The Eyepocalypse. It's slowly coming to an end. 

Emphasis on   S  L  O  W  L  Y.

I guess I should write about it since I posted on facebook about my eye and scared everybody. I’m fine. I’m actually a little better than I was before. Imagine that.

People keep asking me if I can see out of my crazy eye. Yeah. I can see. Can I see WELL? Not exactly. My vision up close has improved A LOT. My distance vision? Not so much. My pupil is still giving me problems. Mr. Rheumatologist told me it was "sluggish" in its response. I've found that if I have both eyes open, I rely on my good eye to see, and my bad eye just goes blurryville. But if I close my good eye and force my stink eye to actually do something for a change, she tries her darnedest to see what I need to see. I tested it out at work the other day to see if it would focus, and i decided to look at the office keyboard. All the little letters were going skinny and tall, and then short and fat, and then skinny and tall, and then short and fat. At least I know she working in there. Ms. Ophthalmologist told me that it's "too soon to tell" if it will ever go back to normal and it may not ever. Not exactly the news you want to hear. She DID tell me I could wear contacts again. That was fun after not wearing them for 2 months. Felt like walking around in a fishbowl. Hopefully over the next few weeks, my vision will keep improving.

What's reeeeeeallly funny is that my eye doctor told me as she was running out of the room, "I want to see you again in two months! Byeeee!" I didn't have the heart to tell her, "I'm gonna be in Scotland in two months! Byeeeee!" I guess we'll figure this out later.

This is Dr. Fitzmorris, my eye doctor, checking out some old lady's eye pressure.

Well...after almost exactly 48 hours of wearing contacts, though, I was getting ready for work and I looked at my eye and HOLY COW, it turned red again! And it was all hurty and stuff! I immediately took the contacts out and began the panic process. I ended up calling the eye doctor, scheduling another appointment with them, and starting back on those blasted eye drops. And literally 24 hours later, it was fine. No pain, no pressure, no bright red ring around the blue part (which looks really really scary, by the way). So I called the eye doctor AGAIN, cancelled my appointment (after some awkward crying and making the nurse feel reeeeeeeealllly bad about how expensive my bloodwork was) and they are weaning me off the eye drops. Flare ups are apparently normal and it may keep doing that the rest of my life. Greeeeeeeat. 

But good news! I am privileged to be the Matron of Honor in my dear friend Jolynne Fross' wedding at the end of July. She was one of my roomies in college and now we're lucky enough to live close to each other for a little bit before life happens and goes all nuts. I love her! And I love planning someone ELSE’S wedding. It’s so much less stressful than planning my own was. And I've been waiting for her to get married for everrrrr. I'm sure she has too :)

Love this girl!

But speaking of stress: Scotland! We really need to plan for this giant move that's about to happen. Right now, we've paid our deposit and we're waiting to hear back from the University (did I mention it's been almost 4 weeks??) I am getting a little impatient because there's not really much other planning we can do until we have visas, but we can't get our visas without this little Confirmation of Acceptance of Studies number, which the school has yet to assign to us. Can't book hotels or plane ticket dates or train tickets or anything until we know for sure that we're actually going to be in the country at that time. Clay even called them and asked them what was going on, and they said they were working tirelessly to get to everyone, but that we would need to be patient. So... we're waiting. 

In the meantime, I am compiling every single bit of rewards points and credit card points and survey points that I have to try to get us a place to stay for a few days while we look for a place to live. Here is our tentative plan:

Hopefully GET OUR VISAS.

Apply for some sweet student loans. Or win the lottery.

Quit my job at the end of July. Cry and cry and cry.

Jolynne’s wedding weekend July 25-27

Leave NOLA after Jolynne's wedding. 

Stay with my parents in PCB for a while. Go to the beach and get a little tan. Spend time with the best sister of all time. Give little Yaris to them.

Go to Atlanta. Spend time with family and friends and go see the Braves a few times. Yes, I said TIMES!

Fly to Scotland the 2^nd week or so of August (depending on how flights look).

Get there? Go… live somewhere?

That's the plan.

I got new glasses!! I love Natalie Gainey!!

What's your post about?

That's what Clay told me to name my post. 

Well… good things and sad things always happen.

We spent last weekend at the beach with Matt, Elise, Trevor, and Kate, some of our dearest and bestest friends. We went to Pensacola with Matt and Elise last year and had a hoot and a half, so we were excited to be able to do this again. We basically sat out on the beach, or ate and ate and ate. It was magical. We also got to have brunch with the wife of the late Larry Butler, Kenny Rogers’ producer. It was pretty surreal, especially looking at an actual Grammy and autographs and pictures and all kinds of records and whatnot on the walls. My personal favorite was an autographed page of lyrics from Johnny Cash and Julie Andrews.

JULIE ANDREWS! IN THEIR HALF-BATHROOM!! If you didn't know this, Julie Andrews reminds me of my mother, and my childhood. So everyone should watch this and sing along: Watch me!

Anyway, here are some of my favorite pictures from our fun trip. We had such a great time. Thanks to Sam Ritchie and Kellie Crumpton for buying me the disposable cameras for my honeymoon 3 years ago that I ended up using on this trip. 

But the sad part is that Trevor and Kate are moving to New York. Like, today. Like, they literally got in the truck with Bella and drove away today. We love them. But Kate got accepted to the Master’s program at Pratt. So she has to go be an amazing master of art history and arty things. We love them. That’s why we gave them Bella. And she gave us wieners. WIENERS!

God is so good. My last couple of posts were a little heavy on the "people are telling us we shouldn't go to Scotland because my eye is falling out and I wrecked little Yaris," and some readers got all mad and wanted to revolt. Let me just tell you how God is making everything SO CLEAR.

• Medical bills are almost paid in full. Just chest x-ray here, eye exam there, 'roids, 'roids, 'roids. The only big one left is the bloodwork, but it is FARRRRR less than what we were expecting. One bill literally has 85% of the original cost mysteriously cut by something called "insurance discount." AND I made the full amount ALMOST ON THE PENNY in overtime last pay period.

• Parents told us not to fix little Yaris because she's going to them in August. Not a pretty gift to give your parents as a thank you for raising you but really. She's not as bad as that station wagon that we drove in Georgia.

• With some very generous donations from our church and family, we were able to pay the down payment on Clay's degree to secure our spot without touching our savings account. Even with all the medical bills, we haven't touched our savings and have continued to press on toward having a significant chunk of money for our visas. I can't tell you how much this blows my mind. I've monitored our bank account for weeks now, and I don't know how it's all happening, but God is miraculously working everything out for us. THIS IS HUGE.

Faith. God isn’t making it super easy, but He’s making it very clear.

However. If anyone has some expert advice on the following, please, by all means, butt into my life:

• Cheapest way to move our things to Scotland (take on the plane, ship, mail, etc)
• where to live, and where to live while we’re finding a place to live
• finding me a job in Scotland
• finding a cheap train ticket from Manchester to Leuchars
• anything else really that you would like to tell me in general

because no, I still don’t know any of it.

I'll leave you with this funny little story. Remember last time how I said my pupil was all weird? Well. I went to the rheumatologist today and he told me my sluggish pupil was the result of possible scar tissue, and then he said, "Are you taking any dilating eye drops? Nooooo, I'll let your eye doctor tell you what to do." Soooo, being hasty, I pulled out my dilating eye drops, popped one in, and then things got reeeeeeaaaallly crazy. 

Do you see it?

aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Shouldn't have done that. Whoops. 

Carm