It Comes With A Price

[jessicagallagher]

Originally published at constant-casualty.net. You can comment here or there.

“Hopkins” taken on January 1st, 2009

There was no sleep to be had last night where I was concerned.  Simon, he slept like a baby… doped up on Nyquil so he didn’t have to listen to me snore.  (Which meant that I had to listen to him snore, instead… but I guess that’s only fair.)  I downed the cough syrup my doctor gave me, which is a miracle drug in my books for the record, and we passed out around 9:30 or so.  But I was up on the hour, every hour wheezing and hacking.  At one point in my dilerious state, I feared that I had taken too many puffs of my rescue inhaler and was going to die if I fell asleep.  And then worried if the cough syrup was going to interact badly with my nebulizer treatment I had taken and suddenly felt like I was having chest pains.  Oh yes, I was that out of it.

At about 4am I decided that I needed to quit the inhaler puffs, because they obviously weren’t working, and go onto another nebulizer treatment.  At least I slept from 4:30 until 7:30 when the alarm went off and we had to get up so I could take Simon to work.

All of this — well, ok maybe not all, but some — is due to our newest addition to the household: Hopkins (pictured above).  Our neighbors had him in a hutch outside throughout the summer, but never really seemed to interested in taking care of him.  The other night Simon and I came home from work to find the bunny romping through our backyard.  After talking with my mother and sister, we found out that the story goes the neighbors couldn’t afford him anymore, and so they “let him go.”  I was livid.  While we were trying to catch him that night, the neighbor had come out of her house to go to her car and very cautiously avoided all eye contact with us, which just confirmed the story.  The next day my awesome sister-in-law came to the house and caught him.  Simon and I couldn’t see him be homeless, and so we offered to adopt him.

Yes, I am allergic to rabbits.  Yes, he will be living indoors with us and our anti-social cat - who, surprisingly, hasn’t tried to attack him yet and I’m very proud of her for that.  And so the first night of having him with us I’m an asthmatic mess, but it will pass.  I will head to the clinic today to see if they can pump me full of steroids (since I will blame the asthma attacks on this nasty cold and not the adoption of a new furry creature) and I will get on some allergy meds once again.  I went through this phase when we got Clea, and I am now completely immune to her.  I am determined to do the same with Hopkins.

Because, look at him… How could you ever say no to that face?!

P.S. - Hopkins is my “Happy” for the week, for the record.