Hello. It's Belinda.
How is your month going so far?
I have a case of the "Januaries."
All I want to do is hibernate.
Give me a burrow and some orchard hay and I'll see you on Groundhog Day.
Just kidding.
Today I want to write about Abigail.
I know a lot of you are big fans. Me too.
She left us a year ago this week.
You can read a nice chapter about her in the Abigail's House of Buns novel published a few days ago.
Her friend Enzo wrote it. He's the new novelist for the company. He does an excellent job.
If you don't know the story behind Abigail becoming the company novelist, "pull up a chair." Because it's a good one.
When I was hired to be the Small Pet Select spokesrabbit, I didn't know how to do the job. I'm still not sure what I'm doing if you want to know the truth.
I just starting writing about hay and things here at home. "So far so good."
Well one day I heard my roommate whispering on the phone to someone. I heard my name.
Same thing happened with the team at work. "Hushed tones" at the beginning of meetings. Everyone acting jumpy when I got on the call.
Turned out they were planning a big surprise birthday party for me. I didn't have a clue.
I thought I was getting fired.
So I hired Abigail to replace me as the company writer. And I went behind everyone's back to do it. I wasn't supposed to hire a new employee for the company. I really pulled a fast one.
In the end, everyone got a big surprise, if you know what I mean.
From the start, Abigail was the perfect employee. Every few weeks, she would send me drafts of her novel chapters to review. I would plop onto my sleeping rug and start reading.
I never made any changes. Not my job. I just wanted to know what would happen next.
When I asked her for "previews" she always told me I had to just wait and see.
Abigail lived in California at the House of Buns. From my house in Pittsburgh, that's six hours by plane and three hours by clock. Which made scheduling our “Zoom” video meetings anybody's guess.
So I would just turn on the computer gizmo and wait. Sometimes she showed up and sometimes she didn't. It all worked out.
Mostly, we talked about food and gossiped about our roommates.
I worried a lot about being a good boss to Abigail. You probably know rabbits can be a bit "pushy" with each other. For example if Little Fang gets out of her pen I chase her all over the bottom level. Not my fault.
But when you're at work it's different. I wasn't supposed to chase Abigail. Plus she was across the country.
Anyway I learned a lot from her over the years. And the most important lesson was to just "trust my gut" about my job.
Abigail didn't fuss about her novel chapters. She just sat down and wrote them.
Now speaking of trusting my gut. I could go for a snack.
I hope you liked reading about Abigail.
I did a photo blog about her a month ago. It was fun. You can see the photos here.
I hope you have a good week.
Remember to drink your water. The air is so dry right now.
Sincerely,
Belinda
Spokesrabbit, Small Pet Select
Inventor of "First Chew"
Belinda@smallpetselect.com
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Would you like to read more of Belinda's weekly blogs? See them all HERE.
