Purple Rabbits and the Panic Button

My sister Janet has many fine qualities, but these 2 are my favorites:

1) She believes in me even when I don't know what the heck I'm doing

2) She keeps her cool even in the most panicky situations

(Please note -- 1 and 2 are related)

Even when I am running around, squawking like a chicken, she is able to view the situation with an objective eye. Example:

ME: "Awk, awk! I left the window open and the rain got in and soaked my computer! It won't start up and we have to list an auction...awk, awk!"

JANET: "Hang on, I'm coming over with a hair dryer."

(Another note -- I know that even primitive societies now have hair dryers, many with Quik Curl attachments. For some reason I never replaced mine when the motors burned out.)

Final result? The computer was dried by her quick-thinking action, the auction went up and the La Boutique empire was saved.

I'm sure her biggest challenge, though, was the Fendi Purple Rabbit Event. Now, this was in the first year of Purse of the Month, when I would choose a purse design simply because I liked it, without real thought of my ability to re-create it in miniature.

I saw the real Fendi design in purple fur and loved it. No doubt dolls the world over were suffering because they did not yet have a furry purple purse, and I had to make one available to them. I ordered 10 purple rabbit skins.

My sister's youngest daughter, Danielle, was 9 at the time and (unfortunately) she was the one who opened the box when it arrived. The little animal-loving child was horrified.

"Mom! This box is full of rabbit skins -- and there are no rabbits in them!"

Quick-thinking Janet tried to explain that these rabbits had fought bravely in the war and...Well, Danielle wasn't buying it. (For months afterward I was referred to as Auntie Diane, the Butcher.)

I took the purple rabbit skins home, a wee bit dismayed by how...furry they were. There was way more volume than the real-scale Fendi had. But I soldiered on and finally showed Janet the prototype. She was silent for a whole minute before she said, "It looks like...Pet on a Rope."

We laughed 'til we cried. That's exactly what it looked like! But we needed to solve our problem -- the clock was ticking! Janet said, "What we need is to shear the rabbit fur. Let's get some pet trimmers."

Valiant soul, she was the one who went to Pet Paradise and explained to the cat-lady-clerk that she needed trimmers.

"How long is the fur you need to trim?" the clerk asked.

Janet glanced at the Cat Enclosure, just 10 feet away. "Well, it's about the same length as cat fur..."

The clerk looked nervous. "Why don't you try the clippers out and bring them back if they don't work. What type of pet do you have?"

"Well, actually, the 'pet' is not really alive...and it's purple... Say, couldn't we try it them on a cat?"

They threw her out. And my sister (God bless her!) marched into Wal-Mart and didn't tell them a darn thing. She brought me a beard and moustache trimmer, and for weeks I was down on my knees in my basement, shaving away, purple fur in the air and in my nose, cursing the day I'd ever thought this up...

If you have a Fendi purple fur bag, thank you for your purchase. Please enjoy it. There will never be another.