Which One Did I Choose?

For a change, I thought I'd make you all laugh a bit - it's the weekend, time to relax, let your hair down, unwind, play, rest, shop, clean, dance, eat, sleep, read, sing, kiss or whatever else you have not gotten round to during the week :-)

You've all seen pictures of me before, and therefore you know that I wear specs. Well, that's not my choice; like almost everybody else who wears them, I simply need them. Full stop.

I have been wearing specs ever since I was 7 years old, and without them, I am as blind as a bat, as the saying goes (which is rubbish, actually, because bats are not blind at all. But neither am I, come to think of it. Impaired vision, I guess is the correct term; or, medically speaking, I am myopic.).

After I don't know how many years of having been wearing my current pair, I decided it was time for new ones when one of our local opticians sent a leaflet through the mail, advertising a special offer "for a limited time only" (without specifying what that limited time really means - a day? a week? a month? a year?).

Now, when I go shopping for specs, I want to find a pair that suits me well enough to be worn every single day, from the moment I get out of bed to when it is time for "lights out!" at the Librarian's home.

Because of my really precarious eyesight, I need very strong glasses, specially cut and polished out of a special material, "compressed" plastic (don't ask - that's what my optician calls it), and - you guessed it - they cost me an arm and a leg (not literally, don't worry. Otherwise, I would have run out of legs and arms a long time ago.). Not the frames, just the lenses. Therefore, I can not afford to have more than one pair which I wear day in, day out, rain or shine, and that makes it of course even more important to choose the right ones.

Now for the difficult part: The frames at the optician's all have glass in them - but uncut, obviously. And I can not really see myself in the mirror clearly from further away than a few inches - which makes it virtually impossible to get the full picture. So, I depend on someone to accompany and advise me on the various models; someone who is not interested in selling me the most expensive frame in the whole shop, but who honestly tells me which ones look alright perched atop my nose and which ones do not.

My sister fully qualifies for that position, and sure enough, yesterday after work we met up in town and went to the aforementioned optician's with their "special offer".

Somehow, there was nobody there to serve us, so we had free range of the entire shop - and did we make use of it! When I had told my boyfriend that I was going to look for new specs and the difficulties that presents for me, he suggested to simply take a camera along, take pictures of myself with the various models, and then make my choice aided by the photos.

Since, as I said, we were completely left to our own devices, my sister and I had plenty of fun with me trying on the frames we thought would suit me, and some rather impossible ones just for a laugh.

The results - taken with the not very good camera of my mobile phone - are here for you to look & laugh at:

 Dame Edna - without the make-up and the jewels :-D

 My sis says I remind her of a certain TV presenter who used to host a show on German telly years ago. I'm afraid she is quite right.

 Is it just me or does anyone else think I look like a bloke there, and a slightly angry and VERY nerdy one at that?

By then, we were afraid they were going to boot us out of the shop any minute now, for all our giggling and helping ourselves to everything we wanted. So we tried a more serious approach. 

And now I want you to guess which frame I choose in the end!