glasses

I recently got glasses.
I'm kind of a cyclops--I have one eye with 20/20 vision, and the other that's half-blind. My brain has worked overtime to compensate, though, and my good eye is extremely dominant, so I hardly even notice that one half of my vision is pretty cloudy. I can read, see distances, see close up just fine without correction.
When they discovered my bad eye, however, in third grade, I got a contact lens to correct it.
Except for a pair of glasses in seventh grade that I loathed, I always wore that contact.
In theory.
Contacts are kind of a pain, especially for forgetful, lazy people like myself. You kind of need to care for the lenses, since by extension, the lenses go in your eyes. I knew this, but never maintained the strict regimen of cleaning, enzyme tablets, etc, that I was supposed to. When I was post-college, and they invented the one-solution-does-it-all stuff, I thought, surely now I have no excuses.
I still hardly wore the thing. See, they're itchy! And when you only have one in, you can really tell how itchy it is! And if something gets in your eye, you might as well be blind! Sometimes my eye would just start tearing up and I'd have to take the stupid thing out. Usually this was in a place where I had dirty hands and no place to put the lens.
Legally, I am supposed to wear "corrective lenses" while driving. Realistically, I maintained an uneasy middle ground, where I'd try to remember to put it in if it was dark out. Which I often forgot to do.
So I felt really brilliant (or stupid: why did it take so long?) when I decided to give glasses a try again. Some people have reading glasses; I would have driving glasses.
I got the eye exam, paid for the lenses, hoped they weren't too geeky (I think glasses can be very cute--Think Tina Fey--but I'm not all hip to glass selection).
Then I put them on at home and felt like I'd stepped into a funhouse with weird mirrors.
It felt like I was watching my life on a movie screen--all strangely distorted and 'framed'.
And when I kept them on for more than twenty minutes, my brain hurt.
Plus, when I tried to drive, I quickly determined it was far more scary/dangerous to have them on.
I was very scared that I'd made a very expensive mistake. But since I'd plunked down the money, I kept wearing them, and they got better. First, it was just during the day--night was still scary. But then, driving home from Ojai after the fires, I wore the glasses the whole way home. I was very tired and slightly headachy afterwards, but since then, I can hardly notice my brain adjust after I put them on.
It is a very good feeling to drive legally (even if I don't notice a big difference in my driving when I put on the glasses). It is a very good feeling not to have to deal with ^%$*^% contact lenses.
Everyone is happy.
Plus, Dyami said the glasses kind of make me look like a 'sexy librarian.' Which is really the look I was going for. (Raspy voice: Hey, Sweet-Cheeks. Can I scan your (wink) library card? ) Really, I secretly long to be a librarian...or own a failing bookstore, where there aren't any customers, and I ahve a huge inventory that I read all day. This fantasy would also involve cats. And an underfed emplooyee that would scoop the kitty litter and remember to feed them.
Now that I have the glasses, I'm almost there!