20/15, but more like 1/15

My 20/15 eyes need reading glasses.

I scheduled myself an eye exam along with the girls recently, expecting to go in and get glasses that I’d have to wear while I drive because everything far away looks like it’s frozen in the very teensy first step of exploding.  (OMG, I should just say ‘blurry’ and quit being such a pretentious asshole.)  Imagine my surprise when the doctor said she’s jealous of me and my 20/15 vision.  I thought maybe I’d just answered wrong when she flipped the lenses back and forth.  Turns out that being a girl of a certain age who is reading all day every day, sometimes in not bright enough conditions, produces eye strain.  Tired eyes make blurry leaves in trees and fuzzy freeway signs.  The reading glasses will help my eyeballs relax and work better overall.  
I could NOT believe when I picked them up after work last night how much better I can see up close with them on. The woman at the optometrist’s office was cracking up as I took the glasses off and put them back on while looking at the little card she’d handed me.  I think I might have said some bad words out of shock.  I can’t see so great far away with them on, but my iPhone and iPad screens both just got an upgrade.
My baby brother is coming to town for work next week, so I get to see him for a little bit.  It’s good timing.  I think we kinda need each other a little extra right now.  I am holding my breath a lot, wishing that it would just skip to July already.  I alternate between not accepting that my dad is dead (that was really, really hard to type) and feeling heartbroken from him leaving me.  He’s not supposed to do that.  So how can it be almost a year ago that he did?    
I used to read this blog years ago on a pretty regular basis.  Her father passed away and she wrote about her experience more, and with more raw pain, than I do about mine.  It was awful, honestly, and I quit reading.  I get her now.  Why she went on and on and on about it.  Sometimes our brains just bash themselves into the same damn brick wall over and over and over when we don’t want to make peace with how things are.  My dad thought, I think even at the very end, that he’d be going home from that hospital, and it’s like I’ve taken over that hope for him.  That doesn’t even make any sense, I know, but I’m not sure how else to put it.  
You know what?  It’s time to open up the kitchen door and put on some music and cook supper and drink a beer.  

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