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Jeepers, Creepers, Where’d You Get Those Peepers - Middle Chicks

If you can’t see the menu at a restaurant anymore, raise your hand! Yet another symptom of aging that sucks. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your eyesight is, it seems as though when you hit the age of about 41, your eyes change. For some of us, it gets harder to see read a book in bed without the book sitting across the room. For others, those of you who’ve spent your lives wearing glasses, you’ve probably found that you don’t need those glasses any more for close-up stuff and you’re pulling those darn things off as much as others are putting on a pair of readers.

Back in my early-ish 30s, I was wearing coke bottles on my face. Literally. I was legally blind without glasses. I’ve been blessed by having to wear glasses since the age of 13 and it was super fun to sport glasses, braces, zits, and frizzy hair all at the same time. Those were the days, I tell ya. Back to my point. When I made it to those early 30s, I did two things for myself that changed my life forever: I had PRK on my eyes to fix my eyesight, and did a professional straightener on my hair.

What is PRK?

Everybody has heard of Lasik surgery, but I’m not sure PRK is quite as well known. PRK is not the same as Lasik, as PRK involves scraping the cornea to shape it to improve the eyesight, but it’s the same premise, which is to have near perfect vision. It works. In fact, I still have 20/25 vision. When I had the surgery, my eye doctor told me that when I worked my way into my 40s, I would more than likely need readers. I knew what readers were, and had in fact played in them when I was younger at the drugstore and watched my kids playing in them at the same drugstores, but as we do in our 30s, I managed to quickly put that thought out of my mind.

Enter the 40s and, sure enough, I started having issues seeing that doggone restaurant menu. Then my kids would say, “Mommy, look at this!” while they were shoving things to see or read right under my nose, immediately requiring me to move it to a safe distance away from my now-can’t-see-anything-close-up eyes. Now, I am at a point that I can’t see the computer well unless it’s practically across the room from me.

Well Hello, Presbyopia

In my quest to figure out and deal with what the hell is happening, I found myself back in glasses and because I am inquisitive by nature (and hate wearing glasses) I now know a whole lot about Presbyopia. Presbyopia is a real thing that happens to men and women in their 40s and beyond. In a nutshell, it’s when your near sight starts to leave. Just like your body, your eyes age. Which is awesome, because I can have sagging skin, achy joints, AND poor eyesight. Just like reliving those teen years all over again—only different. Some of the signs of Presbyopia are when you find yourself needing more light to see (which is why all of us are using the flashlights on our phone to see) and also noticing that it might be harder to see at night when driving. You’re not imagining those things—they are real and they are happening.

Readers to the Rescue

So how do we deal with all this eyesight nonsense? Well, we buy some damn readers. Oh joy, we’re back in glasses! Back in the day, our parents wore them hanging around their necks with beaded holders, and truth be told, many folks still do just that. We also have then propped on top of our heads, hung in our shirt necklines, left on kitchen countertops and on our desks and in our handbags. In fact, if you’re like me, you likely lose as many readers as you buy because, well, the darn things are hard to keep track of.

Introducing Peepers: Your New BFF

The good news is that readers generally don’t cost a fortune, so losing them doesn’t hurt as much. I recently had a reader emergency—which really means that I lost all my reading glasses and needed some replacements, STAT. I hate the creepy selection at the drugstore, so I went to the Google machine and typed in “Cute Funky Readers.” Don’t laugh—that was exactly what I was looking for! To my utter surprise and joy, I ended up at Peepers.com. Peepers carries accessories, readers, bifocalsm and sunglasses and I swear to you, just about every pair is cute. The user experience on the Peepers site is terrific and using their search function, I was quickly and easily able to narrow down a large inventory to options that suited my taste. Even better, their prices were fantastic.

Here’s a disclaimer: The folks at Peepers don’t know they’ve got such a happy customer that she’s writing a blog post about their site and their products, but I consider it my responsibility to my fellow middle-aged amigos to spread this word. I ultimately ended up buying three pairs of Peepers specs. Their prices were reasonable, their products fit my needs (“cute/funky”), they were obviously well made, and they took about four days to arrive at my door. There’s nothing not to like about that equation.

So if you find yourself in need of some readers, definitely check out Peepers. If you don’t know for sure what strength of readers you need, they have a handy chart you can download with instructions on how to use it, so you can know before you buy. If you somehow manage to get it wrong, Peepers has a  no questions asked return policy.

What about you? Are your eyes failing and driving you crazy yet? Isn’t it awesome?? Have you found your own magical source for readers? If so, I’d love to hear about what you like.