Starling took four of my five children with him to Laurel, and I put Becca Boo to sleep and didn't even know what to DO with myself. I absolutely did NOT want to sleep. (I'm so sick of sleeping, I'd throw it up if it touched my tongue). Watching television is pretty much a crappy experience, since all the people on the tv are blurry fuzzies that go in and out of focus and make my eyes go all twitchy.

I needed to clean my house. I needed to fold the three piles of laundry on my bed. But I didn't take a pain pill today. I didn't take a sleeping pill today. I cleaned and homeschooled my children and wrote letters of recommendation all day. (Which is tricky when you can't see to type. BUT I'm so deprived of blogging I will suffer through squinting and take sixteen breaks if I have to). I also got to visit with my friend. And I did NOT have to cook lunch because Blaine showed up randomly at my house with Domino's pizza. (Shout out to Blaine! Sorry, I don't know your last name! But I like you! A lot).   

In my excitement while eating an apple, because that's the only thing left in my house to eat, I sat down on my piano, and an amazing thing happened. NO ONE started banging on the OTHER END. I wrote a song, lyrics, added a beat, tested out my vocals, FINISHED... (I never FINISH anything. EVER). I was STILL ALONE so I drug out the ole violin, which Starling traded eons ago in exchange for a Dirt Cheap Guitar even though NOONE in our family could play the violin. I played everything Brooklyn has learned on her little pink violin, spiced it up and tried to make a fiddle out of it. Danced a little... And now I'm blogging.

Great things come to those who wait. AND how I have WAITED!!!

I didn't like getting PRK. #1- I refused to read ANYTHING about HOW it is done. #2- I refused to WATCH stupid youtube videos with Starling showing people getting their eye chopped at

I went to get LASIK, but of course, SOME geyser in my gene pool had to donate THIN cornea's. So GREAT, I couldn't GET LASIK, which is the SAME price, less painful, and you LEAVE the same day using your EYES. But, I am ME. And my life HAS to be as complicated and ridiculous AS possible.

I got the surgery in New Orleans, by the way, to add a twist to the INSANELY COMPLICATED. Dr. Singer charges $799 an eye versus the home boys in Hattiesburg. (BUT it's really much more than that since they prescribe like a million meds that cost hundreds of dollars. BC some doctors JUST don't believe in GENERIC). And my friend got his Lasik done there and Starling researched the fire dragon out of all the doctor's and decided to go with Singer.

SO ANYWAY. We haul all SEVEN of us to the eye doctor. We lose Boeing in the midst of me taking the three older kids to go pee. Some random nurse lady asked, "Are ya'll missing a kid?" as we both answered, "No."

Starling got charged an extra fifty bucks AN EYE because we paid with a credit card instead of CASH. (ARE YOU FRICKIN KIDDING ME??)  And then he left me there and took all five kids to the Aquarium.

The people got me right in, set up, and told me I'd be all numb, and all good. They gave me a valium and I popped a squat in the patient spot. That's right before I died and went to Hell.

The doc dropped some numbing drops in my eyes. But he did NOT tie me down. He did, however, tell me to say still. He forgot to add "While I BURN OUT YOUR EYEBALL!!!"

I was just laying there smiling, watching the room spin like a good little girl, when the doc ripped open my eyelids and taped them to my forehead. THEN taped the bottom SOMETHING- cause to my knowledge I've got no bottom lids- to my chin for good measure. I felt nice and awake. I may have even giggled at the thought of my eyes floating away and joining the spinning room since nothing was holding them inside my head anymore.

But all fun ended when some white contraction got stabbed into my eye WHILE I was looking at it.

I forgot to hold still. I forgot to not talk. "YOW WOW WOW!!!!! Aren't you supposed to numb me or something! THAT thing HURTS!!" As my legs try to kick the doctor away- who is OVER and BEHIND my head. Lucky for him, I'm not that flexible.

"Well you ARE having surgery." Is ALL he said.

"Ya need to LIE STI-YILL." said the nurses in their thick New Orleans' accents.

"But his burning out my eyes!!"

It smelled like burnt, it felt like burnt, and when he said, "All right other eye." I almost DIED.

I started shaking like a Chihuahua stuck in a balloon truck. I couldn't lay still. I couldn't stop shaking. My legs WANTED to be with my face for comfort. I don't know why. Maybe I was getting in the fetal position. Who knows. I was drugged and being tortured.

Then they told me I was done, wrapped my head in medical tape and some clear plastic WORSE than aviator sun shades on my face, and sent me to the waiting room to be picked up.

The doctor did say, "Yay! Can you see me? Can you see the clock?" But I don't think I answered because I could only see a blur and a blur and I was pretty sure I was going to join the blur called the floor at any given second.

So I tried to look at my phone to call for help, but I couldn't see anything on my phone. So I just sat there until Russ, my brother and law, came to get me. He took me to get my pain killers filled because, when I showed the nurse my left over pain pills from birthing my children she laughed in my face and said, "Honey- that ain't gonna be enough." So I got the $60 pain pills.

And I ate some pills and slept for a very long time. I don't really remember anything except my phone getting pushed into the bathtub and not really caring because I couldn't see it anyway. And apparently, even though I couldn't see to text, I still attempted texting random people from Starling's phone and he got some interesting calls in response.

I got extremely angry, like ferociously angry when I was awake. Starling said maybe I was having pain killer withdrawals. I didn't want to take them anymore because I don't like being out of my head. I have enough time staying in my head as it is. But I kept getting unruly, and Starling kept popping those pills in my mouth and sending me back to La La Land. And somehow my kids all survived. The house didn't, but let's be honest. My house is at war with five kids. Does any house stand a chance? And with the guard unconscious sending out random rants and threats about burning people's eyes out like mine? No. No chance at all.

And last night was horrific.

Absolutely terrifying. I was laying in Brooklyn's room with Brooklyn waiting for her to fall asleep. Boeing and Bry climbed onto the bed and fell asleep, too. I was just laying there thinking I would NEVER fall asleep when one of Brooklyn's talk toys starting talking. One talked and made another toy sound off. I was silently thinking what a funny blog that would make when a bag next to the toys started moving. I could see the bag quite clearly from the moonlight. I sat up and watched the bag move, move. I waited to see what was going to come out.

And out comes a GINORMOUS RAT/PIG! l think they are called a Newt? There is one at Kamper Park, I think. I about touched the ceiling. In my terror and panic, I tried to wake up Brooklyn and show it to her so I could tell her it was her new pet to see her freak, but she wouldn't wake up. And then it started coming towards the bed. I screamed. And woke up screaming.

And I was in MY bed. And there was no rat. But I didn't wake up enough. I still didn't know I was dreaming, though the fact that Brooklyn's room was a chicken coop should have cued me. And if THAT didn't alarm me, then when Dr. Oz, who, in my dreamy reality, had performed my EYE surgery, showed up to GET the Newt, I should have known something was aloof.

But no, I was 100% sure I was NOT dreaming and was wondering if Dr. Oz even had a license to perform eye surgery. (I'd probably gone to one of his shows where he tells you how eating a grapefruit helps your gastrointestinal track perform better while making your hair OH so SHINY) when he was like, any questions? And I said, "Yeah I can't see? Can you burn off my eyes?" And he was like- "i'm doctor OZ, right? I can do anything! Here give me that cucumber over there and I'll show you how to make you see WHILE curing foot fungus!)"

So anyway- Dr. Oz is standing by the Newt telling me he's going to kill it.

"Yeah! But not in here! Gross!" And then the Newt rubbed up on Ozzie's leg like some kind of house cat.

"Oh my gosh? Is he a NICE rat??" The doctor, understandably, looks at me like I'm slurping water from a sewage lagoon.

"Who cares? It's a rat."

So I go into this HUGE childhood story about RATS. (I'm surprised Dr. Phil didn't show up).

"I remember being in my Grandma's Rosie's big block house that she painted blue and pink after asking her two grandkids that were in elementary what color she should paint her house. One day in her laundry room I saw a tail. It looked like a giant fat, round bald pink snake. It was a RAT. A real RAT. Mice don't bother me. They are mostly little cute, fluffy things. And rat's might not bother me as much, but for that AWFUL TAIL.

But opossums; they don't bother me. One time my Grandma Rosie and I were walking down the road picking up cans before that was weird; (oh wait that has ALWAYS been weird). She was wearing her hand made dress she made out of a dollar store bed sheet and we were singing "Glory, Halelujia" when I saw a freshly dead opossum in the road. My grandma, like all normal sane humans, naturally removed all road kill off the road. She'd use a stick or a shovel. Always one to help the traffic flow a little easier. I watched her push the thing with a stick and saw movement in the opossum's abdomen area.

"Hu. The thangs got babies in her pouch." And my grandma continued to scoot the carcass off the road. "We can't just LEAVE the babies! They'll die!" I was pretty young, but old enough to know I could take care of a litter of opossums. My grandma, who thinks that opossums are one of worst parasites to graze her chicken loving self, reluctantly let me gather all the babies, take them home and bottle feed them. And she let me keep them until they looked like normal rodents, not just little bold jelly beans.

Yeah I grew attached to those dang opossums, which was unfortunate."

At this point Dr. Oz gets his first word in. "Why is that?"

"Because, after all that love and time I put into keeping those varmints alive, my grandma fed them to her cats. Every last one."

"Okay," says Dr. Oz.

"Now that you've returned from left field- SEVERAL fields OVER- I can dispose of the current rat, despite 

the fact he doesn't have a grossly long tail."

Then the newt rat looked at me. We made eye contact. As Dr. Oz was shewing it out of the bedroom/chicken coop. He was going to ax it.

"That brings me to a story about my grandma-"

"NO NO. Save it."

I fervently told him that I don't like things chop blocked in front of me because my grandma chopped a rooster's head off in front of me and it flew around me and got blood on my shoe, all the while heis head was just dangling there by a strand of skin. Traumatized me.

"You need to shoot it. Its more humane."

Then Dr. Oz reached down to grab the thing and it all but purred.

"Is it soft? Like is his hair silky like Brooklyn's or stiff like a black lab's coat?" (Like this might be the determining factor of the rodent's life).

"And does he stink? Or smelll woodsy?"

I'd decided to keep it as a pet at this point. Seriously.

THEN it crawled in bed next to Brooklyn. And it was by my foot.

This gave me a panic but I was trying to decide if I was going to let the rat live and sleep in bed with my children, or been shot. (I really am an all or nothing girl. Which is why I'm not allowed to have a horse. Starling said he is NOT sharing a bed with a horse).

Then, it BIT ME!

Well, in real life. In my real bed. BRIGHTON had GRABBED my foot. AND In REAL life, I woke up and the RAT still had HOLD of my FOOT. I ALMOST kicked Brighton's head into Starling's closet. I was scrambling, son, I haven't moved that fast since somebody yelled Doughnut.

My ruckus woke up the other passengers on our bed and I never did get a good sleep after that.

I'm hoping for a nice quiet, dreamless, sleep. But, the dream inspired me to write a book series named, "Grandma Rosie."