All good things...

I've grown increasingly sad over the past few weeks, because so many of the blogs I read are shutting down. I know that real life takes prescidence over Internet Life, but the selfish part of me wants to keep reading these fantastic writers, wants to learn more about their lives, read their stories, and be able to tell Dan, oh, this person is doing this now.

Also, this weekend Dan did something that I am at once extremely proud of and at the same time a little apprehensive about. He got contacts for the first time ever. It was something he wanted to do for a long time, but started to think more about it recently and decided he wanted to go through with it before the wedding because he wants to be glasses-free for wedding photos. He has a lifelong squeamishness toward eyeball touching which kept him from getting contacts in the past, but I guess his desire for change overcame his eyeball touching phobia.

We went to the Chain Glasses Store in the racetrack mall on Sunday and he had his eye exam, picked out his new frames (he's still going to be wearing glasses sometimes), and then got a long and frequently-interrupted lesson about how to insert contacts. His frustration was palpable after a while, because he was trying really hard and his eye just wouldn't cooperate, but he got the first one in eventually and then got the second one in right away. I tried to coach him but I've never worn corrective lenses of any kind so I couldn't give much in the way of guidance. I do wonder whether women who wear makeup have an easier time of learning the whole inserting-contacts process because we are less likely to cringe when things come at our eyeballs (you can't really cringe if you want your eyeliner/mascara to go on right). Men don't wear makeup, though (at least Dan doesn't) and I wonder whether his apprehension about eye touching stems in part from never getting used to it with the mascara wand (he does the open-mouth thing that most women do when putting on mascara when he's trying to put in a contact; I wonder why we all do that?)

On the one hand, I think it's fabulous, because it will free him up to do things like run outside in the cold without having to worry about fogged glasses or being unable to see anything, take photos without having to navigate his glasses around the viewfinder, etc. And he can buy cheap sunglasses now. On the other hand, the only time I have ever seen him without glasses has been in the shower or in bed, times of intimacy even if all we're doing is sleeping. Dan's face-without-glasses is something that only I've gotten to see in years, something that a part of me feels is a special thing just for me, but when we left the glasses place on Sunday everybody in the mall got to see it. Also, I really like the way he looks in glasses (not that I don't like the way he looks without) and I find glasses to be a really attractive thing, something to help distinguish a face from other faces.

As we drove home, he marveled at how free he felt, seeing the world in sharp clarity with nothing sitting on his face, driving for the first time in his life without glasses. He was grinning from ear to ear, heady with the pleasure of unencumberance. I know it's a good thing and something he's really happy about, something he's been thinking about for a long time. But a small part of me will miss being the only one who gets to see him with nothing on his face, and miss the frames around his eyes on the days he'll spend in contacts. I'm sure I'll get over it eventually.