Monday, January 30th (“Oh…! You’re… FORTY!”)

I either spent yesterday taking care of myself, or running myself ragged… or half-and-half. I’m still not awake yet so I’m not sure. I started off with a visit to the chiropractor/massage therapist, and since that’s close to the Oaks Mall I decided to swing by there for a couple of reasons. I have a gift certificate to Bath & Body Works (thank you Barbara!), I need to do some bra shopping, and I need to get my eyes checked. While I could do the last two anywhere, I did need to go to the mall for the B&BW; so I decided to take the day off from work and see if I could knock all that shit out in one day.

I got to the mall at around 11. It turned out the optometrist could fit me in, but not until 3. I knew I could drag my other stuff out at the mall for about two hours, or a little more if I also had lunch, so since the mall is about as opposite across town as you can get from my house, I opted for not driving back home but to stick it out at the mall.

I made my first brave stop at Victoria’s Secret. I used to buy their bras, and while pricey, they last a long time. So I was on the fence. I mean, bras are pretty expendable with me (by the way, I bitched about bra buying a few years ago and everyone had some really good suggestions for their favorite bras… and that really helpful post got eaten/lost in The Great Blog Migration of 2009. Curses!). I tend to buy cheap bras, with about a $25 cap because I am cheap. VS bras run more in the line of twice that. However, when I’ve bought them before, they’ve lasted three times as long. Math tells me, then, that I’m actually spending MORE on the cheap bras because I buy them more often… so I should suck it up and at least get one good one.

Not to mention, in the back of my head was the idea that while Sears may have some bras that are pretty-but-not-too-frilly and for what I’m willing to pay… I can actually get fitted for a bra at Victoria’s Secret. Show of hands, ladies — who has been fitted for a bra? Did you find out you were wearing the wrong size, in spite of reading how to fit yourself and breaking out your own measuring tape? Because I did. Both measure myself, and find out I was wearing the wrong size. I’d gotten the band size right, but not the cup size… I was off by… well, let’s say quite a lot. I don’t even want to say; let’s just agree that it’s a double-letter and that this explains a lot of my… er, spillage issues (“great tracts of land”!). And the fact that the elastic commits suicide after a few weeks.

So from now on my undergarments will look like something someone’s Russian great-grandmother would hang on the line to dry… but that shit will FIT. Then, I admit, I went to Sears to buy a couple more, in the right size, but cheaper. Every-day, t-shirt types, and a sports one also for walking.

After that I decided to break for lunch, and slipped across the parking lot to BJ’s, where I got my usual (as pictured above). I can get it without onions, and it’s one of the only things on the menu that doesn’t come with something I’m allergic to. Fortunately, it’s really tasty and I do not mind at all getting it every time!

Then it was off to Bath & Body Works, and my timing was perfect because they were having a buy-three-get-two-free sale on what I wanted, and that means I even still have some of my gift certificate left. ROCK!

After this I needed a little sit-down, and got a soda and sat in one of the comfy chairs in the seating areas in front of a department store (usually I only ever see old people and bored husbands in those chairs) and sat and knit and drank my soda.

Then…. it was off to the eye exam. I got there quite a bit early, because I wanted to pick out frames before I was blind, and I’m glad I got there early because I had a really, really hard time making up my mind. Apparently big chunky plastic frames with bling are in this year… and guess what style I don’t like?! Yeah. Also, right now, I have frames I really, really like. And I was able to get the ear-pieces bent around; they hook over my ears and don’t slide off, which is fucking AWESOME when you are a crafter who leans over and looks down a lot. However, lately, I’ve been having to take my glasses off if I’m crafting up close for more than about ten minutes, because it’s getting harder to focus when I look up. And the part that makes them great – hooking over the ears – is also a pain to just take off and put on. You can’t just whip them off, and slap them back on again.

So it’s time for a change. And apparently more of a change than I thought, because… at one point during the exam, during all the “which looks better, one or two” stuff, I was looking with both eyes and it just wasn’t lining up. Major double-vision, and even though she kept fiddling with it, I kept having it, and … it wasn’t that she didn’t believe me… it was that she … well, maybe she didn’t believe me. But I kept telling her it was there. And here’s the thing — I haven’t had an eye exam in about three years. And in these glasses I’m wearing now, the left eye is still fine, but the right eye is blurry. If I close my left, I can see with my right (through the glasses) for about five feet… and then… blursville. (I am near-sighted, by the way.) And I’m a slight hypochondriac, so I’m thinking all kinds of things from my astigmatism getting worse to early cataracts, especially when she keeps saying that I shouldn’t be having double-vision with what she’s doing.

Then… drumroll, please… she looks at my chart again and pops out with “Oh…! You’re… FORTY!” and since she looks like she’s about twelve, it was *really* funny. I mean, I just busted out and could not stop laughing. She didn’t say it in a mean way, just in a … I don’t know, it sounded like the punchline of a joke, and I just lost it. OooOOOOOoOO! You’re…. FOOOOOOORRRRRRTY! Seriously, even an hour later I was still chuckling. She makes a few more adjustments, a few more “which is better, two or three” moments, and then she sort of … clears her throat and asks me how I feel about bifocals. Again, I had to laugh.

See, G-ma had bifocals. And Daddy had bifocals. So sort of like when I was growing up I always thought I’d get a tattoo because a lot of people around me had tattoos so I thought that was just what you did…? I always thought, from the moment I first got glasses, that bifocals were in my future. I feel more relieved, more “jeez, about time!” than anything else. But, sadly, so much for getting glasses made in about an hour. I’m going to get what’s called progressive lenses, which they don’t make on site and take about ten days to get made and get sent to them. So I still feel sort of goofy in one eye, the feeling which has been irking me and was the pokey-pokey to get me moving towards a new eye exam.

EDITED TO AD: OK, I totally accidentally just hit the POST button, which means my brain must think I’m done with this super-long recap of yesterday. That’s kind of funny! SO ANYWAY. Took the day off, talked to a lot of people about my boobs, and got new glasses. That pretty much sums it up, if you’ve skimmed down to the end. 🙂