glasses

I went to the wonderful optician in Arlington Center, feeling extremely foolish. I hate feeling like something is wrong, and not knowing what, when I can only point to symptoms that are so subtle or nonspecific it looks like I'm making a hysterical fuss about nothing. (See also: flickering fluorescent lights, mold smells, unusual side effects.) "I don't know what could be the matter. It's not like I'm having trouble seeing, or that my glasses started being uncomfortable. It's just that I usually need to clean them a couple of times a day, and now this side seems to get dirty almost as soon as I put them on."

He looked at me. He took the glasses off my face and looked at them. He turned them around in his hands and said "hmmm." Then he went into the other room for a few minutes, and came back with my very clean glasses. They felt ok...but they had felt ok before. I wiggled my nose and tried to wiggle my ears. Had he done anything besides cleaning? It seemed rude to ask, so I was still wondering when he asked me, "What did you do to them? Did you try to adjust the fit, or bend the earpiece?" Glasses don't bend this far out of shape of their own accord.

I hadn't thought I did anything to them. I was nearly a mile away before I figured out what had probably caused the problem. Like many of you, I read in bed, and sometimes I fall asleep with my glasses on. Now that my prescription is low enough to use fashionable-looking, flimsy little wire frames, that's more dangerous than I expect.

uncomfortable nuisance

I go to a fair amount of trouble to avoid wearing uncomfortable shoes. (In places where women use shoes to signal "I am dressing up" or "I am taking this event seriously," I can confuse people who pay attention to these things, because my shoe wardrobe goes up to Marginally Acceptable and then stops, despite generous offers to buy me more formal or fashionable shoes. On the other foot, where the shoe-code is being used to signal, "Don't worry, I'm really a nice girl trying to follow polite gender norms even if I sometimes need to work among men in jeans and no makeup," I don't go along with it and there's no confusion at all.)

The shoes I wear with my interview suit have a very low heel and the toes aren't pointed. They don't pinch anywhere, and they don't give me blisters. I can walk a mile or so in them, and often have. They aren't padded like modern walking shoes, but they have more padding than the tennis shoes I wore in the '70s. I remember reading that bit of _Dandelion Wine_ and going to the front hall to try to see where the magic could be in something almost as ordinary and familiar as my own feet.

I've noticed a problem when I wear my dress shoes for more than an hour or so, or when I walk or drive a significant distance in them. It's not that they hurt while I'm wearing them. It's that I get deep, painful, cracks in my heels afterwards. I don't know if it's the shoes or the nylons (well, nylon knee-highs. But it's all the same at heel level) or body position or some combination. But I don't like it a bit.