New glasses

I got a new pair of glasses last week.  What do you think?

"I'd rather be writing a novel."

I went for my first eye exam in 3.5 years and found that my eyes had actually improved since the last time.  Either that or the idiot doctor I saw back then got my prescription wrong, which I think is the more likely scenario.  Seriously, the guy was a jerk. He yelled at me for filling out the insurance form wrong, and then he went out of the exam room and yelled at the staff for not having properly explained to me how to fill out the form.  I had no problems with the contacts he prescribed, but when my new glasses were finally ready and I went in to pick them up, I could hardly bear to look through them.  I insisted that there must have been a mistake, this prescription was far too strong.  He counter-insisted that prescription was correct, and I needed to get out of his way.  I waited a week and went back again, ever more sure that the prescription was too strong.  They told me to "tough it out" and "my eyes would get used to it."

Well, they did.  And it's hard to say, really.  At the time, I was 8 months pregnant and hyperemetic.  Merely looking at a dish that had once contained  a food I'd eaten and later thrown up would make me feel dizzy and/or puke.  It wasn't inconceivable that my difficulty with the glasses was somehow related to my general, all-encompassing, nausea.  Within a couple of weeks, my eyes did in fact adjust, and I could wear the glasses while feeling nothing more than baseline, hyperemetic malaise.

So this time I was at first surprised, then vindicated, when the (I might add, very nice and conscientious) optometrist told me, "It looks like your prescription has changed.  You're wearing lenses that are 3 steps too strong for you."  He repeated parts of the eye exam just to make sure, and came up with the same result.  Moreover, he did not yell at me for anything.  Not for waiting so long to see an eye doctor, not for wearing contact lenses that had been expired for more than a year.

I was so giddy at the thought that my eyes might actually be getting better (or at least not getting worse), that I decided to spend something like a week's salary on new contact lenses and glasses.  I went for the most dramatic frames they had.  It seems like everybody is wearing glasses these days.  They're in.  I can't help but think how differently my life might have turned out if glasses had been so popular when I was in junior high.

Afterwards, I did have a bit of buyer's remorse.  Gigantic black frames too large for my face--what was I thinking?  They looked good at the store (were my eyes slightly dilated then?), but not so much when I got home.

On the bright side, however, now that I've got the right prescription, I can see better than I've been able to see in, well… more than 3.5 years.

All week, I wore the glasses.  I haven't gone that long in glasses probably since the age of 12 or 13, when I first got contacts.  Glasses were always my back up--what I'd wear after I'd taken my contacts out in the evening and nobody was going to see me again.

I've got to say, these new glasses are finally starting to grow on me.  I think they give me a sort of stern, professorial look, which definitely helped me set the tone at the beginning of the new semester.  With these glasses, everything I say suddenly becomes brilliant.  The only thing that could make me seem any smarter would be if I also had a British accent.

Maybe I will write a publishable novel after all. With a genre and everything.

Thanks for reading.