It's finally here. Spring break. I can feel my whole body longing to breathe that sigh of relief that always hits me as we finally hit the open highway heading south of our river valley. The point at which it just doesn't matter what we forgot to pack or to do. (Well, the garbage we forgot to empty while we were gone for three weeks at Christmas did do quite a number on our house's aroma. I guess that one mattered a little.)

But I can't sigh yet. In the next twenty-four hours, I have oodles of preparations to do, laundry to do, and packing to do. Hopefully it can all be done in the amount of time I have. Hopefully I do not get in so much of a hurry that I overpack. (When I take my time, I'm actually a fairly conservative packer. For our trip to the States, I took less for a family of five for three weeks than I used to take for myself for one!)

Here's something that Jason blind-sided me with on Monday: for my collective "all-special-gift-giving-days-in-one" gift for the year, he suggested that I could go get corrective laser surgery on my eyes.

While, in theory, this is something that I have longed for since I first heard about it at the age of 13, and watched Mrs. Brown walk around with the uber-sexy eye patch that was required at the time for several weeks per eye, now that I am actually confronted with the notion, my stomach is lurching around in the vicinity of my vocal chords and my mind is flopping around like a pasty trout on a hot river rock as far as decisions go.

I have spent the last two nights reverting to old sleepless habits to research as much as possible about laser eye surgery on the internet. I have also been asking myself some tough questions: am I sure I want good vision badly enough to risk becoming one of those statistics, however small, where things have gone horribly, horribly wrong? (Or even mildly wrong?) These are the only set of eyes I've got, and though they have been letting me down on a regular basis since the age of nine, at least their current decrepit state is workable, ya know?

Despite my trepidation, I have booked a consultation in Edmonton on Monday. We will see if they can sufficiently allay my fears that I can agree to this idea with confidence.

Because for every thought I have of permanent eye dryness, painful cornea rippling, or old-age concerns (of which most are unknown, since LASIK has only been around since 1991), I have about five thoughts of "wouldn't it be nice if I could actually see my legs while I am shaving them?" or "Wow. It would sure be great to not have to fumble for glasses before dealing with the screaming child coming into our room at 3 a.m." etc.

So. If anyone has any horror stories about people who have had LASIK surgery, now's the time to lay 'em on me. But please--they have to have happened to you, or someone you know well. I don't want any rumours that have been magnified through fourteen repeats of the story, until "They had minor night halos for about three months" turns into "They got abducted by aliens because they couldn't tell the difference between approaching headlights and the lights on a saucer-like spacecraft."

Happy Easter, everyone. What are you looking forward to (or not!) this spring?