Call me vain, but I have always hated my glasses. And this weekend, I discovered that it's perhaps not solely about vanity, after all.
On Friday, I noticed that my eye had been bothering me for quite some time. Now, I think this was a couple days, but as I told the eye doctor, the days all kind of run together in my world. Working too much will do that to you. For the sake of this entry, we'll say that I started noticing it a lot on Thursday. I only work 6 hours on Fridays, so after the four hours at my morning job and before the two hours at my night job, I went home and watched some TV while eating lunch. It suddenly became very clear to me that my eye was still bothering me even though I had taken out my contacts. Everytime the TV flashed, I had to close my eye because it hurt.
So I called the eye doctor, and he got me in that afternoon, and he examined my eye with bunches of different colored lights that I'd never seen him use before. Then he took down the model of the eye.
Now, I don't know about you, but anytime any kind of doctor takes down a plastic model and sets it on his/her desk, I start to panic. In my experience, this is never a good sign.
Fortunately, it was not that serious. I have a scratched cornea. It's a pretty minor scratch, but I have to put in eye drops four times a day and I can't wear my contacts for a week. One whole week!
I got contacts in the tenth grade when I began flat out refusing to wear my glasses unless I was driving. I always thought I looked much prettier without glasses, which is true, so I never really noticed the other benefits that contacts bring me. I mean, I knew that I didn't have to think about them fogging up when I went inside. And I knew that I didn't have to have anything pinching my nose or falling down my face. I knew it, but I didn't know it.
That's why this weekend came as quite a shock to me. My nose feels all pinched. Then, I have to hold the menu at restaurants up in front of my face because I can't see it without tilting my head far down. Simply moving my eyes doesn't work because I can't see where there isn't a lens. Same with merging. I have to move my whole head. And then on Saturday, that really horribly humid evening, after I took my sister home, I got out of the car and the glasses fogged and wouldn't clear so I had to walk to my apartment completely blind in the dark. Also, I keep running into things because my depth perception is completely off. My grocery shopping experience last night? I don't celebrate it. I ran over my toe with the cart. And now while I'm typing, I can't look at my hands and my screen at the same time when I'm trying to put my fingers back on the keyboard.
I add boooo to the total score of glasses. Boooo.
Posted by LoWriter at July 25, 2005 08:53 AMYou just need some of those awesomely huge tortoise shell glasses from the late 80s. Or bionic eyes. That would be pretty sweet.
Posted by: schdav at July 25, 2005 11:57 AMI find it funny that you boycotted glasses too, I did that when I was 15 in order to get contacts. But I wasn't driving so I just boycotted them at all times. It is amazing how used to going around with out them you can get... you don't even feel blind or like you can't see because it's 'normal'...
I have to admit that I like my glasses except when it rains. but I like my contacts better, except when they annoy me by getting dry.
Posted by: 10lees at July 25, 2005 05:53 PMyeah, pretty much, i annoyed the crap outta my eye doc when i went in for contacts a few months ago. more on that in a sec...
i hated my glasses in high school (oh, lordy, they were purple, yes they were) adn so i got "the only option available for astigmatism" - horrid horrid gas permeables. i used them for just over a year and throughly grossed out my friends by popping the buggers in my mouth every time i needed a rinsing. and they got soooo annoying that i just stopped wearing them.
i wore nothing until about a year ago. and then i had to get my license renewed and i discoverd that i needed glasses to offically drive. i have these sweet Chanel half frames now, and they rule cuz they are featherweight. but the Rx is off a bit, and i have depth problems too, Lo..... and i kept getting worse and worse....
so then in March, i went out and tried to get me some soft lenses. took me quite a while cuz i didnt think i was that bad. until the first pair he gave me wasnt strong enough after 2 days. and the 2nd pair wasnt strong enough 2 days after that. and so on and so forth until we get to free pair number 5. i'm once again wearing lenses for astigmatism, but praise the lord for toric!!!!!! this whole process took me over a month and 4 free visits to the eye doc (yes, i paid for the initial visit).
i sure hope you heal fast, Lo!!! i cant wait to see your pretty eyes once again!
i wonder if i can write a grant to get me free lasiks?
Posted by: at July 26, 2005 02:37 PMthat was me, by the way.... doh!
Posted by: dr. gonzo at July 26, 2005 02:38 PMI could've guessed it was you...
Posted by: 10lees at July 26, 2005 05:19 PMand how is that, my dear???
Posted by: dr gonzo at July 27, 2005 09:51 AMYour syntax of course... I always will know when it's you if you write a long piece, if you only write a couple of lines I probably couldn't've guessed.
Plus the big purple glasses, I've seen those pictures!!
Posted by: 10lees at July 27, 2005 10:57 AMdear lord, i forgot you had! yeeeeshhhh. i should burn those...
Posted by: dr gonzo at July 28, 2005 08:43 AMThey can't possibly be as bad as the ones I had in 8th and 9th grade. Those were truly horrible. Huge wire frames with dark tinted glass in them. I look like an old man with funky hair.
Posted by: Lo at July 28, 2005 08:47 AMI had half frames of blue tortishell with huge round lenses in 7th grade, luckily I dropped them in 8th grade and they had a huge chip taken out of them... therefore I refused to wear them except in class, and movies :-) Then I got new ones in 9th grade, but I still hated wearing glasses. When I got my newest pair in 2000 I LOVED wearing my glasses because I look 'librarian chic', which means guy's think I'm mysterious and smart... ooo la la... hahahaa
Posted by: 10lees at July 28, 2005 01:15 PMthere is something terribly sexy about a girl with a messy bun and smart glasses. i get more compliments when i'm lazy about contacts and hair... sheesh... makes a girl not want to invest in makeup!
Posted by: dr gonzo at July 29, 2005 10:22 AMSorta late on this one, but just noticed the one sentence while scrolling down the page. You mentioned looking at the keyboard to position your fingers. Most people do that, but if you can I'd recommend trying to learn how to do it without looking. That's epecially true if you use the mouse often. It may not seem like much time, but it adds time both to position your hands and then for your eyes to track back to the screen. It's sorta like typing without looking at the keys in that it makes using the computer less of a hastle and one wonders how anyone could not do it. But some people never get the hang of typing either, so I guess it may just be how people are.
Now that I've added a lengthy comment on a complete tangent...
Posted by: Jeremy at August 5, 2005 10:58 PMUm, not to be contrary or mean or conceited, but I'm actually quite a good typist. The only thing I have real problems with are the numbers at the top. I can't remember where they're at. Typically, I type just over 82 wpm, and not only do I not have to look at my hands, but I can look at other people and talk to them while I'm not looking at my hands. Unfortunately, I was re-doing things that used numbered lists when I wrote this. :)
Posted by: Lo at August 7, 2005 09:50 PM