2001-01-31 - 7:53pm

Who's Who Cheat Sheet
Who I Read

On the internal soundtrack: "Golden Slumbers", Beatles

Well, I keep forgetting to mention my little issue with my glasses.

My vision is bad. My contact lens prescription is a -8.0 and they don't work so well anymore. Two years ago the doctor told me my particular brand of contacts doesn't go beyond that, and my vision wasn't quite bad enough to switch. so I've probably graduated to a -8.5 or so by now. I don't know what that is as a glasses prescription.

I got glasses when I was 8 years old, at which point my popularity level, which had been based on the fact that I was nice to everybody, plummeted. Kids don't care if you're nice, if you're wearing glasses. Plus, at that age it was starting to be cool to be snobby instead.

I wore them until I was 14, at which point I got contacts. I never wore my glasses in public after that.

I felt hopelessly dorky in them. It's a silly thing for me to feel, since I barely notice when other people wear glasses. Glasses can be extremely sexy on men, like Mulder in his glasses or Sean Connery in his reading glasses. I see girls all over the place wearing glasses, looking cool. Why can I not believe I'm one of them? I don't like my hair (too straight), but I don't feel dorky about it. Just annoyed.

The reason they bother me so much, I believe, is that they make my eyes look smaller than they are. My glasses are not quite at coke-bottle status but they're getting there. Because of this and the reflective effect, they are just hiding my eyes, which are one of my better features. They're a muddy color, but they're pretty big and have decent eyelashes.

(Speaking of eyelashes, Poindexter's are nearly half an inch long, and dark and thick. I'm not exaggerating. I drool over them at least once a day.)

About a year ago, I got what turned out to be a bad batch of contact lenses. After the first day, they itched unbearably and made my eyelids swell up. I would wear them a few days (instead of two weeks) and throw them out. I thought the problem was my cleaning solution, and my opthalmologist said to try different ones, so I did. But nothing worked, so I got in the habit of wearing glasses most of the time.

Once I got through this bad batch, my contacts were okay, but by then they just annoyed me being there.

So, at this point, I am primarily a glasses-wearer. And I feel dorky all the time. I need to get over this. The stupid thing is that nobody ELSE thinks so, least of all Poindexter. He thinks I'm gorgeous all the time. (I'd be suspicious of this except that I think the same thing about him, although I do prefer his hair to be flopping and not hidden under a hat.) So it is JUST ME that thinks I'm dorky, and I ought to get over that. I don't care if everybody ELSE thinks I look dorky -- and if you've seen me in my fisherman's hat out pumping my arms power-walking, you'd know this is true -- but I don't like feeling that I look dorky. Does that make sense?

I have an appointment with the opthalmologist, so I can probably get better contacts (maybe one-day disposable or one-week), but the fact is, I like the convenience of glasses.

Now if I could just convince MYSELF to feel just as attractive in glasses as I do without, I'd be a lot better off.

BTW, yes, I have considered that little laser operation. But I'm worried about the error rate and the long-term effects of it. If I lost my vision altogether, between that and my useless ears I'd essentially be cut off from the world. I'd have to spend all my time reading the braille edition of Playboy.

There is a house at the end of our street (same builder/model) that is for sale, listed at an astonishing amount more than we paid for ours. We decided to go have a look at it during its open house on Sunday.

We were even more astonished to find that the owners did not choose the option of a loft floor, as we did. They may have had a few more of the other fancy options, but not many. The house looks as though it's been professionally decorated, though, which will probably help them get close to the asking price.

As much as I may wish we lived elsewhere, I think we made a good choice financially, picking the house we did.

We weren't the only ones snooping, either -- two other couples on the street came in while we were there, including our next door neighbors, Ahmed and Marie. While chatting about options they asked a question about our house, and we invited them over to see it when they were done browsing.

They did, and I also invited them for dinner sometime. From the initial schedule comparison it looks like it won't be 'til March. Ugh. They seem really nice. Very friendly people, but apparently introverts, like us. There's another couple down the street that we chat with occasionally, but they seem like hard partiers and we'd probably bore them to death. I'd also like Gwen to come over sometime, but I haven't seen her lately.

Another neighbor, Frances, an extremely busy and incredibly nice and motherly woman, dropped by on Monday to invite us to a neighborhood gathering at her house. The gathering, unfortunately, is the night we leave for NJ to see Pop-Pop before we go to Florida. Ugh. We'll probably stop by for an hour and then we'll have to leave.

OK, so I went to do the volunteer thing last night. I think I may have picked a bad night for it, since there were 2 volunteers for every kid. Plus it was extremely noisy and I couldn't hear the kids I did try to talk to briefly. Argh. I'm going again next week so we'll see if it's better.

The kids were really adorable, though. I was entertained just sitting and watching them play and interact with other volunteers. One kid, about age 8, spent the whole time making a valentine for his mom, which was incredibly sweet. Another kid, wearing a bomber jacket he refused to take off (well, it was a cool jacket) got very involved in making an elaborate pizza out of play doh.

I think I'm going to talk to the coordinator about getting together with a couple of other volunteers to sponsor a family. That way we can get to know people personally and help them over an extended period (six months to a year, I think). I feel really weird just meeting people in passing and never getting to know them as individuals. It's not that the other types of work aren't important, just that I don't feel like it's what I was hoping to do.

I also want to read to people in nursing homes. Gotta look into doing that.

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