What I Already Know

Waking up in New Paltz.  There are deer out in the back yard as there often are.  Should I wake my niece up to see them.  She probably won’t care.  There will be other opportunities.  She lives here now.  I still can’t believe that after only, really one day, I’ve suddenly resumed a life with three women under my roof. 

And one of them needs a computer.   If we were in Beijing, we’d DiDi it down to SLT and visit the Apple Store.  While I was there, I’d probably pop over to Lens Crafters and buy three boxes of contacts and get one free.  I have no idea where the nearest Apple Store is here but it ain’t pop-over-able.  BestBuy will have Macs I’m told and there is one across the river in Poughkeepsie at the Galeria.

My colleague had gotten his daughter a Mac in CA with some special back-to-school package, but it is only for kids going to college.  Another young attendant hears us talking and reminds our guy of some wham-bang offer that gets my daughter something from a grand that would normally be more than fifteen hundred.  It’s all about the memory and this configuration would allow her five hundred gigs’ worth.  That’s what I was budgeting for and it sounds good to me.  We need a printer and I get a new HP Office Jet 3830 that was fifty dollars on some sale just a little while ago but is not one hundred dollars.  Can’t win em’ all. 

The laptop will need to ship to our place and the printer I go place in the back of the car.  I still need my contacts.  My niece and my daughter want to go to Target and I tell them I’ll ping them on wechat when I’m ready to go.  I make my way over to the Poughkeepsie cousin of my Beijing Lens Crafters here in the mall and try to sign up for an eye exam.  I enter, resigned.  I have no need for an eye exam.  I know precisely what my prescription is.  It hasn’t changed for years.  But, as I learned long ago, you cannot buy contacts in the U.S. without some U.S. prescription on file somewhere and I’ll run out of contacts before the next time I’ll be bouncing around in Beijing.

The attendant couldn’t be nicer.  She confirms what I already know.  “No.  Even if you could find your old exam from Hong Kong, it wouldn’t matter.   You need something from the U.S. I’ve an appointment now, with the doctor for two days out.  Ahh, for the unregulated freedom of China where you can buy any damn contact lenses you want and if you put the wrong ones in and drive into a truck, it’s nobody’s fault but your own.



Friday, 08/30/19