Dear Weatherman

Bunnies like it to be about 55 degrees, not 102. Unfortunately for me, this makes having a bunny very stressful. As a first-time bunny owner (we got Bruce a week ago), I freak out easily. I have looked online to find out how to cool off my bunny and let me tell you, Bruce is not having it. I gave him a frozen water bottle and he pushed it away; I put a wet washcloth on the floor of his cage..he laid on it for a few minutes then grabbed it in his teeth and moved it to the other side of his cage. Online they said I could give him a fan but not to put it directly facing him. I tried this, but when he's hopping around outside his cage, he stands in front of the fan...so I put it directly on his cage when I get scared about him overheating and he likes that.

So it's been hot all week and I've been on edge about Bruce. Then the other day, I got a text from my roommate that said that all of his water was gone when she got home. This is weird because he never drinks half his water and I didn't even think he could reach the bottom of his cup. I got this text about 20 minutes late because I was in class and trying not to check my phone (which failed, obviously). So I asked her if he was okay. She responded with, "I don't know, I had to leave for class but he was sitting there then randomly fell over." This is definitely a situation where I would not have left for class. I'd spent 15 minutes that morning trying to get him out from under her bed and was late to my internship. Luckily, my class ended then so I rushed home to find out if he was dead or in a coma. He was hanging out in his cage, perky as a bunny, with his whiskers blowing in the wind of the fan. Oy.



The other thing I found online is "how to train your dragon rabbit." I decided to wait a bit until Bruce stops being so scared of us, but since we've been scaring him out from under every bed and chasing him around to get him back into his cage, this isn't happening so quickly. So I tried a little of this training early on. Obviously, you train the bunny with food. Bruce likes apples, grapes, cucumbers (not the "treats" I bought at the pet store and not carrots) so I grabbed an apple and held it a few feet in front of him. Nothing. He only digs it if you bring it right up to his mouth or lay it in front of him.

Looks like we have a stubborn rabbit.
which means he takes after me


Luckily, the temperature's going down and Fall is on its way. The only thing I have to worry about now is clipping his nails...which terrifies me actually.
But for now, Bruce is running around my room (and under beds), hopping up to the computer and sniffing my shoes. All is well in the bunny world.

Chilena/Chicana

I'm taking a class on Chicano Art (capitalized.) and I already love how it's making me feel like I'm growing. We spent the first day wasting time because the professor had accidentally told the person who sells the course readers to come later than he meant. He asked us where we were from and what ethnicities we had in the class. I didn't get to tell him I'm Chilean which sort of bummed me out. Almost the entire class is Mexican-American...which is a term I found out quite of few identify with rather than Chicano. [I think two girls in the class are Asian, but I didn't really get a good look. One was sitting next to me, and the other was sitting in the back in a wheelchair. Those are definitely two situations when you cannot stare at a person to figure out if they are Asian or not.] A lot of the class had an opinion of what term they prefer to use when labeling themselves. I said that I identify as "latina" but, as the professor pointed out, that is such a weird phrase too.

I remember when we started doing state testing in elementary school and we were asked to fill in our ethnic background. I definitely knew what I wasn't, and then there was the word "Hispanic". First off, I wasn't Hispanic, I was Chilean. Once I was told that those two go together, there was another problem. The form looked like this:

Check one -
White (non-Hispanic)
Hispanic

Okay, well what if I'm both? I didn't really identify with other "hispanics" at school--even throughout high school--but I wasn't just White. I think I more often chose Hispanic just to differentiate myself from everyone else in SLO. Aside from that, I didn't identify with the term much. Here and there I'd teach my friends little bits about Chilean culture, but my mom was my only source of information there...I didn't feel much like a part of the culture.

Etching: "Libertad" by Ester Hernández

So now my homework is to read articles about what it means to be Chicano..even though I'm not. Still, I've always rooted for Chicanos over any other group in California and it feels important to learn about the culture and the activists that helped Chicanos fight assimilation into the mainstream "American" culture. When I'm learning about these things, I feel like I'm becoming much more educated than I do when I'm learning about psychology or biology. I'm excited because I'm also taking a class about prejudices in the American education system, and I think these two classes will help me become the type of educated person that I admire. I mean, if there is anyone who I envy for their knowledge, it is always someone who is knowledgeable about world cultures, especially third-world society and how minorities have struggled in first-world societies.



PS, I have a new bunny. His name is Bruce.

let's see how long this lasts

So it's been three years since I started this blog and I'm sad to see I didn't keep up the pace of writing that I started with. I guess things got in the way...missing my friends back home, boys, too many assignments. I didn't want this blog to involve my personal/emotional life so I had to stop writing when that was all I could think about. How ironic that I had so much trouble being creative when my creativity and intellect were supposed to be developing at college.

Anyway, the point is I need to start writing again. Mandatory post once a week. Let's start today's.

I was just going through my pictures on my computer, which for some reason led to me going through documents. I have all these notes written to myself..which I guess is a good thing because I've forgotten about all of them. There are things I want to do with the classes I teach in the future..little projects and lessons about the world I guess; then there's one labeled "In 10 Years" with a small list of things I'd like to do when I have the husband and the house and the kids. Apparently that is something that will always be ten years away..I suppose I should change that title soon ("In 9 Years"). I can't tell you what is on this list but I hope I think of many more. Just re-read all my posts on here too so I guess I should add "frame the pictures of my children playing, not of my children posing" to the list.

I know it's going to take me a little bit to get back into the writing mode (something that will probably improve when school starts next week), and I'm getting distracted thinking about food. SO...here's an unfinished poem I also found on my compy. I don't know why it was cut off where it was but I remember starting to think about it on the way to the bus or something and not being able to write it down for a while. Maybe that has something to do with it.


a mushroom in the forest
wished to be a florist.
he resented weeds
and wished to please
the ostentatious trees.

he toiled all day at tilling
but the forest floor was not willing
to be pushed aside
for flowers that'd chide
the sun's inclination to hide.

at last he sowed one seed
and attended to its every need
until the morning an elm who'd had doubt
spied near his roots a small greenish sprout
and gave the forest an earth-shaking shout:

Gather around my fellow trees
and look at what I was sure could not be!
a sprout, like that mushroom wished to grow
it's here near my trunk but far down below
and at the spot where a seed he did sow

the oaks and pines they all bent far down
but all stood back up with a tsk and a frown
"what's could be there? oh there's nothing in sight"
"it just cannot be, it's a trick of the light"
and "wait! I think the elm tree is right!"

the oak pointed out how down in the mud
was a small shaft of green, a leaf, and a bud.
twisting their trunks, at the mushroom they peeked...