I have pretty ordinary eyesight, so I’m a bit fussy about all things vision related. I wear contact lenses most of the time, because  I have more glass in my specs than a good, solid crystal whiskey glass.  Forget the saying “like the bottom of a Coke bottle”, I’ve got the whole slab.  So my contacts are always well kept, my glasses pristine, and my sunnies polarised.

But this is not a story about my failing eyesight (no I will not be getting LASER any time soon: too scared. No I don’t need bifocals yet: long arms.)  It’s a story about sun glasses.

My last sunglasses were Ray Bans, and I got them about three years ago.  They weren’t cheap, but they’ve done well. Unfortunately I dropped them on the tiles ABOUT EIGHT MONTHS AGO, and I have been wearing them with a massive crack just below my line of vision ever since. I live in Queensland.  So that means I wear them every.single.day.  With a crack.  It was driving me bonkers initially.  And then not so much, because I sort of filtered it out, and looked around it.  Just like the dirt on my floor and the frown lines on my forehead.  I know they’re all there, but hey, we can live in harmony right?  A little scotoma here and there never hurt anyone.

Nathan goes through sunnies like, well, like they’re going out of style.  Partly because he is a fashion fiend, but mostly because he’s a chippy, and he often gets chippies (see what I did there?).

Friday is our 10 year wedding anniversary, and usually we don’t really do a present thing, but this year we decided to get new sunnies. To sweeten the deal, Nath did some work a while ago for a dude who owns a sunglasses shop.  The dude is really lovely, and implied, with a nudge and a wink, that he would “look after us” when we next needed some shades.  So off we trotted.

Before I go any further you must see what I got:

This is the box. All the shiny.

…And this is all the crap inside the box… Gucci cleaning cloth, Gucci certificate of authenticity… In it’s own little envelope.

The handsome case… That will be all scratched to hell in about a week.

Can you believe that shit?  I’m just gonna chuck ’em in my bag, face, bag, car, bag, carseat… And you would be right in thinking that all of those accoutrements drove the dollar value up a bit.  But I wasn’t worried, Old Mate was doing us a deal.  Nath chose some crazy glasses that pilots wear, made my NASA or some such. They’re unbreakable, and I suspect they can brew you a macchiato should you feel inclined.  Again: not worried, we were in the know.

Until we got the bill. We were not so much in the know as in the shit.  We had cash, but NOT THAT MUCH CASH.  With a nod and a wink, our contact looked at the tally and said “I’ll give you a discount.”

Cool (whew).

He gave us fifty bucks off.  FIFTY.

The fact that I am whinging about what sounds like a decent discount, should alert you to the fact that THESE SUNNIES COST A SMALL FORTUNE.  We felt sick, but were too embarrassed to say anything more than a mumbled “Thanks”, and then we beat it out of that joint.  I’m only just coming down from the rush of spending so much money on non-prescription eyewear.

So if you see me, be sure to notice the Gucci badge on the arms.  Because according to our mate, “That, darlink*, is what you are paying for.”

What wankers we are.

*He didn’t really say darlink.

Have you ever spent up big thinking you were getting a discount?

Got any sunnies that could feed a small nation?

I mentioned here yesterday that I have a problem with loss.

So in the interests of full disclosure, I think I should also reveal I have a problem with shoes. Not in in losing shoes, mind, in finding them.  It appears from the straw poll I performed this morning regarding how many shoes other people actually own, I may* have a problem.  Not a massive problem, just a little one.  Or, not so much little, as errr… Well you be the judge.

Here are my shoes:

42 pairs, give or take.. Mainly give, as I found four more pairs after this photo-shoot, and I remembered I left another pair at a mates house in Melbourne last time I was there…

In my defence, I live in Queensland, and it is quite hot, so I require lots of thong-sandal-flimsy kind of shoes. It does however cool down in the Autumn, so I do require a few shoes for that change of season. In addition I am likely to go to Melbourne at least once a year, so I require black things and warm things to do that.  Plus, there is the fact that I like to give the impression of being kind of casual-sporty, so I have no choice but to have a pair or several of Cons. (You may notice there is one pair of actual running shoes. I wore those in 2011, and I will say they were very comfortable that day.)

So there you have it.  This is what the shoe situation is like for a person with many and varied tastes.  I would also like to remind you, before you mock my abundance, that I wear every single pair of these shoes, except the white wedding shoes, but I will wear those this Friday.  These shoes are my friends and allies.  I have The Menopause, so sometimes it is impossible to find anything to wear that makes a girl feel good. My feet are never fat, and my shoes never fail me.