Monday, October 27, 2003

Framed

I decided to take advantage of my health insurance benefits and went and got my eyes checked. I can do this every year. If my script changes more frequently then that I have to foot the bill for new glasses myself. Last year there was a change, but not enough of a change for me to pony up for new specs. So I persevered. This year I score new frames.


So there I was. 5 pm on a Friday. Looking for frames. The place is open until six so they didn’t really need to give the attitude. They did any it any way. It is much better to try on frames when you can actually see so I didn’t do it at my doctors office while my eyes were all dilated. That and he had no selection and he didn’t have many that came with clip on sunglasses and the pair he did have were for men. I used to be very butch and not wear sunglasses at all. Very butch and too cheap to pop for prescription shades that I would have to replace every year. So I did with out and suffered the headaches, watery eyes and sun damage. For frikin’ years!

Then I discovered clip on sun glasses. I had to pay way too much when I discovered them. Like way, way too much. Like more then my rent at the time too much. And then they got the prescription wrong – which the very chic babe at the place blamed on the frames being so much smaller then my last pair. Bull Shit. Even sadder, I believed her – what? She was chic! And a babe! And wearing the same frames! I thought, I too could be a chic babe in those frames! I really wanted those frames. I over looked the little problem in the glasses boutique ( dead damn give away) that I could not actually read the huge El Phoenix sign that loomed in the window. I could have spent significantly less at the chain place in the same shopping center and still got the prescription wrong, but the chain place smelled funny and the frames were all really big and plastic. Not chic at all.

I paid for my vanity. Good thing I had a better job then and could afford vanity. Those were the days… Anyway. Expensive Charlie’s Frame Boutique, after I sicced my doctors office on them twice, fixed the problem. I should have sicced the Better Business Bureau on them.

By-gones.

So this year I went to the frame store. And got ignored. I wandered around touching their stock and got ignored. When I finally – it was a record for me, under an hour, finding frames as fast as I did with out help. It is a real problem trying to find new frames. I can’t see with out my glasses and to try on different frames I have to remove my existing glasses. And look blindly into a mirror trying to differentiate between this blur and the last blur and did either of them look good on me. And with out help. I finally chose a pair that may have looked better then the other pair I had liked or not.

I won’t be able to tell until I get them in a couple of weeks. And that won’t even happen until I hike back to my doctors office and pick the script up myself. According to the frame place when they called the office up they were told that the doc was out of town and had been and thus they couldn’t just fax it because he had to sign it before or some nonsense. So. Tuesday. I go back to Doc Vacations office and pick up the script. Get the script that I think he should have given me in the first place got back to work and fax it myself to the frame people. Then and only then can we start the whole process.

This is why I don’t take advantage of my Health Insurance Benefits. I feel like I’m being taken advantage of.

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