After years of yearning for them, I finally got glasses with red frames.

Go ahead, make the Sally Jessy Raphael jokes. I like to buy at least one red piece of clothing or accessory every year. Last year, it was an awesome pair of red cowboy boots. (For the record: I am also a fan of purple, orange, green and teal.)

Red signals boldness, lack of fear, power. I like those traits.

When bigger frames, last popular in the '80s, started making a comeback a few years ago, I knew it was only a matter of time before I found a pair.

Most of my eyewear comes from a Danish design company called ProDesign. The looks are bold and clean but feature great attention to detail. My optometrist's office has a small but smartly curated selection of ProDesign and other lines. My pre-red pair were a green metal with hints of gold along the modern sculpture-ish limbs.

In May, a month before my 47th birthday, I noticed that I couldn't read small print without squinting and/or taking off my glasses (I am nearsighted). Uh oh, it's time for bifocals, I thought.

I really don't have a problem with getting older, and I'm not really vain. I just didn't have time to adjust to a new way of looking at everything. I watch my friends practice what looks like a form of eye tai chi in an effort to get used to bifocals or reading glasses. Surely, you've seen the moves:

The Curious Bird: Stretch neck and tilt head to back or to sides.

The Long Arm: Extend the arm with an object in hand to read it (usually a phone).

The Head Topper: Pushing the eyewear up to a perch on head. Most often seen with sunglasses but also is a move used by bifocal wearers.

The Slide: Pulling glasses to end of the nose and peering over the top.

Searcher: Frantically touching the top of the head and patting around on a desk or in a bag to find reading glasses.

A few months later at my eye exam, the optometrist confirmed my suspicion. I am at the low end of the "needs bifocals" scale. Getting them comes down to how much you mind taking your glasses on and off, she said. I was already doing that, so I shrugged and said, "I'll wait until the next pair."

Silly me.

You see, I didn't realize how much I would be taking them on and off. I used to be able to wear my glasses at work all day. Now I have to take them off when I'm at the computer and when I look at my phone. I do both of those things often. Quite often.

If I don't remove the glasses, I get really nasty headaches. Turns out it's a good thing that I'm a fan of good design since my cool new red specs often sit on my desk or rest on top of my phone. Sometimes I feel like I look at them more than through them.

You know what this means, right? A new pair of glasses next year. This time, I think I'll go for the purple frames. With bifocals.