eyes see getting older
So many reminders of my aging, decaying body and forgetfulness lately. This week specifically.
I don't think I mentioned this about my eye doctor appointment on Wednesday: the doctor asked me about any changes to my eyesight, specifically close-up vision. "I wanted to ask you about that, actually." I then mentioned that although I haven't seen any change to my near-sightedness without glasses on or contacts in, I have noticed a recent change in that it's a little more difficult to read tiny print up close with my contacts in. Is that just a byproduct of middle age?
The depressing answer: basically, yes. The doctor explained that even as middle-age changes how eyesight works even after it's been corrected with lenses, how close I have to hold things to my face with no corrective lenses is not likely to change any time soon. But, "usually starting around your early forties," he said -- that's me! -- sooner or later you find yourself doing the thing you've spent your life seeing middle-aged people do: hold stuff out at a distance to make it easier to read.
I don't actually have to do that just yet. I've merely noticed that it's more of a challenge to focus on small print up close. According to the doctor, my eyesight is still good enough that it would be too early to consider bifocal lenses, and if I attempted to use them now it would do more damage than good. This was heartening to hear, especially when he also said, when it comes to that early transition to greater difficulty reading small text up close, I'm doing considerably better than most people my age.
So my eyesight is basically following the same trajectory as my overall looks: presenting as younger than I actually am. Even my eyes are deceptively youthful! That helped neutralize the depressing realization of middle-age truly beginning to set in.
I always get unusually self-conscious about my eye makeup during eye exams. This is the one time I get truly close, clinical scrutiny of my eyes, and I would pose there's a better than average chance I am the single male patient a given eye doctor's office sees who wears eyeliner and mascara. Yesterday my makeup was not as defined as it usually is, as I wore copper eyeliner to match the pink shirt I was wearing. But, I still had on eyeliner, and blue mascara, all of which the people there were looking at not just closely, but sometimes through magnifying instruments.
Of course they see this all the time on women patients, but I always wonder how they are responding internally to the fact that now it's a guy. I don't have much reason to be self-conscious about it these days, given it's been years since there's been even a hint of discomfort in these situations. I once had an eye doctor demonstrate for him that I could effectively wipe clean a contact lens with my fingertip, and I'm pretty convinced it was because he was skeptical after seeing my long fingernails -- so even my nails have come into play with eye doctor visits. Does he do this shit with women who come in, I wondered? Probably not. That was easily more than a decade ago though. That particular doctor did have one redeeming quality: he was gorgeous.
I can't quite say the same of this week's eye doctor. To his credit, he was nice enough, seemingly just as respectful and respectable as he would have been with any other patient.
I still plan to switch to the Bellevue store for my next appointment in 2020, just because their GM, Wendy, is so beyond-expectations great with customer service that she most deserves my loyalty as a customer. She called me this morning to let me know what I already figured out yesterday: the hardware benefit I had been told at Northgate was still at only a $16 balance will indeed replenish in mid-August, once a full year has passed since I last ordered contact lenses. She also assured me that the insurance issue we had a long conversation with her about back in December, when there was some difficulty with Shobhit's ordering, has been resolved. So I think both Shobhit and I should now be all good on the eye doctor front.
Shobhit and I made frittatas for dinner last night, the first time we did that. It turned out fairly well, except that in an overcompensating effort to make Shobhit happy with the salt content, I dumped way too much of it in, making it too salty even for his preferences. It was still edible, at least, and the next one should come out even better.
We didn't watch any TV together, though. Shobhit wanted to spend the evening watching clips of the Peter Strzok hearing before Congress yesterday, which I really had no interest in. Instead, I watched the season finale of The Handmaid's Tale, which, unless season 3 does a very early about-face with its plot line marinating in women's suffering, I am officially done with. After that, I watched the season premiere of the new HBO miniseries Sharp Objects, which I am on board with and look forward to keeping up with -- even though Shobhit was basically right when he read the description and said, "That looks depressing."
Somewhat oddly for mid-summer, I now have a bunch of new TV to keep up with:
Sharp Objects, HBO, 8 episodes, every Sunday through August 26
GLOW season 2, Netflix, out for a while but so far I've only watched the first episode
Harlots season 2, just released on Hulu, 8 episodes starting July 11; apparently the first two episodes were released that same day, but I haven't yet had a chance to get to either of them
A Series of Unfortunate Events season 2, Netflix; God knows if I'll ever even get to this one
Alex Strangelove -- oh wait, I thought this was TV but it's not! I just discovered it's actually a Netflix original movie; still, I heard on a podcast it's like a bit of an edgier gay love story than the very G-rated (but also enjoyable) Love, Simon so that piqued my interest
I also have general interest in Dear White People and Atlanta and just haven't yet found the time for them. I also have movies to see two to three times a week, you know!
Anyway. Back to the laundry. I got distracted by the shows I was watching, and so the lights load sat in a dryer not working for too long. Damn it! So I had to go to bed before it finished drying. Those clothes won't get put away until late tonight now, because I had to go to bed before it was finished. I might have asked Shobhit to put them away, but he fell asleep on the living room couch. He eventually came to bed sometime in the middle of the night, but I don't know what time that was.
Also? For the second time, I did a dumb thing with my alarm this morning. My alarm goes off, I turn it off, totally intending to get up. Then I roll over and decide I'll just wait for a minute. Stupid move! I fell back asleep again. I mean, not for too long -- Shobhit woke me up when he told me it was 5:31. So I only overslept by about 15 minutes. Still, every minute is valuable! And if I keep doing this, one of these days I'm going to wind up oversleeping for much longer.
I mean, not that anyone at work is going to give a shit, really. Scott is only occasionally here before I am, and I am here about an hour earlier than at least half the people who work here. There are literally zero people here who are sticklers for the hours I keep. I'm the only one who ever worries about it. Only one time has Scott even said something when I was gone for lunch for more than ninety minutes, and even then he was flipping me shit more than giving me any official admonishment in his capacity as my supervisor. I work on salary anyway, I get my work done, I'm a productive member of the team!
[posted 12:29 pm]