Getting. Older. Sucks.

The date that I was freaking over last week – it never happened. Which, considering the state of my hair, might not be a terrible thing. Though, it is getting better thanks to all your wonderful suggestions. Thank God! But I digress… Okay, so the non-date. Well, in addition to owning a nightclub Mr. Hot Stuff also owns customs cars that tour in car shows. They’re currently in Florida somewhere, and apparently last weekend someone set fire to them. Huge damages and, even worse, one of his crew was badly injured in the explosions. Not good. Obviously, Hot Stuff had to fly right out, but he did cancel our date with a promise of dinner and a movie when he gets back.

So, instead of holding hands in a dark theater with Mr. Hot Stuff I decided if I couldn’t have a romance of my that weekend, I’d do the next best thing and read about one. I booted up an ebook from one of my good friends, Babe King. (Between the Gutter and the Sky – a great story, you should totally check it out! It’s out Oct. 7th from FreyasBower.com) I was loving it, getting into the characters, the juicy sexual tension… when I noticed something. I was squinting at the screen. I’d never noticed myself doing that before. And, I realized, during the course of the book I had scooched my chair back about a foot from my computer in order to read the print. How had it suddenly become so small and fuzzy? I checked my settings. Nope, same font I always used, same size text. So what was wrong with me?

I shrugged it off. Maybe I was just tired.

Well, the next day, I continued to read. And squint. Until I found myself with a twitch in my right eye and a headache from Hades. After messing with my monitor settings for a good half hour, I consulted my friend Suze. She suggested that maybe I needed (gasp, horrors!) reading glasses.

Um, no. Old people need glasses. I am not old. Ergo, no glasses for me. I am totally fine. My eyes are great.

Though, as soon as Suze said ‘reading glasses’, in the back of my mind, I heard the voice of my college human development teacher. I remembered her saying that up until the age of 30, the human body is a constant state of growth and regeneration. After 30, this stops. At age 30 the human body actually starts decomposing. Now, to my college self 30 seemed a long ways off, but, I’ll admit, on my birthday last year instead of a card with a cake and candles, my sister sent me a sympathy card offering her condolences on the loss of my twenties.

So, just in case (though, I was sure I didn’t need them) I made an appointment with an eye doctor. Who handed down the verdict that years of reading Nancy Drew in the dark until all hours with a dim little flashlight under my covers had finally caught up to me. Yup, you need reading glasses, chickie. (I hate it when Suze is right.)

So, the weekend that I had planned to include hand-holding, dark move theaters, and Mr. Hot Stuff ended up with me in an optician’s office having my pupils dilated and being told that glasses are a fact of “getting older” by the twenty-one year old college kid with piercing in her upper lip holding the eye chart.

But, in a show of defiance, I picked out a pair of hip designer frames in screaming hot pink. Hey, if I’m going to decompose, you'd better believe I’m going to look good doing it.

~Gemma 'Trigger Happy' Halliday

P.S. I’m still waiting for catslady to contact me as the winner of Wendy Nelson Tokunaga’s new book MIDORI BY MOONLIGHT. If you’re out there, catslady, email me!