Tuesday, March 23, 2010

curses!

My teenage daughter and I have been making up curse words that give us the satisfaction of cursing without the aftertaste of guilt and shame. "FAFSA!" is one I've been using a lot recently as I am forced to fill out countless tax and financial aid forms to prepare for Emily's first year at college. Our most recent curse word (pissiform) Emily discovered in anatomy class. It is a very tiny bone in the wrist, but goes especially well with olives as they roll down my leg, oil and all, spilled for the second time in a week. "Pissiform!"

Friday, March 12, 2010

read to me

I’m a person who can’t stand to have windows with mullions - their tic-tack-toe board stretching across the windowpane restricts my view. Glasses press too close to my face and give me that “break-out-of-prison” feeling. A benign thin rim of tortoise shell on Ray Bans and even edgeless readers have me clawing at my face to get them off and away from me. This refusal to wear glasses and the ensuing blurriness that results has thrust me back to my preprimary years where I look at pictures in magazines and pull on sleeves asking people to read to me. Instead of a thrilling bedtime story, my clear-eyed counterparts read to me from the menu’s appetizer list in the dim lighting of the restaurant. 
Of all the things I’ve lost in the process of aging, my blurry vision is what bothers me the most. With the advent of spandex, I’ve adapted to that belt of blubber around my middle, gray hair can be touched up with dye and for achy joints there’s Aleve. But, "Oh the rage" when I come upon small print on a soup label or a medicine bottle. I’m furious that at the age of 46 everything has suddenly gone blurry.  I know there is this invention called reading glasses that can miraculously bring on clearer vision, but I have not yet accepted this cure.