Foreseeable

I knew it was coming. That didn't make it any easier to accept, even as it made it easier to plan for.

About a week ago, I casually wiped my glasses with the bottom of my sweater as I have done so often in the past. They came back up seriously twisted, and that was the moment I realized they had entered the fragile zone. They were not long for this world.

I immediately booked an appointment with the optometrist at a nearby optical outlet. For the next day, as it turned out: she is there only two afternoons a week. Another health care professional who didn't bat an eye when I disclosed my HIV status (Did I have any health problems, she asked. I disclosed my status more to explain the potentially vision-impacting treatment I am taking for my psoriatic arthritis, the effects of which she then explained to me more clearly than anyone else has in the past.)

As luck would have it, a promotion at the store: three pairs of glasses with just-discontinued frames, lenses and clip on sunglasses included (well, for 2 of 3) all for less than $900. I might have been more upset by that before my [no longer so] new job and before the impending urgency of the state of my actual glasses. It actually seems like quite a bargain in light of all of those elements.

Ten days to wait for the new ones. Now when would it happen?

I handled them oh so carefully through the entire weekend of the 6th Canadian Skills Building Symposium on HIV/AIDS, where I had some official duties to perform. They held. A day and a half of time to recover from that demanding weekend, including a rare and enjoyable Monday afternoon movie with a friend. They held.

I got the idea that this would be the day as I dashed off to a meeting this morning. When you have progressive lenses, there is something about their being at slightly different angles that becomes disturbingly noticeable. When I had to straighten them several times on the metro en route to my meeting, I got the sense of foreboding. They didn't last through the meeting, snapping about an hour into things.

Luckily, I had been carrying around my flawed but more solid previous glasses since the day after the sweater incident, and the transition was quite smooth for me. I don't feel comfy in these and I'm looking forward to the impending delivery of my new choices.