I can see clearly now, the rain hath gone

In which I get new contacts!

So my first attempt to get new (replacement) contact lenses ended in silent fury (on my end) and tearful terror (on the store employees' end) due to the fact that I was turned away from every store with terrified squeaks: "No ma'am! We no have!" since my eyes are literally too large for even the largest size in stock. And they DO NOT special order. Or else, that was the look on their face, who knows what the real story is.

Then I got JoelMari involved in the mix, went to a bigger mall in a rich part of town, and told JoelMari to help me translate and make sure I wasn't getting shafted. So the first step was to get an eye exam (duh!) so I popped out my current contacts and then the assistant told me to take a seat so I could "relax my eyes".

Okayyy. I've had contacts for 15 years now and NOT ONCE have I had to "relax my eyes" prior to an exam. "Is this really neccessary?" I asked. "Oh, yes, ma'am!" But whatevs.
Then I got measured (I assume) by this machine that takes what appears to be a picture of your eyes. Then came the pizza of resistance:

As those of you with faulty eyes know, in the US, you sit in a darkened room in a kind of tricked out dentist's chair and a huge futuristic machine on a swivel arm comes down from the ceiling to fit to your forehead and eyes; you look through a series of plates that the tech adjusts, asking you "better? worse? better? worse?" (See the title shot)

WELLLLLLLL NOT HERE!

Here they take a tiny, bright yellow plastic pair of Buster Super Dweeb eyeglasses with one eye blacked out and they HOLD UP various perscriptions to the "test" eye until one "takes".

Honestly, I expected them to wave a feather over a fire pit "Great Spiritttt please tell your humble servantttt Naomi's strength of perscriptionnnnn....", and put minature glasses on a voodoo doll at that point. I was like "what on earth are these? are you fitting me for glasses size or something?" Good thing my eyes were nice and "relaxed", eh?

Heh. Anyhoo, the story ends happy with me with my -7.00 (for those of you who know anything about glasses, that's "blind-o" level) contacts (a years' worth for 60.00$) and some free lens solution.