if it isn't jeans, it is glasses...

so today . . . diandra got glasses.

when she was a teenager, the most dreaded words for me to hear were, "i need a pair of jeans." because what she meant was, "you need to come to the mall with me while we go into every store that carries denim, and i try on every pair of jeans ever made, in 2 or 3 sizes, until we find a pair that is comfortable, looks good, and doesn't cost $100. and the $100 part might be negotiable if they meet the other two criteria."

it was not my idea of fun. it meant an afternoon of endless dressing rooms, occasional tears, repeated trips out of the dressing rooms to find different sizes, arguments about whether i would ever let her wear them out of the house, more tears, until finally, hopefully we would leave the mall triumphantly with a shopping bag containing one. pair. of. jeans. so a couple of days ago when diandra announced that she thought she might need glasses, i thought i might need some valium...

diandra gets headaches. frequently. i have been telling her for the last few years that i think she needs glasses. i wear glasses. rollie wears glasses. all four of her grandparents wear glasses. and she spends a lot of time in front of a computer or with her nose in a book. so it just seemed to me that there was likely a connection between her headaches and her probable lack of 20/20 vision...

but diandra didn't want to wear glasses. until a couple of days ago. a couple of days ago she said to me, "i think maybe i need glasses. i keep getting these headaches."

what?!?!!? really??? how many times have i said that to her?!?!?! probably 50 times!! and every time i say, "maybe you need glasses," or "if you had glasses you might not get so many headaches," she very emphatically says, "no, i'm not wearing glasses!" or "no, i don't need glasses!" (oddly, she doesn't remember me ever telling her that glasses might help her headache situation. she has apparently perfected the skill of selective listening...)

but for some reason, yesterday she decided that if she didn't have a pair of glasses on her face before she went to bed, she would be doomed to live the rest of her life wishing her head would just explode and put her out of her misery. and so, we spent the day looking for the perfect pair of glasses...

she made an appointment for 7:15 p.m. to have an eye exam. but did we wait until then to start our search? no we did not!

we started at costco, because you know, you can get a pair of glasses for a pretty reasonable price there. IF you can find some frames you like, which diandra could not. and IF you can wait two weeks for the new glasses to be made, which diandra could not.

our next stop was lens crafters. at lens crafters, the new pair of eyewear would be ready in an hour--a definite selling point for my instant gratification offspring. it came with a price--like three times as much as costco's price--but we looked anyway, with limited success...

...and then the angels sang!

diandra made the mistake of looking into the locked glass case...the one with frames by tiffany & co... (who even knew that tiffany had a line of eyeglass frames?!?!) and she fell in love. and then she looked at the price tag and stopped breathing... but then the sales person said they were having a sale which would give her half off the lenses AND she could get another 30% off with her AAA card. so she started breathing again, and smiled.

and smiled and smiled and smiled. now she was excited about wearing glasses.

but could i leave it at that and be excited with her? no i could not. i wanted to make sure that she was sure about that choice. so since we had some time before her appointment, i insisted that we check out a few more places. which we did. and she didn't see anything she liked as much as the tiffany frame...

we ate dinner, and she told her dad all about the perfect frames she had found. she had made peace with the price, and couldn't wait to get them! i was still unsure. but she is an adult, and i try to respect her choices (although sometimes she is forced to hear what i think anyway!) i took her back for her eye exam, and she was delighted to find that her eyes weren't too bad, so she won't have to wear glasses all the time. although, i was pretty sure she would want to wear them all the time, as excited as she was about the new frames. we returned to lens crafters, tried on the glasses again, and then it happened. the angels were silent. we were having second thoughts...

i'm sure she blames me and my incessant need to be sure i have exhausted all of the choices before making a decision. i blame my inability to make a decision in the face of all of those choices.

it was a lot of money. and while the frames were awesome, they didn't look as good on her face as some of the others we had seen. but she could get them in an hour!!! but they weren't the best choice for her face. but she loved them!! but that love was waning...

we debated. we compared. we talked about options. we looked at the clock and decided to go to another lens crafters at a different mall--just in case they had some different stock. and they did! but nothing that diandra was in love with...

by now it was 9:00 at night, and everything was closing. so i took a sad and frustrated girl home without new glasses, but with a plan...

this morning we got up and went back to an optical store, where she bought a pair of frames that she decided she loved. she loved them even more when they were handed to her in a pink leather case! but since that store couldn't meet her requirement of instant prescription lenses, we then took the new frames back to the mall to lenscrafters. (are you beginning to see a pattern here? we drove back and forth across town several times.) true to their word, in one hour her vision was corrected, she was happy, and most importantly, she looked cute!i wish i could say it wasn't that bad. but it was. and yet, it turned out good, we did have some fun, and i am glad i was able to help her...

...because soon, it is going to be time for me to get new glasses. and i think i know just who is going to have to come with me...