Painters Need Good Vision

I'm going to the eye doctor.  I can't see as clearly as I would like lately and realized that no matter how often I clean my lenses, no matter how close I get to the computer screen,  I am seeing fuzzy edges.  Again.  Blast it.  I can be in a snit all day long, it won't change the fact that this old lady needs new glasses.  Aging is tough to reconcile with vanity.

From my 'fuzzy' period.  It was so vague I had to outline parts with a pen to make the little shapes show.  

The last time this happened, it took weeks till I snapped to the fact that the lousy work I was producing wasn't because I stink as a painter, rather because I couldn't see.  Now, you'd think that would have been obvious, but for several months I slaved away on paintings that were turning out worse than usual.  I couldn't figure out what was wrong.  I was holding my books up close to my eyes to read and never caught on.  Oh, brother.  How slow could I get?

Certainly not what I had in my head when I started it, this painting is another example of what I was turning out during this time.  It made me cry.

Please don't misunderstand, I love living in a day and age when I can get corrective help for my faulty vision.  However, it hurts my feelings that I have to wear the dang things at all.  I wasn't planning on getting old and wrinkled like 'those people' all did.  I was never going to wear pants with elastic waists, let my eyebrows get bushy or go to bed with socks on, either.  One of the first lessons of being a grownup is to never to say never.  Never.  The first thing you'll end up doing is whatever you declared you'd never, ever do.  It's a cosmic rule.  I think heaven actually laughs at me when I do this and puts it on their list of experiences up next for Alice.  "Alice can't see her eyebrows without a magnification mirror now.  Let's make them grow twice as fast! Bwahahahah!!"  The worst part is- my eyebrows have gotten chilly up north on my brow bones and are in the process of moving south to my chin for a better climate.  I digress..

Glasses.  Sigh...

As a result of all of this, I am going to get my eyes checked and buy new glasses.  I have come to the point where how I see is more important than how I look.  It's akin to how comfortable my feet are is more important than having the most darling shoes ever made.  I have arrived into comfortable middle age.  Okay, the latter end of middle age, but it's still middle age.  I have to confess, I like it here.  And I'll like my new glasses. Mostly.  When I'm not looking in the mirror at my grandmother and trying to breathe calmly.

Come again!  Alice