Hit the Wall …

CrackLast Saturday, working through stasis with Tigger, I wrote about how our energy levels were hitting the wall.  Well, I literally did hit the wall later in the weekend by walking into it late in the evening.  This is now the second time in my life that I have broken a toe doing that.

I found out the first time I did it that there is a name for it, Night Walker’s Fracture.  It happens a lot when people are really tired and not paying attention or get up at night and don’t bother with glasses or lights.  There you are banging your toes against the wall / furniture or catching them like I did on a corner and you stub one or more hard enough to cause a break. 

Thank heavens for warm Georgia weather, flip-flops and ice!  Thankfully Tigger and I are both on the road to recovery now.

And Then There Was the Plan …

Laptop User Celebrating

Tomorrow - the theme is red!

There are so many parts of Rabbittude now!  The bunnies have just gotten in to everything.  Here is the plan for the blog: 

Mon-Thur: Posts about living with house rabbits or what Rabbittude is up to. I plan to blog twice a day through Labor Day and then daily the rest of the year. *CliffsNotes: Our website is currently outdated, we know. An overhaul is in the planning stages to update and integrate it with the blog. When that happens, the blog address should remain the same:  http://blog.rabbittude.com.

Fri: A la Twitter, I will have Follow Friday recommendations.  Many will be rabbit related, but I do actually sneak off from the rabbits from time to time.  So there will be other things I find really appealing.  In addition to bunnies I love humor, nature, photography, jewelry, sewing, crafts and things with Asian flair. 

Sat: Saturdays for me are a day to wrap up and look ahead.  I might have bunny stories or instead will share things I found helpful to me during the week.  In a tough economy, I like to share where I can to help others out.  Expect some sneak peaks of whats ahead.

Sun: You can expect on Sundays to see my two favorite photographic subjects, rabbits and nature. WordPress has been posting weekly Photo Challenge ideas.  I’m pulling from my photo archives now for some of those themes.  Summer’s approach is making me think of ways to combine photography with having fun. 

Rabbits are ziggety zaggety little beings who hop where current conditions dictate.  I hope you will enjoy following the Rabbittude blog.  However, if I am not enjoying the plan or I see readers are not,  it will be a rabbit style plan and adjust course as needed.  Comments on what you like or don’t are welcome.

Blogging Along – Dropping In Titles

Bunny ScanningWhen I said I was going to blog twice a day thru Labor Day and then once a day the rest of the year, I scared myself a bit.  I thought how am I going to come up with enough topics?  The logical side of my brain started counting and freaked out.  Sometimes my analytical left brain is not happy with what the more spontaneous right side has promised.  I am both right and left-handed, so I move back and forth between logical and creative pursuits.  Life is all about keeping the right balance.

It started me thinking about topics a lot. I noticed that more ideas started popping into my mind. My subconscious seems to have settled itself and gotten with the program.  It is scanning for possible subjects now and bringing them up to my conscious mind more.

I found I needed a way to catch all of my ideas quickly before I lost them to my subconscious again.  If I was close to my computer, I would come here to the blog, add a new post and drop the idea into the title.  Then I save the post as a draft.  When I am not able to get to the computer, I am keeping pen and paper handy and making notes.  Then when I get back on the computer, I add new draft posts and drop the subjects in the title box and save them.

Following this plan, I now have about 50 draft titles to look through and choose from.  I can work with them as I please.  I can drop in links,  images, more ideas  or write the whole post start to finish.

Since this is working really well for me in blogging along, I wanted to share the tip with others.

The Perils In Post a Day Blogging, Part 2

Girl Writing on a Chalk BoardToday bunnies are quiet in the background.  My posts are about getting myself into a good blogging pattern.  Call it blogercise. 

Search engines need categories and tags on blogs to help people find ones that are of interest to them. I would like to have rabbit lovers find and read this blog.  I think they will enjoy what I have to offer.  People who love animals and humor will likely enjoy it too.  First they have to find the blog!

They say repetition is the mother of retention. So here goes:

  1. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.
  2. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.
  3. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.
  4. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.
  5. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.
  6. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.
  7. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.
  8. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.
  9. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.
  10. I will remember to add categories and tags to my blog posts.

I did actually type that out 10 times.  I didn’t cheat and just copy and paste.  This time I did remember to tag and categorize this post.  Hopefully, if I take a break once in awhile to share my blogging challenges, it will help others who would like to blog.

Tomorrow back to bunnies! 

What Is In A Name?

Name Badge for Rebecca
The Daily Post at WordPress suggested looking into the story behind your given name as a blog topic. 
There is a lot of story behind my given name.

For their first child, my parents had picked out the names Duncan or Robin.  I am glad I wasn’t a boy.  Mom says when I arrived, I didn’t look like a Robin.  I am not sure what a human Robin is supposed to look like, but apparently not me.  So instead they picked Rebecca which mom said meant enchantress.  She had liked the character Rebecca in Ivanhoe.  I will admit, I never read Ivanhoe, but I did read the CliffsNotes.  Rebecca in Ivanhoe is falsely accused of witchcraft.  It didn’t sound like my kind of tale, so I didn’t explore further.

During my school years, everyone wanted to know about my farm.  Mom must have been the only one to read Ivanhoe, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm was the fictional piece everyone else had heard of or read.  The count on that joke got quite high and was old after just a couple of times. 

Somewhere between birth and the teen years, the meaning of Rebecca was no longer listed as enchantress, but was  being defined as meaning heifer or cow.  That is just swell for friends of a teenage girl to find out.  I was no longer Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, but a cow on the farm.  I received a stuffed cow complete with udder as a gift from my boyfriend.  My eight year old brother had a  fascination for that cow and its udder.

So I was a bit concerned to do any research to see what the meaning might be listed as now.  It appears there is new confusion about whether Rebecca originates from Hebrew or Aramaic.  The meaning can change some in translation, depending on which you start out with.  So the current accepted meaning from one was listed as “noose”, while from the other language it is “to bind”.  I think I will go with “to bind”.

A list of nicknames for Rebecca really hit the mark though.  One of the nicknames was Bunny.

So What Is Rabbittude?

rab-bit-tude

Rabbittude is the combination of two words, rabbit & attitude.  That is simple, but what is the real meaning, the flavor of the word?

To get technical rabbits or bunnies are small mammals in the Lagomorph order.  The male is a buck, the female is a doe and a baby rabbit is a kitten or kit. On the non tech human side, say rabbit and the response from many is ” …. awww bunnies, I love their fur, their big ears, their twitchy little noses, their personalities, soooo cute!”

According to Wikipedia, attitude is a person’s perspective toward a specified target and way of saying and doing things .  Take the last paragraph where I talk about rabbits and combine it with this definition.  There are two versions of rabbittude:

  1. In rabbits – A rabbit is comfortable enough in their environment to display their individual personality which can range widely from sweet and snuggly to quite sassy and bold.
  2. In humans – A deep love of rabbits.

To truly see the rabbit version of rabbittude, you have to experience a live rabbit when it is comfortable and just hanging out and being a bun.  Now I am not recommending that anyone go out right now and get one as a pet, because rabbits can be a huge committment.  Our current rabbits are now ten years old.  That is a huge chunk of time if a rabbit is not your taste.  It is also a very sad situation for rabbits each year who are turned in to shelters or abandoned outside.  Here is what I will share here:

  • Stories from twenty years experience living with rabbits – happy, sad, hilarious, you will get the full rabbit experience
  • Information and resources on rabbit care
  • Bunnyproofing tips & tricks for anyone who has a really feisty totally rabbittude rabbit 

When I see the second version of rabbittude in humans, I usually see a collector of rabbits.  You may have several pet rabbits or be involved in rabbit rescue work.  Or you may not have live rabbits at all but love to collect art, figurines, comics, books or other items that feature rabbits.  You may be a combination collector and have both live rabbits and surround yourself  with rabbit items.  I am a combination rabbit collector.  Live rabbit collectors will enjoy what I already outlined above.  For you collectors who like rabbits to stay where you put them, you will enjoy:

  • Rabbit themed finds by other artists and crafters
  • Some guest blogs or interviews
  • What I am currently creating – I will be working to bring you into the process 

Move forward with Rabbittude.  Later today I will share just how many bunnies you can fit into a half bath.

Perils in Post a Day Blogging

Well, I was intending to write about our Rabbittude Posse.  I will have to try that again another time since the universe has signaled that I wasn’t meant to post that one right now.  The intended blog piece was completely finished.  I was reading it in the preview window, looking for any final edits still needed.  Something burped or hiccupped on WordPress and I was returned to the edit screen where only the final sentence of my blog remained.  I  tried, but could not recover the rest.  What the ???  

WordPress ate my blog!

LOL, this is Internet burp / hiccup learning lesson #288 (16 years x 12 months x approximately 1.5 occurrences per month).  So, if I want to successfully blog twice a day for the next few months, I should be doing my initial draft off  the Internet cloud.  Then I will have a starting copy to return to if one of those frustrating burps or hiccups hit again when I am flying along full speed. 

Note to self, always always always have another copy saved someplace else.  I figure if I write this down in a very public way, perhaps I will save myself from lesson #289.

From Post a Week to Post a Day …

2011 Resolution Redux In January, I committed to blog once each week for all of 2011.  There have been ups and downs in that with the right number along the way, but not necessarily each week.  So now I am upping the game plan for the blog and doing a redux of the resolution and aiming to meet the post a day challenge from here on out.

It won’t be easy, I need to do two posts a day for a few months to catch up to the challenge. I want to do this now because the severe weather here in Georgia has been such a reminder of how little we understand of how much time we really have.  There are so many stories I want to tell about our rabbits to give others who would like to consider a house rabbit a fuller picture of what they can expect.  If you hop into house rabbit ownership, I also want to help you out with all of the bunnyproofing tips and tricks we have learned over the years.   Then there are all the inspirational ideas that come from our rabbits for art, jewelry and other products that we will share for other bunny lovers to buy and enjoy. 

I hope you will enjoy following along with Rabbittude.  Rabbits aren’t terribly predictable creatures and I am like that too.  Expect some hopping around in topics and themes and stories.  If you like it, you may be a rabbit person too!   

Signed,

Rebecca Pullin of Rabbittude