Thankfully, it's Monday of a brand new week. Last week sucked monkey balls.

First, there was the attempted break-in. I was upstairs putting my son to bed, heard the sound of the 'chirp alarm' go off (any time a door or window opens, it chirps), and I realize that once again, someone is trying to (or has!) broken into my house. Apparently, he had opened the back sliding door from the patio. In the end, we devise that the sound of the chirp scared the guy away. This was at 2:30 in the afternoon on Tuesday. Splendid.

(A year ago last April, we were broken into, but on this occasion, I met the guy at the stairs. I am still not sure if I was more scared, or if the Messican Bandito was. It's important to note on that occasion that after chasing the M.B. out of my Casa, he got away on his bike. HIS BIKE. He peddled back to his little apartment in the hood and probably crapped himself on the way, and deservedly so. Little bastard.)

After my heart rate returned to semi-normal from the almost break-in, our good friend, BT, comes over to help get us "dialed in and checked out" on safety. He pulls in on the Harley and starts drawing a map of our house. He makes a list of all the things we need to do in order to not be broken into again. Motion dectectors. More alarm triggers. More thorny bushes by the fence. He also mentions to me that we should trim around the bottom of our trees in the backyard; he thinks someone could hide under them.

(It's important to note our trees are small and really pathetic in size. They have survived droughts and other such things; I have nurtured my only two evergreens with love and water.)

I come home from picking up my son at the babysitter's to find BT has cut 3/4 of my tree branches on the biggest tree. It looks like a skinny trunk with a mushroom cap. My tree looks nekkid! BT apologizes, says he got carried away, and I ask him then if he really cut some branches or just shoved the entire tree in the trashcan in my garage. He quickly apologizes, says he has to leave for Paris the next day, jumps on the Harley and leaves. I'm left alone with my once-was tree. My husband comes home, flips out, then calls BT and leaves this message:

Husband: WHAT THE FUCK , BT!

Click.

By Friday, I am still sad about my tree. I believe my tree has feelings and really is wounded by this whole affair. So, I take my baby to day care and as I'm leaving, my son leans out to me and pokes my eye with his finger. One of the sharp little talons he has for nails manages to go right into my right eye. I fall back and think that my finger very well may still be on his finger.

I attempt to drive home. My right eye has swollen shut, and my left is starting to have sympathy pains for the right one, and is closing as well. Normally it's a 10 minute drive. Friday, it took damn near 30 and a lot of near misses at a few intersections.

After thinking "Oh, it's just a bump, I'll make it" for a few hours (and not being able to really steady myself - it looked to me like I was on a boat and everything was rocking), I called the eye clinic and got a last minute appointment.

And my last minute, they mean "You'll have to sit in a waiting room full of The Strange One's for an hour before you are called back". In that time, I'm sitting with a dish towel to my watering, painful eye, trying to remain optimistic.


"These people are just waiting for their family members; I'll get back shortly"

"Surely they see that my eye is as big as baseball; I'll get back shortly"

"Jeez, I have to pee really, really bad. If I leave, they'll call me and I'll miss my name"

"I'll kill the next person who goes in first, assume their identity, and get my eye fixed up"

"I hate these @#$*()#($*() people!!!!!!"

There was a woman there - blind and deaf - who was getting around better than me. IT'S JUST AN EYE, I tell myself. I listen to the two girls at the reception desk - mostly in Ebonics - talk about their love life, the love life of the doctors they work for, the nurses they hate, why the hate them, and how they hate their jobs. I DON'T CARE. CALL MY @#$*&U#$& name and make it better, I tell you!!

An hour later, I am called back and immediately, Suzanne (the nicest nurse in the world) gives me numbing medicine which immediately takes affect and makes me far less homicidal. I thank her profusely. She yells at the Ebonics Idiots out front for letting me sit for an hour with a corneal abrasion.

Then, Doctor Pudgybutt comes back and looks into my eye, verifying that I have a 1.5 mm scratch on my cornea, "just missed your pupil by a hair". He tells me that in 24 hours, I will be fine - but that if I still had pain on Sunday, I should call the ER because he'll be on call taking care of all those "bad eye injuries". I beg to know what injuries those might be.

Regardless, it was nice to come home (safely, this time) and crawl into bed.

Not before my green apple martini though ...