gross...

Yesterday morning I was in a hurry... but that's pretty much every morning Monday to Thursday. One of the last things I do before I put on my jacket and shoes is I slip in my earrings. No different yesterday.

While in class my left ear started to tingle. Since I cannot shake all the old wives' tales imparted to me as a child, I started to wonder what superstitious meaning a tingling left earlobe has. As the day progressed the tingling turned to a bit of annoying itch. Around 9pm at work I realized that my ear is kind of throbbing now and feels really hot. I touch my lobe and it's sticky.... yuck.... I take a break and head for the washroom... In the mirror I am confronted with a purple earlobe, an infection... and on closer inspection.....

let me backtrack... I have 3 piercings side by side in my left earlobe. Several months ago I started to wear only one earring in that ear, and so the other two holes closed up. Well in my morning rush, I jammed the earring in the middle hole that fused back together. Thinking back, I remember registering a bit of resistance when putting the earring in, but as I already mentioned I was in a hurry.

....and back to the washroom... I had a brief mental picture of my earlobe falling off. Sticky part was mostly puss... yup a tad of an infection... no surprise I was fiddling with it absentmindedly most of the day.

So I get home a bit after midnight. Instead of using rubbing alcohol that's in the washroom to clean my lobe, I decided to do it with vodka. (That's what my mom used when I was little, and it worked like a charm.) We have plenty in the freezer, but I decided to grab a room temperature bottle from our stash. I unscrew the top, tip it over and nothing comes out. It's a brand new bottle I'm perplexed. I look at the opening and it has some sort of device in it... I'm confused... what is it for?... is it a deterrent for alcoholics and minors?... I'm neither, so why don't I know how to work it? I tip if over again... and nothing. I decide to dig the obstacle out... it refuses to budge. I'm getting frustrated, start to wonder if I'm making too much of a raucous and wake Jay up... I proceed to systematically work my way through kitchen utensils to budge the freaking cork or whatever it is. After 10 minutes and only a couple of chipped chunks I'm seriously contemplating abandoning the vodka, grabbing another bottle, or just using the freaking rubbing alcohol. But then I thought, I've been up for almost 19 hours now, I was not about to admit defeat to a bottle of vodka. After 5 more minutes, and one close call of loosing an eye, and another of almost loosing a finger, I tip the bottle and...SUCCESS!!!!.... vodka pours out...

earlobe disinfected... looks a lot better today...

oh yeah I left the earring in... after all this discomfort and hassle I might as well enjoy my newly re-pierced earlobe :)