Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Femtastic gets new glasses

So technically I wear glasses, although if you asked most of the people I’ve hung with i the last few years they’d say “oh her? No, she doesn’t wear glasses.” And when you insisted that I did they’d be very “nu-uh!” and there might be eventual fisticuffs. But I really am someone who wears glasses.

It’s not that I have trouble seeing stuff – I see fine. But apparently my seeing fine requires major heavy lifting by my eyebones. Apparently I’m near-sighted in one of my eyes, and yet far-sighted in the other one. No really. It’s so rare it even has a name – Antimetropia. An·tee·me·tro·peeah. AntimetropiaAntimetropiaAntimetropia... Say it fast, it will totally mess up your tongue! Now I’m all “lookit me, I got a fancy eye condition! I now own a word that nobody else but eye condition enthusiasts – eye goo groupies if you will – will know anything about! I’ll get a pin that says “Ask me about my Antimetropia!” Everyone else will totally wish that they had Antimetropia – all the cool kids are doing it these days!”

Anyway, although my antimetropia (giggle, tee-hee!) doesn’t impair my actual vision, a side-effect of making your eyes work really hard is that they get tired. And like most sorts, when they get tired they get cranky. And the eye-version of a tantrum just happens to be a migraine headache. Bleah.

I started getting the headaches, and then right after wearing the glasses, 10 years ago or more. Here’s what I discovered about me wearing glasses: I look good in glasses. They make me look smart! Good-smart! I’d even go so far as to say they make me look hot-smart, like the naughty librarian right before she whips off her glasses and lets her hair come flying down! Not that I have naughty librarian body or hair or whip off my glasses or let my hair fly or would continue to look hot-smart if I did whip off the glasses and let the hair fly. I’m mostly look just like me, but average-smart and kind of disheveled. But with the glasses? Look out, baby! I even got this pair once that were purple, which I would have thought “no way, that’s too goofy for me.” and would have totally avoided, but then when I tried them on they looked so cool! Fun and also still hot-smart, and I made this classy chain-thing to hang them around my neck and I was rockin’ the glasses look.

But then right after I moved away from my former super-good job, with the Capital-M Money and darn good benefits, and came home to the land of the rare good job and even more rare benefits (of which I had none) my eyes had the audacity to change. Not enough so that I couldn’t see still, but enough that wearing the glasses started causing the headaches. Instead of the headache-stopping which was the whole point of them. (the whole point above and beyond the looking cool – I still looked cool. I just looked cool as I lay on the couch, planning to drill a hole in my head to let out the demons.) So I decided to just stop wearing my glasses until I could afford new ones.

Fast forward to now, with the new good job and SUPER-UBER-GOOD benefits, and also the return in full force of the migraines from my eyes who are officially done doing all the heavy-lifting w/out help, and it’s time to get glasses again. And remember, I’m pro-glasses because of the smartness-making and the possible naughty librarian thing, right?

Tangent: As much as I like wearing glasses, I hate going to the eye doctor. Specifically I hate the eye tests. They’re too much pressure! I hate tests full of subjective questions (“raise your hands as soon as you think you hear something?” “how bad is the pain, on a scale of 1 to Z?”, “do the voices in your head sound angry or more scared?”) where you can’t study and therefore can’t be sure you answer them right! What if I think I can see more clearly on this one… when really I see slightly more clearly on this one…? One time I tried “pass” but that’s apparently not an option. Well fine. (end tangent)

The last time I got my eyes checked (about 5 years ago) I trotted right back to work and finished my day, even though I looked COMPLETELY STONED and freaked everybody out. It was a little tricky to read things, but not impossible. Well, apparently they’ve really suped-up the dilation stuff, because holy crap I could not see ANYTHING! They dropped my eyes and sent me out to this waiting room to wait for the drops to work their eye-bulging magic, and so I did what you do in waiting rooms: you read crappy celebrity magazines and judge the poor, broken celebrities who have it all and can’t seem to keep from crashing it all into walls and down into ditches and stuff. A little waiting, a little judging, a little feeling superior to someone rich and famous just because I’m wearing underwear… good times.

After about 10 minutes I gave up completely because I couldn’t even make the big, bold headlines clear enough to read! Did Brittany really bake her kids? How horrible! Is it possible that Madonna sold peyote to a blind nun prostitute? Gosh, I guess? Oh right, like George Clooney would get into a fight with Fabio! (note: the last one turned out to be true. Oh George…) Not only did the drops hit my poor pupils like a tone of eye-bricks, but they stayed like that for HOURS! It took at least another hour after I got back to work before I could read anything and several more hours before I stopped looking like everything I was seeing was made out of cotton candy and sequins and smelled like hot strawberry-Jello.

Still, in the end I had me a brand-spankin’-new prescription with which to go get me new glasses. Even with the specter of having to get bifocals this time I was still excited about picking out my new smart-hotness accessory. Maybe something in a hot-pink-leopard print? You’ll have to wait and see. Yes, my friends, it’s true – TO BE CONTINUED!

Next: Femtastic hates getting her new glasses.

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