Eyes and Hair Story

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

After seeing the eye doctor and getting my first prescription and getting a whole lecture about different types of lenses and coatings and all with some pricing, I set off to compare and see what I could get in the area. What I got was confused. I have been using little reading glasses that aren't strong enough because apparently your head is supposed to grow as you get blinder, but my head didn't get that memo. Everything falls off my head when I look down. Now, I hoped to get some glasses that fit and looked good on me. Every place I went to told me I couldn't get frames with that small a lens for the type of lens I need. I was figuring I was still going to have to get something with lenses so big, I would look like I had compound eyes in them. Unless I wanted another material that will be thicker than my pinkie finger or some such thing. They would all blurt out a bunch of disagreeable such options with even more objectionable prices and I would give up and leave with my head swimming and my eyes watering. This was worse than high school algebra. One smart person wrote down my options at least, so I could go home and think about it. I eventually decided to go back there because it was going to have a bigger selection of frames and a second pair for half off. Well, then when I went back the story had changed and I could get polycarbon no glare lenses that would not be thicker than a coke bottle bottom and I had a little more breathing room on frame selection. Problem is, did you know when you try on frames, you won't be able to actually see through them to see what you look like in them? Also, the store was closing in 15 minutes, because that's how I roll and if I waited, it would be Easter before I made it back, so I just tried on about 30 as fast as I could and picked some frames and got them ordered. Then I waited anxiously for 10 days. Would I like them? I didn't remember what they looked like. Except, maybe I never knew because, everything looked fuzzy. If I hadn't been so friendly, that other person wouldn't have chosen one of my favorite frames in the keep pile and went off and ordered them before I made my choice, eliminating that possibility. I should have taken more time, I should have tried on more frames. I should have gone back with my daughter or someone who could tell me what I looked like in each frame. I should have paid more attention to details. I'm going to be stuck with this choice for a while. It felt like waiting for a blind date except I was going to have to go steady with him for at least a year. Well, the day arrived. I think it turned out to be an arranged marriage. I could have done better, but I could definitely have done worse. I'm terribly un-photogenic besides the fact that I'm funny looking, but here are the glasses.I actually like my sunglasses I picked better than my regular glasses.
I didn't choose them for everyday because I could see a big shadow under my eyes and I didn't want to look like a football player, so I chose it for the sunglasses. Turns out that may have had more to do with lighting in the store than anything else. Live and learn.
If you are thinking these are really un photogenic shots, you haven't seen anything yet. Here's an example of anything:That makes me laugh even more than it makes me embarrassed. Seems I don't even blink evenly.
The thing I like the least about my frames is that they sit way off my head about an inch on the edges so I can easily hit my husband in the head with them.
Here, this shot up my nose shows what I mean.I wish I could have smaller lenses. Also, I thought no glare lenses would have less reflections off them but I had to try a lot of different angles with no flash to get a shot without a ton glare off them for pictures.
Do I see any better in them? Well, at first I honestly felt seasick and was forever spinning my head around trying to find the right angle to look at whatever I was trying to look at through them. They are progressive lenses because I need reading glasses, but I also need distance glasses for other things. At first I had to push the glasses up high to read and down low to drive and learn how to do all kinds of head gymnastics to see anything in between near and far. Now, about a month later, I've learned how to move my eye quickly to where it needs to go more. I still have some issues, and some days, I just can't see that great anyways. That's because I found out I have something called keratoconus. Which means my cornea doesn't hold it's shape. So, some days my eyesight is worse than others. Actually, hard contact lenses are supposed to help that, but I have another condition no one could name that makes my eyes really sensitive to everything and they really gooped up so I don't know how well that will work. Eventually, I may have to have a surgery for the keratoconus. We shall see. No pun intended.
On a happier note, I am in wedded bliss over my haircut I got around the same time as the glasses. It seems I was born to wear a bob, so I have gone back to that style. I worked real hard to take a picture of the side of my head, but I couldn't manage the back. But I think you can see that it is shorter in the back and tapers down lower in the front. Here's the view the farthest back I could get and still get the side too. Who'd have thought I could have more bad eye days than bad hair days? THE END.

New Haircut

Here's E.'s new haircut.

First, going incognito.















Second, playing hard to get.












Last, Dad gets her from the side while holding her cutie-pie cousin.

FALL HAS FALLEN

And so have I. This week I turn 44. I’m so proud of myself. Why do people hate telling their age? What’s so wrong with getting old? Besides the osteoporosis, loss of bladder control and arthritis, and heart disease and on and on. But the older you get the better you get, right? Like a fine wine I am getting better with age. Of course, I’ve never actually tried wine, and the way I see it, I’d rather drink grape juice, so maybe like a fine wine I’m just fermenting more and more. Yeah! I think that may be right, but I am older and wiser than I used to be. I think I like me better now than when I was 16. So by the time I’m 88 I should be a whole lot smarter than I am now. Or more fermented…I may well not have a mind anymore. I guess I might even be gone except according to an MSN questionnaire, the highest age I can expect to live is 100 or older. And I even told the truth about never exercising and eating only so-so. It didn’t exactly inspire me to improve my bad habits. I took another test that said if I were a famous leader, I would be Mother Teresa and if I were a movie I would be Schindler’s List. Did you know that my daughter E. is a combination of the character that’s a hairdresser that Dolly Parton plays in Steel Magnolias and CeCe Bloom played by Bette Midler in Beaches. I wonder what character is like me? What do you think? And while we’re psychoanalyzing me, if you are one of the people that knew me before I was 7, would you say I had ADD? Otherwise, I’m the first case of adult onset. It could be by association. In any case, I don’t care how old I get to be, as long as I can keep on learning new things and growing. This week I learned that you can actually burn something in the crock pot. That’s also a big bummer after waiting that long for it to cook. No wonder my kids sneak food to their rooms. I also learned what yellow tastes like. What the heck? I thought it was called corn, not yellow, but I bet it’s a whole lot more honest. There’s probably more yellow dye than corn in this stuff. I learned kids are very astute. D1 said, “You’s crazy mom” and I go to pick him up from the sitter and he says, “What’s wrong with you?” Nice greeting. At least he acknowledges my existence now. I told him, “I don’t know, we’ve all been trying to figure that out for a long time.” I learned that if your kids want stuffed jalapeno peppers and then decide they don’t, it is not a good idea to eat the whole plate full to save their lives, even if it tastes good.

The kids have been busy. The school still needed some more work so they were home Monday and Tuesday. Now we are finally in the new building! It looks great. Hopefully next week there will be indoor plumbing too. At least now they can say, “When I was a kid, I had to go outside to use a port a potty at school.” I would trudge through a blizzard and camp out to have this school; it is so worth it. Now real life starts though. School every week day, Saxon math every week night. Goodbye freedom! Good bye summer!
Speaking of which it has been so cold! I actually love fall except that I’m always mourning the loss of summer and dreading winter, but now that I’m so old and busy I know that before I know it, spring will be here again. So the war of the central air vs. Shellie begins. It has a mind of it’s own. If you put it on heat, it’s base temperature it reverts back to any chance it gets is 62. If you put it on cool, it switches to 95. It takes a while to train it to stay were I want it. This summer it was like already August and I was sitting down and all of a sudden I am sweating and hot and thinking, Oh, my gosh! I’m having my first hot flash. Then I checked the thermostat and it was only like 92 degrees in here. So, I still haven’t had a hot flash. I can wait. Of course, this winter I might wish for one.
So back to the kids, can someone explain to me why if they are gone all day they feel the need to cram in as much or more mess into what precious little time they have at home? I had to talk to my husband’s aunt in Chile, so I’m on the phone and the kids attack. C. has a big bag of chocolate chips in his hand and is making pleading doggy eyes. So I signal with my hands to take a teeny bit and move away. I get off the phone, and C. comes in to ask me something, chocolate moustache and beard all over his face, and a big blotch of chocolate on his leg. This means there is an identical one, probably on a bed. I go off to see and in the hall I see a curly lock of hair on the floor. It is not attached to a head. I call out, rhetorically, “Whose hair is this?” Duh, only G. has curls. He’s hiding in the corner of the bathroom, hands behind his back with the s-c-i-s-s-o-r-s in them. I know this because I am psychic and I have x ray vision. So, he’s not a natural barber. So I had to give him a buzz. J. didn’t think it looked too good. So he gave him a shave. He looks like he’s recovering from chemo now. Hopefully he’ll give up and have curly hair. Then E. comes in yelling don’t cut the legs off the grasshopper! Followed by D1, “Yeah, I told you, don’t cut the hot-doctor’s leg!” SO, it’s ok to cut their wings, but not their legs. I’m glad to know we draw the line somewhere.
Another day I go shopping. Apparently, D&D were making bubbles. The dish soap is almost gone. So was the milk, but luckily I was buying more. They tried mixing the two, then I guess it didn’t make too good of bubbles, so they served it to G. in a glass. He didn’t like it, so they decided to throw it down the stairs and see if it bubbled up. Some people don’t have the sense to wait till October to put up their Halloween decorations, so the boys decided to get out all the Halloween stuff. I got to put it all away. This weekend J. had so much fun being sick again with the dizzy stuff. He is falling apart. He showed me this neat video clip though. This guy named Paul Potts went on a show in England like our America’s Got Talent and sang. Opera. No training, he’s just always liked it. Everything feels right when he’s singing he says. What does he do for a living? Works in a car phone warehouse. Not anymore. He had real confidence problems and almost didn’t try out. He said when he was a kid, the others at school bullied him and made fun of him. He thought he was insignificant. Now he doesn’t. I loved this story because how often do we do this? We brush people off as unimportant or weird or whatever, and every one of us is an opera star so to speak on the inside. We all have something beautiful and divine in us. We really ought to remember that and believe that and treat each other like that more often. And he won the competition!