Trina Machacek: Cleaning my personal windshield

I count myself very lucky to have a garage. Luckier yet is that there is actually room in that garage for my vehicles. It could easily, oh so very easily be turned into another catch-all location for all things that have no actual place to live in my world.

But. Yes, a storage-sized “but.” My garage is actually used to house my truck and car. With the garage I am saved from having to clean off my windshield in the winter. I do not miss that task. It usually needs to be done when it is snowy and blowy and colder than well diggers – well you can fill in that blank as you brush, scrape and grumble at the snow on your windshield.

Before the garage I had many years of cleaning windshields. Now I see in some of the parking lots we have here and there for the mine workers who are bused to work, trucks in the winter with windshield wipers standing up and away from the windows.

They look like soldiers with bayonets at the ready to skewer each and every snowflake that dares to land on those windshields. With all that said I suppose I should tell you all of that chitty chat was just a snow job. Those are not the personal windshields I want to talk about today.

No, my personal windshield to be cleaned are my glasses. Yes, the things that bring all things into view for me. However, there are times that even our personal windshields need attention.

Sadly, I don’t often enough realize that my glasses need to be cleaned. Sometimes not until the television has more fuzzy spots than even I can cock my head to see around.

I was a chaperone for a bunch of kids some time ago on a weeklong trip. One student wore glasses and was so busy seeing the sights and being a kid that her glasses got smeared and dirty. About the third day I looked at her and said, “Has someone been licking your glasses?”

Now that line comes back on me about once a week when I finally notice my personal windshields need to be hit with some type of cleaning solution and cloth. I suppose if I were to wear contact lenses the cleaning would be automatic as you take them off each night. Or at least every other night and put them in those cute little plastic cups with cleaning solution.

I have also seen some contact wearers just pop them in their mouths to be cleaned. I would not recommend that after eating anything garlicy. I have, I will admit, spit a bit of liquid on my glasses to get them wet to wipe off some of the grime that accumulates there. I guess that is the same as popping contacts into your mouth to clean them.

Neither sounds very lady like, are they? Cleaning glasses has become a thing for me. I’m at the age that I can’t see without them but in some instances, I can’t see with them either. Some things are too close, and some are too far. I spend a good amount of time putting my glasses on my head or taking them down and perching them on my nose.

I am getting, SLOWLY getting to the point that two lenses are not enough of an adjustment for me. Yes, I think sooner or later I will have to take that step to tri-focals. There is a spot between here and there that I haven’t seen for a while now. I blame it on the dirt on my personal windshields. Yes, yes, it’s the dirt and grimes’ fault.

I never realized just how gross glasses can become until I married a welder who wore glasses. He used them to see of course. More than that he used them as his safety glasses too. Oh, when he got new glasses, it was because the super-duper scratch resistance stuff he had applied to new glasses was so pitted and scratched that looking through them was like watching a light show. All sparkly and flashy.

Oh, he cleaned the lenses several times a day, but occasionally he would clean the frames too. If you wear glasses and have not taken a good look at your glasses as a whole? Holy Moses. They may need a bit of attention.

We are as humans, cute little grease balls at different times of the day and we shed skin cells and stuff constantly. EW. Enough said on that. If you are one of the glass-guided people who ONLY clean your personal windshields before going to the eye doctor… Yes, we see you have let someone lick your glasses! Just sayin.’

Trina Machacek lives in Diamond Valley north of Eureka. Email itybytrina@yahoo.com.