New glasses

I got my new glasses about a week ago and it was HIGH TIME.

I've been in need of new glasses for quite a long time, not just because my old prescription was four years old, but also because of Sarah Palin.

You see, when Sarah Palin came on the scene at last summer's Republican convention, people started looking at me with my rimless glasses and saying, "You know who you kind of look like?"

They'd take me in, frowning a little bit and moving their heads from one side to the other, attempting to sum up the superfical similarities: Last summer, my hair was still long and the style I'd adopted was much like the bangs-swept-to-the-side style Sarah Palin wore. And there were the rimless glasses. We were both brunettes and even our eye color -- hers hazel, mine green -- sort of struck some people.

"You look, kind of, you know. Around the top part of your head? Like Sarah Palin. With the glasses and all."

Okay, that was just embarrassing. Not that it's so tragic to be even slightly compared to Sarah Palin in the looks department, because no matter what the political persuasion, I don't think anyone objected to Sarah's looks. Some had honest admiration and others were grudging and gave off the aroma of sour grapes, but we all know she's very pretty.

However, the only part of me that was being compared to her was....the top part of my head? Like, from the eyes up? That stung a little, mostly because it was obvious to anyone who had eyes in their own heads that ANY resemblance we bore to one another ended with the bottom rims of our glasses.

So I started kind of worrying that people were going to think my hair and my glasses were like that ON PURPOSE. Like I was copying her or something, and how embarrassing would that be? Sarah Palin and I might share similar hairstyles, spectacles and coloring, but I'd make about three of the woman, I would. Which is not something I want to contemplate, especially thinking cringe-worthy thoughts like people in the grocery thinking, "That poor large dear must think she looks like the sexy Sarah. How tragic."

So I cut my hair off, and it was high time to have that done, too. And now I have new glasses. And I posted a picture of my made-over self on an internet chat board I belong to and one person said, Oh, Shelley! You know who you look like? You look just like the writer of the Sookie Stackhouse series, Charlaine Harris!"

So now I'm thinking of peroxiding my hair and stepping up the use of eyeliner -- maybe going for some black frames with dark lenses? -- and getting a great big Billy Idol thing going. Just....well. Just because.