"Come on, Suz... Just one 'Aargh!' " -Ben

Ok, Sooooooo.....

I wore my contacts almost the whole time we were on our trip, but took them out one day to find that the solution in my contacts case had evaporated. I had no choice but to refill it with local Nicaraguan water (yikes...) and leave my contacts out for good after that. After a week of wearing my glasses I was ready for the contacts again, so Sunday I put them in for church. 

Sunday afternoon my eyes were starting to itch (that sometimes happens when I'm wearing my contacts for the first time in a little while) so I switched back to glasses. Within a couple hours the itch had become unbearable and my eyes were noticeably red and watery, especially the left one. When we went to bed that night Ben asked if I wanted him to go to a drug store for eye drops, which I declined, promising that if my eye still hurt in the morning I would just go myself. 

1:30 a.m. rolls around and my eye is in so much pain I can not sleep at all! I toss and turn for a while, before deciding that it was worth going to a drug store for those darn drops. 

Exhausted, crying, in PJs, and holding a few tissues over one eye I asked the night receptionist at our hotel (ahem... home) for directions to the nearest 24/hr pharmacy. Just imagine what that must have looked like!

Driving through an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night when you are exhausted and can't see is a  

BAD idea. The store wasn't even open, after all. 

And, to kick it all off, the receptionist and a local policeman were waiting for me at the front door when I arrived!!!!

"Ma'am, what was the nature of your injury? Why did you need to go to pharmacy so suddenly?" 

Oh, great. I'm absolutely miserable with pain, exhausted, feel totally stupid for driving, and now I'm the victim of domestic abuse?!

I promptly woke Ben up, explained (through my frustrated tears) the situation, and he left for Wal-Mart to get me eye drops and a pirate eye patch. 

They eye drops only made it worse. 

The next morning I was very, very relieved to go to an optometrist and find out I have a scratch the length of a fingernail on my peripheral something or other which will take 1 week and 3 different eye drops to cure, not river blindness from Nicaraguan water. 

Now I have to figure out how to live in a hotel in complete darkness without driving or opening one eye for the next week without losing my mind, too.

last night: 

"Where's your eye patch?" -Ben

"Oh, you don't want a pirate for a wife!" -Suz

"Sure I do! You can be my wench!" -Ben

"Ok, but I need another name. You're not calling me that." -Suz

"Well, you can't be Capt. Blackbeard, cause that's me." -Ben

"How about Cap'n Bloodshot?" -Suz