Public Service Announcement: Ear Infections Suck!

Let’s start out with this Public Service Announcement:

You are never too old to get an ear infection.

Yep.  It’s true.  One of those maladies you think you only get as a child, like chickenpox or scabby knees.  Which, yes, I know, on the occasion, adults get those things, too.  In fact, I have scabby parts all the time due to the activities I choose to engage in.  Get your mind out of the gutter!  I was not talking about those kinds of activities.  Bitch please!  As you have read, dating and any sort of intimate adult activity is apparently not in the stars for me.  Moving on…

Eat infections.  They suck HUGE donkey balls bigtime.  As an adult, whoa Nelly!  I now know why children scream and cry and fuss so much when they have them.  I guess when I first felt the pressure I should have done something about it.  But no.  Wait a week or so.  It’ll clear up.  It’s probably just ear wax blocking my ear canal.  Nothing major, right? Wrong.  I stayed up an entire night since I was in so much discomfort after the pain in my ear progressively got worse.  I went to Doc in a Box.  Diagnosed with Swimmer’s Ear.  Which apparently you can get even when you have no swum.  I blame my ear piece for work.  There is no other explanation I can think of.  They irrigated my ear to remove wax.  Which, whoa that hurt a lot.  But I opted for it then and now.  I did not see any reason to come back in a few days since my malady was diagnosed and would improve thereafter…right?

I was prescribed ear drops and sent on my merry way.  Da Fuq!  Yeah…swimmer’s ear only, my ass!  Pain in my face/neck/ear like I have not ever felt occurred that night.  Holy fuck shitballs.  Left message for dr I went to see the day before.  They returned my call about 4h later and told me to come in.  Luckily I have an amazing roommate who drove me over.  Same dr.  You know what he said, as I wore my sunglasses and am hunched over in agony (photo sensitivity and massive pressure prevented me from being upright and able to tolerate lights) and crying out of frustration: “Hmmm, I thought this would happen.”  Bitch!  What did I just hear out of your highly educated ass?! Did you just say you thought my issue would continue to manifest to this point and never gave me one bit of heads up about it?  Oh fuck no you did not!  I was in too much agony to respond.  More meds dispensed.  Amazing roommate picked me and went to get my meds for me. Netflix, my woobie and I had a massive bonding session on the couch for the next few days.

We had Thanksgiving with friends over that night.  I greeted friends.  Went upstairs and slept for 2h.  I could no longer open or close my mouth.  There was too much pressure on my jaw and too painful.  So I shoveled squishy food in there.  No chewing.  Not that I was hungry anyway.  One friend made this amazing chocolate mousse.  Oh man.  A-mazing!  Roommate made me rice and turkey soup that lasted me more than a week.  Did I mention how amazing my roommate is?

Finally got to go see my REAL doctor.  Guess what?  I had an inner and outer ear infection.  Huh.  That was nice to know since I certainly was not told that by the other doctor.  I got permission to return to work the next day.  Yay! 

On my way home from dropping my uniforms off at work, I got T-boned.  Yes.  You read that right.  My first accident in almost 10 years, since I lived in DC.  My poor Jeep.  Amazingly enough, the SUV that hit me, hit my rear driver wheel/tire.  No body damage!  For once in my life, I am thankful my Jeep is lifted and on 35” tires.  Granted, my wheel was bent to hell, bead popped off tire thus completely flattening it. I heard a snap noise at impact, but am not sure it was her or my vehicle.  I opted to have Jeep towed to friend’s shop since I was uncertain of other damage done.  Great.  Now I was vehicle-less, too.  Coworker who did traffic control on scene (different agency handled crash report) drove me home.  Mousse-making friend brought me to Enterprise Rental for me to get a temp vehicle.  Then I went to ER room to have my hip looked at since it was continuing to bother me since the accident.

As of today, 7 days after the accident, no progress on Jeep since waiting for insurance person to look at it.  I got myself a lovely 2WD F150. Weird.  I can say that it performed fairly well in new snow, ice and mud (drove to Wilson Creek yesterday).  Feels strange to drive such a light weight large pick up (aluminum framed) vs a 2014 model which is steel-framed.  Honestly, I’d rather have a steel framed truck than a piddly lightweight fishtailing slipping and sliding aluminum better mpg truck.

Hmmmm, what else?  There are updates I could add, but I am currently waiting on updates on other things.

I have discovered a pretty cool website.  It is useful if you are ever looking to relocate and want to know cost of living comparisons.   Here it is: http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/

I was wanting to know the state by state outcome of the 2016 Presidential election (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016).  I found out that Hawaii, Rhode Island and New Hampshire and Idaho are the only states with 4 electoral votes.  Man, we’re moving up in the world!  I thought Idaho only had 3, hahaha!  Funny enough, the other three states with 4 are teeny tiny states versus Idaho being a large landmass.  Here is Idaho’s info on the 2016 election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Idaho,_2016 and http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/idaho andhttps://www.sos.idaho.gov/elect/results/2016/PresidentialPrimary/united_states_by_county.html (this shows the Idaho Primary election in March 2016 results).

Trump garnered 59% of the votes.  Only 2 counties were “blue” majority (Sun Valley area- Blaine County and Latah County)

Took the dogs on a jaunt to Wilson Creek this past weekend.  After a week of snow, rain, sleet and cold, the dogs and I were chomping the bit to get out.  Roads were slick.  I drove through a near whiteout wall of fog dropping down Hwy 45 to the Snake River.  Fog was over the Owyhees but cleared up while we were hiking.  It was gorgeous.  I love it out there.  So peaceful.

EDIT: Got quote today to fix the Jeep.  Yay!  I love progress.  My baby is gettin' fixed!