5:39 p.m. - 01 April 2003
E is for Eyes
E is for Eyes
I have had horrible headaches nearly every day for the last several weeks. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of them have to do with these blasted computer screens I sit in front of all day every day, even if one of them is an LCD monitor and the other is a CRT. Of course, the last couple of weeks my headaches might have a just a tiny bit to do with stress, too.
Plus, I think it's time for another visit to the ophthalmologist (one of the side benefits to working in the med staff office for a year and a half is that I didn't even have to stop to think about how to spell that); it's been eighteen months since my last eye exam, and I think my vision has gotten worse since then. My vision problems stem mostly from a fairly bad case of astigmatism, but there's a healthy dose of nearsightedness in there as well. I didn't wear glasses at all until high school, and even then they were only for reading at first. It wasn't until my junior year that I really started wearing them full-time.
And now, of course, I can't do without them. I mean, I could, but it would be dangerous. All detail is lost to me without them -- I'm sitting not two feet from this monitor and I can tell that there are words on the screen, but I only know what the words are because I wrote them. I'm not nearly as bad as my dad and my sister, though, neither of whom can see the big "E" on the top of the vision chart. Tricia tells the story of going to the dentist, where they made her take her glasses off and then asked her to pick a toothbrush. She asked for a green one, but she wasn't entirely sure that was one of the choices.
I don't think I could ever wear contact lenses. For starters, they would be much more expensive than my glasses are now, since they'd have to be weighted to correct the astigmatism. Plus, they'd require a lot more care and feeding than glasses. And finally, I don't exactly relish the idea of sticking my fingers in my eyes on purpose. It just seems wrong, somehow.
And of course, I actually happen to like my eyes, so of course I need glasses. My eyes are one of those in-between colors that are never a choice when you're asked your eye color. I go with green or hazel, most days, but neither of those is really accurate. My mom's whole family has blue eyes, as does Lee, so it's not inconceivable that our children will be blue-eyed. Who knows, though, since my sisters and I are really a walking exhibition on the multi-allelic nature of eye color: My eyes are greenish, Tricia's are sort of a slate blue, and Jennifer's are chocolate-brown. All this from a mother with blue eyes and a father with light brown eyes. When you take into consideration that my blood type is A, Lee's is B, and we both have an O parent, there's no way to predict what our kids will be like.
This has been an entry for AlphaBytes. I'm working my way through the alphabet backwards just because I can.
