With my illness finally on the wane and a somewhat surprisingly free weekend, I seized a day of accomplishment. While I did not get a much-needed hair cut (my free time did not reveal itself early enough to schedule an appointment, so I shall continue to brush my bangs to one side for a few more weeks), I did my taxes and had my eyes checked.
My vision has seemed blurrier lately, and while gesturing during rehearsal the other day I knocked my glasses off and one of the lenses popped out. I snapped it back in place, but noted that my glasses were beginning to show their age. When I realized I had a free afternoon today, I found an optometrist near me with appointments available that I could schedule online.
My prescription actually hasn't changed as much as I had expected, although I am going to try a slightly different fit for my contacts. I declined the optometrist's suggestion that I get dilated for a retina check, explaining that I could just get it done the next time I visited my parents (she seemed a bit skeptical about this plan, perhaps because she doubts my claim to have a retina specialist for a father. After all, if I did have such connections, why would I go a few years without getting dilated? "What's with that?" her cocked eyebrow seemed to say). I did, however, ask if we could check for farsightedness.
"Really?" she said. "I usually don't do that unless you're over 40. How old are you?"
"33," I said. "But I've noticed that I'm having to hold things a little closer to read them, or change the angle."
Actually, it wasn't so much that I noticed it as it was Rachel pointing it out to me a few weeks ago with a laugh about my getting old. I quelled my displeasure at the thought of needing reading glasses already by recalling that I am the Waterhouse sibling without a single gray hair.
And so we checked my close-up vision and discovered that, in fact, it was my astigmatism that is causing the problem. It's in both eyes now, and it's gotten worse.
"I can prescribe you glasses you could wear over your contacts that would correct it," the optometrist offered.
"Which would defeat the point of wearing contacts, right?" I replied. She also offered to fit me for toric lenses, but I didn't like the hard lenses I tried a few years ago when the astigmatism was first diagnosed. No, I'll just continue to live with less-than-perfect vision when I'm wearing contacts, and get myself a new pair of glasses to wear a little more often. Perhaps from here.
Lest you think I was all business this Saturday, though, I'll also reassure you that I attended to three other much-neglected tasks: I wove 10 inches on my green rug, and I gave Natasha some serious lap-time while reading the seventh Harry Potter book. Which I read in one day.
You recall how I tend to binge on books after a forced abstention? Parent-Teacher conferences + musical rehearsals + a school internet connection that's so slow that I have been spending most of the minutes I have to spare at home downloading everything I could possibly need or want to refer to in upcoming lessons for off-line use. I have read for pleasure too little the past few weeks, so I finished my recent return to the Rowling series by reading the last (784 page) book in a day.
And now I feel the usual post-major-series melancholia.
I also feel as though I accomplished what I needed to today.
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