A couple years ago, I started wearing bifocal lenses, because I’m getting old and I can no longer read my own watch properly if I’m wearing distance glasses, which I need to, well, function. I can actually see okay close up if I take my glasses off or look over the rims, but that’s not always possible or desirable. So I got bifocals.
Last year, I got a pair of single focal lenses, just for distance. Within a few days of getting them, I rather foolishly left them in the car on a very hot day, and the lenses cracked. There’s a very large crack in the lens over my left eye, and a whole rainbow prism of tiny internal cracks (not visible when the glasses are worn, although the large crack certainly is, and it’s supremely annoying!) elsewhere.
I had been meaning, for some time, to take the glasses with the cracked lenses and get the lenses replaced with bifocals, since the frames are new and in very good shape, and my old glasses were getting ready to fall apart.
And speaking of my old glasses falling apart, they did last night. They’re not repairable. As I can’t function without glasses, I had no choice but to wear the single focal cracked lens glasses, which I’m doing right now.
Anyway, I went to my optometrist and they’ve ordered me in some new lenses and they’ll put them in the frames for me there, rather than having to send my frames away. And how much is this costing me? Well, after the insurance paid their part (yes, glasses are included in our private healthcare cover, it’s part of why we pay for private healthcare), it was still $335. The insurance paid $250. And it’s just the lenses! Mind you, these are better quality multi-focal lenses, with wider focal areas, which should be good, and they’ve got coating to cut down glare and UV and other stuff, so that’s good, but still. Seems like a lot of money to pay for glasses, doesn’t it?
Oh, well. It’s what I get for getting older, right? At least we have good health insurance that pays for a reasonable portion of the glasses, so I’m thankful for that. And at least the frames I’m going to be wearing now are plastic coated on the arms so the arms don’t turn my temples greenish black from the base metal rubbing my acidic skin. (I know, it’s gross. I can’t wear costume jewellery at all, either, which is a pity. I wonder if you can get sterling silver glasses frames… and how much that would cost….)
So there you go. The strange and boring tale of Bonni’s glasses. And the time you spent reading that is some small portion of your life that you’ll never get back… Sorry about that.

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