Ah Velma, I get it now.

I have not yet learned to always have my reading glasses with me. And yet I cannot read fine print without them. Who am I kidding? I can't read regular print without them!

I frequently forget them in restaurants. This is not a terrible thing, as the main list I can usually read, it's the description underneath that defeats me. A problem if I'm on my own as the small print tends to be where they put things like "includes bacon that will kill you". But I only occasionally go out to eat on my own, and family members and friends seem to be happy to read the small print for me. I could be wrong; perhaps even now they have plans to group together and steal my cutlery if I ever forget my glasses at a restaurant again.

I have done some terrible not-to-be-recommended things without glasses (I signed a legal form without them once). I ended up walking to the drug store once to buy reading glasses because mine were at work, and there was NO WAY I was going to spend an evening without the ability to read things.

(Side note: The Girl is right, I am totally getting old. I can't remember why I started writing about glasses. Give me a sec, it'll come back to me).

Oh yeah, I remember. Shopping. I do shop on my own. Shouldn't, as in general I don't like clothes shopping and in specific I'm not very good at it. But it isn't something that The Boy tends to want to do. And The Girl...well, she has a good eye and will shop at the drop of a hat. But then she wants to buy said hat. And some jeans. And maybe some shoes, mom, cause I only have a six pairs of runners. So I go on my own. But....

Can't bring myself to ask for help reading sizes. And I keep forgetting what size I'm looking for anyway. Which sounds ridiculous, but it is almost as though my brain has decided not to believe the scale. I still find myself leaving a store because they don't have anything I want in the plus size section. None of which would fit me anymore, but my brain is having a hard time believing that.

You know what I will shop for without glasses? Or at least what I did, but will no longer? Nylons. I'm generally a stocking kind of a gal, but sometimes you need warm tights, and sometimes you need nylons. Which is what happened the other day.

I went to Shopper's drug mart at something like 4 in the morning. Yeah, I know, but I wasn't sleeping anyway and it was a beautiful morning and it's a five minute walk. Maybe eight if you stroll. And we were down to three litres of chocolate milk. (I have a teenage son. He drinks chocolate milk at the rate many teens drink cola. You have to be a mom to understand how much that is). So I went for a stroll.

I got the milk, walked without thinking to the section with dog bones (despite being nearly 2 months dog-less so far) and then decided to get a pair of nylons.

Now, milk you can get without having to read anything. Even the price thing on the shelf is huge, so I would know if they'd suddenly decided to charge $5.00 per litre I would know.

I would have thought I could choose a pair of beige nylons without reading glasses. I thought wrong. I thought I was getting size b, beige. I was getting Tall. Queen. I may have been queen size or close to it at one point, but tall? I've never been tall. And of course, it was a box of three pairs. So I have three pairs of nylons that make my legs look orange (I'm sure if they were stretched to what they were meant to stretch to, the colour would look more natural), and they sag and bag. A bit at the knee but by then end of the day great pools of material ring my ankles. Ridiculous. I swear, I will try to be better at bringing my glasses everywhere! At the very least, I will try to refrain from purchasing anything without knowing - for certain - what I am getting.

Note: yes, being in a drug store I could have grabbed a pair of glasses just to check the size on the nylons. But the sticker really did look like B Beige, not T Queen. Honest.