I have an eye appointment tomorrow, so I spent the better part of the evening filling out the doctor's questionnaire. (They really should make the print bigger on those things. And the spaces. How do you write a ten-digit phone number in a space this__big?)

I had to change eye doctors because my new insurance (same company, new HMO because the old one folded) won't pay my previous doctor, the one who knows me and who has been treating me forever and from whom I got these glasses. I got the glasses two years ago, and I've been half-blind for about a year. So it's about time for an appointment, and I was ready. Excited, even, at the prospect.

Then comes this stoopid form, with questions I don't know the answers to. Abbreviations that probably mean something to someone who knows about either insurance or ophthalmology, but mean nothing to me. Pfah! It upset me so much that I made up this little speech in my head about how if you don't want to treat me, I'll just go on squinting. Oh, I was eloquently irate.

I do that a lot. I think about what I'm going to say in the worst case scenario, just to be prepared. Then I never use it because circumstances change, or I chicken out, or it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Or it is as bad, but I get tongue-tied.

It'll be different this time, though; I just know it. This time some nasty receptionist is going to give me lip. Or guff. Or maybe sass. One of those, though, lip or guff or sass. Anyway, I'm prepared. I've been practicing my speech.

Maybe it's the wind that's putting me on edge. Maybe it's not the insurance situation or the convoluted questionnaire at all. I know it's the wind that's making my eyes burn, even though I checked the "no" box when they asked me about allergies. No need to make things more complicated than they already are.