7:01 Mattie wakes me up scratching on the door. I let her out of my room.

8:30 Mattie wakes me up busting back into my room. I need to get up anyway. Today is scan day. I have choroidal osteoma which is a super rare benign, calcified tumor on my optical nerve. It was discovered several years ago during a routine eye exam, upon which they sent me straight to the hospital, where everyone thought it was cancer. It was awesome. Any change will lead to vision loss so I have to get regular scans at UAB eye hospital.

After ten years with the tumor, over 50% of patients experience tumor growth and major vision loss. 46% of patents, after the ten-year mark, experience random decalcification of the tumor and stabilization. I'm approaching year four. Because mine is on the optical nerve, it's too risky to operate, but there are some treatments to slow vision loss, which is why I'm monitored for any change. Whatever happens, I'm pretty much guaranteed to keep vision in one eye, at least. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk about my rarely-observed medical condition.

8:45 I eat breakfast while doing some prep for an Usborne book drive a friend and I are hosting for another friend who is a teacher tonight. The internet doesn't have the graphics I need, so I'll have to make some.

9:50 We leave for downtown Birmingham. It's already hot outside man.

10:30 We arrive at the eye institute. It used to be inside the hospital, but they have their own building now. I sign in and wait.

Once I get called back, I first read from a standard eye chart. Ironically my "bad" eye is always stronger. Then they numb my eyes and use a handheld machine on my eyeballs to check the pressure. The numbing makes my eyes super heavy and sticky. Then my eyes get dilated, and I sit in a back room to wait with two elderly ladies. The dilation takes effect really quickly.

After waiting, I get the scans done. The scans involve a big machine and BLINDING green and yellow lights.

Then I wait in a room to see my doctor, who is a quiet and gentle guy. He looks at my eyes with his optical things (I have no other term for this). Then he does an ultrasound on my eye with nasty cold gel. I don't recommend ultrasounds unless you get to see a baby. My condition is still stable.

11:45 I find my parents in the parking lot. My eyes feel miserable. We go to a chicken restaurant downtown but the prices are high and we promptly walk out. On the way home, we pick up Arby's instead because my mom has coupons.

12:45 We get home and eat. I play ball with Mattie till she's panting and exhausted.

1:45 My eyes still feel ultra heavy and everything is blurry which gives me a headache. It's even worse when I look at screens, but work waits for no woman. I draw my curtains and turn on the fairy lights so the light isn't so glaring, and I get on tutor.com. It's a chaotically busy afternoon. I almost smash my laptop though because the garbage tutor.com software is lagging soooooo bad like I'll type a word and it literally takes 30 seconds to show up and also I can't get two words out without my computer popping up an error message. At one point the entire software literally crashes.

During the literal constant stream of students, I get a call back from KDP customer support, who says my paperback of the Duggar family parody isn't going through because there's a problem with the ISBN. I think I fix it but I'm not totally sure.

6:00 I finish my last session of the day and devote some time to finding PDFs of leveled "I Can Read" books, because my sessions with the littlest kids today reminded me that I don't have many resources on hand for them.

6:30 We eat the same dinner as yesterday. Then I find more easy readers online to use with kids. I find and read a PDF of Mouse Soup and every bit of it comes back to me. I hated it when I was little. It all disturbed me.

8:00 The Usborne party starts. I'm winging it and stealing posts from total stranger's parties. It's not a huge success like I hoped and we're even having it for a good cause. But OH WELL. I bought some books for the classroom because I'm not a miser.

9:00 The party ends. I take a few moments to reply to some comments.

9:10 I literally go to bed.

Today's gallery: