here is that I can’t be there consistently with Hunter, week after week, because of my back. So I grumble under my breath, but I can’t do anything to make a change right now, and I feel impotent and infurated with myself at the same time! And it sucks.

The Bad News: So, after weeks and weeks of agony (and 11 years of chronic stuff), it looks like we have solved the mystery of Why Can’t Bunny Move. There may be an adhesion on the nerves in my lower back, right near the right S-I joint. And since you can’t very well scrape a nerve in suregery without like a 99.9% chance of paralysis, I’m going to have to just live with it. I move like an 80 year old, and I just turned 30, and I’m almost at my wit’s end. And folks, I don’t have much wit to begin with. I’m headed to New York in January (I hope) for an MRI and to meet with a Spinal Surgeon, just to get a baseline of what’s going on here.

and for those who need to catch up: 11 years ago last month, I was waitressing at a sports bar, and the bar failed to put down those “skid mats” where they were were supposed to be. So someone spilled a bucket of coleslaw (ew!) and while carrying a loaded bus tub, I slipped and fell, and landed on my left butt cheek, cracking my cocyx and left hip. Being an idiot 19 year old with no sage to turn to, I ended up paying my own ER bills, as well as my physical therapy bills, and I was in a wheelchair for a good semester or two at college. I think worker’s comp carried my $2.13 an hour, so I was able to buy toilet paper and Ramen noodles, but the whole thing was just a nightmare and a half, and as a result, I ended up broke, unable to walk, and in a lot of pain. NOW, thankfully after a decade or so, it’s just an arthritic hip and constant lower back issues. But for some reason, the left hip and right S-I joints are failing to stay in place for the last 4 weeks, and I am left unable to get up from a sitting position without help, and I can’t bend down, work out, or do alot of the things I love. It’s getting better, slowly but surely, and the doctor has assured me that the disc swelling is over now (thanks to multiple shots in my spinal area!) and the muscles are losing their rigidity (yay!) and now it’s just swelling in the right S-I.So I’m getting better, slowly but surely.

But you know me, Bunny, Quen of Instant Gratification. I want it now, now, now! So it’s been hard to wait for the healing process to do it’s thing, and I’m just grumpy. And also not on any painkillers, because I’d rather stay conscious, and those things knock me out good. Speaking of which, thanks for all the kind offers to share your meds, guys…who knew my friends were all pill-poppers? (I kid, I kid.)

More Good News: Despite all the back stuff, I was able to complete my Domestic Violence Victim’s advocacy training and PASS THE TEST! Woohoo! I have to do 6 hours of service at any one of the three outreach programs before I have what’s called “full privilige.” Basically it just means that after I get my 6 hours in, I’ll have the same rights to privilige as attorney-client and doctor-patient relationships, and when I advocate for a victim, she can be assured of privacy in anything she tells me. I’m also a STATE MANDATED REPORTER now, which includes any type of child abuse (read past blogs to know who I’m hinting to here.)

So the next time you see the Bunny, please give her a hug. She needs it.

My dog keeps telling me to, I think I’ve finally figured out what she wants me to do.

I’ve got a bottle of Formula 409 
and a Cat-O-Nine-Tails.
I’m off!

So, where was I? Oh yeah, Back From South Carolina!

Well, I must say my first regret is that we didn’t actually see historic Charleston, and having Blue with us…in the dark…in a strange town…meant that we ate Hardees and Taco Bell *gasp!* Any of you who know how much I despise fast food know how hard that was.

Only one other regret. So the motel we stayed at got great reviews on tripadvisor, and I figured that was the place we should go. Those tripadvisor monkeys must be on serious crack! Who ARE you people?? It was awful! we got a non-smoking room, but the smell of smoke was so think, coming from our bedding/pillows, I had smoke-smell in my hair and clothes the whole ride home! There was copious mold, Ethan and Hunter couldn’t stop sneezing and wheezing! The bathrom was intensely foul!  Hair and…I think boogers, (I hope it was boogers!)  but I don’t know…all over the tub/shower. Despite how filthy I felt just being there, I was too grossed out by the bathroom to shower, so I waited until we got home! Oh, and did I mention that I woke up Sunday morning with a rash on my face where I was sleeping against the gross pillow??? Ugh! Blue heard every person under the sun that decided (for whatever weird reason) to congregate directly outside our door, so she was up all night snarling and growling, and occasionally barking at them.And the whole time, we’re telling her “good girl” for being so protective.

And the next morning, I discovered that Hunter’s 1/2-eaten chcolate milkshake was completely gone. BLUE!!!!

Suffice to say, while we couldn’t wait to get out of there, I was dreading the long, stinky ride home. Anyway, we got on the road, and about 45 minutes into it, when we hadn’t even reached I-95, we saw this weird, hand-written sign on the road. It said

Rabbits

Worms

And that was all. WTF?????

Ethan wanted to go back and paint a “Our…Have” on the sign, just for clarity’s sake! I wanted to go back and see why someone would sell rabbits AND worms. Food? Fishing? I couldn’t figure it out. But there were bunnies there, and you know me.

So we went, and it turns out the guys runs a BAIT FARM from his tar-paper shack. We knocked on (what I think was) the door (?) and he comes out, shows us the rabbits, and says that he sells ‘em for bait to Hunters who are training their dogs. Basically he sells them to people to be ripped apart! Now, I’m all for Hunting. I really am, but just not rabbits! I mean, what chace does a bunny have against a big dog? Deer are faster, plus they’ve got those antlers. Raccoons and squirrels can climb up a tree, skunks can spray to get away, and birds can fly. Poor little defenseless bunnies have nothing. And if you chase them hard enough, they have heart attacks and die!

Long story short, meet the two newest members of our zoo…Truffles, the chocolate buck, and Cinnamon Bun, the baby that should still be nursing and is too young to sex as of yet. I’ll post pics later. They curled up on our laps the entire ride home, probably grateful to be rescued. Truffles was so relaxed, in fact, that by the time we were in Georgia, Ethan has to stop and change his pants. Bunny pee is SO not a fashion statement!

The buns are all doing well. Truffles does his own thing, and Cinnamon Bun has cozied up to our mama-to-be, Thumper, who’s completely adopted him/her. In fact, Thumper should kindle in the next week or so, so we’ll have lots of pictures of new bunnies very soon. I hope.

Hey, email me if you want a free bunny! Bunny_SVS@yahoo.com