Do What You Can, Where You Are, With What You Have

I met a French tourist today, walking the hallway of the hospital, with her husband and son. On Tuesday she climbed on a tour bus with people who had become friends, as they travelled and visited together. There was an accident. She never lost consciousness, she said, but she did loose an arm. She is up and walking around. She hopes her luggage will catch up with her before she flies home to France tomorrow. She has nothing to wear but a hospital gown.

She is one of the lucky ones. There are French people colonizing Northern California, one ICU bed at a time.

I spread my card with contact info through patients and nurses on several levels of the hospital. I missed some people because they were visiting spouses in rooms on different floors. I got a call back from a gentleman who arrived today to find his wife at Stanford Hospital's NT ICU, which I believe means Neuro-Trauma Intensive Care. I hope I misheard and it was something more mundane. The nurse with whom I spoke had given him my message and amongst all this drama he took the time to call and thank me for my offer of lodging whilst he's here.

There were some people from the Consulate going from patient to patient, checking on everyone. With them, as with the walking wounded, our encounters were oddly stilted, punctuated by smiles that felt callous and inappropriate. I was glad to see that the system has geared up to do what needs to be done.

Another message waited at home. This from the Maison des Francais a l'Etranger, I am on stand-by tomorrow, there are incoming family members who may or may not need a place to stay. They will receive whatever support I can offer and I know that I am not the only one.

Practical Magic-American Red Cross

www.halfwaytofrance.blogspot.com is the place to go to read several informative, detailed posts about the recent tour bus crash which has killed, injured and left stranded three dozen French visitors to California.

I listen to talk radio, as I am often in my car. The traffic reports, every ten minutes, usually only register if they affect me. Tuesday's report of a tour bus crash 100 miles south of here sounded bad, and I could visualize the barren landscape surrounding the accident site. You know it is serious when they fly in eight med-evac helicopters and close a major freeway for eighteen hours, in both directions.  I felt empathy for whomever was hurting and thankful that our Emergency Services are so good. I didn't know, what I would hear the next day, that these were French Tourists who, on top of everything else had no English to help them through.

One thing I can do is talk. Be it in English or French I have learned, from personal experience, to be a patient advocate. I am not daunted by official paper-work. I am great at logistics, organizing people to help and getting things done outside of "Channels". 

My name is now on a list at the French Consulate as someone who is willing to translate, help or provide accommodation for those in need. My understanding of French bureaucracy is that if someone knows to ask specifically for that list, and the person to ask, then it will be freely given.

So I called the Red Cross as well. 

The local director called me back personally. Amongst fielding calls from hospitals calling her after office hours to say that they were discharging people into the night, with no money, papers or language skills, 100 miles from the rest of their group, and where did she want to put them, she noted some of the ways I might be useful. 

I will follow up with the local Chapter of The American Red Cross today, as I now know that there are victims who were transported to the Trauma Centers at our local hospitals. 

I know a lot of people after twenty-five years in business in California. I know quite a few French speaking Doctors, Lawyers, Travel Agents, not to mention several owners of private planes. 

I just wanted to post about the Red Cross and how great they are. Multi-tasking, logistics-managing, tirelessly helpful and more.

La Framericaine, is doing a great job of documenting. I will post more once we get a better grip on the local needs.

I am shocked it was not covered at all on the French news. Shame on you TV5.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished-I am a Terrible Person

I have been cringing all week, ever since I received my invitation to a volunteer appreciation soiree. I was volunteered onto the Marketing Committee for an organization that trains docents to teach music in the schools. One of my more admirable friends has been working in the non-profit sector ever since I've known her. She has carried the weight of many miseries on her shoulders whilst running programs helping abused children and I have occasionally helped out. I filled and maintained flower-boxes to make the entry to a Boys Home more inviting and I have spent the day encouraging golfers to dig deep at a fundraising game. My Hubby has donated paintings for sale at the silent auction. 

Now my friend has moved into a happier section of children's' non-profits and we continue to support her efforts. The marketing committee meet once a month. It's the least I can do. The Summer fund-raiser will headline a very well known popular singer song-writer and is, coincidentally, being held in the gardens of one of my clients.

"All fairly innocuous so far, what's she whining about?" Ah, to the crux of the matter!

At Christmas time we went to a fund-raising performance by two beautiful sopranos. Once we found the country church in the dark and wind whipped rain storm and settled on the hard wooden pews we were entertained by these lovely and talented women, who had given of their time and effort to sing for us. So far so good.

THEY NEVER STOPPED SMILING! They smile whilst singing together, smile whilst looking at one another as each sings solo and, above all, smile their way through the saccharine sweet story of how they met at "singing college" and were so compatible and appreciative of one another that the only possible thing that could make them want to smile more was coming home and marrying two brothers. Smiling Singing Sisters, for ever.   

See what a horrible person I am? Who could find fault with that? 

I had not murmured a word that was anything less than supportive and congratulatory. I applauded enthusiastically and on cue. I am no savage, although maybe; deep in my heart; I am. When I read the evite detailing our get together I noted drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Fine. Followed by thanks and "speechy stuff". Par for the course; nothing I can't get through on a Monday evening.

Performance by Smiling Soprano Sisters. OH SHIT! 

Ever since, I have been battling with myself. I really really don't want to go. Once was really, really enough, thank you. Now that I have written this out loud I know that I will go. Friends support friends and the cause is the cause. I have been lauding them to all and sundry and will ensnare several new volunteers to go with me. Strength in numbers, a-simpering we will go!

Toasting Hemingway

Yesterday was Lovely-Daughter's 24th birthday. We met for dinner at La Bodegita, Cuban Restaurant. LD has had her hair highlights up-dated into very Glam, Long Summer-Streaks. Her make-up was focused on a "smokey eye". She was dressed to party with her friends after we "Oldies" went home and she and her handsome, well dressed, husband looked as though they were ready for the red carpet. ( She sure didn't get all this fashion sense from me. Blame/applause to the French side of the family). They were punctual; that she gets from me.

La Bodegita is very nice, it has warm surroundings, great service and food as well as a Rum Selection that would satisfy Hemingway.
I was advised to try a mixed drink with a subtle splash of rum. It tasted like wishy washy lemonade and had sugar coating the outside of the glass. Have they met me before? I don't want a sticky glass and please keep sprigs of mint to yourself; it is an aromatic weed and only vaguely useful in a sauce served with roast lamb.

The attentive waiter, hearing my disappointment, advised another cocktail, this one containing something called "Rum Agricole". Much more my style! I needed my teeth whitened anyway and now won't need the dentist to do them! I imagine that Rum Agricole is used to chase the rats out of the sugar cane plantations. Just what I was looking for.

We had Ceviche followed by Paella, which is always such a risk to order, not last night. The Paella deserved to be photographed, it was beautiful, but we were too lazy to get the camera from the car. The ingredients were fresh and tasty and the rice was moist and seasoned to perfection. Yum! Dessert involved flambeed bananas, of course, and we finished up keeping the men company in the cigar salon and sipping, a more sophisticated, mellow, aged rum which was like nectar of the Gods.

Today Hubby and I drove South to San Juan Bautista, one of the original California Missions, originally built in the seventeen-hundreds. The ground drops off suddenly beside the Mission. that is the San Andreas Fault Line, right there! It makes sense to pray hard in a spot where the plates of the Earth's crust collide. The Mission is still a functioning Church and the town around it is simple Western-Style with one main street. There are flowers, intermingled with enormous old cacti, everywhere. Today the roses were spectacular and the swallows were flitting around, as always in the spring. We were lucky enough to catch sight of a variety of flowering cacti.

Our favorite lunch spot is Jardine de San Juan, a Mexican restaurant with a huge interior courtyard, shaded by plane trees and accented with purple clematis, pink geraniums and a wandering troop of chickens, with accompanying roosters. There is a central fountain and live musicians.

It is hard to admit that we sometimes don't appreciate this little day trip destination, (easily bored), but today it was perfect.

California Whine Country

Dear Client,
As I drove in to work this morning, at the corner where the service and suppliers' roads must briefly intersect with the roads leading to and from the homes of the elite, I was sorry to see that the fender-bender causing the slow-down was you. You looked so forlorn at the side of your (slightly dented) Maserati, cell phone pressed to your precious ear. Only a few hundred yards from home and yet in a strange land.
The Tesla Roadster in the next lane, (only a smidgen over $100,000 and so cheap to run), was blocking me from your view or I would have waved. I do hope your day got better after that.
I recall first meeting you. You were so important and busy that, of course, I met with you on July Fourth. How frustrating for you, as a foreigner, to be faced with your company's employees lack of enthusiasm for working on Independence Day.
We met at your newly purchased estate. What a long driveway through the gardens and up to the house? Imagine someone selling a house for over $13,000,000 and yet you need to redo the kitchen, bathrooms and fireplaces before it is habitable? All that subtle wood-work will take weeks to lacquer over to a high gloss and all the slab work must be replaced by something shiny too. What were they thinking?
Our first meeting seemed to bode well. You admired the photos in my portfolio and I explained the choices and how each would affect the price. Each time you selected more detailed carvings and more expensive materials, but I felt that you must have understood my explanations and would know what to expect. I spent that whole weekend drawing plans and writing up my proposal, sure we were in harmony and yearning for a signed contract.
You were impressed that I was ready to meet you again on Sunday and had me drive to your original home to present my work. The Maserati was in the forecourt and a Range Rover, but that turned out to be the nanny's car and we had to wait for your wife, who had forgotten about our appointment. The kids were swarming excitedly around the luggage that was being prepared for the trip to Europe and India, departing later that evening. Madame did show up after a while but I'm not sure how involved she really was as she ate a bowl of cereal, whilst standing at the kitchen counter.
Gosh, it took a while to go through all my drawings. I noted your decisions and tallied up your choices. I still don't quite understand how I am to be considered wholly responsible for blowing your budget. I wish you had mentioned your budget needs when we first met, (when I was clarifying how much your choices would cost). It would have saved me a lot of work and I could have had a long weekend like everyone else.
And so this charming reminiscence might end, if I were a quitter, but I am not. I am happy and proud that we worked out a solution to reduce some of the elaborate details, include some indispensable details free of charge and reduce the price as well. Oh, Happy Day! Signing you up for one hand carved marble fireplace was better than none. We'd see about the second one after your trip. Oh, you had forgotten to mention until now that this was a rush job too. O.K. then.
How quaint? No need to show me out. The local customs are different here, we generally do not dismiss visitors and expect them to wander off and find the front door by themselves. I managed though, no worries.
I really appreciated that you emailed me from France with photos of the fireplace that you wanted to buy from someone else so that I could verify the dimensions for you. One would hate it not to fit!
What a great decision to buy it and then ship it by air to save time. The airlines are so reasonable about shipping 1,500lbs of stone. I am sure you told them about your budget. No, no, you weren't my first client to airship stone. I had a lady who shipped 10 tons of pavers to finish her front porch in time for Halloween. Can't have those little Imps and Jack'o'Lanterns tripping up as they Trick or Treat now, can we?
Did I mention that she also had problems with customs clearance, most similar to yours. What a riot, paying all that to ship by air and then waiting, knowing your loot is on a back lot at Kennedy Airport for a couple of weeks. Life is droll, is it not?
Anyhow, seeing you at the roadside this morning brought back all those wonderful memories. You are just the kind of client who inspires one to write a blog.
Bye for now.

SISYPHUS-Don't Ever Give Up

I identify with Sisyphus, although I don't remember what I did to anger the Gods.

Sisyphus was condemned to roll a great boulder to the top of a hill. Every time Sisyphus, by the greatest of exertion and toil, attained the summit, the darn thing rolled back down again.

As each day dawns I rise and try to create my own momentum, moving forward slowly. There are days when I feel that I have made progress and days when the Rock wins. 

As long as I have done my best and pushed and pushed to the limits of my capacities, I don't beat myself up if I am still far from success.

Tomorrow's Friday, a whole new day with a Rock, full of potential!

Literary Influences - Books and I.

Last evening I realized that I had accidentally given away a book that I was reading. I can't say that it was unfinished, because I had read it before. I can't say that I was rereading it deliberately, because that too was accidental, but I felt a loss. I was ready to continue being led through a novel, who's characters had grown familiar, and now they are gone. If I want to know the rest of the story I will have to buy another copy; which is ridiculous. as I was already slightly miffed that I had purchased something that had twinges of deja vue.
I read a lot; it is my escape. As a kid it was Rudyard Kipling, Enid Blighton, anything with animals or horse crazy children who often were detectives during "the Hols". The Famous Five and The Secret Seven were my idols.
Then there were the books that made me cry; Born Free followed by Living Free & Forever Free ( I am almost sniveling now as the memories rush back of how connected I felt to Elsa the lioness and her human family). Ring of Bright Water about Midge the Otter and Grey Friars' Bobby, about the loyal dog who made a home in a Scottish cemetery after his master's death.
Fiction too; My Friend Flicka and all the sequels. I can imagine my vision of the wild mustangs described, as if 40 years had not gone by since I last read about Flicka and Thunderhead and Loco.
I think that the best thing about books, as opposed to films, is that we read and then conjure the images inside our heads. Images that we can go back to and story-lines that we can wonder where they are leading us; even characters so compelling that we puzzle over their problems to see if we might be able to help in some way.
The Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno and Airport will always first be books to me. The Lord of the Rings has such a unique place in my history that I could never go to the movie in case it spoiled something irretrievably. I read it over and over from one volume to the next and then beginning again at the beginning.
I do confess that one phase of my younger reading taste involved the bodice-rippers with men like Fabio on the cover, clutching broken hearted heroines to their virile chests. I evolved (in little steps) via Daniele Steel, then more progress with Herman Wouk's Winds of War and into anything by John Grisham.
In contrast to my perfect recall of the books of my youth, I have long since given up trying to hold on to the titles and authors' names of the novels that I buy in paperback from the best-seller display. I now have a self-imposed rule. I select a book that I think I might like and turn to the publishing history. If it was released in paperback over six months ago, I do not buy it. Too many times I have sat down to the pleasure of a new book only to find that I had read it before.
I ignored my own rule, which is of course how I ended up with my current repeat. The story sounded so intriguing that I took a gamble on a book first written in 1997. Grrr! I was enjoying it despite that, but I can't buy the same book a third time. (I can't remember what it was called, anyway!).

Enter to Win a Free Cremation? - Junk Mail

I continue to be amused and amazed by the creative thinking of our friends in direct mail marketing, otherwise known as junk mailers.
Would you be interested in competing for a free Cremation?
My husband is getting a bit insecure about his age, he will turn 74 next month. With my luck he'll be going strong for another twenty and I will be the one dragging myself pitifully along behind.
He is really annoyed that his paintings are going to go up in value the minute he snuffs it. We may have to send out an erroneous press release regarding his demise for him to be able to profit whilst still breathing. Every problem has a solution. But I digress.
I believe he is also worried about my stance on euthanasia as he predicts it might apply to him. I did ask the vet for a package deal when the cat was on her last legs, but he wouldn't do it. It's not as though disposal would be an issue, we have a nice, roomy, blue debris-box at the work-shop.

Junk Mail?

Everyone gets junk mail. We get less than we used to, as advertisers have turned to email spam and other delightful practices, or maybe they have observed me putting the whole package in the trash immediately upon receipt. You never know who's watching? (That's for the conspiracy theorists out there).

I understand targeted marketing. There are areas where average income is, (used to be), higher than others. This Silicon Valley-San Francisco Bay/Peninsula has the homes of the "Go-To" crowd when a Candidate needs money and support.

I know that my neighborhood does not fall into the "Mega-Bucks category. This was underlined by the junk mail we received this weekend. They are not only proposing that we might need to share a Private Jet, rather than having one all to ourselves, but we can pay 50% now and 50% later. 

I think I'm insulted!

Dandelion is to weeds what Coreopsis is to flowers

As I pat myself on the back that my lawn is now bright green and dandelion-free, I spy with the corner of my eye something bold and yellow and proud that has appeared in the lee of one of my "official plantings" on the hillside below. There is never only one solitary dandelion. As I sit in the shade, resting from my hard morning's weeding, I do enjoy the splash of vibrant color cheekily peeking out of the shade. He can stay for the day, this sentinel of hidden armies, but then I will resume the rout. He will fall on the battlefield and the war will be won, (for today).

I question myself because I have spent time this weekend adding more coreopsis to my landscape. Reliable, sturdy, bright yellow flowers; admitedly bushier and more important than Dandelion but so close in nature and effect.

Everything is Relative:)

Adorable Hubby took the dog out yesterday. That might sound like a non-event to you, but input the information that AH is averse to walking (it is physically difficult for him) and that he was making an effort because I couldn't be there and poor doggie can't get down the stairs to the back garden on her own anymore, and you will see that it was a big deal that the two of them hobbled outside together for the first time in the twelve years that we have had a dog. 

Adorable Hubby doesn't usually get called AH, (or it stands for other words). He usually has me exasperated about something as our "power-struggle/marriage /business relationship" bumps along the twenty-something'st year on the road of our lives. 

Early on there were road signs that I didn't see, or didn't understand because they were written in French. They said things like "Grumpy Frenchman Ahead", "Beware of Artists" and "Danger: do not mix cultural, age and language differences". 

So, as my Dad used to say, "The damn fool didn't know it was impossible, so (s)he went and did it anyway". 

They Race Camels, Don't They?

I grew up crazy about horses, but not to the exclusion of all other creatures. Camels also captured my imagination. One day, as a teenager, musing about the deep dark questions of life I asked myself why Camels are never involved in jumping competitions. Answer to self: "There's nothing to jump in the desert!"

To this day, having never owned or ridden a camel, I imagine that there is a hidden capacity in these seemingly ungainly beasts which are so adapted to their environment but look as though they were assembled in the dark.

Sunshine on my Shoulders Makes me Happy

This was all set to be a post about my satisfying weekend in the garden but my Sister sent me an email which made me smile even more and I thought I'd share some of her instead:
...It has taken me this long to look at my email (1 month). I'm sorry but I'd just prefer to pretend the 21st Century isn't really happening and that one day we will all go back to grunting and keeping sheep. (Actually most men I know are half way there already).
Today is Easter Sunday and I am on my own as the boys are in France skiing, so I have been roped in to go to Catherine's Art Exhibition in St. Just and then to have dinner with Rosie. She's the young woman with whom I share Megan, the eternally lame horse. Megan is on her third month of box rest with walking out leading only.
This combined with Danny the Disappearing Fucking Greyhound, means that I have been walking five to ten miles a bloody day and now feel as though I have splints coming!
I think I may take up knitting.

A Suit of Armour-This Years Beach Fashions

-Having, as yet, not fully unpacked my long-anticipated rowing machine.

-Having delivered foster-dog, and planned exercise-partner, to new forever home.

-Having just had lunch at Stacks Pancake House.

-Being unwilling to face the idea of anything small, brightly colored and SPANDEX as acceptable public attire.

-Being often disinclined to shave my legs.

-Having toes which are purple; not through the endeavors of the hot-rock wielding maidens of the nail salon; but due to stubbed toes and other gardening injuries.

-Realizing that, even though we are having a couple of grey, coolish days, tomorrow could suddenly be summer-hot.

My brainwave for today offers you, and myself, a new season's metallic beach fashions. Complete with complimentary sword to use on any boom-boxes or other rotten, skinny beach-going annoyances.

Tresco- the Highs & Lows of a Horse's Life

Tresco came to the riding school one day; a dark, shiny liver-chestnut horse with a white blaze. He was over 16 hh and sturdy. He surprised us by turning out to be an Anglo-Arab. He had jumped to a decent level of competition and been sold on when his rider moved away to college.
So-Angelo was his official moniker but was toned down to Tresco, the name of an island off the Cornish coast.
Tresco was a gentleman in the stable. Easy to groom, no trouble at all. Put a saddle on his back and his head and tail would lift in excitement. He grew in stature and charisma at the promise of activity. This horse was not the ideal beginners ride and even riding escort to a large group of holiday-makers, although fun and flashy, he covered twice the ground with his sideways fussing and circling to let everyone catch up. Tresco was one of my favorites. Fun and flashy were appealing to the late-teenager I was then and I rode him any time I could.
At the end of that season I moved to take a job in another county and lost sight of Tresco. I heard he had been sold to a private home and I was glad for him.
A year or more went by and I came home for family reasons, to help my parents run their General Store and Bed and Breakfast in a small village on the Cornish coast. I have always enjoyed walking and would take our two dogs and cover miles along the cliff-tops or up on the moors in the hours when I wasn't working.
One day I came upon a pitiful horse in a small muddy field, strewn with old rusty farm machines and other hazards. The horse was wearing a New Zealand rug to keep out the weather but his back and hip-bones were starkly visible through the tough fabric. The horse was Tresco. Head-hanging, dull-coated Tresco.
When your parents own the local store it is not hard, even for outsiders, to find information in a small village. Those members of the population who are not cousins or related by marriage had ancestors who were pirates and smugglers together. I learned who was responsible for Tresco's downfall and tried to improve his life by involving the authorities. The R.S.P.C.A. began by a process to educate the idiot girl who didn't see how miserably she was treating her horse. She wasn't doing it on purpose but was as thick in the head as two short planks. Progress was not being made and I went to see if she would sell him to me. She wanted more than was reasonable and more than I had.
Thanks to my parents, who never refused to help one of my ongoing collection of lame-duck animals or humans, I was able to offer more and buy Tresco out of the clutches of despair. His first week was all about vets and dentists and farriers, and food, of course.
The gruff and distant local farmers began coming in to the shop for more than their daily newspapers. They would ask after Tresco and offer the use of pasture. Tresco became friends with a lot of cows as he moved from one field to another. I'd bring him to our back yard every day for grooming and feeding and he was the only horse I had over the years who didn't scare my Mother when she went to hang out laundry.
After six months or so Tresco was back in fine form and we would ride out proudly with his tail banner-like and a bit of a prance from his hooves. I loved to stroll around the country lanes and wave to our Farmer Friends with the occasional unrestrained gallop on the open moors.
The Atlantic coast of Cornwall is soft and scenic in summertime but I will always prefer the craggy granite personality of wind-driven waves hammering the cliffs. The blustery winds bringing tears to my eyes and huge gulps of salty oxygen to my lungs. Tresco and I enjoyed it all, rain or shine.
Not being independently wealthy and knowing that my parents were getting ready to sell the business and retire to the gentler, Southern Coast, the time came for me to move away and resume my career. Tresco was too strong for my younger sister to ride comfortably and I was off to groom in Germany. Tresco needed a home.
The small-town grapevine extends beyond the village. A "Landed Gentry" family ten miles inland had been aware of us from the sidelines. They had always had Hunters and their horses stayed with them as "pasture ornaments" until the day they died. They gave Tresco a very classy home. Post and rail fencing, no less, which is unheard of in the land of dry-stone walls that is Cornwall. Tresco was an aristocrat who had come full circle.

Late for Tulips, Early for Wisteria.

I sometimes reward myself with an escape to a place of private pleasure. I drive to a nearby National Trust property that has reliably beautiful gardens and look my fill. It's not a huge detour, I spend a half hour appreciating colours and perfumes and the contented resonance of happy bees. I feel restored and take my smile with me again to face the day.

My timing has been a little off this season. We had a warm spell that provoked the tulips. They don't last long in California, once they flower their glory is brief. By the time I got there last week the main spectacle was over and the next, wisteria-phase, was just beginning. I was a bit annoyed at myself and the fact that it was mid-afternoon so too busy for my liking. I was grumpy at all the white-haired ones who have no concept that someone might need to pass on the brick walkways as they dither forward, four abreast, totally unconcerned. The docents were haggered and worn and had lost all sense of humour as there were repeated infractions onto the precious lawns.

Not my best visit. I will have to return again.

Bunny Good - Rocket Scientist

I don't know if it's because of the connotations of Easter or because I may get an emergency foster dog tomorrow (foreclosure foster) but I was thinking about the animal shelter and my last experience there; so enhanced by a real, if eccentric, person named Bunny Good - Rocket Scientist.
Years ago we expanded our business into a large outdoor yard by the train tracks. 50,000 sqft of not much but grass and hard-packed dirt and a light industrial zoning. We import antique roof-tiles and limestone and custom carve fireplaces and such, none of which has to be stored indoors. My main office was at home and I would meet clients by appointment at our stone yard.
The yard came to us with the added attraction of a couple of roving rabbits. There had been an old man living in a trailer and I always supposed that they were his. Somehow over the years word must have gotten out that this was some kind of bunny heaven. New rabbits would be glimpsed amongst the palettes nibbling grass or hopping around trying to hump one another. I was always surprised we didn't have a sudden explosion of bunnies, but we never had babies.
One day there was a lady with a large net wandering around. Her rabbit had escaped from her home on the other side of the railroad and she had tracked him to us. She tried several times to catch him and then brought me a bag of food and "passed the bunny", so to speak.
Now, our business was not big enough to use up all the space and so we also rented parking spaces for trucks, boats an old school bus and, for a while a caravan/trailer. The caravan became inhabited by the druggie-pimp son of the vehicle's owner and there was far too much "activity" there for a while. You don't learn anything for free, as we say.
Back to the rabbits. Quite a few of our renters would bring carrots and such to feed the rabbits. One of our most bohemian people who cared about the rabbits was a scrawny, semi-homeless woman who's hands were twisted with arthritis and who stored all her worldly goods in a green van that never moved. For a long time I thought her name was Bonny, but she corrected me and later showed me a letter that she had written signed Bunny Good-Rocket Scientist.
Bunny would show up on foot, clutching multiple brown grocery bags of who knew what. She would root around in her green van for hours and leave again with a large number of paper bags. She always brought something veggie for the rabbits and gave each new one a name.
Over time I learned that Bunny lived not too far from us; just across the freeway from our home. I always offered her a lift if I was headed home because her version of the five mile trip took hours of walking and changing buses several times. She lived behind an office building, by the Palo Alto Municipal Airport, under a blue-tarp construction in a corner of the parking lot.
So Bunny and I would chat as I kept the car windows discreetly lowered. (No good deed goes unpunished). She really was a Rocket Scientist, had worked at NASA, had been married too, although that's not a sure sign of a sane person. She was a little quirky, bordering on conspiracy theories and such, but harmless enough. The letter she showed me was to some local government agency, in defense of an iris plant that was blooming in the Baylands and scheduled for removal as a non-native species. She took me to see it one day. Her letter included a poem she had written and you just know she was a true thorn in the side of all bureaucracy.
As the four-footed bunnies in our lives grew older and diminished in number we got down to only one. Janeau was very striking, white with black spots. He became friendly as he matured and would eat from our hands. He also peed on my foot one day as I was showing some important clients around. Not just wet and squishy but stinky-boy pee. A sign of affection I am told.
Janeau had been with us for a decade and I didn't want him to be lonely. The local newspaper had run an article about a female rabbit and babies that had been abandoned at the Baylands and rescued by the Park Rangers and brought to the animal shelter. The babies were easy to rehome but Mummy-Bunny didn't have a bright future. Of course I went to see her and found out that Bunny Good was a regular visitor at the shelter too and was very keen to participate in matching me up with this rabbit.
Anyone who has ever adopted an animal knows that there is paper-work involved. In this case I was asked to fill out a description of my home and family as well as a full page explaining every minute of the proposed adoptee's daily routine.
I thought I knew how to work the system so I began with: early morning greeting, cleaning the cage, fresh feed, time for some affection, grooming and requisite ammounts of exercise and rest followed by more affection. I lied about where the bunny was to be in residence and did not disclore that she was destined to be a free-range rabbit.
I told the tale of my family of one husband, one daughter; realized that the dog was no-one's business but my own and made an appointment to collect Mummy-Bunny, after my "Screening Interview" the next day.
Bunny Good had someone lined up to lend me a temporary cage until everyone got acclimated and she gleefully met up with me at our appointed time outside the shelter the next day.
Oh My! The volunteer shelter-person was shocked that my husband was not with me to fetch Mummy-Bunny. She could not conceive of handing over an animal without also screening the new "Father Figure" entering into it's life.
I appoligize. I was unladylike. I reminded her that I could easily have gone to the local feed store and purchased a brand new bunny for less than they were charging me for "I left my Uterus in Palo Alto, Microchipped Miss Floppy Ears" and I believe I suggested she could have her bunny stuffed and mounted wherever she so wished. I was going to say "Bunniless, I departed", which is incorrect as I did leave with Bunny, just not the one I had planned on.
As this story drags on, I promise we are close to the punch line. Ms. Good had me drop her off in town and later that afternoon I received a phone call from the Shelter Director begging me to please accept both their appologies and Mummy-Bunny.
Ms. Good had demanded to see the Chief of Police, who I now know, has oversight of the shelter. She worked her relentless magic and he sorted out the officious officials at the animal shelter. Mummy-Bunny came to live with us and her new friend Janneau.
Footnote: Janneau outlived all the other bunnies. At the age of fourteen he was partially disabled and I researched the local vets to find one who knew rabbits. Late one warm Friday afternoon in August, after a full examination and much amazement at the over-all health and advanced age of my polka-dot rabbit, we decided that putting him to sleep was the most humane solution.
I carried the cardboard pet-carrier back to our workshop with the intention of laying him to rest where he had lived long and free. It was just me and Janneau as everyone had gone home for the day. I was composed, even stoic as I opened up the box to see that the vet had covered him with Marguerite Daisies. I bawled my eyes out over that crazy rabbit.