A Lop-eared Bunny

I started this last Sunday.

————————————–

A lop-eared bunny for breakfast:

The inventiveness of Happy Wife never ceases.

A grim, foggy morning outside. The phonecast indicates sunshine for days and days ahead. So far this morning, though, we are all like vegetables huddled inside a cold soup. Not a morning to slide out of bed and into the flip flops, throw back the drapes, step onto the porch and greet the wondrous felicity of the day with a beaming smile, filled with anticipation — “Good Morning!”

No.

In other words, it’s February. My birth month. Nothing felicitous about turning 55. Or having a David Byrne moment at your desk only the third week into a new job, “How do I work this?”

You see, one imagines that when you reach 55 on the job you become a fount of knowledge, with the young-ins queuing up outside your office. One by one they give a supplicant tap on your door, respectfully asking if you might share a bit of your hard-won wisdom with them, any little kernel of advice you might have that would help them gain the mastery over their job that you now enjoy over yours. This is the natural order of things, no? A thin consolation of elder-hood? That palpable sense of omniscience that attends seniority and Letteredness which permits you to reach back in time and pontificate, “Why, when I was a junior analyst like yourself, we used to…”

That’s not happening.

Not that I’m complaining mind you. People at work have been great and generous towards me. But just imagine the transition: One day I’m grappling with the biological implications of one protein interacting with another, and the next I’m talking with a corrosion engineer about the Trans-Alaska pipeline. (Which is just fine, btw).

I know, right — the life of a dilettante. The very thing my wise father once cautioned me about: Never become a person who knows a little bit about a lot of things, son.

Sorry, Dad. I have become such a person.

Tomorrow is my birthday. Big whoop. Just watch: some hacker will get hold of this, connect my name and birthday, and before you know it take out a mortgage in my name. You know what, no worries. I’ll just find out where the house is, go there, and plop myself down in the family room on the couch and chill. If anyone objects I’ll shout ’em down, “This is MY house.” Ha!

How’s Harry? Well, he’s been a super responder to therapy, that’s for sure. One injection of a mitotic inhibitor and his tumor shrunk from a fist to a golf ball. After another, to a grape. We have our sights set on a pea. His vitality is back to wild type. But we dare not let that go to our heads and scold him for bad behavior, because he’s quick to remind us, Don’t forget I’m sick:

Whatchya gonna do?