The prodigal bun

Yes, I know it's been months. But you can't blame ME. There are only so many hours in a day, you know, and as usual, mine are filled to the hilt. Why, just yesterday I took a seven hour nap, followed by a three course dinner (timothy hay, arugula, banana), and then it was incumbent upon me to clean Kenzie's ears and keep her warm while she took HER seven hour nap. That barely left any time at all to rearrange my blankie or toss my key ring in the water bowl.  I am way too over-scheduled for an old bun, if you ask me.

Mom doesn't ask. With her it's all go, go, go. She's been known to callously toss the "L" word my way just as I'm getting comfortable in my burrow box after a morning of wreaking havoc. She's a fine one to talk about LAZY. The woman is the walking definition of the word. She's been known to snore standing up. Her idea of exertion is pushing buttons on the remote. Shameful.

But I digress. I am a senior bun and as such should be treated with dignity. And understanding. I'm not going to be around forever, you know. So when I express my creativity by ripping up carpet under the sofa or shredding Mom's sandal straps, I should be praised, not vilified. It's not easy for a bun with arthritis to squeeze behind the mirror and establish a new litterbox, but somehow I persevere. For which I deserve a hearty "Congratulations!" and a warm hug, not a shriek of horror and the threat of diapers.

Anyway, I will continue to post updates, as often as my feeble paws can manage. But right now it is sunny under the window, and the red winged blackbirds are singing, and the carpet is soooo soft....ZZZZZZZZZZ

Nervous Nellie

*I* am not the one who's nervous. I am fearless Freddie! But Mom is pacing the floor and twisting her hair into little knots. All because I am having surgery tomorrow to remove my bladder stone and clean out my sludge. I will spend the day in a blissful drug-induced stupor, while Mom chews her fingernails down to the bone and stress-eats a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Maybe even two pints. (She's done it before...)

An apple a day...

Bristly bark jostling within the jowls,  mounds of succulent foliage melting in the mouth, the tenderest of tendrils tickling my tongue...It's not every day I wax poetic about a mid-morning snack! Of course, it's not every day that Granny sends home the mother of all apple branches. The thing weighed more than Mom (and that's saying something!) Granny and Mom rather naively assumed that a snack of this stature would take Kenzie and me two, maybe three days to devour. HAH! We reduced that stick to the size of a toothpick in two hours flat. Nothing left but some sawdust...

Speaking of DUST, it's been a while since Mom dragged out the noisy sucky thing in a feeble attempt to make our surroundings more habitable. She's the most marginal of housekeepers on her best day, and   trust us, she doesn't have many of those. We are used to it by now, the billowing cloud of debris that surrounds us with every step. Far be it from Kenzie and me to complain about the noxious fumes that assault our senses daily. Sure, Mom can claim "asthma" when faced with the onerous ordeal of climbing, say, six steps. But let a couple of long-suffering house bunnies simply SUGGEST that a full scale overhaul of our living environment is in order, and we're treated with all the respect one might afford an annoying ant. Or an annoying AUNT.

So we soldier on, Kenzie and me, and bear our burdens bravely. Scrumptious snacks help take the sting out of our squalor. There's not much apple tree left, and Granny wants it all gone. She says maybe she should just set us to work on the stump, and save her hours of back-breaking labor. I'm all for it. We are more than up for the challenge. But not right now. Right now we've got full tummies and a cozy hideaway under the bed, and the rain is gently falling, and the furnace is percolating, and the only thing we're up for is a long nap.

*blush*

Mom has a new habit. She will pounce on me while I am peacefully snoozing, and bury her face in my fur, and mutter all kinds of nonsense like, "Oh, my widdle Freddie Weddie, my precious widdle lovie bunny!" and cover me with all kinds of syrupy kisses. It's embarrassing, I tell you. No dignity. Kenzie escapes most of the carnage because she stays safely under the bed, and Mom doesn't fit under there. But I prefer to relax in the open air, and that's when Mom pounces!

You may have been wondering where I've been for the last three or four, or five, months (flashes accusing glare at Mom). It's all her fault. She has been obsessed with her silly schoolwork and hasn't left me any computer time whatsoever. I have been stewing in my own creative juices since...well, my last blog entry was OCTOBER. So that will tell you something about Mom and her ability to SHARE the computer.

So between dodging Mom's attacks attention, and fighting with her for access to the keyboard, I haven't gotten a lot of writing done. She promises to make it up to me. So stay tuned, and if you can think of any helpful hints for me to make myself less irresistible (tough job, I know), pass them along. AACCKK!! Here she comes again.....!!

Old news

Would you believe Mom is still scolding me for my home improvements?? You would think she'd be grateful to have a hard-working house bunny with bunstruction skills. There's not a room in the house that's not been graced with my special artistic touches.

It's easier to get away with  engage in this behavior because Mom's shackled herself to the computer for what she describes as "mountains of homework". It's heavy duty homework too, the kind that causes her to utter the kind of language that sensitive house bunnies should not be subjected to. So instead of sticking around and being morally compromised, Kenzie and I headed out to see what kind of havoc we could wreak projects we could devote ourselves to.

It's Mom's own fault. Granny suggested the other day that we might be BORED. "Free reign of every room in the house, and the little $%#$s decide they need more EXCITEMENT in their lives???" Mom bellered, as we dove for cover. The cover we chose happened to be the living room sofa, and while we huddled under there, clinging to each other in fear and desperation, I noticed that the carpet seemed to be a little discolored (not that I had ANYTHING to do with THAT), and I gave it just the tiniest tug.

Well, you know that saying about potato chips, you can't ever only eat just one? It kind of works that way for carpeting too. And once I'd pulled up a cubic foot of the stuff over by the lamp, it seemed aesthetically pleasing to just keep going. By the time Mom dragged herself away from analyzing "The Merchant of Venice" as delineated in structuralism, or some such nonsense, we'd* cleared away the size of a small wading pool.

So today we are marooned under the bed while Mom mitigates the damage. She's going to measure for a throw rug, and perhaps some barbed wire.

*Kenzie insists she was not involved. She only acted as a lookout. You know what Judge Judy would say about THAT.

Pride and Productivity

It has come to my attention that my beloved human cousin Armando has been led to believe some spurious untruths about me and my equally beloved mate Kenzie. There is NOT poop "all over the house". We keep it to the bathroom, bedroom, and under the sofa. And I didn't "lay waste to the perfectly good living room carpet". I merely REARRANGED the tufts in a pleasant, bunny-friendly pattern. And despite what some might allege, I do NOT stick my nose in everything Mom eats and take a chunk for myself. Well, *I* do not. Kenzie, on the other hand...

I really can't blame the boy for thinking ill of us. Moth refuses to let us travel in the car unless it's a trip to the VET, and therefore we can't actually SEE Armando and solicit his sympathy. Mom says we can send him a note at Christmas, but you can't really lay out a case for yourself in a Hallmark card. Especially the cheap kind Mom buys with no blank space.

So I will go on being maligned, consoled only by my sea grass chewie and the fifty pound bag of seed Mom bought for the birds. At least she said it was for the birds, when she saw me gnawing a hole in the bottom of it. I say what's a little more debris on Mom's kitchen floor? It's not like we're living in the Barbie Dream House. Of course, I have proudly left my mark on Mom's ACTUAL Barbie house, but that's another story for another time.

Foiled again

Mom has left her bedroom closet door tightly closed for the past two weeks now. At first I was sure it was just an innocent mistake, and she would soon see the error of her ways. It's just not right for one of my favorite potty ahem, PLAY, spots to be consistently out of reach.

So imagine my delight when she went into the back bedroom to drag out a furnace filter (because somewhere or other she heard the absolutely unfounded assertion that furnace filters should be replaced on a regular basis, even though they are SO PRETTY covered with soft black and white fur) and anyway, she left the CLOSET OPEN!!! (This is the same closet in which I performed much destruction, ahem, CONSTRUCTION earlier in the season).

I waited until Mom was safely out of earshot and I dove headlong into the room, and barrelled straight into my favorite corner. But something was missing. Gone were my carpet tufts and strips of material carefully gleaned from the ancient comforter. Also missing was my impressive pile of foam bits, and a spare chunk of weatherstripping.

But what shocked me most of ALL was the absence of my carefully deposited mounds of poop, ahem, "personal territory markers". None were left. Not ONE. There's one on the front porch caught in the spider's web, for goodness sake! But none in my very own sacred sanctum!

Well, there was just one thing to be done about it, and I think we all know what that is. So I hoisted myself up by my bunstraps and set to work redecorating. Mom hasn't seen the fruits of my labor yet. She's been too busy patting herself on the back for her newly "fresh and airy" bedroom. At the glacial rate Mom cleans, my efforts should go undetected for at least six months. Or until it's time to change the furnace filter again.

Fearsome

Behold Fred the Fearless, Intrepid Explorer! Yesterday I conquered the kitchen, with its slippery tile floor and creaky cabinetry. I bravely went face to face with the air conditioning duct, and showed the boots in the coat closet who's boss! Mom found me lurking underneath the jelly cupboard, surveying my domain.

Today I vanquished the bathroom! First I scaled a mountain of cushy toilet paper, then slithered into the cabinet under the sink and rearranged the towels. And I got a good head start on a new bald spot on the carpet behind the totes.

Mom doesn't seem to appreciate my adventuresome nature. "NO, Freddie, don't rip the wallboard!" "Stop, Freddie, the shower stall is not a litter box!" She's so fussy.

Oh yeah,

it's my BIRTHDAY today!!! And Kenzie's too. I am nine, and she is six. And we STILL don't get to go in the closet...

Stymied

The most horrible thing happened yesterday. Mom went away, and left us under the extremely watchful eye of Granny. Now, normally this would be a good thing. Granny likes to cuddle and gives us extra treats and serves me juice in my very own bowl so I don't have to share a glass like I do with Mom. But THIS time, Granny was up to no good.

It started out innocently enough. We had a leisurely breakfast and then some snuggle time, just like when Mom is home. But then Granny pulled out the big noisy sucky thing, and attacked our favorite hidey spots! First she moved the sofa and destroyed our carefully collected piles of poop. Then she went after our meticulously amassed mounds of shedding fur. Who would have guessed that the carpet is actually a deep maroon beneath the wads of fluffy white?

But then came the ultimate indignity. She TRICKED us into hopping up into our pen, then promptly locked us in, cackling with glee at her cleverness. And then she proceeded to violate our most sacred of spaces, UNDER THE BED. She did not stop with the vacuum, oh no. She brought out an even bigger, noisier monstrosity and began SCRUBBING our hideaway with SOAP and WATER.

Naturally we were concerned that she might need our assistance, and strove mightily to gnaw our way to freedom. No such luck. Granny left us there to languish while she finished her dastardly deed, and then moved on to the closet/litter box. Yes, you read that right. It's so much more convenient to just slip behind the stack of shoes when nature calls, instead of hiking up all those stairs to our pen. What could it hurt?

Granny didn't see it that way. Instead of being impressed with our ability to improvise, she groused about the "stench". Instead of marvelling at the sheer magnitude of our output, she muttered bad words under her breath about our "piggishness". It was completely insulting and uncalled for.

And after all that, she had the audacity to take a long hot shower in OUR bathroom. The NERVE!

We were sure that as soon as Mom came home and discovered our dilemma, she'd set Granny straight. We were wrong. Not only did Mom seem PLEASED about the invasion, she promised Granny that she would forevermore keep the closet door shut tight, and so far, she has. You couldn't slip a sheet of paper between mom and that door. Why, just this afternoon Kenzie made the arduous hike out from behind the sofa to do her business, only to be turned away. It was heartbreaking.

Freddie Fender

Wasted days and wasted nights....I love morphine! It makes me feel all gooey and soft...

Today was my tooth surgery. We got a bit of a late start, which meant Mom drove like a bat out of hell, which actually isn't all that unusual. You would think she'd be a bit more cautious, what with her precious cargo and all. Kenzie and I clung to the sides of our carrier as we ricocheted around hairpin turns, tires squealing in protest. We got to the clinic with one minute to spare. And then...

...and then the true terror began. Mom snatched me out of my carrier and plunked me down on a slippery, icy cold scale, only to make smart aleck remarks about my weight. *I* don't think five and a half pounds is excessive. It's all muscle.

Actually, it's all fur. And I weigh a lot less now, now that the tech came in and hauled me away to the back room where she SHAVED MY NECK. Then she stuck a big fat needle into it, to draw my pre-op bloodwork. As if that wasn't bad enough, then then another tech came in with another big fat needle, and stabbed me in the back!

Well, I can't honestly say I minded that one. That was the morphine. So I didn't really argue when the vet came in and started poking around my mouth with his nasty scope. He commented on what a good boy I was, and wrapped me in a warm towel, and whisked me off to the operating room. I'm a little unclear what happened after that, but eventually I found myself wrapped in another warm towel, being placed into my mom's eager and loving arms. She oohed and aahed over me and gave me back to Kenzie for safekeeping. Then I got to go home!

Oh, Granny came along, and SHE gave Kenzie and me our post-op blackberries. Blackberries make everything better. It's good to have a Granny.

The cold hard tooth

Mom saw the dental surgeon today. MY dental surgeon, not hers. Hers would be a walk in the park. Just suck down a Vicodin and a shot of Old Crow and let 'im go to town! But we're talking about *ME*. My teeth (or shall I say FANGS) are far more fearsome than any you'll find in Mom's mouth. My teeth grow SPIKES. Long, jaggedy spikes that threaten to rip my tender tongue to shreds! Or at least poke me in the cheek.

Anyway, my dental surgeon won't work on me without general anesthesia because I am such a "Stressie Bessie". I beg your pardon?? Just because I showed a little attitude to the otoscope..."High spirited" is a much nicer term than "high strung", wouldn't you agree? Anyway, he's a specialist and works fast. He promises to knock me out, file me down, and pack me up to go home all in less than two hours. Mom won't even have time to fret, and fretting is what she does best.

The "B" word

Mom can no longer deny the ravages of time. She's officially a geezer, thanks to her brand new bifocals, fresh from the Wal*Mart Vision Center.

She didn't even get the transition specs, the ones that would have allowed her to at least pretend to still be vibrant and youthful. No, she figured "in for a penny, in for a pound", and chose sturdy rhinestone-studded frames worthy of Great-Aunt Agatha, lenses sliced across the middle with the traditional line of demarcation. All she's lacking now is a decorative gold-tone chain to hold them securely 'round her neck, nestled against her sagging bosom.

It took her long enough to get to this point of acceptance. She's been peering and squinting for a few years now, and Granny finally had enough. "Take the check and GO!" she shrieked, and Mom had no choice but to drag herself in for an exam. The optometrist was a kindly woman who refrained from saying, "It's about time", and instead patted Mom gently on the shoulder, like one might comfort a loved one on their first day in the nursing home.

Mom came home and wept bitterly, or at least groused a bit, and buried her sorrows beneath a gargantuan slab of pumpkin pie smothered in whipped cream. A pie, I might add, that she didn't even SHARE. Then she browsed through the shopping pages in search of elastic-waist pants and sensible shoes. Maybe now the clerks will stop asking for her ID when she buys wine. Instead they'll ask if she'd like the senior discount.

O Sole Mio

It's no wonder the neighbors cringe and turn away when they see Mom coming. They've got to think she's   certifiably insane. Why, just today she was puttering around outside, in her "Sunday best" sweatpants with the big hole in the rear end, muttering to herself and shrieking every time she saw what might be a bee. And last night she forgot all the windows were open and serenaded the neighborhood with a spirited round of "Greens and Goodies", our night-night song. I would blush crimson with shame, but you couldn't see it anyway what with my thick velvety fur.

Mom thought Granny was bad when she crooned lovingly to the forsythia bush as she whacked it near to the ground. I have to say, between the two of them, Mom's the most embarrassing. At least Granny can claim to be "elderly", which automatically gives her the right to be eccentric and crotchety. Mom has no such excuse. She's just bats.

Well, it's about time!

Finally! I am reunited with my adoring public! It's been a long, rough, few months. Mom has been preoccupied with that thing called "school", and you know what that means. Kenzie and I get shunted to the back of the bus.

It's not all bad. Mom was way too busy to notice our project, the one where we tunneled underneath the sofa and ate our way up inside the springs. And she didn't even catch us using it as a litter box. Sure, she might have commented that the living room smelled a little "sharp", but that's as far as it went before she had her nose stuck back in the books again.

But now the semester is over, and Mom has the time, if not the energy, to make the rounds of the house, "mitigating the damage" as she likes to say. What that means in plain bunny speak is "Let's take away the bunnies' fun!" Granny came over and the two of them set to work with a hammer and nails and some chicken wire, and a big loud sucky thing called a "carpet cleaner", and next thing you know that sofa is shining brightly and locked up as tight as Fort Knox. No way a curious bunny can so much as squeeze one paw beneath it now.

We are resourceful little bunnies and we still have our secret hideaways, like the back of the coat closet, for now anyway. Mom's only taking one class this summer so she has grand ambitions of spring cleaning the whole house, and she's bound to stumble upon a few surprises. We'll keep you posted!

*YAWN*

Mom wants to know why I start throwing a fit around 5:30, clamoring to be released from my pen to run free...

...but after she drags herself out of bed to let me out, the first thing I do is run into the living room and LAY DOWN!

heh heh 

Havoc!

Kenzie and I have had free run of the house now for about a week, while Mom digs out from under an avalanche of homework. Never mind the dishwasher overflowing with dirty coffee mugs, or the dining room floor buried under a mountain of unfolded laundry. And I'd advise you to avoid the bathroom unless you have a strong stomach. You've heard of drain clogs? Mom's got the equivalent of a small badger crammed down the sink.

It's not her fault, she'll tell you. How's she supposed to keep up with housework while attempting to decipher thirty pages of 9-point single spaced roughly translated French transgenre prose poetry? Who can expect her to worry about poop patrol when faced with diagramming two chapters of linguistic symbolism? There's only so much one human can do, she protests, as she sobs a little and shuffles to the bathroom, still in her ratty PJs.

Kenzie and I have bravely soldiered on. We appreciate that Mom's too distracted to care about a slight slippage in our litter habits. That pile of Orchard Grass in the living room? Looks just fine from where we're sitting. And it will take Mom at least another week to notice the missing foot on her favorite doll. We figure we're safe at least until the end of the semester. Go Mom go!

Better late than never

Finally! At last I am reunited with my adoring public! Mom has been hogging the computer lately. Something about "essays" and "research papers" and nonsense like that. I can't get a word in edgewise! I will be glad when this semester is over and I have been reinstated to my rightful position as King of the Keyboard!

In other news, it's Christmas, which means piles and piles of presents! Kenzie and I enjoy exploring the mountain of loot, occasionally adding our own special touch to the wrappings. Most of the gifts are addressed to my human cousin, Armando, but there are a couple near the back with MY name on them! Well, Kenzie and my name both. We have to share.

Speaking of sharing, we're still scraping by with just the one Christmas stocking. You would think by now Mom would have gotten around to stitching up one for each of us, but no. Mom has SEVEN of her own stockings hanging around the dining room. She SAYS they're just for decoration and she doesn't really expect Santa to fill them all, but I've seen her eyes glowing with greed as she surveys them.

Speaking of greed, Santa will be lucky to get a plate full of crumbs this Christmas Eve, with the way Mom's been inhaling the Christmas cookies. She doesn't share those, either. Occasionally Kenzie can persuade her to part with a nibble or two. Kenzie's a big fan of oatmeal raisin. I'll stick with my raspberry hay cakes.

A real trooper

Kenzie was a perfect angel today. She endured the poking and prodding like a champ, and the vet didn't even need to sedate her for the X-rays. Her pelvis and spine look perfectly normal. There's no evidence of previous injury, and no damage to the vertebrae or disks. Which is great news on the one hand, but doesn't shed any light on the cause of her semi-paralysis.

I was just glad it was Kenzie on the hot seat instead of me. I didn't even begrudge her the extra slice of banana she scored after the exam. I did not appreciate it when the vet put the two of us on the floor so she could evaluate our gaits, and Kenzie decided that would be a good time to mount me. HER, mounting ME. It's supposed to be the other way around! Oh, my battered dignity.

So Kenzie's condition is still a mystery, and one that's unlikely to be solved anytime soon, at least without benefit of a bunny MRI. The vet said that would run close to a thousand dollars, and might be just as inconclusive as the X-rays. So for the time being, we're going to watch and wait. It might be months before Kenzie has another episode, or maybe *paws crossed* she never will.

Now we are back home, and Kenzie is soothing her frayed nerves with a heaping helping of timothy hay, fresh from the new bale. Granny brought it with her this morning. Granny also brought a big bag of birdseed, which I am eager to get my little jaws around. Mom is in the bedroom taking a nap, "sleeping off the stress" she says, as if SHE was the one getting manhandled today! She says, "It's harder on me than it is on you," which I don't believe for one minute. Neither does Kenzie.

One more day

So Mom is getting nervous. Tomorrow morning Kenzie sees the vet for spinal X-rays, and Mom is wondering how that works. I mean, Kenzie isn't going to just lie there quietly while they stretch her out and snap away. So how WILL they get our girl to cooperate? Mom is envisioning all sorts of gruesome scenarios. She made the appointment for 8:30 in the morning so Kenzie would have all day to recover and hopefully forgive Mom for the ordeal!

In other news, Mom finished her first paper for school. Well, *I* finished it, is more like it. She counts on me to channel her creative muse. It was a fascinating two page study of the strategies of effective technical communication. Okay, it wasn't fascinating, it was dull as dirt. "Just as long as I get an A," Mom says. She's been really enjoying school lately, now that she dropped that horrendous Mathematical Reasoning class.

Mom was all excited the other day when she saw another student who was as old as her! "Everybody thinks I'm a member of the faculty," she complains. "I'm old enough to be the faculty's mother!" That's only a slight exaggeration. She's pretty old. She says I have no room to talk, seeing as I am pushing the upper bounds of senior citizenship myself. But everyone knows we rabbits age much more gracefully than humans.

She also got three new assignments with the newspaper, which bodes well for our grocery budget. Mom is getting tired of cold cereal and peanut butter and jelly. She had to buy us a supplemental bag of hay while waiting for our bale to arrive. $10 for a tiny little bag! She says we'd better cherish every bite.