That truly is the question. 

The aging process has bombarded my body with achy joints, gray hair, ugly brown spots on my skin and the most painful of all….bad eyesight.  I have methodically combated all the other age indicators with handfuls of glucosomine, bottles of hair dye, dollar store make-up (ok, I’m cheap) and now, glasses, or contacts, or maybe glasses and contacts.  Ahhh.  That is the other question.

I’ve known my eyesight was slipping for nearly ten years.  The defining moment is embedded in my memory.  I was enjoying my nightly ritual of cozy pajama pants, hot tea or Grand Marnier, how crazy my day was decided which, and a good book.  I realized I couldn’t read the print.  It was fuzzy.  Was it a Grand Marnier night?  Nooo.  Then why couldn’t I read the words?  They were fading in and out of focus.  Well, after several nights of the same experience, I drove myself to the local drugstore, pajama pants and all, and bought my first pair of reading glasses.  1.0 on the magnifying Richter scale.  Problem solved.

Well, the problem was solved temporarily.  As all of you know, aging waits for no one.  As the years progressed, my vision worsened to the point of where my dollar store glasses (yes, they have glasses too!  Great store.) are now a 2.0.  I need them for everything. 

Well, not everything.  Apparently, my distance vision is nearly perfect.  I learned this fact when I broke down and went to the eye doctor.  With all the studying I’ve been doing for my new insurance gig, it was time I got a regular eye exam.  My goal was to alleviate the constant put ’em on, take ’em off, put ’em on, take ’em off, rollercoaster ride of cheap reading glasses.  So, to solve the problem, I could either get, fancy no-line, progressive glasses with smart frames to make me look über intelligent, or cool contacts. 

I opted for the latter.  Now I know there are people out there that have worn contact lenses for almost their entire lives.  They got their first pair in the womb.  They flip them in and out of their eyes with a deftness that would rival a surgeon.  I, on the other hand, have hands like a monkey, ok scratch that, monkeys look like they are good at small motor skills.  I have hands that are good for large motor skills, ones that wring, squeeze and manipulate muscles for a living.

Learning to handle contacts is a skill I can now say I have. Sort of.  I’ve learned how to pull my eyelid back, make sure my contact’s not inside out, (it has to make a bowl, not flatten out) grab it like a taco if it is, turn it around, balance it on the tip of my finger but make sure my finger is not too wet…open wide… hold my breath… zero in on my baby blues and pray it sucks onto my eyeball.  It now takes me an average of 3 attempts instead of the previous 20 to accomplish this.

So, after all this, the cleaning and the dropping and the cleaning again and the losing (yes I lost one for a day) and the burning and blurred vision and the three trips back to the eye doctor to try different lenses…. I’ve decided I don’t like them.  Wah.  I really wanted contacts to be the answer to my reading vision woes.  I wanted to be that chic, middle-aged woman who looked like she had perfect eyesight.  The one that didn’t have to struggle to find her glasses when reading menus, labels and her cell phone.

My nearly perfect distance vision kept me from being that lady.  I learned that bifocal contacts are a blended balance between a correction with your near and far-sighted vision. In striving to get my perfect reading vision, my distance vision became slightly blurry.  My daily life right now is a constant struggle to attain clarity and find a clear direction.  The last thing I need to do is cloud it up with blurry vision.

So with somewhat a defeated attitude, I hope “Guys still make passes at girls who wear glasses.”  In the meantime,  just sign me,

Little Miss Four Eyes.