Suddenly I See-ee

Though I knew it was in excess of ten years, I wasn't sure exactly how long I'd been wearing the same pair of contact lenses. Last week I visited the eye doctor for the first time in six years, and he told me: twelve years.

There is no good reason for this. I think the issue was...me. Just last week the spousal unit—in regards to some random half-zip fleece thing I'd worn to the gym—said, "I gotta say, Vernie. No one holds on to a sweatshirt like you." And I guess that's true. Despite excessive spending in some areas like books, shoes (occasionally), self-preservation (this would include haircuts and, I don't know, private pilates sessions?), babysitting ($20/hr. = ouch!), restaurants (occasionally) and more books, I am by nature someone who doesn't think she needs more than one random half-zip fleece thing. Call me crazy.

Nor did I need new contact lenses if the ones I had were perfectly fine. This didn't stop the Eye Guy from reaming me out for thirty minutes, though. See (ha! get it?!) here, Eye Guy, I wanted to say, if I felt like listening to someone berate me for my human failings, I'd go to church, thank you. But I didn't. I agreed that I was an awful, ridiculous person and that there is no one in the world except me who would do such a brainless, lame, potentially dangerous thing. Then he checked out my eyes and I almost laughed out loud when he announced that by some miracle of the Eye Gods, I had no cornea damage.

Then I waltzed out of there with a new pair of disposable lenses and 20/20 vision. This is good. But it is also not-so-good because there are all sorts of things I was fortunate not to notice before. In other words, I've been vacuuming. A lot.