I think I've hit the peak of summer misery.

Isaac brought us days of rain and continues to drag moist air over the state, pushing our humidity levels up to Insane Percent. I brought two bags of stuff up the stairs around noon and the sweat was just pouring down my face like I'd run a marathon.

This has been a weird week for me - I know that I should be going all out on business prospecting and yet somehow I can't get my head in the game. I'm doing at best 37% effort and I really can't say why - but hope is on the horizon, and actually arrived in the mail, via a local magazine addressing this issue and a boot camp starting tomorrow.

Boot camp in real estate terms is an office exercise, when people who want a kick in the ass get together and review what they are doing, (Um...?) and volunteer to get screamed at a little bit: "ARE YOU DOING EVERYTHING YOU CAN DO TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS? ARE YOU??? ARE YOU DOING THIS, AND THIS AND THIS? NO?? THEN THAT'S WHY YOU SUCK!! NOW JUST GET OUT THERE AND DO IT!!!

YES, DRILL SERGEANT!! Says Agent Gump/Me.

I'm in, I know I need it - it's an ongoing issue in this business, unless you live in an area where you just know everybody and everybody knows that Ed and Martha's little girl (who might be 45) sells houses now, so they just call her and she gets business entirely on referral. If you aren't that lucky kid with parents who know everybody in town you have to get out there and sell yourself. You have to put yourself out there, online and face to face, in every possible way. And this doesn't come naturally to me, but I discovered that I really enjoy it when I do it. Even so, I've been slacking for a few weeks. (I was going to say "a week" but that would be a lie - like how long it has been since I set foot in the gym.)

Part of it is physical. I just cannot effing SEE, and it is making me grumpy and tired. I cannot wait until my eye dr. appointment on September 10th (the earliest I could get in). My vision is, as the kids say, all jacked up. (Yes, the "kids" influencing my vocabulary are around 30 and have kids of their own. Shut up.)

It's been annoying for a while, but over the summer it either got worse or I just lost my ability to tolerate not being able to see things I need to be able to read - the MLS on my laptop is soo tiny now it wears me out. Books are tiring. I can see this big bright iMac screen with readers over my contacts, but even it isn't ideal - and did I mention that the local MLS isn't available on a Mac? I may have had this issue in AVL too, but there I could use this big bright screen for the MLS so it didn't matter so much. Now I have hours of eyestrain a day.

I don't think it's entirely my vewy speshul eyes, either. Last year in Asheville I got new glasses and contacts, and I think the very nice eye doctor over-corrected my distance vision. I don't entirely blame her, because I do recall telling her that one of my issues was reading street signs in unfamiliar neighborhoods. She did fix that as much as my screwed up left eye would allow, and I functioned. But that choice, combined with bifocals that are really cute but don't actually work as reading glasses and totally don't work as computer glasses - we are back to square one and figuring out what I really need to be able to Just Freaking SEE.

I muddled through with the less than just right, and now, a year later, it's so far less than just right I am wearing magnifying glasses to do the freaking dishes. So I'm wearing contact lenses when: 1) I need magnifying readers to see anything closer than 4 feet away; and 2) I wear sunglasses when outdoors. This seems to leave a really narrow window when my formerly awesome Rigid Gas Permeable Lenses are really doing their job, and they cost an arm and a leg.

So I have to think about this, and I hope the doctor (now I'm back at the same place that did my post brain thang testing, but I think the doctor I liked isn't there now) will have the patience to talk me through the decisions I need to make. I may just jettison the contacts, at least for a while, if I can get glasses that actually work - even if I need an all around bifocal pair and a different pair for the computer, it'd beat the hell out of the current arrangement, which is contacts almost constantly covered by off the rack readers or sunglasses, and I still have Issues. Sort of defeats the purpose of contact lenses, ya know?

I am somewhat resigned to the reality that I will never really see the way I did before my brain thang. I'm not whining. (Okay, maybe I am, but it's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.) I'm also officially past trying to pretend it's not an issue, because it is. I'm very grateful that my vision recovered the way it did. I'm functional, yes, but it's a surprisingly tiring thing to compensate for, day in and day out. I just want the best vision solution I can get, and a doctor with the patience to help me figure it out. And my appointment isn't until September 10th. It's going to be a loong two weeks.