10:06 p.m. - 2003-06-25
Healthy Miss Bunny
Well, this is going to be a cheerful entry.
Ummmm....I hope ya'll caught the sarcasm in that.
Actually, part of the entry will be half ecstatically happy and half semi-sad. The other part of the entry will be sad and a little tiny bit angry.
Ready? Ok, part of the first:
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Miss Bunny went to both the eye vet and to see Alvin today.
The ecstatically happy part is that, both vets agree, she is perfectly healthy. It is unbelieveable to me - after two and a half years her Pasteurella appears to be gonzo.
I am major league crossing my finders and knocking on wood as I am typing this. Pasteurella is so serious in rabbits, and she had such a horrible case of it. However, her eye has cleared up, her cheek is firm and her tear duct is not weeping. It's been since January that she had a flair up, and she's had no symptoms whatsoever since starting the bicillin.
Alvin seemed especially happy, since he had had a bad day. Actually he had had a bad week, complete with a total idiot bunny owner yesterday who was really depressing him. So having the healthy Miss Bunny chewing at his lab coat at the end of his rotten day was just the lift he needed.
He kept scritching her ears and saying: "Just look at that face! What a beautiful face! Healthy!"
Which brings me to the sad part. We won't be seeing Alvin as much anymore! If Mirage stays healthy we'll only be seeing him every six months for "well bunny" visits.
I have to admit, I got teary eyed when we were leaving. I hugged him and told him he was the best vet ever.
And you know what folks? He is. Hands down. I'd bring him any sick animal in the world - you name it, I know he could take care of it. A chinchilla with a toothache? No problem! A ferret with measles? Sure!! Hell, if I had a yeti with an ear infection I'd bring it to Alvin! A jackalope!!! A griffin!! I know he could help!
No, seriously, he really is the best. And as much as I'm thrilled that Miss Bunny is doing so well, I will miss his reassuring manner and our monthly visits.
And I'll have to get myself a lab coat for Miss Bunny to chew on!
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And now for the sad and somewhat angry part:
I've been re-reading Seth's book, "Adrift" again, and this morning when I picked it up, a postcard I hadn't noticed before fell out.
It was a postcard of a cat, and on the back were two sets of paw prints in purple ink. Written underneath was the message: "Thanks for taking such good care of us!"
It was an old postcard from my friend Jim, thanking me for petsitting his two beautiful cats, Jetboy and Nix.
Jim, of course, is my friend who committed suicide a little less than two years ago. I keep thinking that I'm really doing ok about his death. Over the months I've stopped talking aloud to him whenever I think I feel his spirit around. I've stopped obsessively writing down my dreams in hopes that someday he'll appear to me in them, as he sometimes does in Donna's. I do think about a mourning garden for him, with black, white and lavender flowers. But for the most part I have tried to go on, and just think about good times we had and how he has been released from pain and not think about the circumstances of his death.
But every once in awhile I'll find something of his in the house, some little remnant that I had forgotten, and it's then that I feel there are time bombs around. Little bombs that let me know I'm not over his death, and you know? I never will be.
Because it just is no way to die. It just feels so totally off kilter. If he had died of cancer I would feel closure, but suicide? I feel guilty, like I should have somehow known it would come to that, and I feel angry, because I'm still here, and he should be, too! But where is he? Floating around in the ether, I guess...
Oh dear, I'm probably upsetting all of my friends who knew Jim who are reading this. Sorry, folks. But you know what? I love you. And if you are even HALFWAY thinking about anything like this, EVER, please call me. I don't care if it's three in the morning and you're at a truckstop in Peoria, just call me. Because I'd rather make an all night driving trip to some butt-freakin' town to pick you up and take care of you than suffer with the unhappy alternative. OK? Promise??!! PROMISE???!!!
There. Now I feel better.
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And on a seriously more pleasant note:
Wendy, my gallery owner, left a message on our machine today to tell me that the gallery is doing a lot better. Bare Hands has been going through some difficult growing pains since its move and Wendy has been a bit tense. A couple of weeks ago we did some feng shui things and, I confess, I did some serious hoodoo, and now it has evidently kicked in.
She sounded happier than I've heard her sound for weeks. It made me feel great. I love Bare Hands. It's like no other gallery I've ever been involved with. I sometimes feel like I'm a member of a very special little tribe, all of us artists who show work there.
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And what else? The garden really looked pumped up today. In fact, the bunnies had a complete meal of food grown right here! Arugula, mint, lemon balm, chocolate mint, parsley, swiss chard, nasturtiums, little eetsy tiny carrots, basil, and raddicchio. Yum!! Whotta' dinner!!
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