Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Bunny Heaven

Jesse was my rabbit. He was originally my daughter's rabbit. In the summer of 1995 Caila wanted to get an animal. She wanted a dog but I didn't want the responsibility. She wanted a cat but I loved the songbirds in the yard outside the carriage house. I had a friend that worked with me at the Fogarty Center who had a dwarf rabbit. It seemed like the perfect pet. He lived inside, went to the bathroom in a litter box, could be left alone during the day, didn't need to go for a walk, and didn't kill birds. We went to the pet store and found Jesse. He was a dwarf Norwegian rabbit with Siamese colors.

Nobody told me that rabbits like to eat wires, wood, and basically anything they could chew on. He loved my guitar cords and wooden furniture. He also loved Trix, not the cereal but the little vegetable pellets that came in his rabbit food. He would root through the food looking for them while ignoring the alfalfa pellets. He didn't really like carrots but did like the leaves on top. His favorite vegetable was celery leaves.

When I moved to Florida at the end of 2001 Jesse took the road trip with me. He lived out on the lanai, which is a screened in room attached to the back of the house. It was the best of both worlds for him. He was outdoors but was protected from the neighbor's cats. It was bunny heaven. Jesse became ill last spring and again this summer. The vet said that he was very old (for a rabbit) gave him some antibiotics and he bounced back although he never made it back to his hopping young self. This weekend he lost his ability to get up. I brushed his hair, gave him water and celery tops but his appetite was not what it used to be. When rabbits are in pain they make noises like little piglets. Jesse was silent. When I came home from work yesterday I could see that his time was near. Early this morning he passed away without a sound. He was the fuzziest bunny in the whole wild world. I will miss him dearly.

Be good...

Saturday, October 07, 2006

It's been a long time for me

I got busy this summer, applied for, and received my license to practice occupational therapy again. It's been several years and I just finished my first week on the new job. I'm kind of glad that I took time off from the profession because it gave me the opportunity to appreciate all of the blessings that come with my work. After being sidetracked into management I am happy to return to a staff position and the best part of it is that I am working with hands again. I fell in love with hand therapy when I first started and I have come back to my first love again. I feel that I have come full circle and have the comfort that it brings.

I was pretty busy with the Barnyard Sounds web site this summer also. It has gotten huge and I dreaded the work that was involved to redesign it. It took me a couple of months but it is finished. The new design is something that I can live with and add to without too much difficulty. The most amazing thing is that in the process I did some calculating of the numbers of items that I have uploaded to this massive web site. There are 373 songs encoded as WMA files, 218 lyrics encoded as TXT files, 208 photographs encoded as JPG files, 131 lyrics encoded as PDF files, 45 videos encoded as WMV files, 35 songs encoded as MP3 files, 14 speeches encoded as WMA files, 4 sounds encoded as WAV files, 3 screensavers, 1 radio broadcast encoded as a WMA file, and 1 podcast encoded as a MP3 file hosted at Barnyard Sounds. In addition there are 24 Bushisms encoded as MP3 files, 20 articles encoded as HTM files, 11 video bloopers encoded as WMV files, 10 documents encoded as PDF files, and 1 dancing fool encoded as a SWF file hosted at Barnyard Politics. If that's not enough for you there are 140 programs and 3 games hosted at Barnyard Programs. I am pretty proud of those numbers and it makes me feel good to know that they are all available for free through the miracle of the internet.

Be good...