Meanwhile, Here At Home

It’s been crazy. Shortly after we arrived we had a visit from Grandma and Grandpa, and Cute W’s had a whole series of meetings and presentations all over the state. I’ve been catching up and haven’t entirely gotten my groove back. But I’m trying to get there soon.

The other day, Thursday, I was exceptionally tired and cranky. I had stayed up too late the night before. Cramps might also have been involved. Cute W was out of town for work. The girls and I took the opportunity to have take-out Chinese food for our late, post-practices dinner while watching the Netflix Anne of Green Gables reboot, Anne With an E. When the show ended I was all set to go to bed early. The girls were already in bed and I headed downstairs to turn out the lights when I noticed our cat, Isis. Normally at that time of night she’s curled up on the sofa, but she was standing in our dining room in Alert Huntress mode. Dammit. Apparently she’d done some spring hunting and brought her catch in through our screened porch.

Upon closer examination, things got worse. Honestly, I was hoping for, say, a mouse corpse. In a situation like this, while it’s sad for the mouse, it’s really my best-case scenario. Instead, Isis had brought in a still-alive-but-not-psyched-to-be-at-our-house bunny. Awesome. I picked up Isis and sequestered her upstairs in our bedroom, and then I recruited the girls to come out of bed to help me try to get the bunny back outside. First we managed to get the bunny into a box, but it fled before I had a chance to throw something over the box to trap it. Then we tried to usher the bunny out via our screened porch. The bunny was probably only about 10 feet away from the door, but it would need to navigate a tricky U-turn. We stretched out to act as human barricades. Or, rather, one of my daughters and I did, while the other one was not perfectly positioned. The bunny obediently avoided two of us, then hopped right by one daughter who basically just watched it hop away while making no visible effort to impede the bunny’s movement in any way. Do I sound like I’m still bitter? I might be.

Now, sadly, bunny had traveled farther away from any possible exit and was hiding in the dusty corridor behind our love seat, games cabinet, and tv. There was strategic scaring, gentle broom swatting, lettuce-and-carrot tempting, and way too much furniture rearranging. The girls lost heart and I sent them to bed.

We’d lost sight of the bunny and I hoped it might venture into view, or at least make some noise, once the girls were gone and I was sitting like a gentler version of Elmer Fudd being wery, wery quiet. . . . Nope. The bunny was last seen behind the love seat. I’d propped some doors open and it’s possible that the bunny had made it out at some point, but I have no idea. I text-whined to Cute W and gave up. It seemed likely that by giving up I was dooming the bunny, which felt pretty awful. I mean, there are women out there obtaining open-heart surgeries for baby goats, and here I’d given up on the bunny after 45 minutes. But, like I said: I was tired. And crampy.

There’s been no sign of the bunny. Godspeed, fluffy one.

Today’s Niska-Day. J invited a slew of friends over to watch the parade, which has turned into a bit of a marathon of sociability. M was much more low-key, but a couple of friends showed up right before the parade started, and I’ve received recent text communication that she remains alive and well. Happy Niska-Day, everyone!