The Audacity of Mrs. Bun

May 12, 2008

During those weeks when Willie wore his E-collar and felt miserable, the neighborhood bunnies ran amok. Baby Bun ventured far from his home under the house near the end of the road to set up a fort under the Cook's propane gas tank, oblivious that he had ventured onto Jade and Buster's turf. Luckily, Erin and my mom rescued the naive Baby Bun and returned him to his nest. Not that he was the only bunny who had taken advantage of Willie's downtime. Mrs. Bun must have missed Willie's attentions during those dark days, because in his recovery she has taken up some wild and wanton ways. At dusk last night, as we made the curve near the pond and headed towards home, I noticed her first. She was sitting in the middle of the road coquettishly looking back over her right shoulder. There she remained, batting her eyelids, flaunting her bosom, and flouting the all the rules of the animal kingdom. Clearly, she was waiting for Willie to notice her. She has done this multiple times lately. She wants him. She's willing to vie for him. When he finally notices, the seduction begins. Willie doesn't exactly understand how to play her game, but he's willing to try. In the end, after much chasing and snuffling, Willie is left dreaming of the possibilities and admiring the audacity of Mrs. Bun.

I wish I could tell you unequivocally that Erin has recovered from what set her low last week (just like Willie most assuredly has), but her energy level and aches and pains have ebbed and flowed. She felt well enough to practice soccer on Friday night and lasted about 70 minutes (which is about the best her back allows these days). She took an easy start to the day on Saturday, then helped her coach Lisa Villalobos with Hot Shots (pre-school soccer players) for a few hours. She didn't feel like doing much the rest of the day. The quiet time gave her an opportunity to retire to her room and work on her top-secret Mother's Day project, while listening to The Beatles ad naseum.

Sunday she woke up felling reasonably perky and presented me with a new, beaded chain to hold my eye-glasses [NOTE BENE: I have reached the age where I have not yet moved into bifocals, but can't read with my glasses on or drive with my glasses off. Needless to say, I spend the greater portion of the day donning and doffing my eye wear. Keeping my specs in chains helps me immensely. Otherwise, I would waste an even larger portion of the day wondering where I left them when I took them off. Now I'm so accustomed to wearing them on a chain that when I take them off, I just drop them. Definitely a bad habit, if you forget to wear a chain!]. When we headed off to church, I thought we had turned the corner on the virus and its debilitating effect on Erin's outlook and comfort. The next time I saw her (an hour and a half later) in the choir area at the front of the chancel waiting to sing, I could tell she hurt. She made it through both pieces her choir sang, but when she joined Walter and me in the pew, she just slumped for the rest of the service. We got stuck in a big Mother's Day lunch crowd at Gina's, and eventually the wait got too long and my mom took her home. She just couldn't get comfortable at the table waiting.

I prepared myself to hang out quietly with her the rest of the afternoon, but she rallied. I broke one of the rules of good mothering and suggest we take a walk around the lake. . .BAREFOOTED. We had a jolly time--only a few burs and nothing really icky stuck to our soles--and it warmed us up enough that Erin made it through all of her home exercises except "the birddog" with no complaint. Tomorrow's scans will tell us a lot about whether these back issues arise from tumor pressure or from something else. We're hoping for something else, but even that is not a free pass. Somehow, we have to find a way to shoot the gap between the Scylla of too much activity and the Charybdis of too much sloth. Overdoing and underdoing seem to trigger the same discomfort cycle.