What would you put on a running shirt if you were inventing your own?  Turns out mine would be vaguely sarcastic.  Imagine that.

My Race Ragz lets you choose from about a ton of pictures and sayings, or you can create your own. They have motivational, funny, and even some for barefoot runners!

I haven’t been able to try my shirt out on a run since I haven’t been feeling well (and as you can see I used that excuse to not hang up my laundry too…) but I wore it around anyways and I absolutely love it.  Their shirts are really comfortable and shaped to fit nicely.  I ordered a size up and I’m glad I did – I would definitely recommend you do the same if you order one of their shirts!

I believe they only have white colored shirts, but the graphics can be most any color you’d like.  I actually chose black. I know, how boring I must be. But I like it!

I  know you want to create one of these, and here’s your chance!  My Race Ragz was kind enough to give me a performance shirt to review AND one to giveaway!  (US shipping only, sorry everyone else)

Enter below to win, and go ahead and make your shirt all kinds of colorful and you! You have until 7/25/2014 to enter; the winner will be emailed the following weekend.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I am DETERMINED to get out for a run this week, if only on the treadmill and I’ll try my shirt out then, it’s moisture wicking as well as cool looking.  Fortunately I finally realized that it would be best to post my review without waiting around for all that.  🙂

Oh, and since you can personalize these with your own saying you don’t have to run to love one of these shirts!

As I mentioned yesterday due to health reasons I’ve decided to try and eat vegan and unprocessed for the remainder of July.

My go to meal this last week has been simple – throw a cup of rice, 2 cups water, and a bag of southwest frozen vegetables in the rice cooker, wrap some in a small tortilla with a little salsa, and ta-da, dinner is served. Easy to make and easy on the stomach, it’s even OK without the salsa though it’s dry.

My goal for this week was to find easy meals so good that I’d crave them.  And I found some!

First I wanted to try making cashew cream sauce as I’ve seen it used as a base for mac and cheese, nachos, and even whipped cream.  The base recipe is this easy:

Cashew Cream Sauce:

• raw cashews
• water

Rinse the cashews, soak them overnight, rinse them again.  Put them in a food processor, cover with water to about an inch over the cashews, and blend very, very well.

Done!

Since it’s a base for so many things and freezable I made too much and froze some in mason jars to be used later.  After all, easy as it is to make it’s even easier to pull it out of the freezer to defrost.

I’m hoping to try an alfredo sauce with it, I’ll let you know how it works out.

I found a recipe with great reviews to use cashews as a base for a nacho dip, so I made some of that too, modified slightly (I really over bought the cashews…).

Nacho Dip:

• 2 1/2 cups water
• 2 cups raw cashews
• 2 juiced lemons
• 3/4 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder (heaping)
• 1 teaspoon onion powder (heaping)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast

Basically you throw everything in the food processors and blend until it’s liquified.  I stopped at this point and stored the liquid half in the fridge and half in the freezer.  I’m guessing if cashew cream freezes well so will this.  We shall see!

At this point it is the consistency of water almost. I still dipped a chip in it and this stuff is amazing tasting!  The end product is definitely more than the parts.

To finish it up it should be heated up for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently. As I said I didn’t get this far and I’m already addicted to the taste. If I can have this for my burritos and such vegan just got a whole lot easier!

My other big win came from The Simple Veganista, mashed chickpea salad.  The name does not do it justice at all. I made it and thought well, it’s healthy looking.  Then I tried it on a cracker and wow, delicious.  I had the 13 year old try it, win.

I made a couple modifications as raw veggies are out at the moment.

Chickpea Salad:

• 1 can garbanzo beans, drained
• 1/2 cup carrots
• 1/4 cup scallions
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 cup cashew cream (I just happened to have some in the fridge so…)
• 2 tablespoons mustard
• juice of 1 lemon
• pinch of paprika

Ground up the carrots, scallions, and garlic pretty small in food processor

Pan fried them to soften

Throw everything but the cashew cream in food processor and pulse.  Leave the garbanzos chunky, not smooth like hummus.

Stir in the cashew cream (hummus or vegan mayo was suggested in original recipe)

Eat with crackers or on a sandwich. It’s really, really good on crackers!

I had some plain on spelt bread. It would be great with lettuce, tomato and onion. Also, it would have made a better picture that way!

Bread Maker Spelt Bread:

• 1 1/4 cup rice mik
• 2 Tbls. agave
• 2 Tbls. coconut oil
• 1 tsp. salt
• 4 cups spelt flour
• 2 tsp. ground flax seed
• 2 1/2 tsp. yeast

Warm the milk slightly, add all ingredients in order to bread machine, and set on basic.

My bread fell somewhere in the final bake cycle, as it always does. It’s still soft, nutty and delicious!

It’s been a rough couple of weeks.  I haven’t been blogging, I haven’t been running, I haven’t even been on much of any social media because sitting at the computer paying attention to one thing for that long has just been too much work. Heck, I’ve even been watching Netflix instead of reading which isn’t much like me.

On the animal front out of the 2 chickens I have left one began crowing – seriously.  I have  a third rooster out of my 4 pullets, and I can’t keep one chicken by itself so I’m looking for a good home for both of them.  If I try again I’ll for certain get them from a breeder instead of a feed store.  It never even occurred to me that they’d sex 3 out of 4 wrong. At least I live in an area where it isn’t too hard to find them good homes.

Also this week my 13 year old dog Lucky who has arthritis and nerve damage in her legs has begun randomly falling down even when she is just standing still.  Her legs have been bad and the other dogs have knocked her down before, but it wasn’t like this. Not fun but not unexpected.

Oh, and my son brought home a little couple day old kitten who was the only survivor of a litter from a hoarder’s house.  We knew it had about 1% chance of making it but it started eating, made it through the night, and then didn’t make it through the next day.  I couldn’t tell my son to leave it to die but it was definitely a rough life lesson for the kids. I did use it as an opportunity to talk about how they made his last day so much better than it would have been and sometimes that’s all you can do.

These are things I can’t change.

I don’t like to sound so negative. On the plus side my other two dogs are happy healthy and obnoxious as always, the rats are healthy and playful as always, and the bunny is still awesome though she/he has decided that chewing on floorboards is a great way to pass the time.

On the everything else front my ulcerative colitis which has been in remission for an entire year is rearing it’s ugly head again.  It isn’t horrible yet, I usually feel a bit sick after eating or after drinking anything cold or carbonated but I still CAN eat and that’s always a plus. Half of the time I feel almost normal and the other half I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus.  I’m absolutely not up for running or even walking outside. Thanks to an insanely high deductible I really can’t afford to go to the doctor for it. I’ve decided it’s time to take things into my own hands and see if I can control it through diet.

I know what things make me feel sicker.  Being a vegetarian I don’t have to worry about red meat, which is said to make it worse.  Strangely I can’t eat any raw fruits or vegetables, everything has to be super-cooked. No booze though it seems I can tolerate sangria , I’m *trying* to be smart and not test that theory. But stress is a trigger too and some days it’s a toss up as to which is the worst of two evils.  Dairy is a trigger too. The doctor told me way back when to avoid glutton, but as a vegetarian we decided that would limit my food too much and it was never brought up again.

You might be surprised at how hard it is to follow the rules even when you know that breaking them will only do you harm.  There’s only one frozen pizza in the freezer, I’ll just eat it and then it won’t be there to temp me anymore.  I’ll just have a bowl of ice cream tonight, and then I’ll stop eating it…  till the next grocery store visit that is.

This is something I can change.

So I’ve decided it’s time to go all in.  For the rest of July I’m changing my vegan Meatless Mondays to every day, and going vegan for the rest of the month.  I’m not going to stock up on fake cheese and such, I’m going to try and eat real foods as much as I can.  I’m also cutting out wheat and rye.  I don’t plan on going glutton free but I am going to avoid most of it until I’m firmly back in remission.  Will it make a difference?  Only time will tell but it certainly can’t hurt.

I am making one exception if I feel good – Friday nights I usually go to the BarFly for dinner.  It’s a bar / mostly seafood restaurant in Safety Harbor. They’ve had nothing on the menu vegetarian but always let me special order vegetarian quesadillas or nachos anyways (and they make them GOOD). Then I went in last Friday and they had added both to their new menu!   Granted I’m sure other people were asking for them too, but I’m certainly not going to start asking them to modify their newly vegetarian menu items when they just added them! At least not yet.  🙂

So wish me luck and if you have any tips for a cheese addict going vegan or blogs you recommend let me know!

Last Thursday we decided to go to the Straz Center and see Return to the Forbidden Planet. Cheesy Sci-fi?  I’m so in!  It was my first time going to the Straz Center and I was really impressed by the area.  There were lots of places to eat nearby and a library right across the way which you could get to through a glass walkway that made me think of Stephen King’s IT.  Wasn’t there a glass walkway to the library in that book?  But this one is up a floor or two.

Anyways, we got there early and were walking through said walkway when I noticed something odd.

Um, are those Storm Troopers?  Yes, yes they are.  We had time before the show started so we decided to go check it out.  Actually, I would have totally been late to go check Storm Troopers out.  So off we go and guess what?  They were there for Forbidden Planet, and so was Darth Vader! Seriously cool. I mean, you know, to people like me.

Turns out pretty much everyone was there! I even got a picture with Spider-Man to send to my nephews, making me the coolest aunt ever. No, this isn’t it.

After stopping at the bar for a rum and coke (not something you can do everywhere in Florida!) we went in to see the show.

It’s a lot of the Tempest, a lot of Forbidden Planet, a lot of 50’s rock, and a lot of fun!  I was pretty amazed at how much fun we had, they had the entire audience laughing most of the night.  And 4 days later I’m still singing songs from the show.  (Gloria, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, Young Girl… )

Did I mention the space monsters?

Even in space the Monster Mash is all that.

If you are in the Tampa area and you are a fan of Shakespeare / sci fi / music / theater or fun  you should really go check them out. You can see the times and prices and get your tickets here. The show is Thursday through Sunday until July 6th.

I was given two tickets to see The Forbidden Planet in exchange for an honest review.

So, how about you?  Have you been to the Straz Center yet?  Have you seen Return to the Forbidden Planet anywhere else?  And the all important question, do you know the walkway in IT that I’m talking about?

About that 10K goal.  Ya, I still have it.  But how do you take anything too seriously when it’s summer time and you are living in Tampa? If you know don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.

Ya, huge Sublime fan here.

Summer is always a little bittersweet if you ask me.  The possibilities are endless, except for that whole gotta feed the kids 9-5 thing.  My 9-5 is as a technical analyst. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, I actually have to think 8-10 hours a day.  Nerd that I am I enjoy it, but when I’m done I’m done, and this is what’s left.  🙂

Anyways, back to my 10K goal.   I have been following the plan minus the cross training. I do yoga after every run, sometimes quite a bit, but that’s a much cross training as I’ve done since starting the 10K plan.  Until this week, when summer time hit.

First, I started the Kinetic Revolution 30 Day Challenge which, as all things do that look super easy at first, kicked my butt by the second week and reminded me that people who do not cross train are weaker than people who do. So ya, my legs are a wee bit more tired than they should be.

Then, to celebrate and make official summer I went paddleboarding AND kayaking.  I paddleboarded out, switched with my boyfriend and kayaked back in.  Best of both worlds!  You want some excellent cross training, try anything with a paddle.

Then, to also celebrate and make summer official I went for an hour swim.  It was both hella fun and hella exhausting.

And then I realized.  I have the choice of continuing to try to up my distance running each week, jumping into all kinds of other crazy exhausting but fun other summer activities, or trying to do it all.  I choose a lazy combination of all of the above.  I’m going to stick to running 4 miles on the weekend for a while and swim, paddle, hike, and other summer stuff my heart out.  I still intend to gradually add distance to my ‘long runs’, but not every week until I get used to all the extra stuff I’ve been doing.

I had my eye on a cool sounding 10K in July, but it specifically said it was NOT for run/walkers. That’s intimidating since it would be my first 10K and I’ve never done a 5K that wasn’t a mud run or fun run. Plus some people said that it was not only extremely hot in spite of being a night run, it was extremely dark in some parts which would make me nervous running by myself barefoot or not.

I’m thinking I will let summer be summer, gradually continue with my plan but repeat weeks as much as I want for a while, and look for a 10K when it starts to cool off a wee bit, maybe in September. I feel pretty good about this since paddleboarding and swimming are WAY more exhausting than running so they can only help my running in the long run (no pun intended).

So, what is my current goal? Paddle a lot, run 3 days a week consistently (hopefully including trails but not ticks, a whole ‘nother post)  listen to a while lot of Sublime, Weezer, Slipknot and such, appreciate the local bars, wineries and breweries, visit some aquariums and generally live like a tourist because I DO live in vacation land after all.

These guys agree with me, I’m pretty sure.

I’ll leave you with an entirely inappropriate but yet completely my favorite Sublime song because it’s summer and so I can.

How about you, do you change your plans for summertime even if you are an adult who doesn’t get the benefit of being off for the summer? You should!

I am. After all, I wouldn’t even be kinda zennish if I didn’t.

Have you ever really looked forward to something only to have something come up to kind of ruin it for you?  Ya, that happened to me at the Margarita Fest.  But not because the Fest wasn’t a great time!

I got up early that morning and headed out to Color Me Rad (which was, you know, rad) where I felt great and had a really fun time with the family.  I went home, had some food and a shower and headed out.  Waiting in line to go into the Margarita FestivaI I started to get a little headache, but no big deal.

We headed straight away over to the shaded VIP tent to grab some margaritas and beer. Thanks to running into Denise of Run DMT I knew to grab 2 drinks to avoid getting back in line so quick; I got a Grand Mango Jalapeno Margarita and a Grand Prickly Pear Margarita.  I’d never had a jalapeno margarita before, and I gotta say it lived up to the hype.

Ya, I know this picture is too big but I just found out I could embed a picture from Instagram so how could I not?

http://instagram.com/p/oZJqTFLWgc/#

After we sat and drank our first drinks (I do NOT have the coordination to walk holding 2 full drinks and not spill one or both) we headed over to the Taco Bus.  I was super excited because I am for sure the last person in Tampa to try their food and what do you know, there they were.  Couldn’t be more convenient!

But then.  We were in line for about 10 minutes (the other food trucks barely had lines, a testament to the addiction this place causes) and I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the front of the line.  I asked my boyfriend if we could run back to the car for some Tylenol and come back, which we did.  I grabbed another jalapeno margarita and we sat in the shade listening to the band and people watching (always, always fun at these events) for about an hour. I didn’t drink my margarita but I did enjoy myself. Unfortunately as soon as we got up and walked back into the sun my headache firmly reinstated itself as the boss of me and we decided to go.

So no Taco Bus, no traditional margarita (tequila is my all time favorite drink), no Naked Turtle (I also love rum. Don’t judge) and no more fun for me.  I spent the rest of the evening staring at but not watching the TV patiently(ish) waiting for the stupid headache to go away enough to sleep.

Wanna know the worst part?  This was my turn to not be the designated driver and I only drank one full margarita!  What did I do to make karma strike at me like this????? As my 3 year old nephews would say, so sad.

Since I didn’t get to enjoy much of the festivities here’s some links to check out what some other Tampa Bay Bloggers thought. Spoiler alert, they thought it was great.

Run DMT , Never Have I Ever, Loving Life and Casa De Crews

Oh yeah, and final cool things I didn’t do but so hope to next year – this was a dog friendly event, and they had a corona beer bull ride thing.  Check out their twitter feed of the event, it is kind of cool:

https://www.eventliveus.com/event/tampa-bay-margarita-festival/wall

Anyways, long story short it was an amazing event and the people who put this on are doing it again August 16th – this time it’ll be the Summer of Rum. Here’s hoping I’m not the designated driver for that one and I get to torture people with drunk tweets!

I received two VIP tickets to The Tampa Bay Margarita Festival in exchange for writing a review and this giveaway. As always, my opinions are all mine.

Have you ever looked forward to an event and then had to make the decision to opt out?  If you are here in Tampa are you planning to go to the Summer of Rum Festival?  If so check back here closer to the festival, I may have some general admission tickets to give away!

My last update I fessed up and said I had skipped a week’s running and was therefore going to do a ‘do-over’ week.  This week I didn’t do much better and started to plan on re-doing the week again, but with more running.  Then I decided forget that, time to move on, excuses are starting to stack up around here again…

Sunday night out of nowhere motivation hit and I decided that I would just run my 4 miles and move on to the next week.  Never mind that I hadn’t run hardly at all in two weeks and I’ve never run that far without taking walk breaks. That’s all good and determined and all that other good stuff.  It’s how I got it done that made this my nerdiest run ever.

First, I dropped the air conditioning 4 degrees.  I made myself an ice cold water with Endurolytes Fizz in it, which I had never tried before because seriously, it’s not like I”m running all that far. (It was grapefruit and delicious)  I put Spirit of the Marathon on Netflix and proceeded to run my miles while watching it.

Heck ya it worked!  Between the motivating movie and the fact that I wasn’t dying of the heat I not only ran the miles but could have ran more.  I think that it was the iced drink more than the air conditioner that helped with the heat, I don’t usually drink anything at all when I am running but I have of course run in the cold.

So cha-ching, on to the next week and I’m only 1 week behind from my original plan.

Do you ever use any jedi-mind tricks on yourself to get things done?  Whatever works, right? Right??

I haven’t posted for (vegan) Meatless Monday in a while, it’s about time to get back into the habit! Here’s a super-easy recipe for vegan chili relleno.  I was going to make a more intricate filling, but I was running late, Trader Joe’s black refried beans were already flavored with jalepenos, and replacing the cheese in the typical chili relleno with whole beans and stuff doesn’t sound like the right consistency anyways.  Though I may do it anyways the next time.

Here’s how I put them together:

Ingredients:

• 8 pablano peppers
• 1 can Trader Joe’s refried black beans with jalapenos  (refried beans mixed with a can of green chilis would be good too!)

That’s it.  Not much of a recipe, huh?

Part 1, which I did the day before but of course you could do it all in one day if you are less lazy and/or don’t tend to forget to go back to something after it’s cleaned up and hidden in a paper bag:

1. Place pobalano chiles on a cookie pan covered with tin foil.  I didn’t grease the pan at all, but I would the next time because they stuck a little.
2. Move the oven rack up if needed so it’s 6-8 inches below the broiler.
3. Broil the peppers until blackened, about 10-15 minutes each side, then place in a paper bag to finish.
4. After the peppers have cooled enough peel off the outer skin.  I found this to be a bit of a challenge, mine were only about 2/3 peeled but I didn’t even notice in the end.

Ya, they don’t look that great blackened but the kitchen does start to smell pretty dang good.

Part 2:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Slice an opening from almost the top to almost the bottom of each pepper and clean out the seeds from the middle.  I pushed them a little inside out and rinsed the seeds out in the sink.

Fill center with about 2 tsp of the refried beans, close the pepper and place on pan.

Bake peppers for about 25 minutes

Serve alone or with a sauce.  I personally always chose to use a sauce or dip when it’s an option!

OK, so maybe you are wondering what the heck happened to that top chilli.  What happened was…  I tried to recreate a ‘fried coating’ type thing.  It actually tasted pretty good but looked ugly enough to be a fail anyways.  If you are curious and can maybe tell me how to improve the look here is what I did:

3 Tbls water (and a splash) mixed with a about 2.5 Tbls ground flax, whipped to dip the chiles in first, then 1 cup spelt flour with pepper, cumin, and garlic powder mixed in to dip the chiles in second.  This was much more experiment than recipe, I just sprinkled the spices in.

I used a tomatillo sauce I found on the food network, mostly because I didn’t know what it was really and figured it was past time to find out. It was really good and I’d definitely make it again.  My son liked it on the rellenos, but next time I’ll make a red sauce for them, probably with chilpote peppers in adobo sauce.  I’m going to try a sauce like that next week to go with vegan tamales if I can pull it off.

That said, the tomatillo sauce is pretty dang good.  It was strangely sweet and I’m determined to find something that it would fit better with.  I did use it as a chip dip too but it’s such an interesting taste it need to be the star of some other show.

Ingredients:

1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 Anaheim chile, seeded
1 white onion, quartered
1/2 jalapeno chile, seeded
2 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Juice from 1/2 lime

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Toss the vegetables with the oil, salt and pepper. Roast the vegetables until the tomatillos turn a dark-green color and the onions golden brown, about 30 minutes.

Let the vegetables cool, peel the garlic and blend everything together with the lime juice in a Ninja or food processor.

Have you ever tried a tomatillo sauce? Did you like it and what did you serve it with?

Saturday morning me and mine and my sister and hers all got up at the you-know-what of dawn and went to Color Me Rad. Our (8 between us) kids ranged from her 3 year old twins to my 20 year old, we were quite the rag tag assortment.

We were a little late (we have a rep to keep up) and it was a wee bit warm but there was a nice breeze, they were handing out plenty of water, and we had a blast.  I think the kids favorite part is that they were not only allowed to get dirty, they were allowed to get OTHER people dirty.  The twins were rubbing their hands in the colored powder on the ground and then on peoples shirts, pre-school heaven.

Here’s our running crew.  Needless to say we did a whole lot of walking and trading the wee ones back and forth; they walked, ran and hitched rides  at will.  The run was on the fairgrounds so we didn’t feel uncomfortable letting the older ones run ahead of us. No cars and nowhere to get lost!

As much as I’d love for these fun runs to instill a love of running in the kids you really can’t say what will happen.  But I can say that events like this are a great way to spend the day as a family, get away from computers, and make great memories.  And my kids have all of their race bibs pinned to their wall.  I didn’t suggest it, so it makes me happy to see that they are proud of them.

And seriously, who couldn’t use a little more boom, a little more rad, and a little more color in their day?

To top it all off I had the added benefit of a build in chauffeur.  I still don’t get why people don’t love having teenagers around.  Well, OK, it depends on the day.

My family’s other favorite thing to do together is eat, the family is Italian so we can get 40 people and 10 pounds of pasta together in a heartbeat. Like magic!

The family that plays together… probably bickers all the way there and back, but whatever.  How about you, what do you and your family like to do together?

Disclosure: I received race entries in exchange for posting about Color Me Rad.

Remember the 4 cute little baby chickens I got almost 3 months ago?  I bought pullets, meaning (in secret chicken people language) that they were future egg laying hens.

Well, not so much. The cute little yellow fuzz ball started crowing when it was about 2 months old.  Guess what’s against my HOA rules?  I  mean besides all the other stupid stuff.  Roosters.  And as much as we liked Nugget, we couldn’t argue that the crowing was obnoxious so we gave him to someone who’s daughter wanted a pet rooster.  I know, weird.

So the next day….

The very morning after Nugget was gone (and the hens cried all night, for real) the little mini chicken, Baby, started crowing.  Apparently he was intimidated by the huge rooster and didn’t show his true colors until Nugget was gone.  So he had to go.  We gave him to a family that had 6 bantam (little) hens. They were very nice and even offered to send me pictures of him in his new home since I had said they could only have him if he wasn’t going to be a meat chicken or raised in a tiny box or something.

So here is what I ended up with out of my 4 believed to be hens:

But wait, that isn’t a chicken!  Because fate says I obviously don’t have enough animals the guy who took Nugget, the 1st rooster, offered me a cute little 9 week old bunny in trade even though I already said I was just giving him the rooster.  Who would say no to that?

Of course since I hadn’t actually planned on getting a bunny we had to run out that night and pick up food and hay and such necessities.  Oh yeah, and since we didn’t have a rabbit hutch just laying around (s)he is living in my bathroom.   Ya, it’s kind of unconventional but it’s litter box trained and runs around my room when I’m in it for exercise.  Someday my chicken coop will be finished and I’ll build a hutch.  It WILL happen.  All that’s left on the coop is a ceiling and door, the only reason it’s not done is I can’t fit those supplies in my Prius so I have to wait for my dad’s truck to be available to make the Home Depot run.

I managed to turn 4 baby chicks into 2 hens and a bunny, and I didn’t even need a magic hat!    On the plus side I’m down to only 9 pets now…

I’m pretty sure that since my 9 are divided between hens, a bunny, dogs, and rats I can’t be considered an animal hoarder.  I’m pretty sure hoarders pick an animal and stick to it.  Right???  I am, however,  definitely at the point where even a goldfish would cross the line into too much!

How about you, what kinds of pets do you have?  Did you get any of them spur of the moment? I’m not the only one who couldn’t turn down a baby bunny, right?