i have pretty bad vision. for awhile i was 'legally blind'. i'm nearsighted w/astigmatism. whee! and my prescription changes a lot, so i've never been eligible for lasik. when i was a kid i tried to get contacts 'cause i hated my coke bottle lenses, everyone made fun of me, my parents wouldn't let me play basketball 'cause i kept breaking my glasses, etc. a terrible woman at an opthamologist's office was supposed to teach me how to put soft contacts in and out. i'm not sure she really liked kids, and i wasn't an easy kid to like either. after about an hour of trying, we were both incredibly frustrated. the contacts kept rolling up into little sausage tubes and getting stuck behind my eyelid. it hurt. sometimes i managed to get them on, but never successfully got them off. she told me i'd have to come back another day. so i did. i failed again. after 4-5 times of this, she said that i couldn't get contacts because it was obvious that i'd never figure out how to do it properly and some people just aren't made for contacts. i cried for hours. i went back to school and everyone continued making fun of me. my mom wore gas permeable lenses, and with those you don't really have to touch your eye. you just hold them up near your eye and it goes swooop! and suctions them in. when you take them out you don't have to touch them either. you hold your eye open and blink and it loses the suction and falls out. after seeing her do this, when i was 17 i went to the eye doctor and demanded a pair. i bought them and took them home and taught myself how to take them in and out. i didn't do it the right way. i used the little toilet plunger thing to take them out for the entire 12 years i had them.

i went in to the eye doctor today and mentioned lasik longingly. he told me that i actually could be a candidate now. my prescription hasn't changed that much. however, if you want lasik, you can't wear gas permeable contacts for a long time beforehand. apparently their firmness gives an inaccurate impression of how badly your vision is deteriorating; they hold your eye in place sort of like a push-up bra and keep it from sagging and worsening. he said that if i seriously wanted lasik, i'd have to be out of gas permeable lenses for at least 6 months and preferably a year or longer to make sure that my eyes weren't going to worsen dramatically without them. going a year in glasses only would be tough. they're hard to wear goggles over at burning man. they're a pain in rainy seattle where they constantly get wet and fog up. now that they make awesome looking glasses i like them from a style perspective. but from a practical perspective they often drive me nuts. i like sunglasses in the summer and goggles in the snow. he said "okay, open your eye then" and stuck a soft contact on it. it felt bizarre and floppy and enormous. he came back a second later and said "time for your lesson!" and they took me out for my life's second attempt at soft contact training. i was terrified and expecting to fail miserably and have yet another person rolling their eyes and mumbling about how they'd never seen anyone have so much difficulty with this. but i guess they really aren't that different, 'cause i had not much trouble inserting them and removing them is only minorly awkward.

so now i wear the soft contacts which i always wanted to wear in the first place. this is very exciting because it means i can get all kinds of ridiculous fake eye colors and designs and silliness. it also means that the time has come for new glasses, and that you should vote on them.




Poll #1226325
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

which glasses should i get?

glasses #1 - i think these ones are sweet.



glasses #2 - jamz likes these ones the best


glasses #3 - i would be unlikely to wear pink glasses, but they make these in blue with
a green background. i ordered some of those and am going to try them on next weekend.


glasses #4 - i like these ones the best. black and silver! my favorite colors! but jamz doesn't like them.

additionally, here are some random, freaky contacts that i would totally enjoy rocking at a party.




these ones are called "rave" and they GLOW UNDER BLACK LIGHT!