Tag Archives: Doomsday

Keep Moving Forward: Two Weeks

As if it’s been two weeks since I had to say goodbye to Doomsday. I said I was going to talk about it sooner, but I wasn’t quite ready for it.

It’s been a very weird experience, and I think I finally understand what people are talking about when they say “loss”. I used to be like “You didn’t lose that person or pet! You know where they went! To The Death! You didn’t lose them in a mall, they are gone, but not lost.”

And I think that’s a very important distinction sure, but with her being gone there are several things that are lost in the wind as her body is gone but her soul remained within me.

I haven’t felt such sadness since my dog Envy was gone. And I genuinely thought that was top level sadness.

Now, Doomsday was called a lot of things in her time and I was called a lot of things because of my love for her. (Ie. “Crazy” “Obsessed” “Nutbag”) But there is one thing that people kept saying to me about her and our life together when I would tell them that I needed to get home to see her or that I wanted to hang out with her in the evenings instead of socialize with human beings.

She was called “Just a rabbit”.

Oh hell no.

Any living creature is never “just” anything. If that creature is loved and can be loved then they are JUST amazing and wonderful.

Never step up to me and call any of my animal family members JUST my dogs. Or JUST my rabbit. Or JUST my little sister.

How dare you. Sir.

Let me tell you why I’m grieving so hard for this rabbit:

Because I love her.

No past tense. I still love her. That love doesn’t leave just because she is no longer physically here.

If anything, it magnified and reminded me of what our love was and what it had grown into.

That girl had personality. If she didn’t like something she let you know. (Sound familiar?) The vet told me last year that she has never seen a rabbit with more personality in their eyes. She was spewing pure venom because we were getting her cysts drained and she hated that.

There are things that I miss so damn much about her already. Mainly the things that irritated the fuck out of me when she was here.

That water bottle noise.

Anyone who has a small pet that lives in a cage knows what I’m talking about. That stupid noise was like a beacon to let me know she was still there. And now it’s gone and I can’t sleep. I’ve had to have a couple of naps when Daryl naps because I’m so exhausted during the day.

After almost 8 years together that noise had been my lullaby and now it’s missing and I haven’t gone to bed on time or even in the near vicinity of 10 pm for the last two weeks.

I also miss her rubbing her face on my ankles to claim me. And I hate when people touch my ankles. But with her it was sweet. Even though sometimes she would get on my ankle and I would be terrified that she would hump me. (We never got that far because she tickled so much. And it’s fucking creepy as all hell.)

I miss kisses. Bunny kisses are unicorn magic because that’s how they REALLY express love.

This has been one of the harder times of my life just because I had to go through cleaning her stuff out of my room. And there was a lot more than I thought. For such a small being she had a lot of stuff. Including the carpet in my room because she hated to run around on the wood floor. Everything in my room was set up to protect her or protect the thing from chewing that thing.

My room has a giant void.

I moved her stuff out earlier than I probably would have for two reasons:

  1. Dexter (who was her friend and is a our Doodle) keeps looking for her in the cage and can’t relax in my room. It was confusing both the dogs.

2)Every time I looked at the empty cage I started crying. While crying it out is good, I didn’t want to do it every ten seconds while trying to get anything accomplished in my room.

And I had so many weird habits that included her in my life. Like coming into the room at the end of the day and saying “Hello Cuckoo.” or when I was leaving I would make a weird noise and bunny ears at her. Even just facing my laptop over so she could watch Supernatural with me.

Have I mentioned I’m insane?

My guts hurt still hurt and I don’t know how I’ll handle having to pick her up from the vet in a new sort of carrying case. (Ie. An urn. Yes, I’m that crazy person who gets their pet cremated.)

I miss kisses, and snuggles, and even her nipping me to pay attention to her, I miss her angry stomps and funny noises, and chasing each other, and how funny she was when she would jump on my bed or whip around in excitement.

Bunnies are the best. She was the best. And it was so hard to hold her tiny body in my arms and listen to the vet say the most difficult words “She’s gone.” to me.

But now I’ll have to keep moving forward without her. So I’ve come up with a way of dealing…which is that she is now my Patronus. When I’m sad or anxious or darkness is coming over me, I just picture her as her black form with the smoke of a Patronus hopping around me to protect me. Now I just assume her spirit is trailing after me and seeing the world instead of just my bedroom.

Fingers crossed.

This is our first day together. So tiny! Fit into my hand! (And used to sit on my shoulders like a parrot haha)

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Keep Moving Forward: The Beginning of the End.

First off, thank you every one for your kind words. And secondly:

Now I’m going to make you cry. Here is how I was trying to work through what was about to happen to my beloved bunny. Some people won’t care, some people will, I was just trying to work out my own feelings on things.

Tuesday, Sept. 22nd:

I’m sitting here hours before I make what will probably be one of the worst phone call I’ll ever have to make in my life.

My soul mate and friend, Doomsday, is heading into the final moments of her life and I can’t even have her understand what is happening.

For the past couple of months we have been struggling to keep her afloat.

She has had cysts on her belly which have spread throughout the last few years, she has had a tumour on her leg that we have removed a few years ago, we dealt with the burn mark on her leg that the vet in Vancouver gave her when trying to keep her warm during that surgery. Now we are looking down the barrel of the gun with some sort of bacterial infection in her eyes, severe weight loss, and now, the final nail in her coffin, she isn’t using her legs right.

Ever been in the mood to not lift your own body? That’s her constant state. She sits and stares at the wall in one spot, no longer even laying down.

The other night I took her out of her cage in the hopes that she would run around or do something, even just sniff me. But what happened was she refused to leave her home, I had to push her into her bed to even get her to move and I lifted her out that way.

When I did that she fell face forward into it and that’s when I knew she was finally changing her address to Heaven.

Normally she would stomp her foot at me, turn around and nudge me like “Hey! Stop that!”

But she just fell over. And I’ve been witnessing things like this over the last week that don’t look good.

Hell, even my mom started crying at this news. And my mom has wanted the “stench” of her out of the house since I got her. (I’ve never noticed until this last month, that’s how bad her bowels were.)

Even my father, who professionally processes, sells, and has a marked dislike of rabbits checked on her this weekend and asked me how she was doing.

Of course, I was away and he was terrified that she would die on his watch and I would Khaleesi him with a couple of dragons.

That’s how fiercely I love her, my parents are worried about me.

And all I can think is how this will be a relief.

Not for me, but for her. Well, I suppose for me a bit, now I won’t have to wait, wonder, and worry.

11:00 am.

I made the call. And I cried right through it. I hate when people hear, see, or acknowledge that I’m crying. The vet was very calm and told me my options. Said she was so sorry to hear this news and that they would be there for me.

And then asked me if I wanted to do it today. Which, obviously made me burst into tears. She goes tomorrow around the same time. Changing her address to Heaven.

I’m so heartbroken, I can’t even process this.

No longer will I hear her at night drinking her water like a nuisance, no longer will she trip me while I’m trying to clean my room. No longer will she glare at me when I snuggle her too closely or push her fur the wrong way.

After all these years it’s going to be so hard to say goodbye to the little love of my life who has been with me for almost 8 years.

We’ve grown so much together. She would sit on me when I studied or read, she would do figure eights around my ankles and nuzzle me like there’s no tomorrow.

We would open Christmas presents together, and watch Supernatural, she would hide in my closet, my bookshelf, under the bed, anywhere that was safe and she could run out and scare the daylights out of me.

She would lick me when she was happy, jump 3 feet in the air when she was ecstatic, snuggle into my neck on cold nights, and right into my sweater on freezing nights.

She’s been my little cuckoo and moved with me across the country and back, we’ve ruined 5 apartments together because she loves to chew the woodwork.

We put out Christmas cards for the last three or four years and she tolerated me sticking her in a box, putting her in a scarf, and in generally holding her at the right angles so we could get the perfect pictures all to show that family don’t end with blood.

But now it’s time to let all that go and let her go out with some dignity.

I won’t prop her up just so I don’t have to say goodbye and selfishly keep her around for myself.

I will do her one last solid and care for her until the very end.

She’s going now. I hope you wish her all a very fond farewell.

More next week while I process this grief and keep moving forward.

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Vancity Valentine

As you may have guessed from recent (and past) posts, I’m single. What a travesty, right? I’m pretty and awesome and have a unabashed love for dude-type things. (Re: My addiction to watching Lethal Weapon every summer, and my love of all things Joss Whedon. Not to mention my increasing collection of action figures and plans for a new tattoo.)

So, what am I doing being single?

Living my life. (Or according to my Nonna, I just don’t want people to bother me. She’s not wrong.) You see, I also have a serious case of Sarcastica Influenza. And a big huge bleeping Bullshit Detector. Therefor, guys of this lovely hipster brofest twerking Hot or Nah era, are promptly rejected when they come a sniffin’. Also, I kind of have a Bitchy Resting Face, so I scare people when I’m just hanging around. It’s kind of fun. Until you make a kid cry. Anyway.

That being said: I love Valentines Day. Oh yes, yes, it’s all that Hallmarky lovefest fakery to some. And people go over board, stress themselves out, and whatnot. But for one shining day most of us are glowingly in love, expressing love, or just in general being kind to one another.

Yes, people get down about not having a significant other or someone to celebrate with. To you I say: CELEBRATE WITH ME!

No I am not hosting a mixer for lonely hearts. (That’s in your church basement, seek it out. What have you.) Tomorrow I will be throwing some of my favourite love quotes at you and a list of books that will guide you to a great love story. Don’t fret if you don’t have a Valentine, I’ll be your Valentine.

Fret if you can’t find something to munch on while reading said love books. Personally, I will likely be eating a box of chocolates, drinking some cheap ass wine, and watching Tangled (Or Braveheart, I haven’t decided. Oo, or Captain America. Nothing says Love like Chris Evans pecks.) with Doomsday and celebrating that she made it through her surgery and has no immediate plans to kill me after I put a cone on her last night.

Be kind to one another, yourself, and don’t bash people who are in love, that speaks more to how you look at yourself than what you think of them.

Unless they are throat deep in a make out session. Then throw things. That’s just gross. I highly suggest carrying around cherry tomatoes it looks like fun to hit people with vegetables. (I’ve been watching a lot of Merlin lately, that guy is in the stocks a lot. I want to nail someone in the head with a tomato so hard.)

Constant vigilance, love and light.

Your Vancity Valentine

P.S: I really just love heart shaped things, so it’s like my own personal doodles are everywhere. Timmy Hos ‘I Heart You’ donuts here I come!

Mine.

Let’s get a little emotional, shall we?

This week has been a bit of a scary one, although not as scary as some things are. My pet dwarf rabbit Doomsday has been a little off. She’s turning 6 soon and as she gets older things are going to start happening to her body that I don’t like. (And I’m sure she’s not a fan of it either.) She already has some cysts in her chest that we get drained about every two months now, and our last trip to the vet proved terrifying as they found a giant lump on her knee that I hadn’t seen before, I don’t examine her entire body, but I will now regularly since it was incredibly shocking to have to be called back into a room with three people holding her teeny tiny body and one pointing at it like ‘What?’ In truth, I could barely look at it because it freaked me out. I nearly puked and she didn’t look too thrilled about it either. But that could’ve just be because she was being stretched out at full length and she only likes that when there is sunshine to be laid in. All I could say was ‘WHAT IS THAT?!” and cover my mouth before I spewed on the floor.

This at least explained why she had been burrowing into my scarf and sweater when we were waiting. Her heart was going a mile a minute and she was shaking. She’s a Nervous Nelly, but I’ve never seen her act like that before. Something was hurting her and I didn’t notice.

I’ll tell you right now, for the moment she is okay. The vet told me yesterday that it’s a tumour, but it’s benign and can be removed and she won’t have a trouble in the world besides her visits for her cysts. As it is, she’s hopping around, limping a little, but otherwise seemingly happy. (Who wouldn’t be on pain killers?)

The reason I’m telling you this is because it actually really troubles my heart. I consider myself a good person and an animal lover, so when something like that happens to my teeny tiny soul mate, I’m really saddened and heartbroken that I missed it in the first place.

When I first bought Doomsday it didn’t feel like I bought her. It felt like I met her. I had found a little piece of my soul in a pet store. Who knew?

I’ve had this happen to me a few times, when I meet another part of my soul, whether it be animal or human, I know when I’ve met it. Soul mates aren’t just your one true love, they are in friendships and other kinds of loves too. (Although when it comes to romantic love you can see where I’ve had problems keeping boys around when I knew they weren’t part of my soul. Papa don’t play those games.)

I distinctly remember pointing at her in the store and saying “I’d like to see him please.” (I was dead set on getting a rabbit  and naming it Clark Kent.) The girl said, “I believe that’s actually a girl.” Admittedly, I was disappointed for about 5.6 seconds before she put that teeny tiny bundle into my hands and I brought her to my chest. Doomsday immediately pressed her face into my neck and .03 seconds went by before I said ‘Mine.’

This happened with my dog Envy, although she was remiss to give in to my love at first. Age 12 and I had met my first animal soul mate. Age 21 I met Doomsday. And age 23ish, I met Dexter. A third. Do you know what it’s like to have a puppy run towards you from a barn and straight into your arms? Because if you don’t, damn, you are missing out. I picked that labradoodle up and she, too, snuggled into my collarbone and my heart said ‘Mine.’

Doomsday on the other hand, was the first pet that was really and truly, only mine. I didn’t have to share her with anyone, but I did since I lived with five other girls at the time and we cooed over her like she was a new baby. I started second semester with her at my side and we haven’t looked back. While I studied she hopped around me chewing at my books, or sitting on my butt while I wrote notes on my stomach. We would snuggle while watching Supernatural in the living room when I was sick. Chase each other in the hallway because it was a circle. And continuously rub noses. (She loves this in particular, something about their moms doing it to them.)

Little noodle rubs her face on me to claim that I’m hers too. In fact I’ve almost crushed her over a dozen times because the idjit doesn’t know to not do that while I’m walking.

When I moved into my first apartment she came with me, happily doing her super jump in the air every thirty seconds because she was out of her cage 24/7 and we had wall to wall carpeting. (She hates being on wood or tiles.) I would come home from work drinking slushies and laying on the couch with a fan on me and she would be sprawled out right in front of the fan getting cool too as we watched Magnum P.I. (It sounds like I’m dating myself, but really my mom owns them on DVD and I love Tom Selleck. Doomsday prefers watching Buffy.)

We’ve lived together for 6 years. One of my longest relationships is with a rabbit. Go figure.

I’ll leave you with this: When I was in the veterinary office a woman was sitting beside me with her cat and the vet technician said something along the lines of ‘How is so and so and her mommy today?” the lady immediately said ‘I don’t do that ‘mommy’ business. I’m her guardian.”

Now isn’t that the most beautiful word for what we are? I’ve struggled for years to figure out what I am to her. I’ve always hated when someone called me her ‘mom’ because that’s not the right word and I knew it. Friend seemed a little obvious, but also wrong. Sister wasn’t right since I consider us to be a high caliber of friendship. Sure, she pisses me off sometimes, I piss her off, we play, I laugh, she twitches, gooses me every once in awhile, and in general is a pal.

I’m going to protect her from what I can and shield her from the worst because there are two words that describe what that teeny tiny rabbit is to me and I’m to her:

Mine. Guardian.

Hallo Everabody!

It’s been awhile, but here’s what’s new on the site:

(Please note, we’re not done making changes, but I missed writing to you so I came back early.)

Obviously the look of the site is new(ish), my friend and collaborator is making us a fresh design for the future but for now we’ll stick with something more colourful!

Now, the big news is that all the pages up at the top where it tells you which genres to look in? And how they have lists of books that I’ve read and/or loved? Now you can click on them to read the past post! Whoohoo! Thank God for Irene, she’s making all sorts of fun changes to the site and hopefully I won’t have to think too hard about much anymore! Haha

Having a minion is great. I feel like Gru. (Hence the accented ‘hello’.)

Story time? Since we haven’t talked in awhile here are the highlights from the last few weeks:

1)Christmas was great, it was nerd Heaven. David Duchovny got a girlfriend. And I have Doctor Who paraphernalia coming out the yin yang.

2)New Years was wonderfully dipped in alcohol and friendship. And poutine. Which is my only real true friend. It was my first New Years since I was a kid that I really participated in. Last year I played Cards Against Humanity with my family and watched my sister cry over her break up. It was just leaking out randomly, it was scary. Very Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I also had my first New Years kiss, which was also alcohol dipped and a peck on the cheek that wasn’t from my dad, although there were whiskers involved. But sweet none the less.

3)I woke up on New Years day with barf down my front and still in my party dress.

4)Fireball is my enemy and I realized yesterday an anagram for Alli Barf. Well, almost, but you get the idea. We’re not friends anymore. Again.

5)I finished writing my own book at 8 pm on New Years Eve! It’s ready to go and be published already after 10 years of an off/on again love affair that usually ends up with me wanting to set it on fire.

6)I finished reading Trainspotting!!!! WAAHOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I’m not sure what to think of it.

7)I was told that I’m pretty, nice, and have beautiful eyes from a Mexican man that comes into my work and told that he has a son around my age and he’ll bring him back to Vancouver so we can get married. He made me swear that in the next month I won’t marry someone else.

Yeah. Because that’s really going to happen. Unless Rupert shows up. Or Norman Reedus. Or The Rock.

8)Someone donated a mannequin head and told me her name was Daphne.

9)I found a box that contained a baggie of packets of sugar. And condoms. I don’t even want to know where that was going.

10)A German man told me he loves me in Tagalog. (Which is what his Filipino girlfriend speaks. He’s 83.) His girlfriend also slipped me packages of M and Ms like it was a drug deal.

11)I was walking home and walked past a girl wearing an obviously fake moustache like it was nothing. I love her.

12)I was cleaning the store for opening and I heard a clock ticking near my head. Which seemed reasonable because there WAS one by my head…and then I really looked at it and the hands weren’t moving and there were no batteries in it. I’m Captain Hook.

13)I got into a fight with another mirror. This makes the third mirror I’ve broken/killed/lost a fight with. The first when I was playing with a baby and showing him his face and it broke in my hand. The second I kept knocking over and didn’t fully break, but cut my leg on. And now the third which my sister keeps on the counter for plucking her eyebrows and I knocked it over when I got off toilet. Seriously. When you start saying ‘Typical’ when you break a mirror, it’s time to call it quits on being near them.

Okay, I think that’s all the weird and wonderful things. Now I’m going to go bra shopping because Doomsdays chewed all the straps to most of my bras like a goddamn weirdo.

Happy New Year!

 

White Noise Week

Hello Little Birds:

This week in my chakra/acting class I found my voice! She’s a little goofy, and you’ve actually met her, because she use to only talk through writing. Now she will rise! In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!

…. …. …..I have passed the test.

Yes. I just Fellowship of the Ringed you. (I’d say that joke can take the place of our regular Friday quote, yes?)

So, funnily enough, now that I’ve found my voice I’ve been challenged to a media blackout. Which, sadly, includes Deranged Librarian. Just until next Thursday! So no need to panic!

Happily though, I will get to finish reading Dragonfly in Amber, play with Doomsday, and pull my hair out when I start to get Facebook withdrawals.

I expect without distractions like the internet I will read a million books! …Except I can’t put them on Goodreads until next week….this is a terrible plan! My morning rituals will be all out of whack!

…I’m writing to you like this is a friggin diary, Jesus. I need to detox.

See you on the flip side wiener dogs.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!