Tag: reading

Are my arms not long enough, or is my eyesight getting worse?

Are my arms not long enough or is my eyesight getting worse?

I have worn glasses since I turned 20. My favorite pastime in the university’s library’s old book area  finally  took its toll. I always loved reading. I started reading early and as a bilingual child I had a lot of reading material – I had books in two languages to read.

In Haifa, there was a tiny book store that held treasures galore and when my parents took me there to choose a book I was so happy, I usually finished the book by the time we got home.

Libraries were my other favorite place, books , books and more books.

Over the years my library expanded and took a lot of space, I took 3 boxes of books with me when we moved to the USA many years ago.

These days I have a Kindle, but I still go back to my leather bound old Damon Ranyon book every once in a while. There is something magical about a real book.

I always needed glasses for seeing, never for reading. And then something happened in the  last year. My arms got shorter – that is my only explanation for why I could not read  on my cell phone or why it was getting harder to read on the laptop unless I moved them both a little farther from me.

There was no way I needed reading glasses, I am not old!

So I scheduled an Ophthalmologist appointment, and I got the good news and the bad news. The good news- my eyesight was getting better, I really do not need glasses to see. I blame my hearing loss. I had a virus attack my ears six years ago and I lost my hearing.

Losing one sense fixed in a way another sense. My eyesight got better and so did my sense of smell.

The bad news – I need reading glasses.

When I lost my hearing I was in my mid fifties and since I lost it overnight and have to wear hearing aids, I did not see it as a sign of getting older despite everyone telling me stories about their grandmother and her hearing aids.

But reading glasses is something completely different, it is admitting that I am getting older. Not an easy thing to admit even though I know technically that I am getting closer to sixty.

I have a new pair of glasses and it is helping with the reading. But if you ask me it is not the glasses, it is the pilates classes that I am taking that are helping my arms get longer.

The weird things I like to read in my local newspaper

My local newspaper publishes a  list of restaurants that have had health violations the previous week, each week I think to myself do I check the list or do I not. Do I really want to know? And yet every week I go to that list and read it, hoping and praying that I did not go to any of these places. It’s like a traffic accident that you see is about to happen and you can’t turn your head to avoid looking. 

There really is no point in reading  that a restaurant I went to last week or two weeks ago had a cockroach infestation or no sufficient hot water and yet I still read it. Maybe its a form of self torture, who knows.

There usually have some normal and reasonable closures, but when it said the closed CVS and only allowed prepacked foods at this particular CVS I started to wonder what exactly they sell, we have several CVS’s close by and none of them sell fresh food or ice cream. So I went to the official county website to see if there is any further information but alas there is none.

What should we do with the information about health department closures,do I go to a place that was cited and closed with the belief that it is cleaner now, with immodium in my purse just in case or do I avoid going to a place I like as they frequently have issues. This is going to be a tough decision!