"I'm afraid I cannot acquisce to your request."

[rolanni]

"...that means, No."

And that's likely as close as I'll come to talking like a pirate today.

Up early and off to Skowhegan. I used to live in Skowhegan. It's a pleasant town; a river runs through it, Coburn Park is very nice, the wooden indian is marvelous, and the downtown is extremely walkable, with a couple of really cool footbridges -- one 'way over the gorge just below the dam, the second above the dam, a swinging bridge from the island over to Bloomfield. There are dozens of ducks on the Bloomfield side of the bridge; on the Skowhegan side, there's an ice cream stand. Win-win.

The town's on a slope, so if you walk uphill, to, say, the Margaret Chase Smith Library, and go out onto the second floor porch, you can see the whole thing laid out below you, like a Christmas garden New England town, all the way down to the Great Eddy.

So, off to Skowhegan this morning in the rising fog, there to visit the eye doctor, who is worth a forty mile round trip, had a very thorough check-up, coming away with new prescriptions for glasses (I'm less nearsighted now?) and contact lenses -- and an appointment for next Monday with a specialist, who will hopefully be able to figure out why I have an on-again/off-again blind spot in my left eye. Gerry ruled out the Usual Baddies, which was good, but wants to make sure that there isn't an underlying Real Baddy lurking beyond the range of his equipment. Better safe than sorry, but ...argh.

After, kinzel and I breakfasted at the Empire Grill, then walked across the gorge bridge. kinzel took pictures of the dam and of the great blue heron and possibly of the red-and-orange foilage -- fall comes early in Skowhegan, and winter stays late.

A ride out the back way to the post office, and thence to home, where we rest briefly. There's another ride to Skowhegan scheduled for the afternoon, so that kinzel can get his eyes checked.

Comments

Eyesight

[(Anonymous)]

Sharon - Near sightedness does change as one ages. My daughter-in law is able to read without glasses now. Little does she know, the next step is glasses for far-sightedness. If there is a cure for that, other than glasses, I'd love to know it, having always been far-sighted. Also, have the big blind spot in the left eye, which, paradoxically, is the better eye. Go figure.

Joan C

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I got new glasses this year. Things were getting a bit blurry with my other pair. I was worried that my sight had changed so much in 2 years. Quite depressing when you're fifty because you wonder if you'll be blind as a bat by sixty and life then wouldn't be worth living for a voracious reader. But I got good news, something no optometrist had noticed in the forty years I've been wearing glasses: there are people whose eyes are very sensitive to minute changes, even one quarter of one out of ten. In other words, blindness is still very far away. Anyway, I wonder if the same thing might be happening to you.