Did you know...

... that you can develop a stress-induced allergy? Apparently.

For the last month or so, my left eye has been giving me the ol' one-two punch and making me wish I'd never put my contact in there... every single day. So, I finally sucked it up and went to the eye doctor on a whim yesterday. I thought he'd tell me I had a scratch on my eye, wear my glasses for a week, give me some drops and I'd be on my merry little way. Not. Even. Close.

I oh-so-innocently walk into his office and sit down. Make the small talk. Explain the situation. Smile and nod appropriately. Then, before I know it, he's coming after me with tweezers & pulling eyelashes OUT OF MY FACE. Multiple ones. From the corner of my eye. No, I don't like those there either but if I were able to put them out regularly, I WOULD HAVE ALREADY DONE THAT.

The fun didn't stop there. Next thing I know, he's got this bright red dye stuff and he's squirting it all over my eyeball. All while I wear a pristine white shirt, but that's beside the point... that red dye HURT. So as I'm basically blinded and my eye is stripped from all its eyelash-related dignity, he takes a q-tip and flips my eyelid inside out. INSIDE OUT. As in, parts that have never seen the outside world are just hanging out there for everybody and their dog to take a gander at.

At this point, I almost blacked out. Somewhere in there, he took his happy little q-tip and started poking around. Something about seeing 'fibers' or some bs. Personally, I think he enjoyed this WAY too much. Finally, he puts my eyelid back the way my momma intended it to be and said, "Well, there's nothing more than a few fibers and a little bit of extra mucus in there." I nearly lunged at that man's jugular. But before I could, he took this bottle of mystery liquid and 'flushed' my eye out... and it honest to God looked like I'd take a shower in there as I walked out.

So, one ridiculously tiny bottle & $45 hard earned dollars later, I now get to put one happy little drop of whatever the heck Alcon concocted into my eye every morning. All because (apparently) the stress of the wedding has caused some chemical change in my body that's making my left eye hate me.

Sigh.

Growing Up?

I've been meticulously budgeting every last cent to my name since April of this year. I'm not quite sure when it started but somewhere along the end of March, it clicked. I can't be reckless or frivolous with my hard-earned money anymore. No more, "Oh, it's okay to put it on the credit card. I'll take care of it next month." Yeah... I'm still working on that 'next month' part from a good 6 years ago.

It's called, "living within your means." I randomly stumbled upon one of Dave Ramsey's books in March (the initial cause for said 'clicking' aforementioned). Next thing you know, I've b-school nerded out with spreadsheets out the wazoo, envelopes with a fixed amount of cash for pretty much all purchases, and after the mandatory trial and error period, I have to say... I am so proud of myself.

I've already paid for Brett's wedding band in full. I've cut my credit card bill in HALF (that is no small feat, I assure you). I've gotten our joint debt plan rolling now and I feel really confident that we're going to knock the crap out of it and be debt free MUCH sooner than most young couples our age. Yup... pretty proud of us, I'm not going to lie.

All that said, I've been saving for wedding odds and ends along the way and tonight, I made a purchase. I bought the garter set. Okay, I'll admit... I had no intention of buying a garter at all, let alone a set. (I mean, seriously... I don't do lace. I don't do gaudy lace. And I certainly don't do dingy gaudy lace). But... after spending way too much time on Etsy.com today, I came across a very TCU-esque set that I eventually talked myself into buying (after having checked the budget... three times). Alas, I give you the garter set:

Picture courtesy of PetereneDesign.Etsy.com

So... what do you think? Not bad, right? It's sans lace, which is always a plus in my book. No crazy feathers or polka dots or ribbons randomly strewn about. Simple, TCU-ish and within my budget. I win.

Neurosis.

Neurosis: a term generally used to describe a non-psychotic mental illness which triggers feelings of distress and anxiety and impairs functioning

Hi, my name is Julie and I'm neurotic. At least, that's the only explanation for my feelings today. I woke up this morning with my heart skipping a beat, as if I'd overslept and missed something incredibly important. In reality, I woke up at 5:09 - 6 minutes before my alarm was scheduled to go off so I could get up and go to the gym per usual. On the way to the gym, I was kindly reminded that I was forcible awakened in the middle of the night due to some awesome high volume teeth grinding. Once I was at the gym, I had the attention span (and therefore, willpower) of a lab rat. Seven minutes on one machine, 5 on another... for an entire hour. Yeah. I didn't like me in the cardio area either.

By the time I got to work, my head was SWIMMING with my ridiculous to-do list: wedding planning details that *must* be hashed out by Sunday; baby shower planning for a dear old friend of mine that also *must* be completed by Sunday; work related madness that needs to be done asap; personal live randomness that still hasn't been done like cleaning, grocery shopping, etc. Basically, thanks to the fantastic visualization capabilities of my ridiculous mind, I had driven myself insane by 10:15 this morning. And I honestly looked pretty much just like this:


Now, has anything changed since yesterday that warranted this craziness that wrecked my day? No. I don't know what caused it but good grief: Julie went from zero to neurotic in 5.2281 seconds.

Even after making the decision to divide and conquer some wedding details today with my mother, my heart is still in my throat and I can't seem to get ahead of the game. What gives?! It's not like the wedding (or shower or anything else, for that matter) is this weekend. There's still plenty of time. I get that. But I can't shake this feeling that I'm simply not doing enough. Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever feel like you've got a gazillion balls up in the air and at any possible second, you'll look away and BAM! A big ugly mess of disaster.

Whew. Okay, time to get to the list of things that made me insane today. Here's hoping tomorrow is a better day...