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As a child, I was never very fond of stuffed animals (a.k.a. plushes). I was always led to believe that they attract loads of dust, germs, & bacteria, which will lead to further chaos in my battle against allergies. My mom severely disliked a cluttered bedroom, & always thought those furry little critters made the room look messy & cluttered.
Therefore, throughout my childhood, I only kept one stuffed animal as my furry little sleeping companion. It was a caramel-orange colored kitten with light brown stripes, soft ears & paw pads, & a fluffy white tummy. That was one of my most treasured possessions as a child, not only because of it’s infinite cuteness & cuddliness, but also because my beloved grandmother gave it to me as a gift. I still have that same stuffed animal to this very day. It is wrapped in tissue paper, boxed, & carefully stored away in our home’s storage closet. I hope to keep this treasured stuffed animal for many years (perhaps even generations) to come.
This brings me to current times. As you can clearly see from the name of my blog, I am a huge lover of both rabbits & foxes. I’m not quite sure how I came to love both animals together, especially since foxes have a penchant for hunting rabbits. My earliest memory is from my youth, when my oldest brother had a pet rabbit. It was a dark chocolate brown color & was quite a mischievous little one. My brother’s rabbit was incredibly adorable & relatively well-behaved with a slight naughty streak. Since then, I fell in love with rabbits.
As for foxes, I fell in love with them after reading my all-time favorite Japanese comic book series (a.k.a. manga) called XXX Holic. This comic book series made various spiritual & mythical references to foxes, & that just ensnared me straight away. I just fell head over heels in love with the spiritual nature of foxes as well as their beauty.
Combining my two loves together, I created the title Rabbits & Foxes. It began a couple of years ago with my feeble & half-assed attempt at creating a free website on Wix. Why? A part of me was reminiscing about the late 1990s when everyone was jumping on the Yahoo! GeoCities bandwagon & making their own fan pages. (I remember those good ol’ days, when you could slap a bunch of JPEGs on a colorful background with rainbow-colored text & call it a fan page.) Another part of me was actually trying to make my own personal stamp on the World Wide Web. I was overly ambitious, & strapped on britches that were way to big for my petite size.
It was well after that failed attempt in which I created this blog. I was following Jian on a business trip to Shanghai, China & had nothing to do except stay in our hotel room on a day full of severe lightning storm warnings. So, I made up my mind to start a photo journal of my two week trip. I promised myself from that point on that I would diligently stick to this blog. Being the weirdo that I am, I came up with the idea of collecting trinkets & other useless things to go along with my rabbit & fox theme.
My first pieces to my small collection were these two felt figurines that I bought online. I haven’t given them a name yet. So far I just call them Rabbit and Fox. I am very picky regarding the things I collect, so my “collection” is pretty sparse at this moment. I recently acquired these two new additions to my themed collection.
Irving
Gaspard
best friends
The rabbit plush takes a bit of explaining. It starts with my niece. She has a larger version of this exact stuffed animal that she sleeps with every single night. She plays with this stuffed animal daily, & it has become one of her most prized & treasured toys. I frequently like to tease my niece (all in fun, of course) & hide this stuffed animal behind my back, which makes her hyper-excited & chase me around the house to get it back. For fun, I got this smaller version of her favorite stuffed toy, which she named Bun Bun, just to match with her & to show her that I got my own stuffed rabbit. She was over-the-moon when she saw my toy. She told me that now I have to get all the other small sized plushes of all of her other stuffed toys to match her. I named my stuffed rabbit Irving, but my niece calls it Bun Bun (to match her toy’s name).
I got the fox a few days ago as a little Christmas present to myself. My niece immediately took a liking to it, especially because it makes a rattling sound. (Yes, I bought myself an infant’s plush from the baby section at the toy shop.) There was a larger stuffed animal version of this fox, but I decided to stay with the small size trend. I love this fox because it doesn’t look to overly cartoonish or babyish. It’s just the right amount of cute. I also named this fox Gaspard. As you can tell already, I like naming all of my inanimate objects. I don’t think this is weird at all contrary to whatever Jian might say. I think it’s rather fun & unique. I’d much rather say, “Can you bring Richard over here?”, instead of saying “Can you bring me my iPad?”. Or I’d rather say, “Can you get Stephan for me?”, instead of saying “Can you get me my phone charger?” Doesn’t that just sound more interesting? I think so. I’m so happy I have new mascots for my blog! Let’s all welcome Irving & Gaspard!! Cheers!
Today’s song of the day:
A few weeks ago I took a small trip to Washington DC. I accompanied my mom to DC so she could attend the wedding of a friend’s daughter. Now that my mom is widowed, she often does not like to go to places by herself, especially since she used to have a very special person to do everything with & now suddenly doesn’t. My other siblings are all much older now living in far away places, married, divorced, with children of their own, or often traveling for work. My mom lives with me, & I take care of her (a.k.a. keep her company). I enjoy all the time I spend with her, especially since we get along so well, almost like sisters but still maintaining that mother-child boundary. I had such a blast going with my mom to DC. We turned her wedding invitation into a small sightseeing trip. We tried not to let the soggy weather bring us down.
Well, what an eventful trip we had. Before we left home, we checked the weather forecast & knew that there would be rain on most of our days in our nation’s Capitol. However, we were not fully prepared for the looming hurricane (named Joaquin) supposedly meant to barrel right into the east coast states. Lucky for us the hurricane was first predicted to hit our region on the day after we were flying back home. Then, later it was reported that the hurricane didn’t even touch the region we visited at all, & instead the hurricane hit other south-eastern regions. Needless to say, we still got hit by a case of the rainy day blues. We prepared by bringing our own umbrellas & raincoats. I thought I had brought the proper pair of boots for the rain, but after three years of owning these cheap H&M brand water-resistant shoes, it gave up on me. It just happened to be on the big day we were planning on visiting the Smithsonian’s history museums.
We started out our morning by first visiting the National Monument. (We had no idea you had to reserve tickets months in advance if you want to go to their observation room.) Everything was going great with our umbrellas out, our raincoats zipped up, & our feet warm & dry in each of our boots. Out of nowhere, I felt a rush of coldness overtake my feet. That’s when it hit me that my socks were soaked through & the insoles of my shoes were getting soggy. It was the most uncomfortable, unpleasant experience for a neat freak like myself who always has to keep her clothes clean & must always wear clean socks. I thought the rest of my day was going to be ruined until the museum gift shop saved my life (figuratively). My mom felt bad for my situation (& I think she was getting sick of hearing me whine about my wet feet), so she bought me a pair of American flag themed socks. The socks looked so tacky, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I generously & graciously wore the socks. Surprisingly the cheesy socks were thicker & much more comfortable than the original socks I had worn…& THEY WERE DRY!!! I also had to stuff my shoes with paper towels to dry them as much as possible. 
After that wet socks fiasco, we had the most amazing time at the MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY. This was by far our most favorite & memorable museums. I could spend an entire day in this place & never be able see everything. I would definitely come back to this museum again & again.
OH MY GAWD!! IT’S JULIA CHILD’S KITCHEN!!!
Let me interject at this point by saying we didn’t take many pictures on our trip. (I know…what a shame, since there’s so much history to be captured on film.) Every day we encountered wind & rain, loads of city construction, hoards of obnoxious tourists blocking everything with their unnecessarily oversized cameras & country bumpkin mannerisms, & it was hard to take pictures in museums with a camera phone in one hand & an umbrella in the other hand.
At the last minute we decided to rent a car instead of using Uber &/or public transportation, so we could get around in the rain easier as well as have the freedom to go to more hard-to-reach places. We truly got to explore a more local side of Washington DC on this trip. We took my mom to restaurants & shops she would normally never set foot inside of, let alone hear about. One of the restaurants we got to try out was called Succotash. It was across the street from our hotel & had only been open for two weeks. That was my mom’s first time trying authentic Southern cooking.
Another memorable eatery we visited was Maketto. It’s one part restaurant, one part clothing store, & one part coffee shop. I would like to pause here & say that I have never met people more friendly & warm than the employees working at Maketto. They really made our soggy day feel good. We made a pitstop to have a cup of coffee, & for Jian to browse through his favorite Japanese clothing brands (he broke down & bought a great t-shirt). The coffee barista mixed up my drink order, so he graciously offered me a complementary pastry. Their hospitality made my day.
Other notable places we visited…one I must mention is The Round Robin Bar at the Willet InterContinental Hotel. This bar is nearly 200 years old, the oldest existing bar in all of DC, & has been graced with the patronage of many presidents past & present. We first heard of this bar from watching a show on TV, & were quite surprised we were able to get seats at the counter even when the hotel was hosting a busy Republican National Convention event. We had a few cocktails & snacks, chatted with a retired couple sitting next to us, & sped off to have a quiet Thai dinner at a restaurant called Rice in the hip Logan Circle neighborhood. We found an awesome ice creamery (Dolcezza) that served Portland, Oregon’s famous Stumptown Coffee (but these beans were roasted in NYC, not PDX). That’s how we capped off our night. Handmade craft gelato & Stumptown coffee.
Along the way, we visited two more Smithsonian museums: Air and Space Museum & Natural History Museum. My mom got her biggest wish granted. She finally got to take an up-close look at the infamous Hope Diamond. It is so beautiful, but looks a lot smaller in person than it does in pictures & on TV. I’d still like to own one for myself…an un-cursed one of course. While walking through the aquariums & the oceanography exhibits at the Natural History museum made us all crave seafood, so we made a beeline to Sushi Capitol for some delicious nigiri-style sushi. Hey, that’s kind of what happens when you see all those fishes swimming around in their tanks while on an empty stomach. I ended up eating 21 pieces of sushi all by myself. My all-time sushi eating record is 22 pieces. There’s a popular sushi restaurant near my house that once had a customer who ate 90 pieces of nigiri sushi in one meal. They challenged me to beat that guy’s record, but I don’t think I could do it. Not even my dad could do it, & he’s the only person I know who could match my sushi eating record. Let me add in that it’s not easy to eat so much sushi, even though they look bite-sized…especially with the extra fatty pieces. Those types of fish tend to stick to your stomach & make you feel fuller, faster. All that sushi rice only adds to the fullness too.
Finally, the wedding day comes around. The daughter of my mom’s best friend is getting married to her law school sweetheart. My mom has been friends with this family for over 40 years, since before she immigrated to the United States. Even I know this family well. I was born at the same time as this couple’s son. We grew up together. I babysat this boy & his little sister. Now she’s getting married. She had a quaint, small wedding in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. While my mom was celebrating & dancing the night away, Jian & I took the opportunity to visit the popular Jack Rose Dining Saloon. We also heard about this place from watching TV, & learned that this place houses well over ONE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED bottles of bourbons & whiskeys. Jian & I are diehard, hardcore whisky/whiskey/bourbon fans. (My dad would be so proud.) Next to Multnomah Whisky Library on the west coast in Portland, Oregon…this place is our east coast Mecca. Our eyes nearly bugged out of our heads when we browsed through their extensive (for lack of a better word) phone book sized alcohol menu. We had a whisky tasting experience to remember for a lifetime. Plus, I got to eat my all-time favorite dish: Scotch Eggs!!! I take my hat off to our whisky sommelier. I want a job like hers some day.
I tried a whisky I’ve been wanting to try for a very long tim: Kavalan Whisky by King Car Group. Hailing from Taipei, Taiwan and a two-time 2015 Whisky Magazine award winner, this whisky was crisp, sweet, a little smoky with a spicy ginger aftertaste. I thoroughly enjoyed this dram even though I’m not much of a spicy whisky fan. The bottle I tried was called Kavalan King Car.
We capped off our evening by looking for a coffee nightcap. Jian found a place called Slipstream, a hybrid coffee shop & bar. Yes, I said coffee AND cocktails. Needless to say, we chucked the coffee & desserts idea & drank more alcohol. No, Jian was NOT too tipsy to drive. He kept his composure & alcohol consumption to a reasonable amount. He’s not a reckless drinker, no matter what. [INSERT STERN GLARE HERE] i, on the other hand, let loose because I wasn’t driving that night. I got a little tipsy & kept texting my mom in Chinese. We all had a great evening & end to our trip. I was not looking forward to packing my suitcase in a tipsy state, but. I powered through it anyway.
I am looking forward to the next time I get to visit Washington DC again. I had a great time. Cheers.
Today’s song of the day:
In many (if not all) Asian cultures, it is extremely common to wear slippers, not flip flops & not sandals, but house slippers. Traditional customs state that outdoor shoes are to be removed before entering one’s dwelling & slippers are to be worn inside of the home. I am Asian, so it feels like second nature for me to wear slippers at home. In fact, I feel rather uncomfortable not wearing slippers around the house.
In most Asian homes it is customary to remove one’s shoes before entering the home. This is to avoid bringing outside dirt &/or bad energy into the home. (Leave all that negativity at the door folks.) The slippers help to cover/protect one’s feet & to provide some warmth during those cold weather days. I am a 100% advocate of wearing slippers.
I’ve been wearing slippers for as long as I can remember. I remember my very first “official” pair of slippers. They were the clichéd bunny slippers, but I can stand firm that they were much cuter than the bunny slippers of today. They were fluffy, white & had floppy ears with just enough floppiness to be adorable but not obnoxious to walk in. The soles were made of a stiff plastic material, so I could also wear them outside for short periods of time (as long as it wasn’t soaking wet outside.) the bunny face on the front actually looked somewhat lifelike & cute, not cartoonish in the least. Even as I had worn out the heel insole, I wore those slippers until my feet were overstretched & could no longer fit them.
Today, I am a firm believer in the slipper movement. I wish more people would get on board with wearing slippers around the house. It is so warm & inviting…like coming home to a warm hug…but on your feet. Especially when the weather has turned cold, slippers make a big difference in keeping one warm while lounging. They’re just all around great to wear every day. Both men & women can wear slippers. Hell, even Hugh Hefner wears slippers (with his silk pajamas). The character George Banks from the Mary Poppins movie sings about wearing slippers (with sherry & pipes). Even Audrey Hepburn’s character Eliza Doolittle throws a pair of them at Rex Harrison’s character Professor Henry Higgins in a fit of passion/anger in the movie My Fair Lady. See guys? You can wear them too!
Slippers come in a wide variety of colors & types. So, don’t think they only come in the fuzzy, pink, froo-froo Isotoner variety meant only for housewives who watch sappy talk shows & eat Bon Bons all day. I’d suggest trying to wear slippers for one day. You can buy a cheap pair of slippers at IKEA for $2.99USD. If you like them, keep them. If not, then feel free to toss them out. Slippers: they’re fun to wear. I even throw mine in the washing machine when they get dirty. Yes, some slippers are even machine washable! Give it a try. You might like it. Cheers!
Today’s song of the day:
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