Coffee House Connections

My husband and I have found a new favorite coffee shop.  It’s a bit of a drive for us, but we find it’s worthwhile for the good food and drinks, and (for us, the most important part) the atmosphere.

We went there this past Sunday, and were a bit surprised.  Our quaint little hole-in-the-wall had become a bustling metropolis.  The Christmas shopping season has indeed descended upon us, and it has touched the small town coffee shop we love.

Glad to grab the last table in the building, I was irritated at being so close to a table with four loud teenagers, prohibiting the usual intimate conversation Chris and I usually engage in during our Sunday afternoon forays.  It was a table for two, with two other teens standing with them, talking and gesturing with enthusiasm.  I was sitting facing them; Chris could not see them.

Eventually, the two standing teens left, and we were able to chat without all the noise, but I could still see the teens.  At one point in time, the boy decided he wanted to take a picture of himself and the girl at the table.  Stretching his arm as far as he could, while she leaned across the table, with both of them smiling, he took a picture.  The flash went off.

The flash illuminated the other side of the room.

He had taken a picture of the door on the other side of the room.  The girl collapsed in giggles, with a huge side of embarrassment.  Then she noticed me smiling.  We shared a smile, then a laugh, then she gestured to the boy and all three of us were laughing.  Only Chris wasn’t in on the joke, and I was laughing too hard to explain.

Suddenly, the annoying teenagers became the people I’d shared a joke with.  We had shared a smile together.  That changes everything.

Making eye contact with people, I’ve noticed, makes a huge impact.  Sharing a smile, even more.  Looking away from people creates a rift.  Engaging strangers, it’s scary.  Super-scary for people like me who have anxiety disorders.  It’s so easy for other people to not reciprocate.

But I’ve learned that being the PROACTIVE person is dangerous, but rewarding.  Looking at a person and refusing to look away…yeah, sometimes it shows you more than you want to see, but it also shows you their potential, their strengths, their enthusiasm.  It shows you their humanity.  It shows you that they are more like you than they are different.

After all, one snapshot, doesn't exactly tell you all about a person, does it?  DOES IT?

 

I Milked a Rabbit.

Misty as a baby.  She used to sit IN her food bowl.

I milked a rabbit.

Inadvertently.

You may wonder how a person can accidentally milk a bunny…

Well, it started out quite innocently.

I was upstairs, minding my own business, when my daughter brought her rabbit, Misty, to me.  She was concerned because there was an unusual lump on her belly, kind of in her “armpit” area.  (Yeah, I know, rabbits technically don’t have arms, thus removing the possibility of having armpits…but what am I going to say?  Near her front knee-pits?  Do rabbits even have knees?)

So I felt around Misty’s belly, and there was definitely ONE LUMP there.  It reminded me a lot of the lumps one of our cats used to get, after being injured.  The skin would heal up around the wound without us realizing there was still something inside it.  Like a beak or a claw.   (He was a scrappy cat.  I watched him fight a hawk once.  He won.  He always won.  Until he didn't.  But that's another story.)  Anyway, I used to squeeze the resulting cyst to allow the foreign object to come out.

You can see where this is going already…

Not thinking anything about it, I squeezed the “cyst” on Misty’s belly.  She DID NOT like it, but a hard, white lump emerged, and I figured we’d solved the problem.  I sprayed a bit of Bactine on the “wound” (because Bactine is awesome, and everyone should carry it around to spray on any open wound.  Always.) and told Carina we’d need to check it daily to make sure it didn’t get infected.

The next day, the “cyst” seemed softer, so we relaxed a bit.

Until the following evening…when I was upstairs…and Carina appeared with her bunny.

“Mom?  I’m really concerned.  She’s got another lump!”

So I’m feeling around on her bunny’s belly, and I find this lump.  Perfectly parallel to the other lump.  

“Umm, Carina?  Could these lumps possibly be nipples?”

Yep.  We had the sudden appearance of nipples on our bunny.  Thus, when I squeezed her “cyst”, I was actually milking her.  Ew.

I’m not sure why I find this more disgusting than squeezing a squirrel claw out of my cat. Because some wild, possibly rabid squirrel body part embedded in cat flesh is definitely dirtier than the milk from a virginal rabbit who has been kept inside the house under fairly pristine conditions.   

Perhaps it’s the personal invasion aspect?  I molested our bunny?

One $60 vet visit later, and we find out that our little girl is experiencing a false pregnancy.  You will be happy to know that we have indeed guarded her purity with the greatest of care.  But she THINKS she’s pregnant.  Apparently, it’s some sort of hormonal thing that happens in certain animals.  

And, if something strange or odd is going to happen, it’s bound to occur in the Colvin household.

Carina says I’m getting too much pleasure out of this.  But really.  How many people get the life experience of milking a bunny?  Or having ghost baby bunnies? 

I feel like I need to buy some sort of sympathy gift for Misty.  But what do you get for a rabbit to tell her, “Hey, I’m sorry you thought you were pregnant, but you’re not.  Tough luck.”

Well, there was this one encounter she had...

 Update:  I discovered that there are actually bunny milking farms in the Netherlands.  Egads.