Aye, my Eye

Probably should have started the title of this post with Oy instead of Aye, but I can't resist terrible puns. So I went to the optometrist last night (he lives in Marblehead, where I grew up - it's on Boston's North Shore - just a few streets down from the house I grew up in. But since I never went to Marblehead's public schools, I didn't know his kids or anything. I asked about his commute, since Marblehead to Somerville can't be fun, and he explained that his business has been a family business since the 1920's, so he couldn't very well move it. But funny that I fled Marblehead for Somerville and he stopped living in Somerville to move to Marblehead.)

Anyway, he's a very good optometrist. He had a cool machine that figures out your prescription (or gets him about 95% there.) You just rest your chin on the thingie and it shines different amounts of light into your eye and it figures it out from there - basically when it shines the light into your eye, your retina reflects the light back. The machine measures the particular shape of your retinal reflection and compares that to standard 20/20 vision, calculates the differences and from there produces a prescription in about 30 seconds. Pretty cool. I didn't know the specifics of the retina reflecting part but I guessed there was some kind of reflection/light intake measurement involved and figured out the rest of it from there. Then I felt smart for the rest of the appointment. Hey, I gotta give myself props where I can, okay?

I went for contacts but because my right eye has an astigmatism with nearsightedness, I need a weighted contact - the contact is unevenly shaped to correct for the astigmatism and the contact is therefore heavier at the bottom so that it stays at the right orientation. Except my eyelids are too tight, or something, and both the contacts he tried were moving all over the place. I had this problem with my last batch of contacts, too - I had about a 50% success rate on the right contact (monthly disposables) so every month it was kind of a crapshoot. So there's one more standard lens he was thinking of trying, or we could move straight into custom. I'm disappointed not to have new contacts - for one thing, I can't take an Ashtanga class with glasses because I sweat so much they'll slide right off; also I can't wear mascara with glasses - but I'm happy to know what the problem is and to be on the way to solving it.

And also, TGIF.

Kitten update: Zoe isn't dead yet but she's not eating much and nature is taking its course; I finally feel like this is the right decision (she doesn't seem too unhappy.) Simone is settling in well - she keeps trying to be friendly to Inty and Zoe but they both persist in hating her; however, Simone likes to crawl under the covers and both Inty and Zoe are happy enough to sit on top of a chirping, purring lump. I guess as long as there's a sheet separating them, they don't realise that there's another cat under there... which made me realise that I totally give my cats too much credit for brains.