September 16th, 2019

I bet you recognize this for what it is.  Sunglasses surgery.  What a major Pain in the Arse.

Yesterday we were driving along........    Well, ok, to be fair, Tim was driving along, I was merely passengering.  At any rate, we were having a fine old time, doing this and that and chatting and laughing as we do, and suddenly, the left lens popped out of Tim's sunglasses.  For no apparent reason.  In the frame and then Out of the frame. That's not helpful at all while driving, just FYI.

Fortunately, we were headed toward home anyway because squinting into the bright sunshine here will not only give a person a permanent Clint Eastwood Squint, but also a headache.  I gently cradled the pieces of broken sunglasses in my hands the entire drive back.

Once we arrived home, Tim patted down both himself, the seat and the floor around his car seat looking for the missing piece.  Nope.  If it's there, we cannot find it.  So, I deposited the pieces on the kitchen countertop and went off to rummage in various drawers looking for one of those eyeglass repair kits.  I knew that once upon a time I had at least one. The only question was, what the heck did I do with it?  I was concerned that in one of my cleaning jags I had thrown it out as something old that I rarely use anyway.

Thankfully I found not one, not two but three of them tucked away in here and there around the house.  Hurrah!  Problem solved!  Or so we thought.

Tim was the first of us to tackle this project.  He is a very patient man.  Think about it, he lives with me. Obviously, he is a very patient man.  So I busied myself with myriad other things to give him space and peace while he worked.  Quite some time later, he emerged.  I questioned how it went with just a quirk of my eyebrow.  He shook his head and held up his hands.  "My hands are just too big for those teeny tiny things" he said.  

Well as  person with much smaller hands, perhaps I am the right person for the job!  Yay!  I was actually kind of eager to start, certain that I could do this.  I could be the Hero Of the Day!  Who wouldn't want to be the hero, eh?

I decided to ignore the fact that my stupid arthritic hands do not work very well.  I was going to overcome that little bump in the road. I was determined. I was going to DO THIS!  Sometimes, it just takes the right attitude to be a winner, right?  

And so I began.  With a shocking (for me) amount of patience, over and over, I tried to thread one of several miniscule screws into the proper place using tweezer (no joke) in one hand, while my other hand was squeezing the frame just hard enough to hold the lends in place.  Over and over and OVER to no avail.  I tried every single teensy tiny screw from the teensy tiny container and I couldn't seem to line it up .  I could feel myself getting annoyed so I set it all down and stepped away for a bit to give my poor hands a  rest. 

I had a few restorative M&M's and returned.  This time I perused each itty bitty piece with a  magnifying glass first.  Perhaps that way I would notice something I wasn't seeing before?  Nope.  Ok.  Deep breathe, I selected the thinnest screw, so small it was nearly invisible, with my tweezers, lined it up and.....oh my gosh...it set!  Woohoo!  I'm nearly there, I'm nearly done, I'm nearly the hero of the day!

I picked up the equally miniscule screwdriver aaaaaannnnnndddddd, knocked the damned screw out of the hole whereupon it bounced off the countertop and onto the floor.  ARGH!

I spent quite some time hunting for that screw on the lfoor. I even swept the floor and then examined the content of the dustpan (not that there was much in it) but no. No sign of the missing screw. I have no idea where that thing went, but it's gone now forever.  Once again, I could feel my temper rising so I walked away.

After dinner I attempted it one more time.  Not sure why I thought it might be a good idea, but I tried putting the screw in from the bottom instead of the top. And did so.  Successfully, easily, quickly and stupidly, because while it appeared as if the job were done of course it wasn't.  Screws are meant to go in from one and only one direction.  Naturally, the instant I handed them off to Tim, the entire thing fell apart once more. Dang.

Needless to say, today, the glasses are still in pieces.  In all honesty, probably they will ultimately just be thrown out which is a shame because they are rather expensive, very nice looking, very comfortable and it's hard to argue with that.

Perhaps later today, if I'm still feeling calm and patient and if my hands are feeling agreeable, I will take one more crack at it.

I find myself thinking of my friend Aaron who I worked with in Audiology all those years.  Not only did he work on teensy tiny hearing aids on a regular basis, he was also reknowned for getting Gordian knots out of necklaces, finding the tiniest little bitty parts of audiology lab bits that got dropped, and in general solving problems.   Why did I learn nothing of the secrets of his success when I worked side by side with them? 

Hindsight.  20/20.  In sunglasses that are all in one piece.  

Dang.