This morning, far too early: dragged my bod out of warm, comfy bed, got the stove going. Staggered about for a while, slowly returning to consciousness. At far too reasonable an hour, pulled on a coat, got into the car, drove into Montpelier -- on the way to the first eye exam I've undergone in many years. Many, many years.
My vision's always been excellent. As long as I'm rested, anyway. That, in fact, has been the surefire barometer of how I'm doing in that department: sufficient shuteye -- see good. Snooze deficient: see less good. Drastically short on Z's: start to see bad. Take 40 or 60 or 80 winks: see more gooder. Yada yada yada.
These last couple of months have featured me having to get up every morning and get the stove going, the house good and chilly due to arctic conditions outside, the stove taking a while to get cranking out the heat, me knowing that if I don't get up early on mornings of genuine cold that the house will remain freakin' freezing if I don't pull my adorable booty out from under the covers. And once I rise and dirty myself up, there's no retreating back to warm, comfy bed afterward. Add to that periodic creeping discontent from being here instead of, say, Madrid. Add to that big time bouts of work. One result: me sometimes waking up in the wee hours, unable to get back to sleep. Producing snooze-deficient nights. (Refer to previous paragraph.)
I've noticed in recent days that my eyes are tired from all of that, tired enough that my vision's been less than its usual wonderful wonderfulness. My drivers license gets renewed next week, the Vermont DMV's gonna want me to look into their funny eye-test thingy. I decided not to chance getting into a wrangle with them about vision stuff, made an appointment with an optometrist. For this morning.
The optometrist: a fairly wacky Asian woman named Lois who began talking the moment she picked up the clipboard (holding pages and pages the friendly munchkin behind the counter had given me to fill out, pre-exam, sheets covered on both sides with overabundant rows of boxes waiting to be checked (or not) and blank spaces waiting to be unblanked with personal information (or not)) and didn't stop. Barely paused to breathe.
An interesting person, actually with an attractive, friendly face, black page-boy style hair showing strands of gray, worker's hands (nails short, skin dry, needing loving care). And of course non-stop blather, continuing through the hundreds and hundreds of tests she put me little eyes through. An unending monologue, veering off on frequent tangents that she'd rein in as soon as she realized she was off topic (followed seconds later by other tangents), accompanying an unending series of tests (eye paddles, lights going on and off, space-age style eye machines swinging in and out, charts popping up everywhere). Serious entertainment. No, really -- I don't know what I expected when I walked in there, but it wasn't world-class diversion. And with all the fun, my eyes perked up and acted like their normal happy, clear-visioned selves. Clear enough that Lois gave me an official-looking note -- and I am not making this up -- telling the DMV that I should be excused from their eye exam. Shades of fourth grade.
[continued in next entry]
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This afternoon, light snow falling:
España, te echo de menos.
rws 7:06 PM [+]
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