Easter, Earthquakes, & Eye Patches

Easter was ...well...it had some normal components to it. We had invited Clint's family to our house, so yesterday we spent half of the day cleaning and preparing. At bedtime, I felt very "ready" for Easter, and generally excited to spend the day with my family.

Then last night, I kept having nightmares about my eye. In one dream, my eye was a yellowish-orange color, and I was blind. In a second dream, my eye had a huge gouge in it. When I woke up this morning, I couldn't open my left eye. It was so swollen and was pulsing with a hot, searing pain. I went into the bathroom and pried it open, and the whole eye was scarlet red. I couldn't keep it open for more than a few seconds, because the light in the room was agony, so I just clamped it shut.

I probably average about one or two eye infections a month in my left eye (I have a few tiny scratches in the cornea), but this was worse than anything I had experienced in years. I almost had Clint take me to Urgent Care, but changed my mind at the last minute, because past experience has proven that there is really nothing you can do for an eye infection other than wait it out. So I helped Clint get the kids ready for church, and they all went without me. I was miserable. I couldn't open any of my curtains in the house because the light was so painful, so the house felt so gloomy, and I was feeling bitter about not being able to go to church with my family...on Easter of all days.

I called Clint's mom, crying, because Easter was supposed to be at our house, but I couldn't even open my curtains, let alone have our annual Easter egg hunt. She reassured me that the family didn't mind eating Easter dinner in a dark cave, and soothingly told me that everything would be fine. At this point my spirits lifted a little bit, so I proceeded to get ready as best as I could with one eye out of commission.

When Clint came home from church, he brought me a black eye patch that he had picked up from Rite-Aid on his way home. I felt completely foolish putting it on, but once I tried it on, my eye felt so much more relaxed in the darkness of the patch. I still felt reservations about wearing it, because let's face it; I looked completely ridiculous. So what does Clint do? He disappears into the bedroom and emerges a few minutes later wearing renaissance pants and a buccaneer shirt (remnants from an old pirate costume), complete with a do-rag on his head. He said, "There, now you won't feel so silly." All I could think was WOW. Now THAT is love.

So when Clint's parents showed up for Easter dinner (which was actually closer to lunchtime), Clint was dressed like a pirate and I was wearing a patch. Should I be concerned that not one of them question ANY of this? The next few hours went by relatively smoothly, except for I never realized how much your depth perception is compromised when you have only one functioning eye. I was trying to put ice-cubes into glasses on the dining room table, but I kept throwing them on the dinner plates instead. The worst though was when I went to fill up one of the glasses with water. I tipped the pitcher over what I thought was the glass, and then proceeded to pour the water on to the table, right next to the glass. Clint's family was laughing so hard and pretty much made fun of me for the rest of the afternoon.

After our Easter meal (which Clint prepared and was absolutely delicious), we had our egg rolling contest, which I won for the FIRST time EVER! I was pretty excited. Apparently I have better egg rolling capabilities with only one eye. Following this, the kids did their Easter egg hunt outside. When Clint hid the eggs, he actually got a plastic ladybug-shaped egg to float on top of the pond, which I thought was such a clever hiding place, but Trin scooped that one up right away.

Later we were all gathered around Teri's birthday cake (her birthday is this week), getting ready to sing to her, when the earthquake came rolling in. Trinity felt it first. She had just opened her mouth to say "Is the ground shaking?" when we all started going up and down. The island light began swaying back and forth, and the whole thing was a little dizzying. The earthquake was a nice one: strong and rolling, but not sharp enough to cause high levels of anxiety. I was surprised by how long it was--it seemed to go on for awhile. During the earthquake, we just looked at each other in surprise. No one ever moved. I guess all that "duck and cover" training just goes out the window when you actually might need it. Once the quake ended, we lit Teri's candles and sung happy birthday. Afterwards, I wrote down everyone's guesses as to how big the earthquake was, and then Clint looked it up online to see who was closest. We were all WAY off. We all guessed in the low 5 point range. Elijah was the only one to guess an outrageous "7.4," and he wound up being the closest. The earthquake was a 7.2, but felt lighter for us because its epicenter was in Baja, California.

So, I can now officially cross "Experiencing an earthquake on Easter while wearing an eye-patch" off of my bucket list. I hope that you and yours had a wonderful Easter!