Ahhh, my eyes! That thing cut me!

Long time readers may recall my previous difficulties in obtaining and retaining eyeglasses. As I have detailed before, at only one point in my glasses-wearing career have I been able to both order and receive frames and new lenses in less than two weeks, and often I've had to wait far longer. No matter what kind of frames I need, the two week waiting period has become standard and I no longer expect anything less. However, I suspect that it is directly because of my acceptance of this inconvenience that the universe has seen fit to throw additional wrenches into the works just to increase my vision-related-irritation.

Two weeks ago I went in for my annual eye exam. Wasn't having trouble with my vision, but just thought it was time to get it done, particularly since my current pair of glasses have become pretty scratched up and the finish on their two-year-old frames is starting to chip. Had `em examined, they'd changed ever so slightly, and, while my eyes were dilating, I went out to choose some new frames. I decided to stick with the Silhouette frame brand, as I like the rimless glasses look. This time, though, I decided to choose ones with thicker, darker temples. In fact, I found a pair that fit even better than my current pair of glasses. Turns out their lenses were a third of an inch wider than my current lenses, allowing the temples to rest even that much further from the sides of my head, which in turn caused them not to pinch the sides of my fat face. Who knew? Sign me up, I told them.

So I ordered new frames with the same lens shape as my old ones, only wider. They said it would probably take two weeks.

Oh, no, I thought, there's no probably about it. It will take two weeks.
And two weeks passed.

On Friday I phoned the optometrist to see if they had arrived, for I had not yet received a call. Yep, they had just come in and I could pop down and pick them up.

I waited at their fitting desk for a few minutes while the fitting tech (not the semi-evil Liz, of tales past, although she was at the front desk, leading me to suspect that her off-putting manner and inattention to detail might have earned her a demotion from the frame technician side) finished wiping the new pair up. I was afraid that they wouldn't look as cool as I recalled them being. I didn't trust my blurry, dilated memory. But they looked as cool as I'd hoped and fit superbly. Only... I couldn't quite see clearly through the right eye of them. I looked across the room at a framed print with writing on it and held my hand in front of the left eye. Yep. Blurry.

"Um, I hate to say this, but the right eye of these is blurry."

The tech seemed flustered at this. "What eye?" she asked.

"The right."

She checked my records and compared them to my previous records then said it looked like my right eye was listed as somehow having better vision than from previous years.

"That's my bad eye," I said.

Again, she seemed confused and continued to consult records on her computer. Finally she asked if she could take the new pair of glasses back and test them in a device that could measure their power. She returned a few minutes later and was very apologetic, but said it appeared that the lab had sent the wrong lens. Normally, she explained, she would be able to let me take the glasses and just pop the replacement lens in when it arrived. But because these were drill-mounted, she had to have them back for just three or four days. I was disappointed, because I really liked how they looked, but I couldn't get angry about it. For, you see, I have now come to accept that it is both my lot in life to never receive glasses in under two weeks, and my lot that there will always be additional complications that will assure that I don't receive them for at least an additional week. And, really, unless they have some sort of emergency WE SCREWED UP rush service back at the lab, I'm going to assume the 3 or 4 days they said really means two weeks anyway, so this time out it's likely a total of four.

Guess we'll see in a few.