Birmingham Blues

Today I took a lovely three-hour tour of the optometrist’s office, courtesy of an obscenely overbooked appointment schedule. Seriously, I’ve had complete physicals, bloodwork and all, waiting room to copay, that took less than a third as long (thank you, Dr. Renée). I was on a quest to replace the glasses that one of my cats “disappeared” the other night. Yes, I know it’s not a verb, but it’s certainly descriptive of the event.

I left my glasses on the bedside table Monday night, and on Tuesday morning, they were gone. It’s not unusual to find them on the floor; despite cats’ reputation as graceful creatures, mine can clear a table of books, pictures, pens, pencils, and – yes – eyeglasses with the lumbering efficiency of a bulldozer. However, this time my poor abused glasses were not on the floor. Nor were they shoved up under the bed or the table. Not behind the table tangled in among the electric cords. Not bundled up in the bedcovers. In short, one or both cats have successfully pulled off a glassnapping. Unfortunately, I can’t read the ransom note.

When one reaches a certain age, replacing eyeglasses can be an expensive proposition. No longer can one get by with ordinary lenses; one needs progressive lenses. This is not a commentary on the political leanings of the lens, but rather a sad assessment of the state of middle-aged eyes – and vanity. Who wants glasses with that big ol’ line through the middle?

I believe my vision is fairly atypical. Rather than requiring corrective lenses to read a book or a menu, I need them to drive and do other things that utilize distance vision. So you may imagine how safe the roads of Birmingham were this afternoon as I depended on my dilated, unfocused, un-vision-corrected eyes to negotiate my way back from Five Points and into carpool line.

It turns out that there is one advantage to my unusual eyesight – I didn’t have to cough up the cash for progressive lenses this time. My optometrist, who is a kind and understanding woman (the primary reason that I wait around so long to see her), thinks I’ll be able to get by with distance correction only. So the new glasses are on order and should be here in two weeks. In the meantime, save yourselves. Save your children and dogs. Stay off the road.

Just kidding. Through some, shall we say, creative financing, I was able to secure a second, cheapo pair, without all the bells and whistles, that will be ready tomorrow. Until then, I’ll avoid driving as much as possible.

Yes, I’m channeling Jennifer B here, although no one can bring Teh Funny like she does.  And she’s far too young to need progressive lenses. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Suburban Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.