Clear-Sighted

It turns out my eyes weren't as bad as I'd thought. In fact, they'd barely changed. My current glasses are eight years old, and the doctor said getting new ones wasn't urgent but might be a good idea just because of wear. After this long, they're probably a bit scratched, even if the scratches are microscopic. I'm nowhere near needing bifocals. It may be a little more challenging to read while wearing my glasses that correct distance vision, but even with my distance vision corrected, I tested out at 20/20 for close vision. With correction, I've got 20/15 distance vision -- better than "normal." She did tweak my contact lens prescription to see if that would help matters. There's a very slight difference between my eyes, but not enough to make a huge difference, so for the convenience of being able to use the same lenses on either eye, one eye was very slightly overcorrected and the other was very slightly undercorrected. We're trying going for the exact prescription on each eye to see if that helps, since the overcorrection may have caused some of the reading problems. I've got a test pair to see if this works before I actually order more lenses. Right now, I'm working on the computer while wearing contacts for the first time in ages, other than the time when my agent called as I was getting ready for ballet and I had to consult the computer. I hardly notice that I'm wearing corrective lenses, other than that the street outside looks a lot clearer.

I'm afraid I'm going to get the "cataract surgery effect," though, in which once your vision is corrected, you suddenly realize just how dirty your house is. When I'm at home, I just keep a pair of glasses on the coffee table for watching TV and otherwise don't correct my vision at home. Since I'm testing the new contacts and getting ready to go out, I'm seeing my house with clear vision for the first time in ages, and EEEK. I don't plan to make a habit of wearing lenses all day, though.

In fact, the doctor suggested I keep doing what I've been doing, which is wear glasses/lenses just to watch TV or drive. If reading is a problem while wearing contacts to correct the distance vision, I can try the very lowest level of drugstore reading glasses. Otherwise, she suggests I get small glasses frames, maybe rimless on the bottom, to serve as natural bifocals, reading with no lenses from below the glasses. I've been going to this doctor for nearly 20 years, and what I like about her is that she actually asks about how you see and use lenses in daily life instead of just writing a prescription. If I worked in a regular office where I had to drive to get there and deal with people I needed to be able to see while also needing to read, I'd probably need something different (my eyes got a lot worse when I had a day job and wore contacts all the time. They've become a lot better since I started working at home -- maybe I should have added that to the intangible benefits list for writing full-time).

I may go shopping for new glasses in the next month or so, just because it wouldn't hurt to have another extra pair (my TV pair is more than ten years old) that's a little more up-to-date. Now, though, I'm off for a morning out. I'm plant-sitting for some friends and need to go water the plants, and I pass some stores along the way, so I may do a little shopping. I don't know if I'm going to do the actual buying at this point, but I haven't been shopping in so long that I don't even know what's out there. Mostly, I suspect I'll be buying yarn.

And then there's a scene I need to write that came to me last night, although I'm wavering as to how essential it is to the story. It may just be a character "doing laundry" scene, but I think there's something else going on. I can always cut it later if I write it and discover I don't need it, and writing it may tell me something about the characters that ends up being important even if the scene doesn't need to go in the final book.