Growing Pains

About a year ago, a friend bought a Wii. To celebrate, we stayed up until 5 am playing bowling and golf, decided we should sleep a bit, then started up again around 9 am. At some point the next morning, Jen was out in the hallway when a little boy walked past, wanting to know what all the screams and giggles were about. "We're playing video games alllll day!" replied Jen, "this is what you get to do when you're a grown up - whatever you want!"

Heck yes I can do what ever I want. I is a grownup now. If I feel like staying up until 3 am on a school night to watch infomercials, I can. If I want to buy "The Office" DVDs rather than groceries, I can. If what I want for dinner really is macaroni and cheese with a side of cookie dough, I swear it will be done (side note:dinner last night was *awesome*). 99% of the time, being a grownup rocks.

And then there is that other pesky 1%. Today's 1% was the trip to the eye doctor. No change - still blind as a bat. Not a whole lot more blind, however, so that's a nice change (or I guess a nice non-change? yay status quo remaining the same (which is status quo by definition?) whatever), but still can't see more than 8 inches in front of my face without anti-evolutionary aides. I asked the doc to please please please change my contact prescription - these buggers cost over $700 a year and my glasses are in sad sad shape, not to mention way behind on the prescription. No problem he said, here's a free pair of cheaper contacts to try, then he whisked me out to pick out some new sexy specs.

I'm a sucker for the trendy plastic Clark-Kent-ish/hot librarian glasses, as is someone else I know. I told the helpful/bleeds-you-dry assistant what I wanted and she whipped out some pairs no one else had even seen yet - they're so new, even I haven't tried them on yet - you should get these now before someone else does. Holy Molten Lava Batman, these glasses were h-a-w-t. I asked how much they were, then held on to the counter as she told me. Ouch. She was nice enough to tell me all about how the easy care plan will save me money, then spit out the most complicated word problem I have ever heard - something like 15% off the price of a year supply of contacts less $65 plus the glasses, lenses, and coats divided by 2 plus the difference times emc squared. Or something. Huh? Can you maybe write that down? In a table? Or put this into Excel so I can run a goal seek scenario on how to make this cheaper? No, but she will start all over, using smaller words. And it kinda, sorta made sense, in a I can draw meiosis and mitosis but please don't give me an essay question on why this happens in the first place kind of way. She offered to let me pay half now and half later (something divided by 2! There's some math I can handle!!!) and I said ok.

My first pair of glasses were chosen because they were the cheapest ones available. They also happened to be the ugliest ones available. Remember those plastic frames your granny used to wear? With the blue on the top and pink on the bottom? Yeah, those were my glasses. Cheap, ugly, and I haaaaated them. Now that I get to pick my own, I understand why my parents headed straight for the cheap-os. But I just can't quite seem to do that myself. I want to look good and I'm (mostly) willing to pay for that, right? And, after all, I am getting these infinitely hotter ones at a Pythagorean discount. Or something like that. In 1 week, I will be the proud owner of some hott-damn!-sexy-specs. And if they break in the next 10 years, I'll just have to deal with being blind.

In the meantime, I will be running a cost-risk analysis on draining part of my 'wedding fund' to pay for laaaaasers to be shot into my eyes. How much does one really need for future wedding? I asked Jen about this - because really, how much can the Chapel of Love in Vegas possibly cost?