Our happy, bonding bunnies.

Our family has been given three free sets of tickets to Disneyland in the last two years, all recompense for various transgressions this squeaky wheel refused to let quietly pass. Someone got hurt or scared or was treated badly, that kind of thing. I mention this because I overheard the kids discussing a news story they heard about a family suing a water park after their little girl got hurt on a water slide.

The kids were suggesting that perhaps "pushing a jellybean size person down a fifty foot water drop" wasn't the smartest of moves and I agree. Contact Children's Protective Services. Then call a lawyer. Opportunistic? Hell yes - the parents were dumb, but so was the ride operator, where the buck is supposed to make its last stop before being shot down a fifty foot water slide.

It's like I tell my kids - I don't encourage anyone putting their hands in the water on Pirates of the Caribbean or standing up on California Screaming. However, if one of them does it and gets hurt, the very first thing I will do, after turning to my child and calling them a dumbass, will be to turn to the ride operator and tell them they'll be hearing from our lawyer.

Then again, my retirement plan depends heavily on hoping to be hit by a city fire truck.

Cinny found a bunny in the glass. She and Ichabod get along fine, by the way. For a while there, before Cinny was spayed, she was pretty aggressive in her desire to have baby buns and poor Icky, having been neutered, had no idea what she wanted. She wanted babies so bad she convinced herself she was pregnant anyways, and started pulling out her hair to make a nest. Help me. But now all is well and a whole bunch of yucky bunny behaviors disappeared with her utuerus and my four hundred and fifty dollars.

This greeted me when I opened the balcony blinds the other morning. He (she?) sat there the whole time I cleaned and only got nervous when I opened the balcony door. He (she?) was eating the wild bird seed I left out for them. Since I started putting seed out there, we have doves and blue jays with our sparrows and hummingbirds.



I don't know where this guy got the peanut - I don't put them out there. I really enjoy the birds. I especially enjoy wild birds I am not personally responsible for.

I haven't updated you on the new bunny. Turns out it's a girl bun (good thing we just got Icky neutered). With her mommie, my middle girl:



At first, Icky was kind of aggressive. My daughter swears he growled at the new bunny. I didn't know rabbits could growl, but I have seen him jump at her and take bits of fur. He's mostly calmed down at this point, though, and they are learning to be bunny friends:



As long as Cinnabun remembers that Ichabod is the Head Bun, I think we'll be fine.

Next to my middle girl's orthodontist is a pet store. We regularly visit the pet store after seeing Dr. M, because we like to look at cute animals. The kids usually swear not to ask for the animals and then swear to give up their first born children if I just let them have the kitten/puppy/parrot/rat they inevitably fall in love with. I tell them no every time and every time I swear that this is the last time we are going into the pet store after seeing Dr. M.

I'm utterly unreliable.



This is Cinnabun, and Cinnabun is three months old. We do not yet know if Cinnabun is a boy or a girl, but it is definitely a bunny. I fell in love with Cinnabun when he/she came running up to greet us as we entered the store. I'd never seen a bunny do that - usually they are tolerant of the profuse attention we bestow, but they don't seek it out.

That's all it took, really. That and picking it up and having it fall asleep in my hands. I called our vet and explained the situation, that I had fallen in love with a new bunny and would it be safe to introduce it to our older bunny (who just cost us THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS to neuter, by the way, as if bunny balls were somehow more complicated than a cat's, which usually costs about fifty bucks, but I digress) and they told me that as long as I gave the new bun an initial home of its own rather than plopping it into the middle of Ichabod's established territory, we ought to be fine and the buns should be fast friends in a few weeks or they wouldn't be and Icky would try to kill the new bun.

Well, what more ringing, unequivocal endorsement for buying the bunny than having the vet tell me that things will either be OK or my bunny will die? So I bought him/her.

And a new water bottle/litterbox/assorted treats.

And a new cage, which I purchased in one place but which I had to pick up at another, where I almost came home with the bengal kitten who was ripping up one hand and the chihuahua puppy ripping up the other.

I can't be trusted.

You'll probably be glad to know that Ichabod has not yet killed Cinnabun, but this is probably because we separated them. We let Icky out of his cage and put Cinnabun on the floor and let them run around. Icky's never paid attention to the cats and he paid none to Cinnabun until he realized that Cinnabun was a bun, at which point Icky got twitchy and ran away from him every time he/she got close. Then Icky got twitchier and jumped on Cinnabun, so we put them both in their separate cages, put the cages right next to each other and are hoping for the best. Worst case scenario, we have two buns in separate cages forever. But I'm hoping that Icky will come around as he gets used to Cinnabun and they can move in together and be best friends forever.

Frankly, Cinnabun has a bigger problem with Murmy, who still doesn't understand why he is allowed to rip up rabbit-fur mice toys but not rabbit fur rabbits.

I call this "The Bunny Christ". If you saw Dogma, you'll get it. If you haven't, he just looks a little like Christ, if Christ were a bunny. Has that 'woe-is-me, why-does-man-behave-thusly?' thing going on. He was actually kind of happy here, hiding behind my daughter's dresser, ripping up irreplaceable things and swallowing them.

As bunnies do.

 

 

 

Click to download. Install .tsk file into your 'windows' folder.
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All my kids are now old enough to drive, as my oldest girl gleefully informed me yesterday. I tried to teach my son the beginnings of driving basics. I told him it would be like playing a really cool version of Mario Cart, but he wants no part of it yet. The middle girl got spooked by something which was really my fault (and I told her so) and now she's nervous about trying again. The oldest one is ready for Nascar. In my car.

My ex-husband can't stay here or drive my car anymore. He feels entitled to these things and treats us that way. I explained to the kids, as gently as I could, that from now on he would need to stay in a motel and get his own rental car. They get it. The ex-husband never will and there will be quite a lot of acrimony about it. He won't direct it at me - he'll try to make the kids feel guilty. I hate him for counting on them that way.
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Ichabod is home and doing well. His pipes are unclogged and the middle girl is calling him 'Sir Shitsalot". The vet says he needs to be neutered and he needs a friend. Help.
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Middle girl is weaning off one drug and will start another soon. She hates the way the meds make her feel sleepy so, even though she's been told she can take the new one while weaning off the old one, she's chosen to tough out the pain rather than be a zombie all day. Tough kid.

Sunrise over the wetlands preserve.

My son is turning sixteen soon, and I spent the day birthday shopping. I spent hours looking for this PS2 game he wants, but no luck. It reminds me of the years when they were little and I would drive all over the valley, going from one McDonald's to the next, looking for the Happy Meal toy all three kids had to have. Or the time when he HAD to have the Talking Riddler action figure and I had friends all over the country looking for it.

You might consider this indulgence. I suppose it is. It's also autism. My son gets these fixations that would drive him to distraction if ignored. He can't tolerate it. That's not to say he can't handle being told 'no' - he can. But once it gets in his head as one of those bugs, that's it. Too, his social world is other Asperger boys his age and they all have the same fixations on the same things: Yu-Gi-Oh and very specific video games. Their internal society revolves around the games they all play, the cards they all have. To deny him the game is to cripple him socially.

You might also think it's gotta be tough raising an autistic kid, and it is, but I can't imagine my son as "normal". I used to - I spent a lot of years crying over the things he's lost, the life he could have had (the one I imagined for him) and especially over how hard people can make it to be him. The thing is, I genuinely love him the way he is. I love his personality. I love how brilliant his mind is and I love how funny he can be. A few quirks come with that, but which one of us doesn't have our little bug-a-boos that drive someone else nuts? It helps that, being an Asperger person myself, I get him.

It would be breaking the worst taboo to say I am glad he is autistic. I'm not sure it would be true, because I want so much for the world to be easier for him. Still, having known this boy all his life and loving him so much, I don't know that I would want him "cured" if they came up with one tomorrow. I'm glad he is the person he is and so very grateful to be his mom.
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The bunny is doing well. Glopped up intestines, easily treated and (hopefully) prevented. He will be home around Wednesday or so.
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The computer and camera are still broken. My wonderful, generous, intelligent and oh so handsome husband says I might be able to get a new one before August. If so, I want this one. Checked with my buyer's bible, Consumer Reports, who gave it an excellent review. Don't scoff - bought my car that way and twice survived major crashes.