Critters and Contacts

This is a post I wrote about a week ago, but never got around to uploading!  Enjoy!!

L and K are two of the biggest Drama Queens I know; Drama Queens and Hypochondriacs. I blame their father’s side of the family. He’s got a brother who’s a hypochondriac. The guy would get a cut on his finger and swear that it was going to fall off due to gangrene.

Thursday night L fell asleep before taking out her contacts. I don’t wear contacts (I only need glasses for close work like reading, computer work, taking out splinters, etc) so I’m not sure how someone can accidentally fall asleep in them, but she did. When she woke up Friday morning she was complaining of pain in her eyes and her eyes wouldn’t stop watering. Being the horrible mother that I am, I told her “Tough. You’re going to school anyway. Take your glasses.” I ended up driving her to school that morning and as I dropped her off I saw that by now her eyes are really puffy and she’s having a hard time opening them. I kicked her out of my car anyway. Needless to say I got a call from the nurse at school as soon as I walked in the office door. I turned around and went to pick her up again.

It turns out that when you sleep in your contacts they can dry out your eyes; even the ones that are extended wear. When L woke up and removed her contacts she removed some of the cells covering her eye as well – thus the pain. Of course her Optometrist isn’t in the office on Fridays so I had to take her to the Urgent Care. The Dr. there put some numbing drops in her eyes, then some stain in her eyes, and looked at her eyes with a black light. The numbing drops were to take away the pain and make it so she could open her eyes for the amount of time the Dr needed to be able to look at her eyes, and the stain was to see if there were any scratches on her eyes. I was able to look at her eyes under the black light and with the stain in them, and it was pretty cool! Her eyes glowed like a cat’s. I also saw where she’d removed the cells off her eyes when she removed her contacts.

The good news is that she didn’t permanently damage her eyes, and there won’t be a need for a follow-up Dr. visit, just medicated eye drops several times a day for the next week. The bad news, for her, is that she’s not allowed to wear her contacts for 7 days. We are talking about a 15 year old girl. Needless to say, she’s chosen to be blind for the next 7 days rather than wear her glasses because she’s too vain.

I’d like to find out where K has gone. The being that has inhabited her body is too well behaved to be K. I’m not sure where she’s been taken, but I have to say I kind of like this new K-Child. There were no major arguments over the past few days. She did get grounded on Friday due to not doing several chores over the course of several days, but even her reaction to that news was well received. I’m still trying to figure out what she wants, but I’ll enjoy the new K-Child until the ulterior motive is revealed.

I got my Mother’s Day present early this year. M and the kids decided that they would get me Geckos for Mother’s Day. I’ve always loved reptiles and have wanted one, several kinds actually, for quite awhile but have never gotten one. They can be expensive, but a local pet store had a sale on terrariums and all the equipment needed (lights, cage lining, temperature gauge, cage, lid, etc) as well as the animals themselves.

I chose to get Leopard Geckos. Originally I was only going to get one Gecko but decided at the store to get two because they were 50% off. When we were almost ready to leave the store M decided that we should get a third because they only had three to begin with. Apparently in M’s mind the third Gecko would be lonely if we took his “friends” away. We decided to name them Dragon, Night Hawk, and Geico. Stepbrothers is M’s favorite movie of the month which is where Dragon and Night Hawk come from. Geico is… well it should be obvious.

When we got home and I started to look up information on the Leopard Gecko I found out that while they can live together in a group they don’t tend to do so in the wild. I found out that you can’t positively tell the sex of a gecko until they’re about 6 – 12 months old. I also found out that if you have a males and females in one cage this could be a problem. Oh, lucky me. Apparently if you have more than one male they can possibly fight to the death in an attempt to prove dominance. If you have one male with several females they will reproduce - constantly.

Luckily I have a friend who has several Geckos so I’m going to see if we can get together so she can tell me more about raising these little lizards. The pet store told me that the Geckos I purchased are too young to determine the sex of them yet, so I’m hoping that I have time to sort this out! I will also need to get a larger cage for them. They are ok in the cage I have now but they will soon outgrow it. I also want to get a small table to put the cage on in my room. I’d rather have them out of sight of the dogs while we’re not at home. That makes me a little nervous.