green glasses

I've been literally unbalanced with the broken right wrist. Since the accident I've been awkward, and clumsy, and weak, and also tired all the time as the bones are using up all my energy trying to re-grow. My decreased physical capability has meant I do a lot less, and when I've tried to do too much I've often ended up making a mess of things.

One small disaster was that I sat on my glasses a week ago. I'd laid down on the couch for a rest, taken off the glasses, laid them next to me, and then when I got up crushed them, snapping off the right ear piece. ( I broke both my glasses and my body on the right side). I wore them without the ear piece for awhile, balancing them on the left ear and my nose. And then I had a chance to get to the optometrist and look at some new frames.

They had some lovely stuff but at $300 or $350 for the frames, plus new lenses, plus I wanted to get a pair of sunglasses in my prescription, too, which I didn't have before, it got to be really expensive. The lady at the optometrist herself suggested I go back to where I bought the old pair not to repair them, which would be impossible, but just to replace the one broken ear piece. It hadn't even occurred to me to think I could buy a replacement part.

So I went to the old store. They looked up my record. I had bought the glasses 10 years ago, but even then the style I had selected was 10 years old. They couldn't find an exact replacement but she found something pretty close so I bought new ear pieces for the right and the left so they would match. Total cost: $150. And instead of a second pair of sunglasses I'm just going to buy those plastic ones that clip on and flip down.

Saving money is nice. But it's also nice to re-think the idea that anything broken has to be replaced with something new. And although part of me still cringes at the idea that my glasses are 20 years out of fashion, I realize that idea too is just a fiction our culture sells us. The truth is they look pretty cool.