Thursday, October 22, 2009

Apologies to the west coast.

Each morning I set my iPod to shuffle and put it in the dock in my bathroom to keep myself entertained while I shower. This morning while scrubbing down, my iPod spit out three California songs in a row. I thought it was a pretty weird coincidence.

I began to wonder if it was a sign. Was the universe trying to tell me to move across the country and settle down on the west coast? Is that where I belong? Does my destiny lie in California?

Then I got out of the shower and realized that my iPod was just playing songs in alphabetical order and was currently in the C’s.

A part of still thought it might have been a sign, though, and not just my inability to properly hit the shuffle button.

Then California Songs by Local H came on and quickly put an end to that notion.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Life and deaf.

I woke up last week and couldn’t hear out of my left ear. It wasn’t totally deaf. It was more like trying to listen to the world with the the left side of your head submerged in two feet of water. It was bearable, but pretty inconvenient.  I toughed it out, hoping it would go away. Just like most of my hopes, it didn’t come true.

After a few days, I couldn’t take the half-hearing anymore and went to see a doctor. My bet was on an infection. Maybe a tumor. Possibly that one thing where you have a parasitic twin growing inside of you and didn’t even know it. But alas, it was nothing so dramatic. It was simply an excessive build up of ear wax. And I actually had it in both ears.

He went after the less-clogged right ear first. In went his tweezers and out came the huge mass of wax. It was a half-inch long. I didn’t even know there was that much room in my ear deeper than the reach of my pinkie. When he moved on to my left ear, he couldn’t even tweeze it out.  He had to spend 30 minutes washing it out with a syringe and hot water. After a half-hour of enjoying a high-pressure stream against my ear drum, he managed to flush it clean. By the end, the wash basin had bits and chunks of ear debris floating in it and reminded me of a finished bowl of oatmeal filled with water and left in the sink to soak.

I guess I probably shouldn’t have waited 27 years to get my ears cleaned.

Now hearing is a totally different experience. I’ve grown so used to having half an inch of crap between me and the world that now nothing sounds the same. Everything is crisper. Fuller. Louder. It’s like I’ve suddenly gained the super-hearing of Superman.

Unfortunately, the invulnerability of Superman didn’t come with it. When everything is five times louder, it fucking hurts.

Air ducts sound like vacuum cleaners. Water faucets sound like fire hoses. That girl who sits behind me at work and laughs all the time sounds like a flock of ducks in a jet engine.

It makes me wish I had earplugs.

Too bad I had my all-natural ones removed.