I Thought I Had Glaucoma, But It Turned Out To Be A Stye

My husband and I got back from our vacation a few days ago and have both been a little under the weather. I've been managing my symptoms of early-onset glaucoma/or a stye as the doctor liked to call it, and he's had a bad cold, but we're still feeling the happy glow of a few days away. We went to Iceland to enjoy precious wildlife sightings, gorgeous untouched natural landscapes dramatically unfolding for miles without another person in sight, and delicious Icelandic fish soup and bread. We rented a car and saw about 50% of the inhabited portion of the island.

We would have circled the whole country, but we made a last minute decision to take a boat up into the Arctic Circle for a day on Grimsey Island. The boat ride ferried about 200 people across the sea for three hours in a rough, rocking and roiling path leaving about 75% of the ship barfing into paper bags. Unfortunately, they ran out of those paper bags and entire sections of the ship became off-limits.

I'm not prone to sea-sickness, but the stench of vomit can churn my stomach. My husband is prone to sea-sickness and while we were napping warmly in the cabin, the sounds of heavy coughing and choking woke us up and then my husband had to stand outside in the freezing arctic wind to maintain his stomach composure because it was actually a group of small children throwing up on themselves and into the last of the paper bags. I was worried that he'd be too sick to get back on the boat, and was ready to find him a flight back to Iceland off of the tiny air strip in the middle of the island because the whole puke-fest ship was such a mess. Something tells me that snack bar didn't make too much money off of our lot. When we finally arrived and disembarked, he turned to me and said "well, we live here now. Hope you like it."

Lucky for me, the island is a bird sanctuary and my husband is also terrified of birds, so I knew I'd be getting home eventually. I didn't know he was terrified of birds until he ran down a walking trail yelling and screaming, batting wildly at his head, because he was convinced a bird was attacking and chasing him. I almost fell over into a pile of sheep poop laughing so hard because it was like a scene from a movie, before adding the computer animation showing an attacking pterodactyl or something. Also, the Arctic Circle turned out to be the hottest place we visited. Temps were low all week, around 45, and we had lots of rain, and I prepped for the island by putting on three shirts, a scarf, two pairs of pants, thick socks and boots. I wish I only wore one pair of pants because it was about 70 on that stupid island. We did see adorable puffins, though:

Apart from a couple of minor freak-outs, like whether we would run out of gas in the middle of the Westfjords and have to walk 30+ miles in the rain to civilization and then wait for Monday to get gas, and whether we'd be eaten by trolls if we hiked off alone on a poorly marked trail, the trip was serene and relaxing. The one museum we made it to, detailing the history of viking culture and settlement in Iceland, as well as a regional saga from a local poet, basically taught us that Icelanders/Scandinavians were once really murderous and built some of the fastest ships in the world just so they could sail off and kill more people faster. They just really liked killing. The saga of Ale from Borgarnes told of his first kill, at the age of 7, when he lost a hockey game. Today, the people are extremely friendly and confidently wear a wide array of fashions from H&M.