20-20 vision is overrated anyway

I got paid today. Spent it. Yes, all of it. Oops.

See, I needed new glasses. Actually, I’ve needed new glasses for about three years now, ever since Rubin ate the old (expensive, Chanel) pair and left their mangled corpse on the living room rug, but I haven’t bothered to do anything about it because: a) I have contact lenses b) but no money and c) I don’t like myself in glasses anyway. Which is unfortunate really, because I’m almost totally blind without them.

I’ve been hating myself in glasses since I was given my first pair at the age of 10. They were brown and ugly and I was beside myself with excitement about them, mostly because my friend Jenny had glasses and I wanted to be like Jenny. Jenny had flat feet too. I couldn’t have those, but I did persuade my parents to buy me a pair of hideous, double-buckle shoes which I’m pretty sure were designed to help correct the flat feet, but I didn’t care because they were exactly the same as the ones Jenny had. They were brown and ugly, too, and as soon as I got them I realised that actually? I didn’t want them anymore. This was to become the theme for my young life. Hey, I wonder what happened to Jenny?

Anyway, we picked up the new glasses, and I skipped gleefully home, absolutely full of myself, and imagining that everyone was looking at my glasses enviously and totally wishing they were me. They weren’t. This much became clear as soon as I skipped into the kitchen and glanced at myself in the mirror before recoiling in horror and running screaming to the bathroom, where I plastered my face with talcum powder (I was too young to own makeup. Doh), which I refused to remove until my dad threatened to ground me.

You see, I hadn’t realised quite how many freckles I had. Or how unkempt my hair was. I had known that my eyebrows met in the middle, like a bridge, but I hadn’t known quite how similar to Liam Gallagher this made me look. In fact, until I got my first pair of glasses, I had been but slenderly acquainted with my own appearance. No one had realised quite how bad my eyesight was – probably because it just hadn’t occurred to me to tell anyone – so when I looked in the mirror, all I saw was a vague, pale shape with a lot of red hair around it This was acceptable to me. The “warts and all” reality was not.

Years passed. I developed an expensive makeup-buying habit, bought contact lenses, and learned never to look in the mirror while I was wearing them. To this day I will wait until the last possible second before inserting my lenses. All of the beauty magazines tell you how important it is to put the lenses in before applying makeup. Hee! Because yes, I will totally want to see myself without my makeup on, especially when I can see myself really clearly.

These days I’ve come to realise that some things just look better in soft focus. Like my face, for example, and my house. Last week? On (MO)T-Day? I was forced to wear my contacts in order to drive the car to the garage, and because I knew I’d have to drive it back again, I couldn’t take them out when I got home. I spent almost the entire time between dropping the car off and picking it up cleaning like a woman possessed. Who knew the floors were so filthy? Or that there were hand prints on the upstairs windows? (HOW?) Not me. Uh-uh. I’d been rolling along in blissful ignorance of these facts, and when I finally saw the light, it totally blinded me.

I mention all of this because it’s the only way I can emphasize just how much I resent having to spend all – ALL – of my disposable income on new glasses this month. I mean, it’s like a tax on the blind. And I know it was necessary. You shouldn’t really wear contacts for fifteen hours per day (which is the approximate amount of time I spend staring at a computer screen), and I’m pretty sure that all of the squinting I’ve been doing is the cause of the WRINKLES I found under my eyes last week, because it CANNOT be my age, and I will not even consider the possibility that it is.

So. New glasses. I got Playboy glasses, because I’m so hip it hurts. They have little diamante things at the sides (I am drawn to sparkly things), which Terry says makes them look like granny glasses, so that’s also made me feel a lot better about my advancing age. Not.

I get them on Saturday, and as I spent more than the third world debt, I also get a free pair of ugly-ass prescription sunglasses, so yay! And I spent all of my disposable income for the month. Two pairs of glasses and one large bottle of Benefit foundation. Not making that mistake again, that’s for damn sure…