Thunder is the best thing to listen to while you’re reading in bed. In fact, the ever changing weather of the Ozarks may be worth the entire move right there. As someone with an undiagnosed channel flipping brain, who hates tedium, going from snow to sun to rain in under a week is pretty much the best dopamine drip ever.
Maybe it’s because I can hear it instead of see it….something I’m not taking for granted these days. In all of my happy homesteadingness, where I buy 50lb bags of flour, plant tomatoes and contentedly count eggs, I failed to remember that one can’t grow contacts or glasses. I thought I was pretty high up on the “prepper” scale, but I totally didn’t even think about how fragile the supply chain issues are when it comes to vision. My last set of contacts disappeared into thin air. One minute I was putting one in my eyeball, and the next second it was “poof” gone. No amount of my blind searching could locate it, nor could Jim find it… even Charlie who I swear can see bacteria on his food with his naked eye, was unable to find my missing contact, so off to order new contacts I went. A week went by, then two…then three… I finally called and that’s when I found out they had some kind of factory problem and they aren’t making my odd-ball prescription anymore. Not only do I have fairly terrible eyesight, but my astigmatism is at weird angles and so my contacts are rare. Nobody keeps a supply of them in stock. And nobody wants to hear the dreaded words “supply chain” in regards to their ability to see. I mean I can’t drive, I can’t cook, and I can hardly walk from point A to point B without my contacts or glasses. Thankfully they finally did come in after months of my glasses flying off my face every time I whipped my head around (I don’t own the highest quality glasses). And now I have added contacts and glasses to my list of things to keep backups of. They don’t make these things easy to get either, it basically takes a PhD to navigate the insurance hurdles, claims and computer malfunctions. It took a full hour of frustration at the vision counter before I finally figured out that there were multiple Jim Ramseys in the system and that no, I was not married to the one born in 1954. I died laughing and the nice Walmart lady assured me she would not have judged me for being married to an almost 70 year old.
A friend from the gym had pity on my lackluster run of books lately and loaned me a juicy vampire novel. What she didn’t realize is I haven’t read a tangible paper book in ages. It’s not that I’m incapable of reading bonafied smashed pieces of pulp with ink on them, but it’s so much more convenient to read e-books that I rarely do anything else. I’m not one of those detail oriented sensory people who notice or appreciate the smell of the pages, or the feel of it in my hands. In fact, once I get sucked in, I could be reading blood inscribed on a stone wall and I probably wouldn’t notice. But I’m going to try to do better about reading real books for two reasons. One, I don’t want to lose the ability to read real books. I felt like I was all thumbs trying to balance it while I was curled up in bed. Two, I don’t want the kids to think I’m just on my phone all the time, I want them to see that I’m doing valuable worthwhile things like reading vampire novels.
My justification is we’re on winter break this week, and my Challenge A class knocked it out of the park with Science Fair on Monday so I deserve a well earned break. I have a long list of house projects I planned to accomplish, but that will have to wait until I finish the chapter…or the next one.