Blind spot

[muckefuck]

I admit that it's my own piss-poor planning which has transformed a mere annoyance into a personal crisis.

I hate getting new glasses. Any large purchase (i.e. over $100) is a source of inordinant anxiety for me. Three things make buying eyeglasses especially detestable:

1. Ubiquity. They're the one piece of apparel I wear all the time, everywhere. If I buy a winter coat I end up disliking (and I did), well, at least it's not winter all the time and, even when it is, I'm inside more often than not anyway. But they only time I'm not wearing my glasses is when I'm in bed asleep.
2. Insurance. Medical insurance is involved. Whenever that's the case, the whole deal is at least two to three times more obnoxious than it would be otherwise.
3. Bargains. Sales offers on spectacles are all around; I'm bombarded by them on television, in the post, sometimes even just walking down the street (it's obscene how many optical shops there are around). I get the feeling that I could save a lot of money if I were willing to do a bit of research and exploration to find the best ones; moreover, the consumer baggage from my mother makes me feel like I'm being an absolute shmuck if I don't find the best deal possible.

The end result is that I'd rather get a cavity filled by the dentist than visit an optician. Any day. The corollary is that it takes an emergency to get me into a vision centre.

Today, as I was cleaning my lenses, the frame snapped in two. Right next to the lens, too, so it took me 20 minutes to electrical tape them together in a way that they wouldn't immediately fall off my face. (My steadily worsening eyes and procrastination in getting new glasses means that the old ones are (1) impossible to locate on short notice and (2) hopelessly out-of-date anyway.) I phoned into work, but no one checked the machine until twenty minutes after I arrived, so my student worker was left confused. Then we had a departmental meeting that lasted twice as long as I expected.

I called opticians about getting the frames repaired temporarily, but they all told me to see a jeweller about getting them soldered. The jewellers told me to find a jewellery repair specialist. The first specialist was closed, so I walked a mile to the next one. After waiting ten minutes for him to finish with a walk-in who had bought a watch online and was too idiotic to RTFM, I showed him the problem and he immediately said, "I can't solder this; the metal is too soft. I'd need a laser. You should talk to an optician."

I'm too big to cry. I calmly strode out, crossed the street, and surrendered myself to the healing powers of katsu don and top-notch negitoro. In a couple hours, I'll put myself in the hands of a ophthalmologist, settle for whatever lenses are in stock, and pick out a pair of frames which I don't really like but feel I can live with until they in turn break apart six years from now.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

And, like shoes, it's unreasonable not to have more than one good pair at a time. Obviously, it's an expense I'm going to have to be less pound-foolish about.

(Of course, I absolutely loathe shopping for shoes, too, for similar reasons.)