Rant-casm : Mission Improbable

I have a hard time deciding if this is a rant or sarcasm.

I have a better chance of discovering the improbability drive than getting a new pair of glasses that aren’t going to kill me (literally and figuratively).

Once every 3 – 4 years, I have taken 3 planes from Florida to California so that a professor of optometry at UC Berkeley’s whacked-out vision center, and his students, can help me get a new pair of glasses.  

The exam doesn’t involve dilating the eyes.  He makes the lighting behind the letters is as low as possible (though I’d prefer to have white letters on cardboard with a black background), he uses my existing glasses as a platform to add in the new prescription, and…

IT WORKS!

This system takes a few hours, time that no optometrist in the private sector is willing or able to give.  

Afterward, I choose from the 2 frames available that fit my needs.

That, in itself, is a cruel joke I’m not going to bore you with.  If my spectacles were made of glass, I’d no longer have a nose.  

They’d look a lot like this:

The last time I traveled to Berkeley, the total cost, including air fare, motel, eye exam, and glasses, was around $2000.00. 

Why does it take 3 planes to get “there” no matter where I travel?

Or I have to go through the Atlanta airport.  That’s worse than 3 planes.

Since my last new pair of glasses,  I’ve taken 3 planes to get to Palm Springs, California to visit my sister, and taken 3 planes to Oklahoma City to visit my daughter.  

After the last flight, I swore I’d NEVER take another plane again.

I know — never say never.  But you’ve never had a headache for 6 months straight before, have you? You haven’t forgotten what it’s like NOT to see 2 of everything, have you?  

I could go on…but enough of scolding people who probably have worse problems than I do.

True, the headache is only one of those forehead and temples things that feels like someone is accosting those areas with quantum vibrators, but how nice it would be to have my head back again. 

Mom said it was the little problems in life, the ones that never go away, that get you down.  Or maybe she didn’t say that, but the quantum vibrators are infusing me with weird messages while they laugh at my discomfort.

Or it could be more sinister than that.  Focusing is not possible (prisms and astigmatism correction are off), the tint is wearing in all the wrong places, and the temples that hubby rebuilt for the frames — twice —  are cracking.

What do I need, you might ask?

Besides a miracle?

Oh…not much.  

1.  I need to bring along a friend who wants a 4-day marathon vacation to California. It’s an additional airfare but it far outweighs the debilitating airport anxiety.  As you can imagine, it won’t be much of a vacation:  She’ll have to drive the car that I rent at the airport in Bay Area traffic.
2. I have to convince a professor of optometry, who is now mostly retired, to agree upon a time and day that all of us can live with.  
3. Further, since I’m poorer than dirt, it’s going to have to be during a week that cheaper airline tickets are available.

That’s the Mission Improbable scenario.

This is the Mission IMPOSSIBLE scenario:  Finding someone with a private plane who is going to Berkeley anyway and wouldn’t mind taking 2 crazy women along with him or her.  And then taking them back to Florida 3 days later.

With my luck, this would be our landing

I suppose it’s not much different than usual, since that’s how I feel anyway when I have to be on 3 planes to get to 1 destination.

So, to recap…if you know someone who

• has a private plane and
• wants to fly to Berkeley

That would be ever so nice.