Until very recently, my vanity has trounced my impatience, and I’ve been a loyal contact lens wearer for many years despite the non-trivial expense, annoyance and inconvenience. I’m lucky to have a great eye-care benefits package, and at my last optometrist visit, I ordered the Cadillac of glasses, with designer frames and lenses that include UV photo chrome, or “photo grays” as us old-timers call them. I’ve always been hesitant to get photo grays because I’ve been mentally stuck in the 80’s, when the technology was fairly new and there were constant complaints about how dark they got and how long it took the lenses to return to normal while going from outdoors to indoors. I could just kick myself now for not getting them sooner. Those photo grays are the best thing that have ever happened to my eyes. I would normally wear contacts all day and supplement my ever-weakening vision with reading glasses, which meant having to keep track of both reading glasses and sunglasses in the summer, not to mention at least one round a day of removing and re-wetting the lenses due to dryness. I was up to three pairs of reading glasses-one for home, one for my purse, and one at the office. When I got the new photo grays, I decided to experiment for a week and wear nothing but the new glasses. I’m totally sold. It’s amazing to be able to walk outside and have the lenses gently and magically adjust to any light level. It’s completely seamless and it feels insanely luxurious to me.
The other advantage is that I can actually...see things now. No more squinting to read labels at the grocery store. No more digging reading glasses out of my purse at Mass to follow along in the missalette. No more losing track of my sunglasses. It’s changed the entire ball game. I put the contact lenses in to apply makeup, then pop them right back out and put on my trusty new glasses and go about my day with no anxiety about not being able to read small print or forgetting my sunglasses. And besides, glasses are hip and cool now, right? It’s “the thing.” A fashion accessory. Right? So I’m cool, right? They’re forest-green and they look nice. Not like those awful things I was forced to wear as a kid. Affirm me, darn it! This has been a very difficult emotional adjustment, if a very easy visual one.
I’ve been hinting on this blog off and on for some time now about a Special Endeavor that I intend to embark on, but I’m being a big old chicken about it for no good reason, and I haven’t quite gotten up the gumption to pull the trigger on it yet. As these things go, it’s fairly low-risk, but I’m nervous about it Now that I don’t have The Move as an excuse for avoiding things anymore (hence seeing both the eye doc and the dentist in the same week) and I’m going to have to pull it together and actually get started. And you, my readers, shall be the first to have a gander at the premiere. Now that I’ve made my intent public, I have to follow through. Deep breath. Part of the problem is that I have almost the opposite condition of narcissism, in which I feel that no one wants to see me or hear me and that nothing I say or do has the slightest importance in the world, as opposed to feeling like The Entire World Must Know My Every Passing Thought, which seems to be the prevailing attitude these days. Plus there are some technical snafus that have to be worked through and I’m feeling a bit frozen by all of it. But I am going to pour hot water on that ice and get going. It’s time.
--Kristen McHenry
Fantastic, Kristen!
Thanks for the "heads up" on the UV lenses that adjust to light. Looking forward to your "premiere" coming up. Best wishes on your new endeavor. Exciting!