New glasses and stuff.

Behold, my glorious new bifocals. And disregard my bad hair moment. It has been a bit of a challenge to adjust to these things. I went from occasionally needing reading glasses over the last several years to needing them pretty much whenever I sat down to do stuff that was close up. And then I started having a hard time reading road signs as I was out driving.

So, I went out and did what any other sane person trying to save money did. I procrastinated on getting new glasses. My reading glasses were a bit on the fragile side but I did my best to compensate with cheapie ones from Dollar Tree. The glasses I had gotten when I was living in the dorm was kinda the best I could do for seeing road signs that were for street names because they had some correction for the astigmatism in my left eye. (I honestly have no idea why I was told 20 yrs ago when I got them that the astigmatism was in my right eye.)  When the reading glasses came apart, I realized I couldn't put it off any longer.

So, when I got these I was astounded how much my vision improved. I could see stuff like the clock across the room and it didn't look fuzzy. And reading and close up work suddenly got an enormous amount easier. Gratitude is not a strong enough expression for how I feel about it all.

We've been working on getting ready for the start of school in a few weeks. I picked up everything that the kids needed from their lists from the teachers. I am looking around at the prodigious amount of school supplies we have leftover from last year. I have begun confiscating pencils and highlighters for myself. I have been doing a lot more writing by hand. And I've resumed doing stuff like researching things again. (I haven't busted out the notecards yet, but I am keeping notes in a notebook with references to things like page numbers, paragraphs, and line number. And noting which book, obviously.)

Looking at the piles of crayons, I am really thinking I need to do two things with this. One is to make those melted crayons that melt together into a hockey puck. Some people use cookie cutters, but I don't think mine would stand up to it well. Also, I don't want to use my cookie cutters like that. I suspect I would have a devil of a time trying to get the wax out of them. I am, however, going to use my muffin tin with some liners. (Aluminum foil generally works well if you fold it right. Like the last time we made them (which I think is just about precisely a year from sometime this week), the colors are going to have like colors with like. I will, however, do three in mixed colors from the different parts of the color wheel that are complementary.

I have no idea what we're going to do with these mixed crayons we've made. The kids just don't use them. If I had wicks, I would make a crayon based candle for a teacher or somebody else who'd enjoy it. But I don't and I have literally no idea how to make wicks.