What you can see

Winter reveals the structure of the world and the paths of creatures that might have been hidden in another season. That’s what I thought while I was driving down the road the other day, admiring the bare trees. I’m kind of loving it, even though so many native Minnesotans seemed to doubt my sanity when I declared that I wasn’t afraid of winter.

(So, I am afraid of driving in a blizzard but that’s another thing entirely, am I right?)

Admittedly, it’s been a kinder and gentler winter here in central Minnesota, or so I’m told. We’ve had temperatures above freezing a few times and my husband tells me that next week it will get up to 39 degrees. I’m mean, that’s practically short sleeve weather around here.

Today I took my Christmas lights down outside and while I was doing so, a woman walked by and told me that she voted for my house in the neighborhood Christmas Lights contest. She said anyone could just put up inflatables, even though the house with a yard full of them won. I thanked her and wished I could have seen her more clearly but I couldn’t because I was wearing my up-close glasses.

I’m blaming my age for my vision dilemma. I can see to read without any correction at all. However, I need glasses to see a computer clearly or to read anything at an arm’s distance. But if I wear “distance” glasses, I can’t see those things well at all. So I constantly switch glasses. At work–because most of my work is up-close, I wear the up-close glasses so I can see three to six feet away.

I know. I know. I need new glasses. It’s on the agenda for this year. Bi-focals, I imagine. I used to wear contacts almost exclusively, but they stopped working when I couldn’t see close up or at arm’s length or at a distance all at once. Meanwhile, the world is blurry either here or there.

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I just finished reading (in two days) Leave the World Behind. I even took my Kindle to work to read on my lunch break because I just Had To Know. (I love a disaster/dystopian novel.)

Now I’m reading The Hiding Place. I thought I read this when I was a kid but it seems entirely new to me, though I know the ultimate story (holocaust survival).